I’ll never wear it and I’ll never give it away.

So it sits, my mother’s fancy apron, in the drawer of a credenza, under the tablecloth we use twice a year.

At her house, it was kept on a shelf in the linen closet, next to the hand towels. Once, toward the end of her life, when congestive heart failure was wracking her body with phlegmy coughs, I saw the tip of its sash sticking out from under the door, as if to remind me of her loveliness.

My mother had a lot of aprons, ranging from plain to pretty, but this one stood alone. Its sheer organza, embroidered with green and yellow flowers, marked it as special. She tied it around her tidy waist on Passover, and for company on Saturday nights, removing it once the hors d'oeuvres were out of the oven and my father belted “who wants a high ball?” to the guests.

Yesterday, I panicked because I wasn’t sure the apron was in the credenza. I’ve been losing things lately - a pair of delicate earrings shaped like bows, a lightweight black sweater - misplaced and driving me crazy. On this, my third Mother’s Day without a mother, I wanted to touch her prettiness, so was relieved to find it where it belonged.

I remember when Mother’s Day shifted from a day where I gave, to a day where I also received. Having a mother and being one was more than an exchange of cards - it was an exercise in posture. I may have looked strong, but my fortitude was delicate. One shift from either side - my mother’s low-blood-pressure, my kids’ high fevers - and I wobbled, struggling to steady myself, knowing I had to, because both motherhood and daughterhood demanded it.

Bookends insist that we don’t topple.

Lately, I play songs my mother liked - Liza singing New York or Barbra belting out People - as I walk, so I can feel her. I need to, because the longer she’s gone, the less I cry. I want to yearn for her because when I break a little, I can let her in. And feel like a daughter again.

I close my palm around the apron’s sash. I think of the day, soon after Philip and I were engaged, when my parents invited his for brunch. I barely talked on the drive to New Jersey, worried that his parents would find mine too suburban. As we pulled into the driveway, I winced at the bald spot on our front lawn, wishing my father didn’t think sod was a waste of money. We got out of the car, Philip’s mother holding a beautiful box of chocolates in front of her like a tray.

The front door opened. And there were my smiling parents. My father was handsome, tennis-fit and tanned, in his good sports shirt and slacks. And my mother. My sweetheart of a mother. She emerged, her pretty yellow apron as neat and well-cared for as she was. She opened her arms and smiled her smile. And said “Welcome to our home.”

Yesterday felt indulgent. No piling into the car to go to New Jersey. No arranging a platter of lox when we got there. None of the exhaustion of planning and giving. Only the luxury of a sleepy, lazy Sunday. A sunny walk. The joy of reading books side by side. The sweetness of linking arms on the sidewalk. Of being served an omelette. A mimosa in a crystal flute.

Queen for a day.

I was told to sit at the dining table to open cards and gifts.

I tugged at ribbons.

And felt the organza tug of apron strings.

Both pulling at my heart.

The back-and-forth of mother-love.

Getting dressed is exhausting, and I would know, because I did it seven times yesterday. Give me 82 degrees and sunny when it’s barely spring, and I’ll give you me - in a panic.

It shouldn’t have been that way - I was on my way to meet my friend Emily. And while she’s one of the most beautiful people I know and has great style, getting dressed for her isn’t stressful (I have a couple of friends who always seem to be wearing exactly the right thing, rendering my “right thing” wrong. She’s not one of them.)

In fact, I knew what I’d wear - my favorite new pants, by a company called Ruti, which, a couple of months ago, were populating my feed to such a degree that I bought two pair. I love them.

The top was another matter. First, I paired those Ruti’s with a simple white tee, then, a pretty top with a pointy collar (adorable, in my head) then, a beige drapey number. No, no, and no. I’m too pasty for white or beige and suddenly, the whole thing wasn’t working.

Outfit 1:

Those Ruti’s came right off my booty. And before I knew it, I was flailing.

Outfit 2:

Ah. A long slim denim skirt with a floaty peasant top. Rich hippie. Or maybe middle-class hippie. Ok, just hippie. Actually, not even hippie. More like dippy. Yes, I had to admit it, I looked a bit dippy. And my mood was getting drippy.

I was starting to become the me I dislike most. Frustrated. Insecure. Frantic. I surveyed my closet with a squint, as if to divine something. And I did.

Outfit 3:

This pretty little lady of a dress volunteered itself. Why yes, my lovely striped friend, I’ll take you for a spin! Let’s pair you with high espadrilles and be on our way! No, no, said my sobering voice. You don’t have high espadrilles any more because they hurt your feet. Remember? It was when you first suspected you might have something that rhymes with onions, but were in denial? You gave them to a niece with younger feet. Maybe this dress works with a low sandal? No! No, it does not. The proportions are wrong! Really. Why have a dress if you don’t have a shoe for it? Why? Why? I’m not just thinking “why, why,” I’m saying it. Spiraling. Stamping my foot a little. And while it’s not late, it’s no longer early.

I try a brown dress with a skinny leopard belt and look like an annoying art teacher who insists on doing yet another papier maché project. I yank an oversized t-shirt dress from my closet. God. I’ve gone from artsy to frumpy. A slim denim shirtdress follows, but gets the boot simply because I’m in boot-mode.

Finally, I grab the least inspired choice of all. A black t-shirt with flowy pants and sandals. There’s nothing wrong with it, but nothing all that right either. I throw a couple of necklaces over the t-shirt and hope for the best.

As I walk to the restaurant, I ask myself why I was so surprised by the weather. I mean, I do have a weather app on my phone. I knew it would be 82 and sunny. And yet it threw me into a tizzy, tossing me, like clothes in the dryer.

I always know things are coming, yet, ridiculously, they surprise me. I’ve been this way my whole life.

Wait, you’re supposed to start a career after college?

People get married in their 30’s? Who knew this?

It’s harder to get pregnant as you get older? Now they tell me.

You have to register kids for pre-school?

Hold on. Companies lay senior people off?

I could go on.

Suffice it to say, there are those who prepare for the worst and those who hope for the best. And then there are those who just kind of wake up.

Which brings me to my current issue.

I took last summer off - first time I’ve not worked in 35 years. I was beachy, boozey, lazy, and I loved it. I figured I’d go back to work in September, but apparently, I was the only one who thought so. It was still sunny and gorgeous so I half-heartedly sent out my typical “hey, I’m up for an assignment” emails. Nothing happened. So I sent a few more. And while waiting, started doing things I’d never done on weekdays -meeting friends for lunch and going to museums. I walked everywhere and did more personal writing than I had in ages. I went to the movies when it rained. Volunteered at a soup kitchen. Had margaritas on Friday afternoons. All of which sounds pretty great. But I felt, and feel, unsettled. So I tell myself it’s temporary.

Last week, I got a text about a job. And panicked. Not in the way I normally panic (“do I still know how to do this?”) but in a new way (“do I want to do this?”) The job fell through and I was relieved.

I think maybe I don’t want to work anymore.

I italicized it because I’m whispering. It’s not that I’m ashamed. It’s that I feel dumb. Dumbstruck, actually - as if there’s a permanent thought bubble over my head that says “Huh?”

I should be enjoying this. And I will, someday. I guess. But I’m not ready. This wasn’t my idea - it just kind of happened. Like the first 82-degree day. And marriage. And child-rearing.

Retirement is one of those words that people hate for good reason - there’s nothing sexy about it.

“I think it’s time I retire this sweater,” I said recently of a faded, shapeless cardigan I’d been wearing at home forever. No one disagreed - and no one saw the sweater as running off to do something glamorous - we saw it as doing what was necessary - disappearing.

Will I disappear if I stop working?

I ask myself why I can’t simply enjoy it - travel with my husband - take an occasional girls’ trip - have a twice-weekly lunch date - walk across the Brooklyn Bridge - be the kind of person who spends an afternoon at The Frick and another at The Whitney. Volunteer. Do pilates. Learn to watercolor?

I will, I tell myself. I will do those things. But first, I have to learn to shift.

In the meantime, I cling to old habits - I’m home for dinner each night and up at 7 every morning. I see weekdays differently than weekends and scoff at the thought of staying out past 10 on a Tuesday night.

I don’t know the customs of my new world and I don’t speak its language.

I’m not alone, but I feel lonely in this.

My step count is high, but my destinations are limited.

And I don’t seem to have a map.

Last night I dreamt that two big ad agencies were vying to hire me. It involved a pitch, and as I ran home to change clothes for a meeting after having worked through the night, the other company called to up their offer. The chaotic feeling woke me. But I wasn’t stressed - I was giddy.

Work made me feel powerful. And wanted. And needed.

This other thing makes me feel naked.

Like snow that won’t melt, or a leaf that clings to a branch after the others have fluttered off, or a drunken party guest who won’t leave, I’m kind of just hanging around.

I get to the restaurant and Emily is at a booth. I can’t see what the white letters on her black t-shirt say until she stands to greet me.

“I love it,” I smile.

“Everyone has t-shirts that say ‘Fuck Ice’ and here I am with this.” She shakes her head as if she’s a clown. If she’s a clown, then sign me up for clown school.

Because if there’s one thing I need, it’s more.

More letting go.

More willingness to take credit for what I’ve done to get here.

More dinners out. More mornings in. More art. More music. More food. More drinks. More life.

More acceptance.

More of what’s on Emily’s shirt.

I wash my hands slowly in the Rehabilitation Center’s restroom, then dab my lips with pale pink gloss. I blot them with a paper towel and will myself to stop dilly-dallying, only to wrap a curl around my finger, trying harder than necessary to get it to behave. My procrastination has nothing to do with not wanting to see Marina and everything to do with being afraid.

It’s been over ten years and I’m worried she won’t recognize me. Or worse, that I won’t recognize her. There’s a big difference between 79 and 89, and while she’s told me she’s “gone skinny,” and has white hair, I worry about how she’ll look under the thin blanket of a small bed. I feel guilty. I could have come sooner.

Marina’s daughter had texted, saying she’d fallen on the ice and injured her ankle. She’d been hospitalized, then moved to a rehab.

I hate rehab centers even more than hospitals and come up with reasons not to go - it’s 10 degrees and windy, for one. It’ll necessitate a PATH to Hoboken and a cab to Union City. If I wait a week, maybe she’ll be home and my husband and I can go to her apartment. And then, I think about the Fridays - every Friday for 20 years - when Marina made the same trip I’m vacillating about. But instead of a cab, she took a bus. In rain and snow, when it was bitterly cold and beastly hot. And never complained.

I walk slowly toward Room 421, trying to ignore the competing smells of chicken and Pine-Sol. I see her before she sees me. She looks up. Gasps. And smiles. Relief melts over me. She’s still beautiful.

“Hola, Caliente.”

When she worked for us, I called her Señorita Caliente because she was always hot, even in winter.

“Debra! You come to see me!” she answers, laughing as I lean in for a hug. Without hesitation, she slides over and pats the bed. I sit. Just as she did, years ago, when I used to beckon her with the same pat.

As a 40-year-old who was pregnant with twins, I was put on bedrest during my last trimester. This was before working remotely was a thing and I’d dreaded not going to the office. Then found that I loved it. Especially on Fridays.

Marina cleaned for us. I’d never had a cleaning person and felt a little uncomfortable about it. But her joy, and mainly, her dignity, wiped my guilt away like a smudge on a counter. She whisked in, her coat unbuttoned and hung within seconds. With her olive skin, high cheekbones, salt and pepper hair in a low bun, gold earrings and a scarf thrown around her neck, she looked rich. I told her so once and she laughed,

“Yes. A very rich woman!”

“I mean it, Caliente. You look like one of the ladies that lives in this neighborhood - like someone on her way to a fancy lunch.”

“That’s me. On my way to fancy lunch,” she said, with a little self-important wag of her head.

“Actually, do you want lunch?” I said. “I have to order something for me, I’ll get you something too.”

Toward the end of my pregnancy, it dawned on me that once the babies were born, the eating-for-three party would be over.

“I’m getting a tuna melt, french fries and a milkshake,” I said, salivating over my third-trimester-trifecta. “How about you? Want a hamburger or something? This coffee shop is good.”

Marina said no, but I ordered her a sandwich just in case. By the time the bell rang, she was humming in the kitchen and I was at the dining table writing copy for, appropriately enough, a Huggies ad.

Marina took the bag from the delivery guy and I pushed my laptop away.

“Go to your room!” she said, “I’ll bring the lunch.” I protested and she pointed to the bedroom. “First you eat, then you rest.”

I tucked myself into the duvet, my head falling heavily onto a pillow, just a couple of slow-blinks from deep sleep. I heard the rustle of Marina’s pants. When I didn’t stir, she turned to leave.

“Stay,” I said. “I was just resting.” I opened my eyes to see her standing before me, the tuna melt plated, the shake poured into a glass, a cloth napkin, on a tray. She had a towel draped over her arm. She put it on my lap and placed the tray on top of it.

I patted the spot next to me on the bed. “Sit with me,” I said.

“I have to do the dusting,” she answered.

“Don’t dust today,” I said. “Sit with me instead. Have some fries.” She protested that dust was no good for babies and I patted the bed again. I got her to agree to five minutes.

I bit into a fry and took a sip of the milkshake, closing my eyes in sweet-salty joy.

“Ooh, I’m getting a kick. Feel,” I said.

Marina put her warm hand on my belly until there was another kick.

“Precioso,” she whispered.

“Or maybe preciosa,” I said.

Not finding out the genders of our babies was either charmingly wide-eyed or just plain idiotic.

Marina shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. We’ll just love them.”

I started to say something but smiled instead.

“What is it?” Her hand was still on my belly.

“It’s just that, I wish I could stay pregnant for longer. I like it. And I know how to do it,” I put my hand next to hers - there was room for both. “I’ve never even changed a diaper or been alone with a baby. I’m scared that…what if I’m not good at it?” I whispered.

She met my eyes. “You’re the best mother of the world,” she said with so much conviction, I almost believed her.

I laughed. “Do I get a crown?”

She said she’d make me one. And then said all the encouraging things my mother said, but with a Chilean accent.

She made sure I had lunch in bed every Friday. And helped me line the drawers of the new dresser with Martha Stewart contact paper - white, with pale green bunnies. We stacked tiny onesies and socks on one side of the top drawer and newborn diapers (Huggies - a perk) on the other.

On June 15th, 2000, bedrest - and actually, all forms of rest - ended. Ava and Ben were beautiful and wondrous but I was not. We hired a baby nurse who wore a uniform and scared the hell out of us. Her name was Hyla. Philip and I called her Hyla Hitler behind her back. She was stern and from what I could tell, had no sense of humor. But, as we reasoned, we didn’t hire her to be our friend. We hired her to teach us how to care for the terrifying creatures who kept crying and pooping and making us fall in love with them whenever their eyes met ours.

“Isn’t it so cute when they yawn?” I said, smiling at Hyla.

She shrugged.

She was nothing, if not efficient.

“I just saw her scrubbing a stain out of a onesie with a toothbrush,” Philip whispered.

“Ew - whose?” My hand flew to my mouth.

“Nobody’s. It’s a special little toothbrush she brought here just for that.”

“You asked?” I was impressed with his bravery. I basically tip-toed around, trying to avoid eye contact with her.

Marina cooed at the babies and told them how beautiful they were in Spanish, then in English, then in a combination.

“Look at she….” Marina said, gazing at Ava. “And look at he.” She shook her head in wonder and turned to Hyla.

“The girl was fussy earlier,” Hyla answered.

Marina smiled, then followed me out of the bedroom.

“We have to get rid of her,” Marina whispered. “The babies need love.”

I countered that Hyla, unlike Philip and me, knew how to get them on a schedule. I praised her diaper-changing skills. And there was the special toothbrush to consider.

Marina stood her ground. “I’ll take care of the babies with you.”

We whispered feverishly every time Hyla left the room, finally deciding it was a Philip job. He stepped into the living room with her and an hour later, she was gone.

Marina and I jumped up and down, hugging, like seventh-grade girls. Philip’s paternity leave - the whole one week of it - had ended the day before, so he left. Marina and I diapered. I breastfed. Which was proving to be trying. We supplemented with formula. Walked the babies around the apartment. Cleaned spit up (sans special toothbrush.) Then did it again. And again. By 5:00, when Philip got home, we were exhausted.

I asked Marina if she wanted dinner before she left. She looked at me like I’d lost my mind.

“I haven’t cleaned yet.” I argued that she’d worked all day. She argued that babies need a clean house. She stayed. And cleaned. And held babies. And cleaned some more. And refused to take an extra penny.

“I do that for the babies,” she said. “And for you.” She smiled. “We’re friends.”

Marina.

Now she sits in a hospital gown and pats the spot next to her on the bed.

When she closes her eyes, I notice a fine line at the base of her lashes - as if a makeup artist had painted white eyeliner on her lids. It’s exquisite. Her teeth, always white and even, have remained so. Her smile is lovely, as is the beauty mark above her lip.

I find a vase for the flowers I picked up, and I can tell she wants to arrange them so I won’t have to. Marina has always treated me like a princess and I’ve let her sweet spoiling wash over me.

She asks about Thelma, who was our nanny. Thelma’s heart, like Marina’s, was butter-soft, and Fridays, when they cooed over Ava and Ben together, was by far, my favorite day of the week.

I called Thelma “Mrs. Beautiful,” and she called me the same. She decided Marina was a Mrs. Beautiful too and about that, she was right.

I was always rushing off to work and more often than I wished, that meant not being sure what to wear.

“Is this ok?” I stood in the kitchen with my hands on my hips, trying to make a GirlBoss-face. Marina stopped cleaning the stovetop and Thelma looked over as she spooned oatmeal into Ava’s and Ben’s mouths.

“That dress is pretty. But why you look mad?” Marina said.

“Oh no - I’m trying to look serious,” I said and explained I had a big meeting.

“I need to look… important.” I ducked into the closet, then back to the kitchen in a sleeveless silk top with a pencil skirt.

“Maybe this is better?”

“Oh. You look like a business lady!” Thelma said.

“A big one!” Marina added.

“Wait. Big, like fat?”

Marina laughed. “You come crazy when you have meetings.”

“It’s you go crazy,” I said.

I helped Marina with English and she helped me with Spanish. She had the harder job for sure.

I ran from room to room, gathering my handbag, lipstick, glasses, Blackberry. I kissed Ava and Ben, kissed them again, then kissed the two Mrs. Beautiful’s. Then lingered at the hallway mirror putting lipstick on.

“Sorry I left all that ribbon on the table,” I said. “I got it on sale and there’s so much. You guys should take some - keep it.” The ribbon was a gorgeous shade of turquoise and I still have a few random strands of it. They nodded and shooed me out the door.

When I got home, the table was set and next to each plate was a napkin tied with turquoise ribbon. And the basket in the bathroom no longer looked like a crime scene. The towels I could never seem to tame were rolled and tied with ribbons.

Marina. Her way of accepting a gift was to give it back.

“I got you some cookies.” I open the box and hold it toward her. She takes a bite of one. I break a piece off too. We chew and smile at each other for a while.

“Show me the children,” she says, so I pull out my phone.

“Ok, here they are together. We were in Florida,”

She holds the phone and kisses each of their faces. I thumb through to find more.

“Mister Philip is so handsome…so nice,” she ways.

Philip - Mister Philip - is indeed handsome. And he’s nice too - but he’s also exacting and cynical. But never with Marina. Marina melts him the way my mother used to.

“Hey. Remember how you used to make the strawberries have mouths?” I say. When Ava and Ben were little, she’d cut a slit into each of the strawberries on a plate, then pinch them between her thumb and forefinger to mimic them talking.

“You want some sugar?” she’d say.

The strawberries answered that indeed they did, and she dropped a few grains into their open mouths before handing them to Ava and Ben.

Her hospital gown slides around her shoulders and she pulls it to her neck, only for it to slip down again. Her hair, salt and pepper when I saw her last, is all salt now. She gathers it, smoothing it behind her ears.

“You don’t have a line on your face,” I say.

She waves me off, but it’s true. She doesn’t look 89. Nor does she seem to know she’s 89. When I called her, around Christmas time, she told me how much she liked going to her local senior center.

“The people are nice. And I help take care of the old ladies.”

When I come back a week later, I’m happy to see her up, in a chair. Her daughter Karla has flown in and brought her some clothing so she wears flowered pants and a black cardigan with an applique near her heart.

She pats the bed. I sit. We eat cookies and look at pictures. She hopes to go home in a few weeks. I tell her I think of her whenever I put my socks away. I used to fold the cuff of one sock over the other, then make a ball. Marina folds one cuff over another, but smooths the two into a flat envelope.

“They look so nice in my drawer,” I say. “I always thank you in my head when I look at them. Philip too.”

Marina laughs and squeezes my hand. We talk a bit, but she lapses into Spanish more than she used to. Without cleaning the houses of Americans, she has less contact with English-speaking people. Union City is mainly Hispanic.

I ask if people are worried about ICE.

“Oh, it’s terrible,” she whispers. “People don’t want to go outside.” My voice too, has become a whisper. I tell her I’m glad she’s a citizen and feel a wave of pure hatred at the thought of a masked man daring to touch Marina.

I have to leave, and promise to come back soon.

When I get back to Manhattan, I stop at a bistro for a very late lunch. I shouldn’t. I have things to do. But I’m immersed in Marina- vibes. So I order my favorite thing - a salad nicoise, fries and a cosmo - the 2026 version of my pregnancy lunch.

I take a sip. And offer a silent toast.

To joy and grace.

To patting the bed and sliding over.

To a woman who raised a child alone, cleaned other people’s floors and made it look easy.

A woman who made strawberries talk.

A woman who makes America great.

A lady. A queen.

Marina.

The one and only.

My husband comes rushing in, the way he does when he can’t wait to tell me something. He jerks his head toward the window.

“It’s coming down in about a week,” he says.

“The whole…the scaffolding? Like, all of it?”

My question has taken some air out of his headline, but he’s still excited as he clarifies - the foreman said the metal bars and ladder that are directly in front of our living room window are coming down.

“We’ll still have the platform ‘til spring,” Philip continues – a reporter, breaking a story – “But the rest? Gone.”

“The gauze too?”

“Yup. All of it.” He waves his arm toward the mess outside our window like Leonard Bernstein dismissing an orchestra.

I give a little shriek and take my place at the far end of the window seat.

I spend a lot of time here, especially in the morning when no one’s awake. Here, I lean against throw pillows like a pasha, write, text, and read as much of the paper as I can bear. Reveling in the luxury of morning solitude, I stare mindlessly out the window. I watch neighbors nod to fellow, half-awake-dog-walkers at 6AM. I know the sound of the bread truck that pulls in front of the restaurant across the street and the three bangs on the door that follow it. When the kitchen crew hasn’t arrived yet, the driver leaves a brown paper bag of baguettes against the front door – an old-fashioned act of trust in a cynical world. I sense the quiet determination of porters and doormen who hose sidewalks like there’s a prize for the biggest puddle.

Or at least that’s what old me did. Current me sees nothing because I’m caged in by scaffolding and draped in gauze. I remember the day the latter appeared, white and snowy as the veil of a bride. Now, it’s grey and torn – the product of an ill-fated wedding that’s lasted way too long. Hey, Macarena, make this damned thing end.

It wasn’t supposed to be up for this long. But in New York, scaffolding months are like dog years. Complaining about it unites us neighbors as we wait for the elevator and collect our mail. I talk a big game about how much I hate it, but my dirty secret is that I don’t hate the dirty gauze.

When the bridge first appeared, I said “Let’s pretend it’s a balcony” to Philip, who, like the rest of the building, was in no mood for whimsy.

“Yeah, a balcony you can’t use because it’s covered with wheelbarrows and bricks and…what the hell is that?” he said, as a huge bucket of sludge was plopped directly in front of our window.

I sighed. I was glad the gauze was white and not black, diffusing light instead of blocking it. And I actually found it a kind of pretty - like a sheet of velum, making the world a little softer.

When I said so to Philip, he looked at me like I’d gone mad and he wasn’t exactly wrong.

But I wasn’t exactly me.

My mother had just been put into hospice and with it, my world into limbo. At first, we were told it would be a matter of days, maybe weeks. Weeks became months and my siblings and I became a network, connected by daily texts.

How was she today?

She ate a little quiche and slept.

The music therapist came, so she was happy.

She had her lungs drained. Bad, at first, now better. Sleeping.

We watched youtube videos.

She was agitated. Hospice nurse will check her meds.

We colored. She slept. A good day.

The texts, like strands of fishing wire, tethered us to her and to each other. They were mundane in their sameness, except when they weren’t.

She cried and yelled that she wants to die.

Texts like that made me stop breathing. Until hospice, I could count on one hand how many times I’d seen my mother cry. Her tears were dignified and contained - a tissue-dab to the corner of each eye, her sad smile, a promise that things would be okay. And she made them okay, even after my father died, when we pretended to be taking care of her while she took care of us.

Now, the discipline she’d maintained for 93 years was gone. Her tears were unrestrained, running wild, like fourth-graders set free on a playground.

We all acted differently then. Sometimes I thought it was the very word that did it to us - hospice. The final act. Permission to skip meetings and showers, to eat a handful of Wheat Thins and a scoop of vanilla ice cream and call it dinner. Hospice - the sickness that doesn’t come with Get Well cards. A terrifying, liberating admission that you’re waiting for death.

“The new normal,” became a phrase we applied to everything - from her pain, to the presence of full-time caregivers, to our exhaustion. The calls at sundown - when she yelled into the phone in a fearful, screechy tone that bore no resemblance to the soft one we’d known all our lives - were harder to get used to. But we came to expect and understand them too.

“This is just a side effect of the medication, and it happens at the end of the day,” I’d say into the phone, willing my voice to sound calming and certain, as I assured her that no one was trying to break into her house. I’d ask her to take deep breaths with me, and then, when she quieted, I’d sing “Que Sera Sera” until she joined me on the“whatever-will-be-will-be’s.” Sometimes, she’d say “Again,” and we’d start over.

I took New Jersey Transit a few days a week, working on the train and when she napped. Life became a long, drawn out, gauze-covered slog. Days blended together - a blur of sadness and stillness, like one long sick day – the kind you say you hate, but quietly embrace. I clung to it, because when this sick day ended, so would my life as a daughter. And I loved being a daughter. I loved being her daughter.

It often seemed like she was about to die. And then she didn’t. Sometimes the hospice nurse would say she was “winding down.” But a day later, she’d start eating again and we’d talk about what good color she had.

It was a year enveloped by a cloud of sameness. A year of spooning soup into a mouth that had lost its stiff upper lip, angling the spoon so chicken broth wouldn’t drip down her chin. A year of kissing her forehead and whispering “just a little more,” when she fell asleep between spoonfuls.

But also, a year of wishing for the thing I’d dreaded all my life. A year of wishing my mother would die. Which flooded me with guilt, because while most of that wish was for the end of her pain, some of it was for the end of mine.

It wasn’t only sad, it was tedious. The train rides. The sitting. The racking of the brain to think of stories to divert her and occasionally make her laugh. The endless tasks.

A phone call from Kecia, her caregiver, came on a Friday afternoon, at the end of a long week, when I was about to snap my laptop shut. With a sigh, I wondered what I needed to order from InstaCart.

“She’s fading,” Kecia said and I was calm, because she was said to be “fading” all the time. It was when she added, “The hospice nurse wants to talk to you,” that my eyes widened.

Arthur, who’d been seeing my mother for the past six months, had a quietness to his voice that stiffened my spine. He said “It looks like Florence is starting to shut down,” as if she were a shoe factory. But his voice was kind. If I wanted to see her, he said, it would be best to come soon.

And so I did.

Arthur said he thought she’d probably last the night. He said to talk to her because she might still be able to hear.

“She’ll go out nicely,” he said, “I can tell.” I nodded proudly. Of course she would. He said we were in good hands with Kecia and that I should call if we needed him. I wanted him to stay, and I wanted him to go. I had no idea what I wanted.

My memories of the night are both sharp and hazy. I held her hand, sometimes letting go for a few minutes, then quickly grabbing it back. I sang Que Sera Sera, and she made a soft sound that I wanted to think was singing.

“Hey, F, I can’t tell if you’re singing or moaning,” I said to her unmoving face.

I leaned closer and angled my head, trying to peer under the lashes of her closed eyes. I stayed that way, willing her to laugh at her bad singing and say “so what else is new?” Silently, I begged her to open her eyes and smile her gracious smile. To stay and be my mother. My F.

By morning, her slow pulse became no pulse.

Kecia’s eyes were steady and kind as she whispered, “she’s gone.” I stared at her dumbly.

She put a rolled-up towel under my mother’s chin so her mouth wouldn’t hang open – “She’s too pretty for that” – and told me to hurry and open the front door so her spirit could escape.

I’ll forget a lot of things, but I’ll never forget the feel of Kecia’s strong hand on the small of my back at the moment I needed it most.

My brother, sister and I held hands and did all the things you do – a funeral, a shiva, a hazy year of mourning.

And then, just as people said it would, after the first year, the haze lifted. The dull constant ache was gone. But in its place were sharper stabs of pain - the ones that came when I’d think, “I better call F to remind her it’s Daylight Savings.” Or when a plane landed in a new city and I started to tap her number into my phone. Or when my eyes lit on a bunch of pale pink tulips at the deli.

Those are the pains that remain - sharp, stabbing, intermittent. They come without warning. Sometimes they’re gone in an instant. Sometimes, I can’t shake them for days.

I sit in the window seat, pecking these words out, catching a glimpse, through the curtain, of a workman’s orange sweatshirt and camouflage pants.

“Oh my God, they’re doing it - they’re taking it down!” I yell to Philip.

We throw the curtains open and watch, because we can’t get over how beautiful it is. I meet the eyes of one of the men and smile. He smiles back.

When I look out again, the metal staircase that has blocked our view is gone. As are the wooden planks and the bricks. The bridge (our balcony) is still there for now, and our view is hardly clear. But it’s better.

The dirty, foggy, shredded twisted, gauze is gone.

So long, old friend.

You’ve shielded me well.

But it’s time to get on with it.

After all, whatever will be will be.

“So what are you gonna wear?” I text.

There are many things I love about my friend Zach but right now, my favorite is that he invited me to see the Knicks with him on Friday night.

His reply informs me that he too, is putting an outfit together and wonders if a black Kith Knicks shirt is stupid. I say it isn’t and bemoan the fact that my Ewing jersey is too long and too tight.

We text back and forth like 7th graders getting ready for a dance. I met Zach 12 years ago when we worked together at Ogilvy. He was an intern and I was (at least technically) his boss. He was wearing a Bob Dylan t-shirt the day we met and when I wondered aloud if he truly liked Dylan or was wearing the shirt as a fashion statement, it horrified him.

“Oh my God. I don’t like Dylan, I love him,” he answered so earnestly, it moved me. Then he added, “Anyone who’d wear this just to be cool is an asshole.”

Instant friendship.

I go to Paragon on Thursday, and come home with a Medium Boy’s Brunson t-shirt (he’s the team captain, in case you don’t know, but if that’s the case, you’ve probably stopped reading by now.)

I pair it with my favorite pants (lightweight, barrel-shaped and oddly flattering, except, as it turns out, with this t-shirt.) The shirt is unattractively snug and with a sigh, I realize that I’m not a Medium Boy after all.

Remembering one more Knicks shirt I own, I assemble another look. I imagine it - an oversized tee with skinny jeans - as an homage to Patti Smith in her younger days. I study the effect in the mirror and with a sigh, admit that Patti Smith wouldn’t be caught dead in this getup. The shirt, which is many sizes too big, comes to my knees and that’s just part of the problem.

I end up opting for a black shirt and pants, gold jewelry and my Knicks cap. As I dress, I ask my husband if he thinks there will be lots of 76ers fans there tonight - after all, Philadelphia is pretty close. He says if there are, it’s unlikely they’ll be sitting near us, since it’s hard to get VIP tickets, especially if you’re from out of town. I’m glad because Philly fans have a reputation for rioting after games - especially when their team wins.

Zach comes over for a pre-game rum & coke and a quick bite. My glamorous neighbor pops in and we let her fabulousness wash over us as we shove mushroom and onion pizza into our mouths.

Before we leave, we light the menorah. It’s been a horrific week - one where a Hanukah massacre in Sydney was sandwiched between a college campus shooting and the tragic murder of Rob Reiner and his wife.

No one needs to say that lighting candles - igniting flickers of child-like hope and joy - matters more this year.

Zach’s tickets, which have been given to him by an editor he works with, get us to the (as I bragged earlier) VIP entrance, so there’s almost no line and we join the throngs of blue and orange-clad fans headed to their seats.

I want to say that the rush of the Garden flutters over me like fistfuls of confetti, but it doesn’t. It fills me - like a giant mouthful of french fries. It’s salty and beautiful and good and bad and I can’t get enough of it.

I haven’t been to a Knicks game since I was dating my husband. We used to meet at a restaurant near the Garden, me in short dresses with black tights and boots, Philip in Hugo Boss suits and Armani ties. I’d never dated a Wall Street guy before and the way he hugged me into the fine wool of his lapel made me feel grown up and cared for. Philip’s company had seats on the floor - just a few rows behind Woody Allen’s bald spot. Sometimes we saw JFK Jr, his big head of beautiful hair and magic smile unmissable, even in a crowd.

Zach leads me to our seats, which indeed, are incredible. We’re on the aisle (yay!) and our view is perfect. Jaylen Brunson warms up with the quiet determination of the nicest, hardest-working kid in gym class. Karl Anthony Towns waves at someone and I wish it was me. The team has just returned from the NBA Cup games - a tournament within a season - or something like that. I don’t understand it, but it doesn’t matter - the Knicks won.

Tonight marks their return to the Garden and we are here to celebrate.

Zach chats with the two women to his right and I look over and smile. Zach is usually a very open, friendly guy. But something is weird about the way he shifts his eyes toward me. That’s when I notice the hats.

“Oh.” I pause and give the two Philadelphia fans a saucy smile. “Do I have to put my dukes up?”

Who am I kidding? If I put my dukes up against these two, I’d be creamed.

The woman closest to Zach smiles back and we learn that they’re teachers who coach middle-school girls’ basketball.

“Well, I don’t like your team, but I like you two!” I say.

A few minutes later, I’ll want to take that statement back.

But before that feeling hits me, I’m overcome with emotion for another of our neighbors. As the Star Spangled Banner is announced, the guy in front of us leaps to his feet. I don’t know when I’ve seen such joy for our country’s anthem before it even begins. He turns to the guy next to him, who’s clearly brought him as a guest, and says “Thanks, man.” He sings along, and by the twilight’s last gleaming, he’s swaying and has his arm around his tall friend’s waist. So proudly he hails!

I’m a sucker for the Star Spangled Banner and can’t help but be moved by his earnestness. So when he turns, with his hand in the air, I’m all in. Boom. He high-fives me. Boom. He high fives Zach. He puts his hand up to high five the Philly Girls and then yanks it away while their hands are mid-air. He laughs and ribs them about their team.

I love our fun section! I love the Knicks. And I love Zach for making this happen.

Five minutes in, when the guy in front of us turns to razz the Philly gals, I glance at Zach.

“Is he….” I say.

“Drunk?” says Zach.

We squint, listening to his promise that the Sixers are going down. His jeers blend into each other - a gobbledy-gook of syllables that don’t exactly form words. The Philly gals - particularly the one next to Zach, beg to differ. She waves the NBA Cup towel we VIP’s were given when we walked in, and says “We’re gonna use this to mop the floor with you.” The drunk guy puts his towel on his head and miraculously, keeps it balanced there for the rest of the game

The Knicks score.

The drunk guy turns.

We high five.

The Sixers run the ball down the court.

The Knicks steal it.

“Idiots!” the Philly fan shrieks.

The Sixers get the ball back.

“Run, ya idiot!” she yells. “You only make a million a year… do something.” I glance at Zach.

“Is she calling our guys idiots or hers?”

“Hers,” he says. He shakes his head. It’s way too early to be this mad, but it’s becoming clear that in this world, anger equals love.

Philly scores.

“THANK you,” she yells, spreading her hands apart, palms up, like a very angry parent whose kid has finally put his toys away.

The Knicks look tired and play poorly. Still, the game is fairly tight and we have many an opportunity to high five with our drunk neighbor. We join him in yelling “DEFENSE!” while the angry Philly fan stands, drowning us out with a piercing chorus of her own.

“OFFENSE! OFFENSE! Now move your feet. Do your job. Shoot the ball. That’s what you get paid for.” They score. “THANK you!” she yells, once again, sounding more annoyed than celebratory.

By the third quarter, there’s nothing Zach and I can do but watch.

Our team unravels. The Drunk Guy keeps cheering them on. The Angry Fan keeps shit-talking her team.

These two are a masterclass in how not to love.

He loves so unconditionally and loudly that the guy ahead of him turns around and says “Really?” more than once.

She shrieks so piercingly and meanly that I’d tell her to stop if she weren’t scaring the hell out of me.

Together, they form a fervent, messy chorus.

“Yes!!!” Enthusiastic high fives.

“Idiots!” Angry head shakes.

More high fives.

More “idiots.” Peppered with “fuckin’ idiots,” when it’s warranted, which seems to be often.

Between the third and fourth quarters, I go to the restroom.

When I get back, Zach is slumped down.

“Ok, it’s official. Everyone in this section hates our neighbors. We need to make it clear we’re not with them,” he says.

We start to high five a little lower and sit slightly turned away from the Philly fans. We look across the aisle, at respectful fans concentrating on the game and clapping when we score.

“God, they look so normal,” Zach says with longing.

“I love them,” I say, and we try to meet their eyes to let them know we’re like them, but it’s no use. We’re lumped in - a blight on the VIP name - and no one wants to look in our direction.

“Yaaaaaaahhhh!” our drunk friend wails, slapping our hands with all his wasted might.

“Shuffle your feet, move it, that’s right, you idiot, earn your paycheck.”

We’re no match for these two.

With 40 seconds to go, we gather our jackets. Even our drunk friend knows when to give up. He turns, and for the first time all night, looks sad. But only for a second. He meets the eyes of the Philly fan, and says, “Where you guys heading now?”

Zach and I aren’t the types to leave without good byes, but that’s what we do. Not a word to the drunkest, happiest Knicks fan on earth. Not a word to our scary, angry nemesis.

They don’t need us. They have each other.

We file out.

The official end of a long sad game.

The official end of a long, sad week.

But tonight, for three hours, we thought only about the next basket.

Zach and I step onto the F Train, no longer sandwiched between loopy love and tough love. We look at each other. Zach laughs. I say “what are you laughing at, ya idiot?” in my best high-pitched shriek. He slaps my hand and yells “yaaaaaah.” And we laugh some more, imagining the two of them tearing up a bar near Penn Station.

“I’m sorry that was so weird,” he says.

I say he’s got to be kidding and we keep laughing.

“Those were great seats though,” Zach says.

“Great seats in hell,” I say.

Our eyes meet and our mouths fall open.

“That’s a good title,” we say, almost at the same time.

We get to my stop.

“Thanks, ya idiot,” I shriek. Zach high-fives me.

I’m still smiling when I get inside.

The menorah, its candles long melted, is surrounded by blobs of blue and white wax. I pick a piece off and knead it between my fingers.

The world feels so sad right now.

But I’m a Knicks fan.

And my cheeks hurt from laughing.

And Zach is my friend.

Which I take as a major win.

Because I’m a fuckin’ idiot that way.

The woman behind me is suffering more than anyone has ever suffered in the history of jury duty.

She, and the woman at the front desk are engaged in a game of verbal ping-pong. The woman at the front desk over-explains. The one behind me over-reacts. The front desk woman wears a striped sweater. The woman behind me is blonde.

“Listen up,” bellows Stripes.

“Jesus Christ” mutters The Blonde.

“When you fill out the form that was given to you upon arrival, do not use check marks, and do not use x’s. They can’t be read by the computer.”

The Blonde lets out a majorly pissed off sigh.

“You need to fill in the circle. The entire circle. Do not put a little dot in the middle, because the computer can not read a little dot. It can only read a fully filled-in circle.”

The Blonde responds by summoning Jesus Christ again, and rapidly tapping her nails.

I can’t tell if Stripes loves or hates having to explain the art of circle-filling-in. Her tone and body language imply annoyance at having to give this kind of direction. And yet. She clearly likes reminding us that, as a group, we’re kind of dumb:

“I can promise you that no matter how many times I say this, at least one person will come up here with a check mark or an X in the circles,” she says, shaking her head sadly, then adds “at least one,” for emphasis.

The Blonde sighs so loudly, I can practically feel the heat of her exasperation on my neck.

“And when you fill in the dates,” Stripes continues, “fill in each circle. If the date is 10/7/25, you circle one number in each column and then, on top of that column, you write the corresponding number. Today’s date on top, corresponding numbers in the circles below. Again. Someone will come up here without having done that.”

“For fuck’s sake,” says The Blonde and I get her point. This is the second time we’ve been given this particular direction. Just how idiotic does Stripes think we are? She directs those whose names start with A though F to bring their forms up. The woman to my right glances at my form and leans over.

“I think she said you’re supposed to put the date at the top,” she whispers.

Oh my God. I’m the idiot. I thank my neighbor for saving me from being “at least one person” and scribble the date where I was told (twice) to put it.

Once the forms are handed in, we settle into our respective grooves. Laptops and books are cracked open. Phones blink with text messages. New friends converse (which is annoying to the rest of us.)

I settle in, glad I wore a simple black t-shirt and high-waisted pants. I feel like I look put-together and appropriate. I think back to the first time I had jury duty, when I was barely 30 and very single. I wore a Norma Kamali charcoal-grey boucle mini-dress that I’d gotten at Daffy’s. Its straps slipped from my shoulders, which I did little to address (someone had once told me I looked like Jennifer Beals from Flashdance, a compliment I’d taken way too seriously.) The falling straps revealed a scoop-necked, black stretchy top that I wore with the dress. I cringe as I write this, not because it sounds so bad, but because it was. Or at least, inappropriate as attire in which to sit before judges, lawyers, defendants, and pretty much anyone but a guy I was flirting with at an East Village Bar.

I sink into my seat. My book is delicious.

“Okay,” says Stripes into the mic, then pauses for dramatic effect.

Like thunder after lightning, the Blonde does her part.

“Jesus,” she hisses, rummaging through her bag for what I hope isn’t a weapon.

“I’m going to call 60 names.” Stripes pauses to let it sink in. “When I call your name, say ‘here,’ or whatever word you’d like, and then line up to my right.”

I sink down further, to keep from being called, but Stripes doesn’t seem to read my body language.

“Debra Fried,” she says, sounding annoyed with me for getting chosen first.

I yell “here” and tuck my book into my tote. Others are called and a messy line begins to form to the right of Stripes. One guy responds to his name by yelling “honk honk.” Some people laugh. The Blonde groans like she’s been hit with sciatica.

Somehow, despite being called first, I end up at the back of the line, and a guard ushers all 60 of us down to the 13th floor. We take our seats in the courtroom and it’s a shock to see the defendant sitting at a table. He wears an untucked, white button-down shirt that’s a bit too large. It’s creased, as if just taken out of the package. It seems intrusive that we should get to see him before we’re on the case, but there he is, looking way more relaxed than I would if my destiny were in the hands of a roomful of strangers.

The judge asks us to stand, raise our right hands, and asks if we promise to be fair and truthful. People murmur “yes” and a man to my left says “I promise” with a touching level of sincerity. There’s something sweet and pure about a roomful of people making a promise together and I’m embarrassed at how moved I feel.

My eye is caught by a flicker of movement. The defendant is leaning in, whispering to his lawyer, and laughing. The lawyer lifts her chin toward those of us with our hands in the air and the defendant’s laughter stops.

As the judge explains the rules of engagement, I’m reminded of my first time at jury duty. I was moved by the sincerity of my fellow jurors then too - and surprised by my own earnestness. Deciding the fate of another person - whether he’d go to jail or go free - was not something we took lightly. I remember welling up when it was over, feeling that I understood, for the first time, what it was to be American.

The judge asks each of the people at the tables before him to stand as they’re introduced. It’s like the beginning of a panel discussion, but we don’t applaud. First, each lawyer stands, looking solemn and nodding respectfully at us potential jurors. And then the defendant rises. I’m struck by how vulnerable he must feel. Standing there. Hoping a roomful of strangers will be just.

“You’re going to hear a lot about what this man is accused of doing,” the judge says, “but it’s your job not to judge him until you’ve heard all the evidence and can do so fairly.” He asks us to ask ourselves if we can do this.

I nod, realizing, to my annoyance, that I’m becoming invested. I’d thought I might use an upcoming freelance gig to get out of serving, but dammit, I’m all in. Once a believer, always a believer.

The judge clears his throat and begins. The defendant, he explains, is accused of approaching a woman near a wooded area of Central Park. A hush comes over the room as our collective fidgeting ceases. People lean in. I sit up straighter.

He continues explaining the accusation, according to which, the man’s pants were open and he held his penis in his hand. I’m childishly taken aback by the word “penis,” then feel amused at myself for reacting like a 4th-grader. I almost smile, but I’m shaken by what is being said. “He is accused of pushing himself against the woman, who was able to get away,” the judge says.

The defendant sits calmly, the cuffs of his too-big shirt partially covering his hands. I search his face for tells. I want to think I’m assessing him in a fair manner, but I realize that I’m squinting angrily.

I think he did it. And I hate him.

I shake my head, wanting to snap myself out of it, but I can’t.

The judge talks about the importance of hearing the facts, and I feel awful because I don’t think I can be fair to this man. I’ve pre-judged him and it’s partly because he laughed when we had our hands in the air.

But it’s also because I can picture all too clearly what the judge described.

“Those of you who serve will hear a lot more in the coming days, but for now, I need you to ask yourself, based on what you’ve heard so far, if you’ll be able to be impartial. If the answer is no, please be prepared to state your reason.”

We shuffle to the hallway, much more quiet than we were on our way in. The line of those who don’t feel they can be impartial is long and I hate being on it. I want to go stand with the fair people.

When it’s my turn to go in, I’m surprised yet again. I’d pictured myself walking up to the judge - “approaching the bench” in a dramatic fashion, but I’m not invited to do so. I stand near the defendant’s table, far enough from the judge to have to speak loudly.

When I’m asked to say my name, there’s a catch in my voice.

“Why is it you feel you can’t be impartial?” the judge asks.

“I was… I was the victim of something similar to what you described,” I say and he nods as if he knew that would be my answer.

“I’m sorry that happened and that you had to talk about it here,” the judge says. My “thank you” comes out as a whisper. I return to the hallway, noting that The Partials are almost all female. Of course we are.

I remember being on a subway platform when I first lived in New York. I stood at the front, to get onto the first car. My eyes met those of the only other person standing there - a man who smiled at me. Reflexively, I smiled back. He looked down at himself. His pants were open. I gasped. He raised his head and met my eyes again, but this time, his smile had become a menacing laugh. It lasted all of ten seconds. And all of 40 years. I can still feel my shock and my humiliation. And later, my anger at having felt that way - after all, it was him whose body was exposed. Him who was living the ultimate embarrassment-dream of being flaccidly half-naked in public. And yet there I stood - fully clothed and totally threatened.

So much power in that moment. None of it mine.

That experience was mild compared to what it could have been. But it makes me angrier now. My daughter is the age I was then.

It was the laugh that went through me. I think of other laughs, from other men. Taunting laughs. Mean laughs. The defendant’s laugh wasn’t mean - it was casual. But I can’t deny that it made me dislike him.

My feeling isn’t fair and I don’t belong in this trial because, obviously, the man in the white shirt deserves impartiality.

Those of us who’ve been dismissed are walked back to Room 1517, like schoolchildren returning from recess. But we’re not in high spirits. I sink into my seat.

The Blonde is ripping through a magazine like she wants to kill it.

I open my book, but don’t read it.

We’re dismissed at the end of the day and told we don’t have to do jury duty for four years. A few people clap, but I don’t feel jubilant. I feel like I failed.

Amongst the people on the elevator is a woman who’d been in the Partial line.

“What did you say when they asked your reason?” she says.

I smile awkwardly because the elevator is full.

“I, um…” I say.

“Yeah, same here,” she answers. “All of us, I guess.”

I don’t answer and we’re silent until we get to the lobby.

As I head up Centre Street, I remember walking home the first time I was here, in my black tights and grey mini - inappropriately sexy, yet touchingly innocent. Innocent enough to believe in our justice system with all my heart. Innocent enough to be clear-eyed and honest. Innocent enough to be fair.

I miss that girl.

I miss the country we were then.

Where I believed that fairness was not only a goal, but a given.

Where people were put on trial before being convicted.

I pass Canal Street, where fake Louis Vuitton handbags are laid out on blankets - a pocketbook picnic. A few weeks from now, the guys selling them will be rounded up by ICE.

I continue walking uptown.

I’m uneasy and ashamed.

I’m glad I’m headed home because I need the safety I feel there.

Lately, I don’t recognize my country.

And today, I don’t recognize myself.

.

I wrote and published this story two years ago when the world felt way more black and white than it does now. I’ll write a new one soon (I’m SO slow!) but for now, maybe this will resonate. xx

With the sigh of someone who’s out of excuses, I open the cabinet. Baskets lay around on shelves, like hungover drunks, overflowing with the accessories they’re supposed to be neatly containing. The strap of a handbag drapes lazily from one basket and a long-forgotten scarf cascades over another; a paisley waterfall run amok. A third contains a snarl of tights, fishnets and stockings, piled higher than the spaghetti plate in Strega Nona. I shudder. No wonder I’ve been avoiding this.

I grab a basket from another shelf, this one filled with scarves. I put a couple in the Yes pile, but most are No’s. A faux-fur clutch has found its way into this mess and I pick it up to reveal a raw silk scarf that I recognize instantly.

I hold it to my face, and while it no longer has a scent, I remember how it smelled - of cold air, and a whiff of cigar smoke laced with Sen Sen. I thought its pattern looked “jazzy” when I was little, although I wasn’t sure what that meant. When my father tucked it inside his overcoat, he looked more like a TV dad going off to an office than a principal on his way to a school.

His returns from work alternately filled the house with joy or tension, depending on his mood. He was the handsome, opinionated, smart, funny, sun that our world revolved around.

I gather the scarf’s fringes in my fingers, like rice at a wedding.

I can almost feel the way they tickled my forehead when he bent to kiss me at the end of the day, just as my curls tickled his chin when he taught me to read Hebrew. I’d sit on his lap, slowly reading right to left and laughingly, he’d flatten my hair with the palm of one hand, as the finger of the other followed along, tapping a word if I got it wrong.

The TV is on Mute and I can’t bear looking, but can’t not see the captions - Young people kidnapped from a music festival. Massacre. Torture. Rape. Unfathomable. And yet.

I uncurl my fingers and the fringes hang in the air, as untethered as I feel.

I can’t help but think of the fringes of my father’s other scarf - his tallis - and how comfortable he looked with it draped around his shoulders. Other people at synagogue hummed and murmured along, but my father’s Hebrew was clear and his voice was strong, and it made me proud.

We went to shul on Friday nights, which I mainly liked because I got to twirl around in a dress beforehand. I’d polish my patent leather shoes with vaseline before dinner, as the smell of roasted chicken and caramelized onions filled our house.

When I got a little older, I loved Saturday mornings because my brother was the Chosen Person who got to march off to shul with my father and I got to stay home. With the rec room to myself, I glorified in singing along to The Archies in the British accent I used for rock and roll. Like Veronica, I loved The Pony.

In Junior High, I started wearing a back brace to treat the scoliosis that had recently been diagnosed. One night, after my allotted hour out of it, I put the brace back on, and assessed myself in the mirror. It was hideous and so was I. I turned away. “I hate it,” I thought, and said it aloud. I cried harder than usual, spitting “I hate it,” through clenched teeth, as I unstrapped the brace and yanked it off. I banged it against the floor, trying to break it. And then felt a presence at the door.

My father reacted the way someone who grew up without money would.

“That brace is expensive and there are kids who can’t afford them. Don’t you ever let me see you doing that again,” he said. “Now put it on,” he added, as he turned to leave.

I glared, waiting for him to go, but he stayed, with his back to me. When he turned, there were tears in his eyes. “You have to wear it because it’s gonna make you better,” he whispered. He lifted my chin with his finger and said something he didn’t say often - “I’m sorry.” I had never seen him cry and the choke in his voice choked my heart. He looked down, then fixed me with his eyes and said, “I’d wear it for you if I could, Baby.”

The next night, he came upstairs as I brushed my teeth. “Did you do your exercises yet?” he asked.

I hated my spine exercises, especially sit ups, which were hard because of the brace. He sat and watched as I did a few, trying to keep my feet from popping off the ground while lifting my torso toward the ceiling. The bedsprings squeaked. He stood, then knelt, and wrapped his hands around my feet. He held them to the ground as I lifted my metal-covered body upward.

“That’s it,” he whispered. “Now do another… and another…one more.” When I got to five, I shifted my gaze from the ceiling to him. He nodded. “You’re doing it,” he said, then added, “let’s do five more.” I said I couldn’t and he said I could. And so I did.

He appeared at my door at 9:45 the next night and the one after, and we’d take our positions. As I raised my body toward the ceiling, he’d whisper, “One. Two. There you go…three.” At the end of the week, when he got to ten and I laid back, he said, “Eleven.” And when I brought my head up, he kissed it.

By high school, my synagogue attendance tapered off, but not my father’s. He looked so comfortable, walking off, in his suit and tie, his velvet tallis bag at his side. I once asked if he knew the meaning of the Hebrew words of the Amidah, the silent prayer. He shook his head and laughed. “I just read them,” he said. I asked, in that case, what it was he actually got out of being there. He answered without hesitation.

“It gives me an hour of quiet every week. An hour to think about what kind of father and husband…what kind of person I’ve been.”

“So you go to shul to keep yourself in line?” I said, a bit of teenage smirk sneaking into my tone.

“That’s exactly what I do,” he said, leveling me with the eyes that didn’t tolerate smirk, teenaged or otherwise.

It was so simple for him. Good. Bad. Right. Wrong.

On High Holidays, we’d sit in the same row we always did; Jews know each others’ pews like high school kids know each others’ lunch tables. I’d turn around and wave to friends, and during the Torah reading, my mother got up to chat with the ladies in the lobby.

My father would give me a little smile and tilt his head and I’d slide over. Without missing a word of the blessing, he’d drape his tallis-covered arm around my shoulder. One gesture, and the world went from cold to warm. We sang, and the sad, sweet melodies washed over us. Softened us. Connected us.

My father’s tallis, like his world-view, was black and white.

The jazzy fabric in my hands is less simple, its colors, more nuanced, its pattern more chaotic. Much like the world we live in. Except that my father’s scarf is beautiful.

He wore it when he drove me to the train station during my college years, insisting on waiting with me on the platform.

“How’s school?” he’d ask. I’d say it was good and we’d stare ahead, our silence an uncomfortable contrast to the laughter and chatter of people around us. Strict fathers and rebellious college daughters don’t exactly have easy banter. He was having back trouble of his own at that point, and standing was even more difficult than conversation. But stand, he did.

When the train arrived, he’d hug me and tell me to be good. When I took my seat on the train, I’d look out the window, and there, amongst the hugely puffy down jackets, was my father’s jazzy scarf. It hung around his neck as he did the thing that hurt his back most - bending. His eyes searched the passengers until he found me. We smiled and waved - nothing separating us but a pane of glass.

When the train started moving, he straightened his back and tried not to wince.

I want to fold the scarf and lay it down gently. But I can’t let go of it.

So I kiss it. And hug it tightly. And yearn.

For the security of my father’s broad shoulders. The clarity of his voice. His arm around my shoulder.

The horrific TV captions keep scrolling. I’m glad he’s not here. But wish that he was.

Because he would grab me by the ankles and keep me grounded.

And level me with his eyes.

And make me feel safe.

Thanks for reading (or re-reading) this. It means a lot to me because today is the anniversary of my father’s death. It’s been 18 years since a stroke silenced my family by ending his life. If you liked this story, there’s an empty heart at the top of the page just waiting for you to fill it in. And if you leave a comment, I’ll feel less like I’m talking into a void. xx

Club Monaco is closed and I’m sad.

The sadness might be a bit misplaced, since I haven’t shopped there much lately. But there was a time when Club Monaco felt like an elegant salon to which I had unlimited access. I’d just started to make a bit of money in advertising (emphasis on “a bit”) and with my elevated financial status came a graduation from Banana Republic (to which I’d graduated from The Gap, Summa Cum Laude.)

Before that, I’d gone into Club Monaco occasionally, but only to look. After all, I could buy a little black shift at Banana or JCrew for less than $100. At Club Monaco, a similar-looking dress was double that price. But I pined for Club Monaco - the cut was always a bit better, the finishes a little sleeker, the buttons more discreet.

And the store! I could have spent all day in that store.

If I could have spun in circles and hugged myself without looking ridiculous, I would have. Camellia-scented candles filled the space with a fragrance that made me feel rich and spoiled. Its ceilings were high and grand. Even its mannequins, with their heeled booties and swing dresses, had a louche sense of style I envied.

Club Monaco housed, not only women’s clothing and a shoe salon, but also, a book shop with fresh flowers, giant photography books and memoirs by the kinds of New Yorkers I wanted to be. I loved the men’s shop which was down a wide polished dark-wood staircase. It smacked of the kind of Ralph Lauren sensibility that felt equal parts macho and gay. There was a square, crystal bottle of bourbon behind the register and one December, when I bought a pair of cashmere track pants for my husband, the handsome sales guy offered me a little tumbler of it, which I drank, not because I liked bourbon, but because it was so much fun.

Club Monaco made me feel more glamorous than I was.

A sweet, young sales associate named Kevin, who worked on Saturdays, amplified that feeling.

“Uh oh, Miss Advertising is here,” he’d sing-song as I waltzed in and it was all I could do not to curtsy. I’d saunter around, plucking dresses and tops from rods, hooking hangers onto my forefinger like a debutante.

“Let me grab those,” Kevin would say, before sweeping them off to the fitting room. By the time he got back, I’d have accumulated a few more “because I just can’t resist.”

“And why should you?” he’d say.

Indeed! Why should I? I worked hard. I spent hours agonizing over campaigns before presenting them to marketing teams, and ultimately, and most inimidatingly, CMO’s and CEO’s. At the time, I was working on a luxury brand and my clients looked the part, entering fresh and pressed, in Prada, Gucci, Chanel and Balenciaga. They placed their handbags on side tables, gently, like mothers putting their babies down for naps. I plopped mine on the floor at my feet. I didn’t understand how they afforded what they wore and assumed they made fortunes. It never occurred to me that they might be savvy with consignment shops or lucky enough to have inherited pieces from well-dressed mothers and aunts.

All I knew was that I wasn’t a member of their club. But I was a member of my Club. Club Monaco gave me all the swank I could afford. I went there when I needed a dress, a top or the sweet, silly joy of Kevin treating me like Carrie Bradshaw.

One June, I rushed in the night before a big shoot.

“Ok,” I said, getting down to business. “It’s going to be 97 degrees and we’ll be outside all day.”

Kevin was aghast. “Tell them you can’t!”

“I have to,” I said, hating to have to break it to him that I was less of a big shot than he thought. I told him about the model, the photographer, the wardrobe, the stylist - all legends in the fashion world.

“So I can’t look all sweaty and messy,” I said.

“Ok, so we’re going for cool, collected, calm,” he said counting the desired qualities onto his palm with the fingers of his other hand. “Wait here.”

He returned with a whisper-light dress that floated from its hanger, as if it was sailing off to a cocktail party in Mustique. “It doesn’t look like much on the hanger, but put it on. It’s black, it’s simple, it says, ‘I’m confident as hell, bitches!’”

I slipped it over my head and its silk drifted to my ankles. When I stepped out of the fitting room, Kevin clapped and I couldn’t help but join him. “It’s perfect!” we said together.

The next day, I wasn’t so sure.

A stylist’s assistant walked by in overall shorts, a tank top and Birkenstocks, looking cool in the way young willowy girls will always look cool. Her hair hung in loose braids and the peace-sign tattoo on the back of her neck made me feel like I hadn’t read the brief. One of the clients wore a white linen caftan with a vintage Gucci scarf (I overheard her tell someone it had been her mother’s) and expensive-looking camel-colored sandals. Suddenly, my kitten-heeled mules - the ones I’d discussed with Kevin - seemed ridiculous. I fished the Birkenstocks from my tote and slipped them on.

We were waiting for hair and makeup to be finished. Waiting for hair and makeup, or wardrobe, or for camera angles to be worked out, comprised what seemed to be at least 75% of most shoots. Clients and account people sat at a table with sparkling water, lovely snacks and open laptops. My art-director partner stood with the director.

They glanced at me and I walked over because I felt like I had to.

“Hey. We’re just talking about the next shot. Peter’s gonna shoot at 24, but when she does that twirl, he’ll go to 60.”

I nodded and said “I love that,” hoping I looked convincing.

I could talk about the way I wanted a shot to look, but when it came to angles, camera speed or cameras themselves, I was lost.

There were many basic things about shoots I didn’t understand - questions I’d felt silly asking when I was young, and then felt like I should know the answers to (because I should have) when I became more experienced. So I did what came naturally - I pretended.

“I mean, I was thinking maybe even 90, so we really push that dreamy effect,” my partner said. “Would that be crazy?”

“It could be really cool,” I said, in the noncommittal way of the uninformed.

We looked at the director, who needed neither of us, but was kind.

“Let’s try!” he said with a happy shrug.

I almost said “we can always slow it down in post” but I wasn’t sure if we could, so I smiled and did a thumbs up. I edged away, wondering why everyone seemed to know how to fill this endless expanse of time but me.

I went over to Craft Services where a few crew members dipped carrot sticks into ranch dressing and filled little cups with pretzels and almonds. I ate an apple slice with almond butter, which killed 30 seconds. And then found a place with a little shade and looked at my phone.

I sighed because even here, out of the sun, at 9AM, the heat was unbearable.

I heard a sigh that seemed to be communicating exactly what I felt and glanced over. It was our stylist. Well, not just “our” stylist, THE stylist. Edward Enninful was as good as you could get. He’d been the youngest-ever fashion editor at i-D Magazine. He’d been Fashion Director at both Italian and American Vogue and was about to become Editor-in-Chief of British Vogue. He wasn’t only well-known, he was worshipped. I smiled as he lit a cigarette, wishing I still smoked.

“It’s so hot,” I said, wincing inwardly at the banality of my comment.

“So hot,” he replied, and his accent made it sound important.

I wished I could think of something else to say or find a reason to leave, but there I was. And there he was.

“I like your dress,” he said quietly.

“Y-y-you like my dress?” I said, then glanced around, sure I’d see a fabulous someone whose dress he actually liked.

He smiled and nodded. “Yes,” he said, taking a long, delicious-looking drag of his cigarette. “I love a slip dress. So simple. So elegant.”

The stiff smile that had been frozen on my face widened and became real. I thanked him, no longer wanting to pretend.

“You just made me feel so good,” I said, and his smile became real too. “I don’t always feel like I fit into these kinds of shoots,”I added, and instantly regretted it because his face showed no emotion. He stared straight ahead.

I was about to slink off.

“I don’t always feel like I fit either,” he said so softly I thought I may have heard wrong. And then he laughed. I wasn’t sure if he was being sincere or funny, since clearly, if anyone belonged here, it was him.

I smiled and wandered off, feeling a lightness in my Birkenstocked-step for the first time all day. I took a seat at the table, feeling perfectly elegant in my slip dress.

And with a a world more confidence (bitches) than I’d felt before, I got through the shoot. And many after it - without ever once being sure what 24 frames per second meant.

Now, I stand in front of the empty store that was once my playground.

I smile at the camellia-scented innocence of a girl who tried on dress after dress and gleefully turned this way and that for Kevin.

Thank God for the Kevins amongst us.

And for the Edwards.

And for the clubs that could make us feel like outsiders.

But instead, make us feel like members.

As I was writing this, I read that Edward Enninful had left British Vogue and was about to launch a magazine called 72. I popped into Casa Magazines on 8th Avenue yesterday and bought it. The little shop was packed with fashionable-looking people buying international magazines. They all seemed to know each other and were a little intimidating, or would have been, had I not been a close, personal friend of Edward Enninful’s. Ok, not close or personal. Or a friend. But I love him just the same.

Part 1. When I almost died of intimidation in a hotel ballroom.

The briefing was too big for Ogilvy, so it was held in a hotel ballroom. Round tables were filled with creative directors, account people, strategists, designers and clients from London, Toronto, Chicago, New York and Frankfurt. As the big shots walked from table to table to shake hands, I was reminded of the scene in The Godfather where the Five Families meet and the Dons show their respect.

I said so to my partner, Jackie Leak, who agreed.

“Except no one will die,” she said.

“Let’s hope not,” I answered.

We laughed. Kind of.

For many, this was a first exposure to the notion of Real Beauty. For others, it was the culmination of two years of white-paper studies, work-sessions and late-night meetings. I was in the latter camp.

From the New York office, I’d been working on Dove with Chicago. Maureen Shirreff, Chicago’s great ECD, was generous and kind. She was the first person I’d ever known who used the word “gal” unironically and she knew Dove inside out. She took me under her wing (I guess that’s kind of a Dove pun?) in ways I’m still grateful for.

I’d dial into conference calls with Chicago, not getting half their jokes or stories, but Maureen always lassoed me in - “Oh, Deb. See, in Chicago, we’ve had snow for the past six days - that’s why we all have cabin fever.”

I was technically part of Chris Wall’s IBM group, although I didn’t work on IBM — I think Ogilvy just needed a place to put me and Chris said, “I’ll take her.” I’d finish a Dove call and shyly peek out of my office (God, remember offices?) while Chris paced around, gathering steam and audience members, as he told a story about Pytka. Everyone in Chris’s group - from Andy Berndt to Tony Arefin to Tom Bagot to Marc Klein - was funny and brilliant and had something to add.

Sometimes I found reasons to go to the printer so I could leave my office and loiter around the edge of their circle. Having been a good head taller than every kid in school, with red hair and freckles, Chris knew an outsider when he saw one. So he too, took me in, and was kind in ways I’ll never forget.

Every few days, he’d pop into my office to ask what was happening with Dove. At that point, we were gearing up to the big campaign while working on spots for facial cleansers and shampoo. Chris’s interest amused and touched me. A grumpy, rumpled 6’11” man hunkering down to try to understand how women feel about not wearing makeup is nothing, if not endearing.

A month later, I sat in a conference room with Maureen, her brilliant partner Viv Rowden, Mel White, the very lovely Amy Starkman (an account person in those days) and Vel Richey-Rankin, who was as intimidating as Maureen was welcoming. Vel was almost six feet tall and dressed in either all black or all white - slim jeans, tailored shirts and cowboy boots. She wore no makeup, except a slash of red lipstick, which stood out on her angular face and complemented the shock of platinum hair that topped her head. She had modeled when she was young and had the bone structure to prove it.

Vel had zero fucks to give before that was even an expression. She didn’t smile if she didn’t feel like it, which I found thrilling and intimidating, but not in that order. She had no qualms about saying “You call this a brief?” to strategists, and “You call this an ad?” to creative people. She lived on a ranch somewhere without internet and was flown in for big Dove projects. I was in awe of her.

Vel, Mel, Maureen and Viv had worked on a book that laid out what Dove believed, didn’t believe, would and wouldn’t do, how it photographed women, what it stood for, whether it had a sense of humor (it did, but it was witty, not “funny.”) We agonized over lines like “Dove is honest and outspoken, but not judgmental.”

“Well, maybe Dove is a little judgmental, like in a good way?” one of us would say.

“It’s more opinionated than judgmental though,” someone else would say. “And maybe not so much opinionated as clear-eyed.”

“Yeah. It’s big and bold in its thinking but kindhearted and welcoming,” someone else chimed in.

We talked about Dove like it was a person - a friend who fascinated us. I’m surprised we didn’t give it an astrological sign.

The book was white and square and beautiful, which is no wonder, since Brian Collins and his group, BIG, designed it. It was about 75% done when I was invited to jump in. I mainly made edits and added a line here and there. I wrote a few pages that I think made it into the book unscathed. Each page took hours and had to pass muster with Vel - no easy task. I gave my copy to someone and never got it back - a mistake I regret to this day.

Our main clients, Silvia Lagnado and Alessandro Manfredi, were every bit as discerning and hard to please as Maureen and Vel. They were passionate about us taking our time - something hard to fathom given today’s timelines. “Get it wrong, and we create a campaign,” Silvia would say, “but get it right, and we create a brand.” And then, with her steady gaze and tone, she’d add, “We’re going to make this campaign famous.” Her conviction made it impossible not to believe her.

At the time, those words took guts and vision. Because back then, Dove was a bar of white soap that got soft and messy in your grandmother’s soap dish. No one hated Dove. But no one cared about it either.

So there we were in a hotel ballroom. With a brief that Silvia boiled down to one phrase - “Widen the parameters of beauty so everyone feels welcome.”

Steve Hayden - the great Steve Hayden, who wrote 1984, the most famous Super Bowl spot ever, got up to speak. He cleared his throat and talked into the mic. To my surprise, he was gentle and scholarly. Most creative people made more of a scene ordering a salad in the cafeteria than Steve made at that podium.

He talked about what a humbling, exciting opportunity we had. He implored the creative people to be tough on our ideas, but kind to each other. He suggested to the account people that they support even the most crazy ideas. And to the clients he said, “If I can ask you to do one thing, it’s to let your creative team behave like magnificent assholes.” Everyone laughed except Steve, whose blue eyes remained gentle and focused. “They need to be assholes,” he said, then looked toward the creative people. “It’s your job to ask questions people don’t want to answer. To keep pushing when you believe something will work. Be difficult.” He paused. “Because that’s how magnificence happens.” Only then did he smile, as he looked toward the clients. “So, please. Let them be assholes. It will benefit everyone in this room. And this project deserves it.”

We cheered. I teared up.

Part 2. When we worked hard and shopped hard.

During the next six months, Jackie and I marched in and out of Steve’s office, campaign after campaign in hand. Steve killed some, made others better, and inevitably said “keep going.” Jackie and I did a lot of pacing. We fell in love with ideas that we hated an hour later. We talked. Thought. Argued. Made up. Thought some more. We sent each other Blackberry messages in the middle of the night that started with “What if we…”

One day, we walked in to Steve with a tagline that said, “Let’s make peace with beauty.” He was silent for a few seconds, which made me nervous, so I said, “The ‘peace’ part works because…” and he said, “Because a dove symbolizes peace. I get it.” Others might have said that meanly. Steve said it kindly. And excitedly. “I love it,” he said. I’d never heard those words from him and it was all I could do not to leap to my feet. If Jackie and I had been good at high-fiving, we would have been doing it that day.

That tagline was adopted by Ogilvy Toronto, whose clients liked it as much as Steve, but in the rest of the regions, it didn’t take.

Everything about that year was emotional. Jackie, Amy and I sat in Steve’s office a few times a week during long conference calls with London and Toronto. We rooted for each other but every team wanted to be the one with the winning campaign. At its best, it made us better. At its worst, it made us - or at least me - behave in ways I regret.

“Ok, clients are loving the New York work the most,” Steve would say on a Monday, and we’d shriek with joy. By Wednesday, he’d say “Well… it looks like London shared another idea that they’re liking more,” and we’d shake our heads, muttering “fuck.” The next thing we knew, Chicago had a whole new take and then, the next week, it was us again.

We paced around like politicians checking the results on election night.

Everyone’s work was good. Some of it was great. Most of it got killed. Sometimes, it was a case of timing. If a campaign hung around for a while, someone shot a hole in it. One hole begat another. And before you knew it, your perfect soufflé had collapsed. If you slipped something in a bit later, people might say “Huh - that’s interesting.” If you timed it just right, the new idea had enough time to gain favor but didn’t hang around long enough to die.

But it wasn’t just timing. It had to work.

“The Campaign For Real Beauty” became our tagline because it was the opposite of “Let’s make peace with beauty.” It was neither clever nor slick. It was a nuts-and-bolts line to its core. Which is exactly why it made sense. This campaign wasn’t trying to seduce anyone. Nor were its women. They were frank and honest and didn’t really care if you liked them or not because they liked themselves. And therein lied the campaign’s power.

We planned to shoot it with all the trappings of a beauty campaign - beautiful studio, cool music, gorgeous natural light, with Rankin as our photographer.

Casting (my first experience with street-casting) took forever. Our women had to be willing to do press, and were asked how they felt about their bodies, their ages, their hair. It was very personal. As we pored over our selects with Rankin, in the New York office, someone commented on how we didn’t have enough plus-sized women in the mix. Our choices were limited and we were leaving for London the next day.

One of the administrative assistants walked past our glass conference room and Jackie and I looked at each other. Jackie jumped up and marched her into the room. And with that, Tabatha Roman became famous.

We shot the first campaign in London. The day before the shoot, the stylist realized she was short a few things.

“Want to run to Topshop with me, girls?” she asked.

She was asking the right girls.

Jackie and I ran around the store, throwing tops, pants and dresses into a shopping basket.

“Yes!” Jackie said, as she held up a black strapless dress. “They have it in 14 and 16!”

The two of us had done lots of wardrobe together, but this was the best by far. We weren’t shopping for fashion, we were shopping for women.

Part 3. When shit got real and I went curly.

Until the week of the shoot, our ads had headlines about making peace with big noses and frizzy hair, full thighs and small boobs and bits of copy about how it was those very things that made us different, and therefore beautiful.

And then, Joerg Herzog from the Frankfurt office had a different thought. “What if we scrapped the headlines and used tick boxes instead?” he asked. He showed us a scrap of paper with a layout. Next to one, tick box, it said “Fit” and next to the other, “Fat,” for instance.

The thought was that we’d ask consumers to weigh in. Not everyone was sure. Did we want to invite people to “grade”women? Some of us had had enough of being rated on a scale of one to ten to last a lifetime. Others felt that inviting people into the conversation would make Dove talk-able and communal. It made sense. And with that, reams of headlines and taglines were put aside in favor of one-word questions with tick boxes and an intentionally clumsy tagline. I started writing lists of word- combinations, like “Wrinkled? Wonderful?” and “Grey? Gorgeous?”

In my heart, I thought it was the images that drew people in - the shock of seeing women who were bigger, frizzier, frecklier and older than the Cindy’s, Naomi’s and Christy’s of the world. I thought those images in Times Square would have had the same effect with or without the tick boxes.

But I could have been wrong. In this case, I was glad to be wrong.

The campaign was way bigger than any one of us. When it finally ran, I wasn’t sure how much (if any) credit I deserved. I confessed this feeling to Maureen Sheriff and she fixed me with her steady eyes.

“Gal, you gotta put that thought away,” she said. “Your lines were what led us here.” I wasn’t sure, but she was. “Same is true of everyone in this room. We all built on each other’s ideas. Every one of us,” she said. She reminded me of things I’d written. Things I’d said. Things I’d added to the white book.

“And on top of that, you let your hair get curly,” she said. We laughed, remembering a day when Vel had met my eyes during a meeting and said, “So when are you gonna walk the walk?” I asked what she meant. “You always talk about getting your hair blown out,” she said, “and you’re writing all this stuff about how beautiful we all our when we’re real.” She smiled and gave me a “ball’s in your court” shrug.

The next Monday, I sheepishly walked in with a headful of loose waves and glanced in her direction. “I’ll be damned,” she said and wrapped me in a hug that was hard and soft at the same time.

Part 4. When we fell in love for real.

The shoot itself was incredible. One of our women, whose tick boxes would ask the world to vote on whether she was “wrinkled” or “wonderful” was undoubtedly the latter. A stylist introduced us, mentioning that she was 96.

“That’s not actually true,” she said, and the room stopped. Had she lied about her age to get into the shoot? We braced ourselves. We didn’t want to lose her.

“So, how old are you, really?” one of us asked.

“I’m 96 and a half,” she said, beaming.

I laughed so hard, I cried. And then, I kept crying. As each new woman got comfortable in front of the camera, her freckles, her crows’ feet, her weight, her wrinkles, not only came out of hiding, but also, came out to play. To be seen. And celebrated. Every one of us who’d sat on the sidelines in gym - or dabbed at our skin with concealer - or lied about our age - came to truly understand something for the first time that day- we were not the problem. At the end of each woman’s session, we clapped loudly for them. And quietly, for ourselves.

Finally, we had one last woman to shoot and were hoping it would go quickly because we’d been there for a good 12 hours. She stepped out from the dressing room. Her features were stunning. Conventionally gorgeous, she wouldn’t have belonged with our rag-tag group - except for the fact that her head was shaved. Which made her not only gorgeous, but intimidating.

Until she told her story.

She’d been diagnosed with alopecia as a teenager and had worn a wig for years. Only recently had she started to go without one. Rankin talked quietly with her for a while, and then asked us to leave the studio so he could shoot her alone. We hung out in the lobby for a very long time. When we were invited back in, she sat on an apple crate, wearing a robe.

“Should we tell them how we shot you?” Rankin asked.

There was a beat of silence.

“I was nude,” she said with a shy smile.

She explained that they had talked about why she had opted to stop wearing a wig - she said it had been a decision to stop hiding. She talked about how scary that decision had been - how vulnerable she’d felt the first time she went wig-less in public. I said how, when we’d met her at casting, I’d assumed her bald head was a choice.

“Oh God, no,” she said. She paused. “But I did have a choice in how I was photographed today,” she said softly. “And I wanted to be brave.” She looked at Rankin with soft eyes and his smile wasn’t that of a hot-shot photographer. It was that of a kind man.

She was quiet for a minute.

“This is first time I’ve felt beautiful since I lost my hair,” she said in a whisper. A tear slid down her cheek and landed on her clavicle, shimmering like a tiny pearl.

We looked around at the circle of freckled, wrinkly, curvy non-models, most of whom were still there. Champagne was poured. Glasses clinked. Exhaustion gave way to relief. In that moment, at least for me, The Campaign For Real Beauty got beautiful.

Part 5. After all was said and done.

Obviously, Silvia was right - Dove is famous. The shoots and activations done after the initial one (the women in white underwear, Evolution and Sketches, to name a few) are more famous than the tick box ads.

Lots of people have won lots of awards.

Some may feel they’ve gotten more or less recognition than they deserved. Who knows - everyone on Dove works their imperfectly beautiful asses off.

As for me and the people I worked with?

Sometimes we were magnificent.

Sometimes we were assholes.

But more often than not, we were beautiful - more than we realized.

I kneel before my bottom drawer as if I’m praying to it, but I should pray for it, because this damned thing needs all the help it can get. I shake my head at the mess as if someone else had created it.

What were once semi-neat piles of nightgowns, silk pajamas, t-shirts and sarongs has become one big messy conglomerate - a terrifying ball of confusion that overwhelms and disgusts me. Oh. So basically, our current government is living in my bottom drawer.

I guess that’s why I’m in the prayer position.

I scoop a pile of tangled fabric into the crook of my arm, letting the overflow fall to the floor. A long cotton, rarely-worn Hanro dress cascades onto my lap, where it lays, deflated and limp. My husband gave it to me because of its softness but its shapelessness is a problem. One I’ll never solve. I fold it and start a Keep Pile.

On top of it, I throw a college t-shirt that has a silk-screened drawing of three drunk kids (I’m one of them) standing in front of The Melody Bar. I’ll never say goodbye to the memory of dancing near the juke box to “Second That Emotion” and I’ll never say goodbye to this t-shirt either.

I grab a bunch of other stuff, and there it is - my father’s favorite sports… wait - do people even say “sports shirt” any more?

My mother donated most of his clothing after he died, but I kept this khaki green ode to the 60’s because I couldn’t bear the thought of it winding up at Goodwill. I used to hold it to my face thinking I could smell his Old Spice - a slap to each cheek every Saturday night - and the weekly cigar he smoked on Sunday afternoons watching the Yankees. I conjured the sweetness of just-cut grass after the lawn mower was put away. And the sharp grapey hit of Manishewitz on Friday nights - a Kiddish cup passed around the table, each of us imitating the “Ahhhh” sound my father made after his sip - like air escaping a tire.

I hold it to my nose. Nothing.

The scents are as long gone as he is.

I run a finger over the raised emblem on the chest.

I used to think it was a small “f” for Fried, but my father would have found monogramming “a waste of good money.” Everything I wanted - from brand name cookies to Princess telephones to air conditioning - were wastes of good money. We could have afforded them, but his instincts skewed poor. He’d been brought up in a cold water flat and talked about his mother heating bricks in the oven, and putting them under the beds so it would be warm enough to sleep.

Or at least, I think that’s what he said. Father-memories take on shapes of their own, especially with no one to fact check them.

I finger the shirt’s buttons and picture him, on Father’s Day, emerging through the sliding door of our rec room, having changed into this shirt after he finished the grilling he despised.

“Look at me, all schmutzed up already” he’d say as my brother David helped with the coals and I was trotted out with waxed-paper-covered platters of hamburger patties and flank steak.

My father took on most chores with gusto, but grilling, to him, was a dirty job. He hated the mess. He hated schlepping the grill up the basement stairs and, with my brother in tow, dragging it to the furthest corner of the yard so it wouldn’t “stink the whole house up.” A jovial fellow in a “World’s Best Dad” apron, he was not.

Once the dreaded task was finished, my father would go inside to wash up, and emerge, tall, handsome, smiling, his grilling t-shirt replaced with a sports shirt - often, this one. The pale green looked fresh against his tennis-tanned skin.

It was more than a wardrobe change - it was an everything change. He took his place at the head of the table with a smile, and his wink made me feel chosen. He joked and cajoled and told stories about his childhood - stories we’d heard - but stories that made us pull our chairs in nonetheless.

He was handsome. Funny. Smart. And in his sports shirt, charming. I loved this version of my father - the version without a temper - the version that didn’t rant about Abe Beam ruining New York - the version that didn’t beep the car horn impatiently when he got home from work, then beep again - this time, one long angry blare - if we didn’t open the garage door soon enough. The version that didn’t scare the hell out of us kids, proclaiming that the world was more anti-semitic than we knew.

I lay the shirt on my bed and fold the arms around its back as if I’m arresting it.

I picture my father wearing it, on Saturday-nights, before company arrived, telling me to stick my hand out as he took a Sen-Sen pack from his dresser.

“One or two?” he asked. I always said two.

He turned the packet upside down and, with an index finger, gave it two taps, the way ladies at the swim club did with their cigarettes. The tiny Sen-Sen pieces floated between us and landed in my palm - two perfect black squares just for me. No matter that he did the same with my brother and sister - this was mine.

The licorice tasted grown up and thrilling.

“Let it sit in your mouth like a lozenge,” he’d say, and I’d wiggle my tongue to unstick it from my back teeth.

And then, the doorbell.

My father took long even strides toward the front door as my mother put a dish towel down. He flung it open and for a few hours, our house was filled with loudness, laughter and gossip. The scents of perfume and hors d’oeuvres mingled with the foreign smell of cigarette smoke and the tinkling of women’s laughter was a grace note to the male jocularity that passed for conversation.

No company was more fun than the Perth Amboy Boys. My father grew up with a group of buddies - neighborhood boys he went to school with. First generation Americans, they all enlisted when World War 2 broke out. No bone spurs for these boys. None of them talked about it much.

They preferred reminiscing about high school basketball or joking or talking politics (which you could do back then without inciting an uproar.) They shook their heads and laughed fondly about how poor they’d been as kids, as only people who are no longer poor can do.

“Abie Baby!” my father yelled, as Abe Resnick marched in, giant cigar already lit. Joe Schlesinger’s sweet smile calmed any contentious kibbitzing that might begin between my father and Abe, and charming, handsome Saul Scott sweetly kissed our heads and plopped us onto his lap as the others crowded in. Berton Sher threw his head back and laughed, his shoulders moving up and down like jackhammers.

And then there was Artie - my father’s favorite. Artie didn’t give us kids a kiss on the keppe like the others - he grabbed us and threw us into the air. The only person who adored his affection more than us was my father, whose laughter was like candy to me.

If I could have had a month-full of Perth Amboy Boys, I’d have taken it in a heartbeat.

I continue to fold the shirt, picturing my father at the head of the Seder table.

Folding tables and bridge chairs were brought up from the basement and wedged together in the rec room. It was so snug that the only way to get to the far side of the table was to crawl under it. Once we were more or less seated, my father’s voice would cut through the chit chat.

“Page one,” he’d say with an his authoritative tone, while opening his Haggadah.

“Page one!” my grandmother repeated, her inflection identical to his.

“That’s what I just said, Blanche,” my father said, trying to look annoyed as he chided his mother-in-law.

“Yes, Larry, dear, I know,” she answered, her eyes twinkling. “And I’m saying it too. Page one.”

He shook his head with a smile as she implored him to continue. His seriousness was no match for her silliness and we all knew it. With his charming mother-in-law, my father was as malleable as play doh.

Toward the end of the seder, when was time to open the door for Elijah, he looked at me. I loved my job. I loved it because it felt good to smell grass and feel spring air after seven pounds of brisket. But what I really loved was how it sounded.

Here, on the front porch, I could hear them the way a stranger would - voices singing a sad, beautiful ancient melody. A family united in post-meal exhaustion. A family of sweet, squeaky voices. My family. My Karen. My David. My mother.

And mostly, my father. His voice rose above the others - strong, clear, unwavering.

He didn’t suffer fools and had no appetite for wise guys. He laid down the law and breaking it wasn’t something that even occurred to us. He had a temper. And no shortage of strong opinions. He was unapologetically dictatorial.

But he usually dictated goodness and insisted on decency.

He taught us to read Hebrew. And made us go to shul. Once, when we were almost home from a Saturday morning service and I was starving for lunch, he turned and drove all the way back to Pathmark, because he realized the cashier had given him too much change. Annoyed, I asked why we couldn’t wait until next time we were there and he said he didn’t want her to get in trouble. “I’m sure she needs that job,” he said, executing a perfect K-turn.

He broke cardboard boxes into little pieces before putting them into the garbage. I think of him every time I do it. He showed us how to get rid of black marks with a damp rag and Ajax before we washed the kitchen floor. I think of him when I do that too. “Be a worker, not a shirker.”

I loved watching him play tennis. His game was equal parts grace and force.

As was his life.

He ruled with a steely voice. Commanded us to be good kids. And intimidated the hell out of us.

But in this shirt, he charmed us, adored us, made us laugh.

I smile sadly, missing what was beautiful, accepting what wasn’t, letting the former overshadow the latter.

Because it did.

By a landslide.

As I said, the shirt has no scent anymore.But I hold it to my face anyway.

And smell the grass.

And the Old Spice.

And everything in between.

Addendum: After I finished putting things back into my bottom drawer that day, my son Ben walked past my room. Impulsively, I gave the shirt to him. He loved it. “But you have to promise to take good care of it,” I said. He looked at me like I was crazy. “Of course I will,” he answered. “It was Grandpa’s.”

The Knicks are out but I’m still in.

Like a bad breakup, the Knicks elimination hit me hard. Actually, this is worse than a regular breakup because I’ve lost not just one boyfriend, but five. I love them equally, but for different reasons:

Jalen - the most dependable of my boyfriends. Jalen is on time for dates. He calls to make sure I get home safely (yes, we still go home to separate apartments - we’re taking it slow.). He’s not showy and he couldn’t flash a giant smile if he tried but when he does smile, it’s the sweetest thing ever.

Josh - ok, he chews Mike & Ike’s like gum and says “what’s that on your shirt?” and laughs way too hard before lifting his finger up to my chin, but that’s what’s great about him. He’s a kid. A kid who plays like a damned man and gets the job done. Which is hot.

KAT - Karl Anthony Towns can be careless and a little messy, but - Oh. My. God. When he’s on, he is SO on - this man brings it and brings it and keeps on bringing it. And if you think that’s a euphemistic way of saying I think he’d deliver in other ways, you are so very right.

Mikal - I can’t say enough about the sweet graceful beauty of my boyfriend Mikal. His Resting Smile Face touches me so. Yes, he can be quiet at times and has been critiqued for not getting physical enough, but…as his girlfriend, I’ll just say it - the man is physical as hell.

Mitchell - is this big man on the rebound? God yes. SO on it. Anyone who thinks it’s a mistake to get involved with a dude on the rebound hasn’t seen the sincerity in this man’s eyes or the embarrassment that overtakes him when he doesn’t deliver. If you haven’t wanted to throw your arms around Mitchell and say “it’s okay - I still love you” then I’m sorry, you don’t have a heart. And if you haven’t thanked God for his presence under the basket, then I’m sorry, but you don’t have a brain.

I have friends who have no idea what I’m talking about when I go on this way and I feel a mixture of annoyance and pity for them because they’ve missed absolutely everything.

Two of my friends who get it the least won’t be named here to protect them from what would be embarrassment, if only they had the decency to be embarrassed. I’ll just say that their names rhyme with Wammy and Doozy. They know who they are.

When W&D texted last week to try to make dinner plans I wrote “If the Knicks are in, I’ll let you know what nights work. If they’re out, I’m wide open.” They responded as I knew they would - “Oh, for God’s sake,” one of them wrote.

Wammy and Doozy don’t have a clue-sy. One of them once asked if it was the Knicks or the Nets I liked.

I tried to explain the joy of having the Knicks do well in the playoffs to Doozy and I think she almost understood.

I reminded her of one late December night, when we were happily young and drunk and she shared an observation.

“You know what’s fun about this time of year?” Doozy had asked, and then proceeded to answer before I could fathom a guess. “You can say ‘Merry Christmas’ to pretty much anyone on the street and they’ll smile and say it back.”

We gave it a try. Strangers perked up and returned our loopy grins with sincerity and wished us the same. No matter that I didn’t celebrate Christmas and that Doozy was barely Christian - people were wishing us well and the walls of anonymity were broken for a few sweet seconds.

I felt that way during the pandemic, when at 7 each night, strangers cheered and waved to each other from rooftops and windows, and gathered in front of hospitals where health care workers stepped out like rock stars before an encore.

It’s the same now. Anyone in a Knicks t-shirt is my friend. No matter that we may have nothing else in common or hate each others’ politics - we all vote for the Knicks.

Exchanging “Go New York’s” with a fellow fan after a win is magic and after a loss, it’s comforting.

Last week, before Game 4, I took a quick shower. By 6:55, I was dried off and ready to take my place on the sofa. Except that I couldn’t get out of the bathroom. The door was inexplicably jammed shut. My husband tried shoving a credit card into the crack. He slid a ruler under it so I could try from the inside. We jiggled the handle. He yelled “stand back,” (which was heroic and exciting, but his heaving himself against the door did nothing.)

I was in a panic - not at being locked in the bathroom, but about missing the game. Finally, a locksmith got me out. I hugged him (which was more than a little awkward, and way too familiar.) But he was a fan, so he understood. I was about to ask if he wanted to watch with us, but then he announced how much five minutes of labor cost and the urge passed. Still, as he left, we all said “Go Knicks” and did fist pumps.

I’ll miss everything about the games - the scurrying to get dinner sorted out, the superstitious taking of places in front of the TV, the way my son Ben coopted my Knicks cap during a game that they won and then wore it for every subsequent game because he liked it and I thought it was good luck. The way all four of us gripped armrests and paced and then erupted in cheers.

I’ll miss texting with my friends Zach, Danny, Alan, Doreen and Eric during games, always in all caps.

Mostly, I’ll miss the thrill. I’ll miss yelling “Go Knicks” to strangers in #11 jerseys. I’ll miss yelling at the TV. I’ll miss jumping off the sofa. I’ll miss the 90 minutes of frenzied excitement and anxious fretting that hinges on an orange ball falling through a wire circle. I’ll miss the beautiful squeak of sneakers on wood.

I wore my Knicks cap today and almost forgot about it until I saw a guy in a blue and orange “New York Forever” t-shirt.

“Go Knicks!” I said and he looked at me for a second like, “You do know it’s over, right?” so I added “Next year!” and he smiled broadly and said “hell yeah.”

I held my hand up for a high five which he didn’t return right away, so I took it down only to watch him slap at the empty air a second later.

It was poor execution on both our parts.

But we’ll be back.

And we’ll get it right.

Next year.

Ava and I want to read. We’ve come to the High Line, on a sunny Easter afternoon, to lounge lazily and catch up on New Yorkers. We envision sitting side by side, getting lost in stories, nudging each other to read a line or two aloud (the “nudge” part is my vision, but still.) And since it’s Easter, the High Line shouldn’t be as crowded as usual.

We’re wrong. The row of chaise lounges is full. We linger, eyeing a woman who’s sprawled across a double-lounge while a single one next to her sits empty. Her face is to the sun and a very large, expensive-looking tote sits next to her - presumably, the reason she needs two lounges. Her sunglasses are too dark for eye contact but it wouldn’t matter. This one’s not budging. “Zero fucks to give” is a skill I’ll never master and I both loathe and envy her for it. My fucks are everywhere.

We walk on and take seats on the beautiful (and incredibly comfortable) teak bleachers that look down at 16th Street. Funny - we all come up here to escape the city, only to stare down at it. Ava and I flip through our magazines.

“Ben told me something Grandma said toward the end,” I say. Ava glances over.

“She said that even at her age, she missed her mother.”A smile pulls at the corner of Ava’s lip.

“And that it was very comforting to talk to old friends on the phone when she was, you know….toward the end.”

My mother’s hospice went on for way longer than the few weeks we thought it would be. Sometimes it seemed like she was about to die. Others, like she never would. Ten months of being “toward the end.”

Ten months of holding on.

Ava and I meet eyes and smile softly. We look at our magazines but we’re not reading.

“I miss her,” we say in comically perfect unison.

“She told Ben he should stay in touch with old friends because as you get older, it’s good to have people in your life who remember you - and your parents - when you were young.”

We put our faces to the sun.

When it’s time to move on, we join the throng of people headed uptown. Ava’s walking to Hudson Yards to catch the Q to her apartment.

I compliment her outfit.

“Do you think I’d look good in barrel jeans?” I ask.

“Mom.” Ava says.

I hate when she makes “Mom” a full sentence.

I sigh as we dart around a woman who’s decided that now would be a perfect time to take a picture of a pansy.

“You have to stop asking me if you’d look good in my jeans. It’s so…”

She can’t find words for exactly how atrocious this question is. She doesn’t use “cringe” as a noun, but it’s hanging there, in the sunny air between us.

We walk along with the tourists who, to my impatience, do not seem to understand that, while planted with flowers and offering views of the Hudson River and Empire State Building, this is STILL A WALKWAY!

“Why are they stopping like no one’s behind them?” I say.

“Mom.”

“Yeah…” I say, willing myself not to sound the way I feel.

“You have to accept that it’s a beautiful Sunday and people aren’t in a hurry - they just want to look at stuff and take pictures. Try giving into it.”

I sigh. It’s so annoying when she’s right. I force myself to slow down. We talk about my mother’s good advice. And about how much we hate that Ben’s heart is aching from a recent breakup. Ava has kind and wise things to say about both. Without realizing it, my pace has slowed. And I’m enjoying it.

Until a middle-aged couple ahead of us stops everything - completely blocking people from walking in either direction - to take a selfie in front of a flowering tree. And then another. And a third.

“Really?” I say. “They don’t see the line of literally, a hundred people behind them?”

“They clearly don’t,” Ava says, clipping her words.

“I get it,” I say, trying to sound light, but it comes out, “I get it.” Actually, it’s more like “I GET it.”

They take more shots, because why have three of the same photo when you can have nine? There’s no room to zip around them and Ava’s patience is driving me crazy. I turn, hoping to meet the outraged eyes of whatever sensible person is behind us.

Only to see a man smiling at a daffodil.

I get looking at it, I guess. But, really. It’s a daffodil. I take an exaggerated breath in and Ava glances at me. I force my exhale to be silent. And then, because there’s nothing else to do, I look at the damned daffodil. Ok. It’s a sweet flower. Very sweet. I remember a Passover Seder when my mother put a vase of them on the table. She looked so happy carrying it into the dining room, saying something about daffodils being the first real sign of spring.

I think about a line from an email my sister-in-law Gale wrote recently - “I know tulips kind of steal the spring show, but I love daffodils because they’re such a brave flower, coming up when the soil is barely warm.”

Gale is brilliant. And she’s right. Buttery daffodils lead the charge - they poke through the dirt and remind us that better days are ahead. With all of that, they’re humble too, bowing their heads, like proper young ladies about to meet the queen. I join the man behind me and smile. Ok, daffodil, you win. You’re amazing.

Finally, the couple finishes their epic photo shoot and we’re permitted to walk again.

“Hey, is that my sweater?” I ask with more edge than I mean to.

“I’m sorry,” Ava says. “I should have asked. But you have another one just like it and it was a little chilly so…”

We argue about whether I really have another just like it and she offers to switch with me so I can take it back home. God, she’s nice. I refuse because the hoodie I’m wearing isn’t warm. I make a lot of mothering mistakes, but dressing Ava less warmly than me will never be one of them.

We walk. And talk. About Ben’s heartache, which is killing us, because Ben is so good at happiness - having it and spreading it. It shouldn’t be legal for him to be sad. And he tries hard not to be. A brave flower if ever there was one.

We talk more - and our conversation, like the stream of people walking the High Line, meanders slowly and easily. Our edges have become as soft as the cashmere of Ava’s sweater, which brushes against my arm as we near the end of the path. I slow down because it’s sunny and beautiful. And so is my daughter. I don’t want this walk to end.

Someone darts around us and I have the nerve to judge him.

Our goodbye hug lasts longer than usual. I watch her walk off, then turn to walk back.

Before I realize it, I’m fast-walking again.

Just ahead of me, there’s a woman in an oatmeal-colored sweater. She stops suddenly. I sigh, wondering what flower she’s spotted. But she’s not looking down at the plantings. Or up at the trees. She’s looking around. Everywhere. Frantically.

She cranes her neck and I turn too. There’s no need to ask who she’s looking for - this is the kind of panic every parent recognizes. The heart-stopping blur. The din of voices as people obscenely go about their days. This is a child-gone-missing panic.

It goes on for five seconds, each of them, monumental.

And then. A girl, her sweater purple, darts past me and grabs her mother’s waist hard. I let out the breath I didn’t know I was holding.

“I couldn’t… I couldn’t…” The girl can’t get the words out, but the mother is saying it too. “I couldn’t find you.”

They clutch each other, crying their relief, and I’m so invested, I have to will myself not to rush over and join their huddle.

They stay that way for almost a full minute, blocking the growing line of people behind them. As if we have all day. Which suddenly, I do.

Their sweaters meld together - a beautiful fuzzy mess of purple oatmeal.

Finally, they start walking.

But their arms stay linked. The daughter leans her head into the mother’s shoulder.

They’re slow walkers, these two.

The path is wide, so there’s room for me to get around them.

But I don’t.

I amble.

And watch this mother and daughter.

They’ll have plenty of time to let go of each other.

But right now, they’re holding on.

To this precious moment.

And so am I.

The tree where the couple staged their photo shoot is very pretty. I see that now.

I get closer to the store and am stopped cold by a sign on the sidewalk.

I don’t want 20% off of everything! I want to keep overpaying at the store I love!

Cartoonishly, my brows shoot up and my mouth falls open as I stare at the words, trying to divine another meaning. Maybe it’s just a case of poor wording - could they just be having a sale on deli meats?

Once inside, I’m stopped again, this time with a thud of forced acceptance. Shelves are being cleared and boxes, packed. A sign in the dried fruit section makes it official.

I look around helplessly. 26 years. I’ve been here for 25 of them. Garden of Eden has one of the few double doors in the neighborhood - and if you push a double stroller, you appreciate stores with wide doors. I loved gliding in, but the luxury of not having to bang my way through a narrow door wasn’t all that drew me.

Garden of Eden isn’t a supermarket. It’s a market. Its ceiling is hung with baskets. The guy who tends the flowers will go to the back and check if there are fresher tulips if he knows you.

Here, the produce sits in wicker baskets, not glass cases. Tissue-paper-wrapped apples are lined up like beauty queens, waiting, but not begging, to be chosen. The apples, I think, have a well-earned sense of entitlement, and take up more space than the other fruits for a reason. Sure, peaches are pretty, but they bruise easily and only last a few months. Same with plums and nectarines. “Let them have summer,” the apples exude. “We run this place.”

The Garden of Eden OG’s (plus pears.)

I sigh loudly and wonder what I can buy, aside from tea and chocolate. The store manager walks toward me, carrying a large box.

“I can’t believe you guys are leaving,” I say. I’ve always found him handsome, and dignified.

“You’ve been here the whole time,” he says, and I feel undeservedly proud.

“I love this place,” I answer quietly, and more quietly still, he thanks me for having been a good customer.

I’d answer but I can’t get words out and I’m embarrassed at how choked up I am.

I approach the citrus section, and, like Dorothy to the Scarecrow, want to whisper to the lemons and limes that I’ll miss them the most. Wheeling my twins’ stroller up to these baskets was always the first thing I did after entering the store.

“Ok. Ava, today, you choose a lemon, and Ben, you get a lime,” I’d say. They’d lean down from the stroller to pluck their yellow and green prizes as if the citrus baskets were kept on the floor just for them.

As we wheeled down the pasta aisle, I’d say “switch” and laughingly, they’d hand each other their fruits. A few minutes later, noticing their restlessness as I tried to remember if I needed dark or light brown sugar, I’d say “switch” again, to their ridiculous delight. I loved that it worked, but worried that my adorable kids might be simple. But then again, who was the one who couldn’t remember an ingredient from a recipe she’d studied only five minutes ago?

I walk toward the back of the store, where the dairy shelves are empty. The handsome manager packs bags of pretzels into a box. I’ve come here the day before every party we’ve ever had to pick out new things - because, as everyone in the neighborhood knows, Garden of Eden has great snacks. Here, I discovered the extra-dark pretzels Ben loves. And the honey-goat cheese Ava used to adore. And boxes of rosemary flatbread and extra long, crispy bread sticks no other store had. Garden of Eden has always been open on Thanksgiving morning and New Year’s Day, and Ben has been sent here many a time, with urgent orders to get “fancy crackers and an extra thing of humus and whatever else looks good.”

I walk past the frozen section, not looking at the hors d’oeuvres, because if I do, I’ll cry for real. I picture myself staring at the flat white boxes filled with pigs in blankets and mini quiches, trying to pick something new and special - something to make my mother want to eat during her last year alive.

I’ve called my friend Tammy from these aisles, to ask if there’s a difference between chicken stock and chicken broth and to say things like “I know this is idiotic, but 32 ounces is a quart, right? Just tell me.” She knew as well as me that I could have asked google those kinds of things, but I liked asking her. Mainly because it would propel her to ask what I was making and she’d give me the unsolicited advice that made all the difference - “Bake it for 5 minutes less than the recipe says” or “I always add nutmeg to that cake - just a few grindings. See if they have it.” They always did.

I go to the deli counter, not because I need anything but because I like the man who works there. I order turkey breast and he turns to the slicer. There’s a handmade card on the counter - a pencil drawing of what I think is a smiling face but might be a shark. Inside, in wobbly, childish writing, it says “I like that you wer here.”

He turns to hand me the neat little packet and I’m struck at how much I too, like that he was here.

“I’m going to miss you,” I say and he smiles.

“You’ve been here as long as me,” he says.

I think of the time I was in a pastrami phase and he’d dangle a slice over the counter, it’s black peppery coating making my fingers deliciously messy as I plucked it and groaned at its salty perfection while he sliced more.

This man has had his back to me more often than his front, but in a way, we know each other.

I ask if he has a new job lined up and he shrugs and says maybe.

At the register, I sigh and shake my head in commiseration with the cashiers. They’re not the same ones who used to come from behind the register to crouch at the stroller and coo at my babies, but I’ve seen them in action with plenty a baby. These women can coo with the best of them.

I meet eyes with the cashier I know best. She’s very pretty and the only time I didn’t see her smile was during the pandemic, when our masks kept us from seeing each other do much of anything.

The first day that I dared to venture out, masked in a bandana like a Halloween bandit, I was flooded with relief to see the glow of light coming from the market. My market. I bought what I needed quickly, thanking the masked and gloved heroes who, unlike me, didn’t have the luxury of working from home.

They were there. Day in. Day out.

Before nor’easters, when ingredients for spaghetti and meatballs made the difference between a perfect snow day and an ok one. On rainy days, when we needed popcorn, brown sugar and chocolate chips so we could watch movies and bake. And in the days just after 9/11, when we needed anything and everything that felt familiar and comforting.

“You’ve been here for this neighborhood,” I say to the pretty cashier, and ask what she’ll do. She has another part-time job at Gristedes and hopes she can get more hours there.

Gristedes is a New York grocery too, but there are lots of them. There are only two Garden of Eden’s. Now, one.

I ask when the final day will be and she says Sunday.

“Is it weird if I come every day ‘til then?” I ask.

“No!” she says with a laugh. “Come!”

I will.

I’ll go today, to get a few extra things for Passover.

And tomorrow, for the gluten-free crackers my neighbor Patti loves.

And the day after, to say goodbye.

To a place that’s always been there. A place I depended on. And took for granted.

And loved.

Goodbye, dear friend.

I’ll miss you.

I have five drafts going, each in various stages of completion. Some are close to done but I can’t get there. I write the way I read - in fits and spurts - lately, my ability to concentrate makes squirrels look focused.

How is it possible that this insanity has only been going on for five weeks? I’ve aged at least five years. Hence, an inability to finish a Ruffle and instead, another Ruff, this one “inspired” (if you can call it that) by the state of the world. Or at least, the world as I see it, through the spaces between the fingers that cover my face as I kind-of look at the paper.

My nephew Doug needed help.

His fourth grade assignment was to write about his family history. So he asked his grandfather, my father, about all things Fried.

With that, my father wrote his grandson a letter. My mother said he wrote it twice - once, in pencil, with cross-outs and erasures, and then, a second time, in pen. Ah, the thought that goes into words when there’s no such thing as a delete button.

A few days later, Doug received a tightly-folded sheet of paper with writing on both sides - my father would sooner have drunk milk with meat than waste a sheet of paper. Growing up in the Depression will do that to a person.

The letter tells the story of my father’s family. An immigrant story that’s unique, yet universal. Or at least, was universal. Here’s a snippet:

Don’t try to decipher my father’s handwriting. I’ll spell out the important parts.

I re-read the part above recently and my eyes filled. Partly, because I love seeing my father’s handwriting. I pictured him taking pains to be accurate and informative - as a public school principal, I have no doubt he wanted his grandson to get an A. But he also wanted his grandson to appreciate where his family came from.

My great-great-great grandfather Lazar had a horse and wagon that he used as a taxi/moving service in Hungary. He died young, leaving a wife and three kids. Two of them, my grandmother’s siblings were sent to America to stay with cousins.

In 1921, my grandmother and her mother did the same. They came to escape persecution. I googled “Hungarian persecution of Jews 1921” and found that “persecution” meant the rounding up - and public hangings of those who were thought to be Communists (ie, Jews.)

They had to be sponsored by family members who could guarantee they’d support them if necessary. And to be sure that was the case, my grandmother, who spoke no English, cleaned houses for money. She and her mother shared a small apartment with the other two siblings and their cousins on the lower east side. How bewildered they’d be by the Ludlow Street of today.

I think of my grandmother, my Grandma Fried, who doted on me and made no secret of the fact that I was her pet - “I love them like the fingers on my hand, but oh, dot Debala” she said about her five grandkids.

I loved baking with her on Sunday mornings, when she’d hum a folksong called Di Grine Kuzine (“My Green Cousin”) about an immigrant who’s new to the US. Sometimes she’d stop to translate the Yiddish to English. I remember a line about the cousin having cheeks like apples.

But what I think of most is the way she talked about this country. How badly they - her people - my people - wanted to get here. Here. Where they’d be safe. Here. Where Jews weren’t persecuted. Here, where there was opportunity. Where freedom abounded and pogroms did not.

Sometimes, she talked about seeing the Statue of Liberty when the boat arrived. “We came up from steerage, after 9 days below” (a thought that sets my claustrophobic nerves into overdrive) “and there it was.” My grandmother would look at the kitchen wall, her peasant hands kneading floury yellow dough on a red formica table.

“The Statue.” She’d shake her head. “It was so beautiful.” (It vas so beautiful - her v’s were w’s and her w’s were - or vere - v’s.)

The letter continues - she met my grandfather, a Hungarian Jew who was born here - and married him. Both worked long hours in a nearby town, leaving my father and his twin brother to be cared for by their grandmother. Eventually, the family moved into a cramped cold-water flat above a small grocery store that my grandparents owned and ran.

My father and his twin brother, my Uncle Murray, enlisted in the army when war broke out - all the boys did - they wanted to defend our country from the evil that had forced their parents to flee their homes.

My grandmother once lifted her dress to show me the scars on her knee - “I used to look out the window and scratch when I worried (vorried) about them.” Two sons in the army at once. No texts. No calls. Only what you could piece together from the radio. No wonder she scratched her poor knee to shreds.

At the end of the letter, there’s this:

“She studied hard to pass the test.” My grandmother had a 6th-grade education. Her English wasn’t great, but she was smart and hard-working. I smile at “she was very proud to become a citizen.”

That never changed. She was always proud.

My grandmother was a great American.

“This is da greatest country in da verld” she’d say with pure conviction - not a hint of irony or bitterness. Because it was. It was the reason she was alive. And she knew she was lucky - “a regular Yankee doodle dandy,” she’d say with a laugh.

I’d look at the newspaper to try to make a pointed comparison between how Europeans viewed America then and how they view it now. But I can’t bear to. And I don’t need to.

It’s clear how Europe - and the world - sees us now.

Getting teary at the thought of one’s immigrant grandparents’ first sight of the Statue of Liberty might be a cliche. But it’s one I’ll gladly own.

I write this through tears.

For all we had.

And all we’ve lost

.

I know I said it wasn’t about clothes, and this is technically a piece of clothing… but it’s also called a ruff. And I’m not sure where I’m headed with these ruffs, so let’s just go with it.

Ok. I take forever to write because I angst over word choices and get way into my feelings. I often weave digressions into my narratives and fear I may be rambling.

So…

This is Ruff - a place for those digressions - and other such things. Quick pieces. Rough drafts - or ruff drafts (how clever am I?) They won’t take a ton of time to write or read, so win-win!

I hope.

Here goes.

RUFF #1: My Brain On The New York Times

If you’re old enough, you’ll remember this Drug-Free America commercial:

Close-up of butter sizzling in pan.

VO (in an annoyed tone): Ok, last time. This is drugs.

An egg is cracked, falls into the butter and begins to fry.

VO: This is your brain on drugs.

The dopey egg continues to fry.

VO (now even more annoyed) Any questions?

My friends and I used to laughingly sputter “This is your brain on drugs” while taking giant hits of joints. Now, I use that metaphor to describe my brain on The New York Times.

This is what happens every morning, no matter my resolve:

Me, in robe, sitting myself down, like a queen, in the window seat, coffee on side table. I open my laptop to The Times’ home page, with a self-satisfied smile. I am so together. So informed. A smartypants about to peruse the headlines.

VO: This is your brain.

Me: Hell yeah, this is my brain, bitch!

Busily, I right-click to save the top headlines and op-eds, forming an impressive line of tabs across the top of the page - the important pieces this important woman will read very soon.

But first, a little fun to wake up. I scroll down toward Wordle. Down I head, but, then… oh - a 2-minute article on Gavin Newsom, who’s handsome and good at shit-talking Trump. I click. After all, it’s only two minutes! I sigh because, of course, Newsom is softening his tone - his state needs aid and the orange ass in the White House needs flattery.

As I begin to lose interest, my eye is caught by an ad for a suede James Perse trucker hat. I’ve always avoided trucker hats, in favor of their less-structured baseball-cap cousins. But this looks like a cross between what the Roy family wears when they duck under helicopter propellers and what celebrities wear when the paparazzi catch them having ice cream with their kids. I want one! I click.

Oh. $225 for a baseball cap? I guess I don’t.

Back to Gavin, who’s now taken not two minutes, but five, of my very precious time. And I’ve only read three sentences.

I scroll toward Wordle. Once again, I’m derailed. This time by an article about Kendrick Lamar’s half-time song. How did I not know about the feud with Drake? Now I’m clicking on a link within the article to learn more. Jesus. Where have I been? I get up to refill my coffee cup.

A ding on my phone as I get back to the window seat. Susie wants to talk.

I tell her I only have five minutes. We talk for 20.

Back to my perusal. Someone wants the Ethicist to weigh in on whether they should intervene because their son’s friend (who they’ve known since childhood!) is cheating on his wife. Of COURSE they shouldn’t intervene. I’m no Ethicist and even I know that! But I read it anyway. The top headlines can wait one little minute.

Finished, and full of self-satisfaction (because the Ethicist and I are on the same page) my eye is caught by the headline “My Farewell Column” by Charles Blow. I didn’t know he was leaving. His column is beautifully touching and human and like everyone who’s ever left me, I wish I’d appreciated him more while he was here. But I am very busy.

I right-click on Nicolas Kristoff’s piece on the world’s richest men vs the world’s poorest children (guess who’s winning? Bastards.) I’ll read it as soon as I do Wordle. Oh. Something on Marianne Faithfull’s style? Just a quick peek. I didn’t know that in addition to Mick, she slept with Jimi Hendrix, and David and Angela Bowie - wow - respect! Marianne. The haughty beauty whose eyes brimmed with Liv Ullman-like sadness.

I study side-by-side shots of Marianne and Kate Moss, both in fur (Kate’s is faux.) I spend a full minute wondering who I’d rather be, deciding on Marianne because of her soulful gaze (not to mention the Mick/Jimi/David/Angela thing.)

My email is making all kinds of noises.

I glance. Work stuff. Notifications from LinkedIn. Yay, three people liked my comment on George’s last post and new people want to connect. Click, click, click - I accept them into my mighty fold. I read George’s column and comment because he’s a good egg.

LinkedIn has two job notifications for me - both of which I’d be “perfect for” - one is to be CEO of a company, another, an administrative assistant. They know me so well!

It’s 8:45. I’ve been “reading” the Times for two hours. And still not one article completed. Not even Wordle (which, yes, counts as an article.)

I have to get ready for the day.

Sadly, this is my brain.

This is my brain on The New York Times.

Any questions?

I’ve tried all kinds of filters and croppings to make it look less sad, but some things are just sad.

It’s kind of ugly. It’s fairly shapeless. It’s definitely boring. I don’t remember when I bought it or where I thought I’d wear it. The label says Neiman Marcus. Go figure.

Did I know it would end up being worn only at home? Does anyone ever buy a dress with that in mind? Or do certain pieces of clothing just end up benched, like basketball players who’ve lost all hope of getting into a game?

I’ve had my - oh, I’ll just say it - HOUSE DRESS - forever. My first memory of wearing it publicly was when I walked the kids to school one day - yes - I had it when my now-24-year-old twins were in third grade - and that’s not because I take good care of my clothes - it’s because it’s made of some kind of indestructible polyester. Or at least I assume so. It’s been washed so many times, the fabric label has faded to blank.

I’d thrown a cashmere cardigan over it and to my shock, a fellow mother asked how I managed to look so put together at that hour.

“You really think so?” I asked.

“Well… I mean… I’m wearing sweats with Cheerios stuck to them, so…” she said with a shrug and I regretted pressing her. I still haven’t learned to simply accept a damned compliment.

My housedress is easy - not cool easy - pathetic easy - the doormat of my wardrobe. It doesn’t matter if I’ve lost or gained five pounds - it fits the same and doesn’t judge. It loves me even when I treat it like crap - which is pretty much always. I’ve spilled coffee on it while staring at Wordle, barely bothering to blot it with a napkin, have splattered its lap with tomato soup, and splashed its bosom with cranberry juice while shaking a batch of cosmo’s. It’s like I’m actively trying to destroy it. And yet it always pops out of the washing machine clean and ready for action - put me in coach!

Save for the picture above, I never hang it. I don’t even fold it. I roll it into a sack-like shape and shove it into my bottom drawer - like embarrassing porn or an incriminating college journal. And yet. It springs out of the drawer without so much as an admonishing wrinkle.

Housey, as I sometimes call it (not proud of that) is my Backstreet Girl. If you don’t know that Rolling Stones song, check it out - I hate myself for liking it, because it’s misogynistic, classist and downright mean, although it sounds sweet as hell.

“Don’t want you out in my world. Just you be my backstreet girl” pretty much sums up how I feel about Housey. Clearly, Keith Richards and I are soul mates. Although his backstreet girl is smoking a Marlboro, with inky black eyeliner peeking through her fuck-you bangs, while mine wears a mock-turtleneck with a modest A-line cut.

Fine. On the cool scale, my housedress is a loser.

On any scale, my housedress is a loser.

But it’s my loser.

After I peel off jeans and boots, or at the end of a meeting-filled day in a form-fitting dress and tights - when I want something I can’t feel on my body - my backstreet housey is so fucking there.

I’ve slipped into it after office days that ended at midnight, hugging it close as I sat on the sofa watching reruns of (ironically) The Office, as my husband snored softly in the bed I was way too wired to tuck myself into.

I’ve hugged it to me on blissful Sundays when I’ve had no place to be, and, with a many a sigh on Saturday nights when I wished we had exciting plans.

I’ve dolloped more cookie dough onto more baking sheets than I can remember, while enveloped in its black semi-stretchy, non-judgmental fabric.

I’ve sung along to “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright” as I sauteed onions, belting out “you just kinda wasted my precious time” with what I, alone, consider a perfect Dylan-esque twang.

I’ve shrugged a coat over it, stamping to the market for the milk I can’t drink my coffee without, cursing myself for not realizing we were low the night before.

I went more days in it, sans shower, than I should admit, during the early weeks of the pandemic, when there seemed no reason to get clean.

Ditto, each of the times I’ve had covid.

It was the first thing I reached for after the “quick catch up” zoom that caught me up on the fact that after 26 years, I no longer had a job. Numbly, I unbuttoned my tan linen work dress and pulled my housedress over my head as I played back the conversation that I wouldn’t be able to process for weeks.

I put it on each time I got home from a long day in New Jersey, where my mother sat way too quietly for way too long during a hospice that I wished would end, until it did, leaving me longing for more of her quiet grace.

After the funeral, I think I wore it for a month.

I’ve danced with my kids to Diana Ross’s Upside Down and Aretha’s Chain of Fools in my housedress while my husband deejayed.

It falls from my shoulders without touching my body at all - so it’s like wearing nothing without revealing a thing.

On bad days, I’ve put it on after arguing with my husband, yelling so loudly, I’ve worried what the neighbors might think. It’s the perfect thing to wear when reflection is necessary - there’s no waistband to distract me as I think about what I said. No belt to fidget with as I admit I was an ass. No seams to straighten as I say I’m sorry.

This morning, I sat in our window seat, watching tiny snowflakes float down- a sight that would have been more beautiful had it not been obscured by the scaffolding and netting that seem to be the price one has to pay for living in the best city in the world.

This is the end of a long, lovely, lazy winter break. One where, for the first time in ages, I didn’t work. And didn’t obsess about not working. I ate what I felt like, drank as often as I wanted (which was quite) and slept late.

I said yes to all invitations. Even the ones that made me feel shy. I invited people over and didn’t freak out about things being perfect. I went to the movies. And out to dinner.

And always, always, came home and put my housedress on.

This morning, I took it off and put (shoved) it away, then pulled on a pair of pants that mean business and a silky button down shirt.

I wrote to my contacts about writing assignments. And then winced, because I’m not sure what makes me more angsty - getting an assignment or not getting one.

My housedress will be there either way.

If I could give it advice, I’d tell it to stop being such a tool.

But it wouldn’t listen. It’s pathetic that way.

And that’s why I love it.

It wants nothing and gives everything.

And it’s never, ever not been there, unless it’s in the laundry bag, splattered with grapefruit juice. Even then, I’m not above fishing it out and pulling it over my head when I really need it.

Which is more and more often lately.

Life is messy.

And comfort is hard to come by.

This was taken when I bought Fun Greenie, which, if you must know, was in 2018.

I’m torn between two dresses. One is low-cut, black and long, the other, calf-length, green, and elegant. Both feel like good options for the London wedding I’m desperately trying to pack for. It’s a short trip, so I’ll carry on (in more ways than one, let’s be honest.) But in my defense, there’s a lot to consider:

• A pub party (pub crawl?) on Thursday night. What does one wear to such a thing? Fun dress? Pants and top with cute boots? Jumpsuit? I want options! I can’t have options! Boo!

• A walking-around outfit for the Friday before the wedding.

• A Friday dinner outfit. Again, options would be nice.

• Hungover debrief clothes for the Sunday after the wedding - cozy cashmere, easy pants? Jeans?

• A cosmetic bag that can barely contain the serums, de-puffers, skin-plumpers and moisturizers that one little face requires.

• Hair stuff.

• Bras, underwear, pj’s, a little evening bag for the wedding, good God, how do people do this?

I wish I could pack Low Cut Blackie and Fun Greenie to compare them in the dreary light of London, but carry-ons are cruel beasts.

I pull a Spanx on, thanking my dear friend Rachael for giving me the best advice ever - buy a Spanx that’s a size too big - it’ll still give you lots of control, without putting you in a bad mood. I wriggle into my sized-up Spanx and the plunge bra that Low-Cut Blackie requires. I zip it up, smile into the mirror and say “Hi!” the way you do at a wedding - half an octave higher than normal, big smile, brows raised, as if you’re surprised there are actually people there.

Low Cut Blackie has never done me wrong and when I wore it to my niece Holly’s wedding I felt like a movie star.

Low-Cut Blackie on too-tan me, with my perfectly beautiful sister.

I waltz out to Philip, who has opted to stay home, which I’m of two minds about. Mind One wants him in London because he loves Emily and Jules, and I love him. Mind Two wants to be a mom on the town with her two kids. Mind Two has won.

“You look good,” he says. I’m about to ask for more specifics, but think, “eh, I have shit to do,” and scoot back to my staging area.

I step into Fun Greenie. Zip it up. Put a hand on my hip and smile. Fun Greenie is festive (hence its name) and unique - I bought it at a vintage shop in Ocean Grove, New Jersey, where a fluffy white dog named Trixie sat on a blue velvet chair in the dressing room and panted her approval.

I’ve only worn FG once - to my nephew Doug’s wedding - and let’s just say, I had a ridiculous amount of fun on a day that kept going until it was night and karaoke was the only thing that made sense.

“Jet” by Paul McCartney & Wings - as not sung by Ava and me. Don’t ask.

On a whim, I slip into a pair of blush booties and they look so good that I point my toe in a self-satisfied manner as I smile at the mirror. I love this dress. And it poses no cleavage issues, which I can’t say for LCB.

I put Low-Cut Blackie on a hanger and wish it better luck next time. Fun Greenie is carefully rolled and tucked into my stingy little suitcase. Ben models his outfit and we decide he’s perfect, as we always do. It’s truly annoying. Ava has known she’ll wear a black slip dress since we got the invitation, because she too, is perfect, and therefore annoying. I manage to love them anyway.

Half a day later, we’re putting our hoods up to shield what’s left of our hairdos from the London mist. By the time we have lunch and check into the airbnb, there’s just time for a quick nap before the pub thing.

Our cute pub outfits are ousted in favor of cozy sweaters because it’s bone-cold and we’re exhausted.

“Let’s say a quick hi and make it an early night,” I say, which makes total sense.

Until it’s way past one and we’re drinking shots of tequila.

And Ava is talking to the cutest British boy we’ve ever seen.

And Ben is laughing so hard with my friend Amanda and her girlfriend Meg that I think he may start crying. And my new best friends Danny and Justin are making me die with the best jokes and gossip I’ve heard in ages.

I almost want this to be the whole wedding because it’s so perfect.

But the most perfect part requires a rewind to when we entered the pub. The first thing we saw was Emily (who I call Topsy because we used to sit facing each other at our advertising agency and only saw one another from the shoulders up.)

Topsy’s face is gorgeous on the worst of days.

And on this, the best of nights, her face is a masterpiece. A masterpiece that gets buried in Ava’s hair as the two of them embrace. And then mine, and then Ben’s, and then everyone’s.

Emily’s smile is drop-dead beautiful. Tonight, it’s better than that. It’s big and loopy and messy with emotion - there’s simply no controlling the tremble of an upper lip that’s part of a face that’s connected to a soul that’s surrounded by love. As we hug and rock back and forth, everything that doesn’t matter floats out the open door of the crowded pub.

We’ve made Topsy happy.

What a gift.

Because Topsy deserves happiness more than most people would guess. And she’s found it in Jules - a woman whose sweetness balances her tartness, and whose brightness softens her jaded edges. Not that Emily’s some sour apple - she isn’t, in the least - but, compared to Jules, we’re all sour apples.

We muddle through a jet-lagged foggy Friday, feeling like we should be at the Tate Modern, but instead, eating scrambled eggs on toast in a charming little restaurant and walking around Chelsea in a daze.

There’s sun on the morning of the wedding - of course there is - the sun wouldn’t dare not shine for Emily and Jules unless it wanted a riot on its hands. Ava - god, I love that girl - has made hair and nail appointments for us.

My hair is whipped into shape and my face is spun into a glowing shimmer. I feel as pretty as Maria, and it’s alarming how charming I feel.

An hour later, Ava, Ben, Fun Greenie and I make our royal entrance.

We’re ushered upstairs where we sit in the nervous way of those awaiting a wedding couple’s entrance.

The doors open. Emily wears an elegant black jumpsuit and Jules, a white one. Perfection. The applause is instant and heartfelt. They’re divine, these two women. They read letters to each other, delivering a masterclass on what it is to love, accept and adore another person, foibles and all.

Tears run rampant over my shimmery glow and I laugh when Emily mentions the way Jules talked like Tony Soprano for a full two weeks after watching the series, and when Jules thanks Emily for teaching her to be fiscally responsible, so she can retire before she’s 93.

Emily’s friend Lauren makes a toast that is so profound, so funny, so beautifully delivered, it should have its own podcast and be spun into a mini-series.

She mentions Emily’s shock upon discovering that Jules owned 15 kinds of shampoo and countless pairs of white sneakers, and says:

While she described all this in horror, my heart jumped for joy. Because yes, we all deserve excesses, who cares? And you will give this to her Jules, you will continue to show her that one more gift, one more hug, just more LOVE - it’s everything. It’s the way to live, and, dear God, if I want anything for my friend, it’s More. More. More.

I hear myself sob loudly and turn to smile at my friend Amanda. I pass my champagne glass and a few minutes later, she passes it back, saving the last sip for me, because Amanda’s a girl’s girl.

Amanda (with her own damned champagne, finally! And her own Greenie!) and me.

My kids are good-looking. And nice. And fun. And available for weddings and Bar Mitzvahs.

We make our way downstairs again, and this time, we dance. Fun Greenie’s only fault is that it’s a bit structured, and therefore, so are my dance moves. I can imagine Low-Cut Blackie singing “who’s sorry now,” but there’s too much joy here for such nonsense.

At the very end, when the Americans have proven they know how to stay until every last bit of alcohol has been consumed, the deejay acknowledges our persistence with the song none of us can resist.

And somehow, as we sway and belt it out, Ben ends up in the middle of the circle. He points at me and Ava on the words, “It’s up to you, New York, New York,” and I cry for what may be the 49th time. My boy is surrounded by love. And he’s reveling in it - as well he should. Confetti pours down and lands in his perfect curls, and Ava and I laugh and cry because we love Ben - and we love Emily and Jules - with all our hearts.

We don’t want it to end.

But our feet can no longer stand to be in their shoes.

And the bartenders are packing up.

Us, during our Purple Period.

The next day, after a very long debrief that starts with scrambled eggs on toast and (as more hungover wedding guests tumble in) becomes a dinner of cocktails and fries, we go back to our flat (as we now call it) and plop suitcases onto beds.

It’s always so much easier to pack for home.

Maybe that’s because we know what to expect when we get there.

Unlike trips abroad, which always throw me.

And then thrill me.

And in this case, fill my heart to bursting.

I roll Fun Greenie into a tidy cylinder with a little pat for a job well done.

I’d wish Emily and Jules all the love in the world.

And I’d wish them joy.

And the shared affection and understanding that comes with age.

But that would be silly.

Because they already have it

More.

More.

More.

“You’ll be ok, right?” Tammy asks, as we pull into the Omega Institute parking lot.

“Yes. No. Oh God, why am I nervous?” I say, and we laugh about how silly it is, because I’m attending a weekend writing workshop, not boot camp.

“You’ll do great,” she says, then to my relief, adds, “I’ll help you check in.”

The Welcome Tent shines Clorox-white in the sun, and gives me a momentary jolt of optimism. I hand my bags to the guy at the table, feeling self-conscious, because, in addition to my wheelie and laptop bag, I’ve brought a big white tote.

“I brought my own pillow,” I say, lifting my chin toward the tote.

“He doesn’t care,” Tammy whispers and I laugh.

“My friend says you don’t care and I’m sure she’s right, I wouldn’t either. I just like having my pillow,” I say, which is already too much. But I don’t stop. I talk about how it’s soft, but not too soft.

“I’d bring my own too,” he kindly interrupts, and I want to kiss him, but instead, I laugh. Way too hard.

“I’m a little nervous,” I say.

“She’s never been away from home,” Tammy adds, and we all laugh, but my laughter goes on for an alarmingly long time.

“Let’s start with your name,” he says.

“Nervous Nellie, clearly,” I say and, kindly, he chuckles.

“What’s your last name?” he says, framing it differently.

“Nellie,” I say. I can’t believe I’m prolonging this.

Finally, I get my name out and he tags my bags, saying, “You’re Oak C.”

“I’m Oak C,” I repeat to Tammy.

“You’re Oatsy?” she says and again, I’m hysterical.

“Jesus. Did you slip Ecstasy into my water?” I choke out between laughs.

“You’re just nervous. You’ll see - you’ll meet the nicest people. This is a Cheryl Strayed thing! Everyone will be just like you!”

My Tammy. She hugs me hard and gets back into her car, giving me a “you can do this” nod, but there’s a flicker of worry behind her smile.

I go to the Registration Desk, feeling less sure of myself by the second. I’m surrounded by clusters - friends, sisters, partners - and I wonder why on earth I thought it was so critical that I do this workshop alone.

Conversations and joyful greetings erupt everywhere.

I’m an outsider who keeps talking about her pillow and can’t seem to stop laughing.

They wear leggings, these returning Omega’s, with Birkenstocks or Uggs. There are two workshops this weekend and it’s easy to see who’s who - my gang, the Cheryl Strayed writers are earthy, with an upstate vibe that’s heavy on fleece and flannel. The Yoga Group is younger, fitter, sexier, and with their great posture and midriff-skimming tops, it’s hard not to be jealous.

The woman who registers me scribbles circles and arrows on a map, as she says to go straight, then make a right, then veer left, maybe? God knows. She draws more arrows and I nod as if it makes sense.

I tell myself it will. But it doesn’t. I’m bad at maps, even in the best of times, and I walk in circles for a while. I squint at the map as if it will help. A serious-looking woman, wearing lavender fleece says “you look lost” and I say “that’s an understatement,” but neither of us laughs. She walks me to Oak C as I frantically try to memorize landmarks, but then realize “make right at Adirondack chairs” means nothing when there are Adirondack chairs everywhere.

Oatsy is clean and ready and they’ve delivered my bags. I sigh, because of course - this was all I needed and now things will fall into place. I put my stuff down.

Suitcase.

Tote bag with pillow (because I brought my own pillow, did I mention that?)

Laptop.

Jacket. Wait. Where’s my jacket? I know I took it from Tammy’s car. I check everywhere, including, nonsensically, the bathroom I haven’t entered.

I leave Oatsy, but can’t lock the door, because…I can’t find the key they just gave me. What is happening? I’m flunking Workshop. And I’ve only been here 10 minutes.

I trudge along a path, muttering and shaking my head at my ineptness.

No, this isn’t happening. No, this isn’t me. No, I shouldn’t have come.

I try to walk back to check-in and end up in the parking lot. I smile at the guy I made my hilarious joke to, but he’s much too busy for this Nellie. Somehow, I make my way back to registration.

When the woman who drew the circles and arrows looks up, I say “Me again,” and explain my problem. She tells me they’ll take care of me next door at Guest Services.

“Don’t worry. What we lose always comes back to us,” she says with a wise smile.

“That’s so true,” I say, thinking “That’s so not true.”

I wonder how I’ll bear a whole weekend of wise smiles and pat phrases, and my self-annoyance shifts outwardly.

It’s not me. It’s them.

A woman asks another if she’s going to 6AM stretch class and I all but roll my eyes.

Everyone is so chill, I want to defrost them.

Hey mama, two yoga-clad women say to each other….

“Shut up, mamas,” I think, plowing ahead.

At Guest Services, I wait my turn.

The woman ahead of me asks for a watercolor kit, which they let you check out like library books. Ordinarily, I’d find this charming, but now, I just want my key and jacket.

“Wow, that’s amazing,” the woman says about the watercolors, and I think, “Is it?” She says how relaxing she finds it to paint, and I smile as if I’m part of the conversation, which I think should be over by now.

But.

They talk about watercolors for a full five minutes as I do my best to look relaxed. The Guest Service woman gives me a replacement key, but doesn’t have my jacket. She assures me it will show up.

“Yes. What we lose always comes back to us,” I say before she can.

She nods and says, “Exactly.”

I sigh. And step onto the porch. And there, draped on a bench I don’t remember sitting on, is… my jacket! I hug it to my chest. The joy of finding something you thought you’d lost is so great, it should have its own word.

I start to feel slightly chill (or maybe just less chilly) as I make my way back to Oatsy. But only until I make two wrong turns and find myself barraged with signs - Willow. Maple. Evergreen. All the trees but my tree.

Finally, I find it and get inside, drenched, but relieved. I look in the mirror and take a breath because I’m here. And this is for me.

Somehow (well, by following a group) I make it to the dining hall, where I awkwardly smile and nod my way through dinner and can’t wait to not have to say my name and where I’m from.

At the evening workshop, I grab a seat in the middle of a row. To my left are two women who chat with the over-enthusiasm of new acquaintances and to my right are three friends. They’re smart and funny and easy with each other and their banter reminds me of my pals, Susie, Tammy and me when we were in our thirties. I feel lonely.

And then. There she is. Cheryl Strayed. Tall. Glamorous. Big hair, warm energy, her magenta dress draping her body. What a rock star. She’s funny and kind. She talks about her book Wild, about fears, and conquering them, about processing the loss of her mother, and I no longer feel alone.

She tells a story about how, at one of her workshops, a woman said, “I’m not really a writer. My mother-in-law takes my kids for a few hours every week and that’s when I write.” Cheryl pauses for a beat. “And I said, ‘honey, if that’s what you’re doing with the few hours you get to yourself, then I have news for you. You’re a writer.’”

Suddenly, we’re all writers. And we’re in this together. I exchange appreciative laughs with the threesome next to me.

“She’s great,” I say to the one closest to me, and she meets my eyes and says “I’m so glad I did this.”

I think about my mother’s simple advice - if you look someone in the eye, and show true interest in them, you won’t be alone. I ask how much of Cheryl’s work she’s read, and finally, I’m sort of normal again.

A while later, Cheryl gives us our first writing exercise. A letter to ourselves about what we want to write this weekend.

Dear Debra, I scribble, feeling silly.

I tell myself I’ll be okay and that all I’ve done so far by losing stuff and laughing too hard is to be human and that I may learn things.

Cheryl says time’s up and we wait expectantly for our next task. But instead, she says to grab a partner and read our letters to each other. I gulp. The new friends to my left are an instant pair. What if the three to my right decide to become a triplet? Will I read aloud like a nut, and tell myself I did a great job?

I dare to glance over. The third of the three wags her forefinger from herself to me, her brows raised inquisitively. “Want to pair up?” she asks. I say “yes” with an embarrassing amount of enthusiasm.

She scoots over. Molly is tall and long-limbed and very beautiful. I study her finely formed nose and high cheekbones, fascinated with her makeup application. She has mastered the smoky eye and then some.

Beautiful Molly reads first and her letter is so well-crafted, I’m taken aback. She tells herself to tell her stories, and to be brave and I can’t imagine her being anything but.

I go next and am surprised at the thinness of my voice.

Don’t worry if you need to talk about missing your mother, because it is not boring. Your heart is broken and you yearn for her and that is human and beautiful. She is there when you falter, and she is there when you succeed, I continue, my voice breaking. She would have laughed with you over how you said Nervous Nellie at check-in and then she would have fixed you with her steady, intelligent eyes and said that everyone was in the same boat and she would have told you you’d be fine in a way that would make you believe it. Let yourself miss that voice and, I don’t know, Dear Debra, you’re allowed to hurt. It makes you the opposite of boring. It makes you beautiful.

My voice has become a whisper and I lose control of my upper lip and a whimper escapes me.

“I honestly don’t know what’s happening to me,” I say, sure that Beautiful Molly regrets having wagged her finger at me. “What I wrote isn’t even that emotional. I just have no control - I couldn’t stop laughing when I got here and now…”

Molly touches my hand.

“I lost my mother too,” she says and I look up from the lap I’d been staring into.

Our eyes meet. Our pain meets.

“It never goes away,” she adds quietly. “It’s the mother wound.”

We sit, letting our tears flow. Her hand stays on mine.

I whisper a thank you, but she doesn’t hear me because Cheryl is telling us to make a list as our next exercise.

I haven’t hand-written in years and without a blank screen and delete button, I scribble madly. My mother, my kids, my husband, my insecurity and fears about what to do if I don’t work full time, all of it comes pouring out of my pen and down my face and I feel - really feel - my mother - in this room, encouraging me, reminding me to feel confident and be kind.

Oh my God, the woman at the desk was right.

Thank you, Registration Woman.

Thank you, Cheryl Strayed.

Thank you, Beautiful Molly.

For touching my heart. And touching my hand. And touching on truths with the simplicity of kind words.

I spend the rest of the weekend listening to the stories of people, who, like me, have come here to write their hearts out.

I drop the snark.

I smile genuinely as I talk about how good the coffee is and fully appreciate how stunning and lush and peaceful it is here.

My unhinged laughter is replaced with unconditional gratitude.

And from time to time, I nod wisely.

Because it is so true.

What we lose always comes back to us

.

I tell Philip I’ll be back soon, as I do every night when I leave. We both know I’m lying.

I trudge off, as if it’s my job, wearing the sneaker-boots that kept popping into my feed, billed as “boots so comfortable you can walk in them all day.” They are. And I could.

I walk west toward the elephants.

The Herd of Elephants in the Meatpacking District, is my favorite exhibit in ages, because it’s outside and takes no effort. Each elephant is made by an artisan from reeds that were endangering India’s real elephants. I don’t think that’s a proper explanation, but suffice it to say that the reeds were bad and they turned them good.

I visit the elephants so often, and with such a proprietary nature, it’s almost weird. Maybe it’s because I happened to be walking by on the night they were delivered.

The elephants on the evening of their arrival.

I make my way to the High Line, and find it amazing, as I do each night, that just going up a flight of stairs can change everything. People lounge on the chaises near the 14th Street entrance and a sense of sweetness seems to overcome them as they look toward the river. Sometimes I plop down and join the loungers, but I usually walk, always to music.

God, I love my earbuds.

They enable me to create my own little music videos - ones that will never be seen by anyone but me.

I play Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky” watching two guys embrace. One takes the other’s face in his hands and they gaze lovingly at each other, the way you do when you’re newly in love. A 5-year-old stands on a bench, shooting her arms into the air in a victory pose as her father takes a picture.

I walk on, stopping so a stranger can take a shot of a family that poses in front of the wild purple flowers that line the walkway. The parents lean their heads toward each other as one of the kids makes a peace sign and the other tries to look cool, but breaks into a smile.

I bop my head as Pharell sings and don’t even remotely care that I look goofy. It’s different up here - as if we all signed an agreement to leave our snark downstairs, the way people toss their flip flops off before walking onto the beach.

I fiddle with my phone and find a new song. Mick and Keith sing “Salt of the Earth,” and I think of my friend Danny because it’s his favorite. Keith warbles “Let’s drink to the hard-working people,” and I’m forced to slow my pace for the same reason I always am at this point in the walk. The Empire State Building stops people in their tracks. And tonight, it deserves it. I can’t resist taking a shot.

I overhear a woman behind me say “Yeah, there’s this site you go to and vote on what color they should light it up with every night.”

I don’t know what she’s talking about.

I smile when her date says, “Really? So people voted on that golden color tonight?” and she says, “I honestly have no idea. I just heard someone say it and thought it would be a good thing to talk about if we ran out of conversation.” He asks if she thinks they’ve gotten to that point and she laughs, saying that actually, she doesn’t.

Clearly a first date, and I think it won’t be their last.

Everyone should have first dates along the High Line. It has a softening effect - especially at this time of day.

Dinnertime is approaching. I should turn around. But these walks won’t last forever - the sun has been setting earlier, and it won’t be long before we turn the clocks back. I keep going. I promise myself I’ll turn around at the Bowing Girl (who I think of as Fearless Girl’s humble cousin.) I’m dying to walk on, but picture Philip at the counter, chopping shallots. With a sigh, I turn back.

I love this walk. It washes away the meetings and “next steps” and the lists of script revisions, leaving them to fall off of me, like the muddled-together watercolors that drip from the tip of a paintbrush in need of a rinse. Drip, drip, drip, step, step, step - and I’m clean.

Here, in my baseball cap and earbuds, I’m anonymous. I can smile and clap my hands against my hips as I listen to Bruno Mars’ Uptown Funk, not sure, and not caring if that makes me uncool.

A new song starts, and I swoon over Mick’s sexy longing for Angie.

Then I play “She Smiled Sweetly.”

And do what I’ve come here to do.

I’ve come to let my heartache out. It’s been almost nine months since I lost my mother. Nine months without the person who carried me for that amount of time.

Actually, she carried me forever. She carried me with the strength and skill of her gentle knitter’s hands. And with the sweet, steady gaze of her hazel eyes. And with the reassuring sound of her voice. She carried me through the Pandemic, when I was supposed to carry her.

Back then, when I called to ask what she was doing, she’d say, “I’m sitting like a lump, what are you doing?” and I’d say that I, too, was sitting like a lump.

“We’re nice lumps, though, aren’t we,” she’d say and I’d answer that we were exceptional lumps. She’d conclude by telling me that everything was going to work out and that we’d be able to see each other soon and I’d hang up feeling like I always did after hearing her voice. Better.

I walk the High Line at the end of the day because I can’t call her any more.

I walk the High Line to feel her softness.

I walk the High Line to allow myself to break a little.

Michael Stipe sings Nightswimming and I let his voice wash over me. It has nothing to do with my mother, this song. And yet, it surrounds me with her.

Nightswimming deserves a quiet night.

I walk down a bit further and stop in front of the mural I never really thought about. But there it is. Thank you Darling. I let tears stream as I silently thank her for being soft in a world where hardness is valued way too much.

I keep walking. Stepping my way into my own heart. Letting all the “Really, I’m fine’s” fall away.

Because really, I’m not fine. I’m aching.

Aching for the “good night” phone calls I no longer make. Aching for stability. Aching for someone who thinks I’m brilliant because I can operate the TV remote. Aching for her whispered “thank you’s” as I stand at her chair, wishing I could do more than bring lunch and hold her hand. Aching for her.

My cheeks are awash in the salt of her sweetness.

I’m swimming in it.

On this very soft night, in this not-so-soft city, that to me, right now, is pure velvet.

I get close to the 14th Street exit.

Nightswimming finishes up.

And so does the sun.

But first, it takes a bow and I don’t blame it for showing off. I would too, if I’d given the world a day like this one. God, I’d be prancing about, waiting for a standing ovation.

I stand with the other iphone-holders and snap away.

I look at the river that separates New York from the state where I grew up - the state where F spent her long, sweet life.

I let the evening’s pink and orange gratitude wash over me.

And head down the steps, toward home.

I wrote this a couple of weeks ago but wanted to work on it before posting.

And then I didn’t.

And then last night happened. I walked along the High Line this morning, once again, wishing for softness in a world that values hardness all too much.

.

The bathing cap of champions. And also of me.

Swim.

I stand in front of the locker room mirror, holding my bathing cap. Red was the only color they had, and I hope it won’t make me look as conspicuous as I feel. I dawdle at the sink for as long as I can.

The bathing cap stretches tightly over my head with a snap, and for the first time in my life, I fully understand why men hate condoms.  

I take a deep breath and open the door. Chlorine fills my nostrils and immediately, I’m back at Oak Crest Swim Club, paddling next to my father, who does laps religiously. I’m an okay swimmer, but as I get older, I get worse. Nevertheless, I love this smell.

The pool’s lanes would be like a highway’s, except that, in addition to the fast and slow ones, there’s what looks like a fun lane. It’s filled with older people holding neon-colored noodles. I step in, willing myself not to shriek at the coldness.

I smile at a lovely-looking woman in her 80’s, whose bathing cap is covered in flowers, and she smiles back. Her lipstick matches her cap.

Why is it not mandatory for everyone to wear caps like this?

“You look so pretty,” I say and her smile gets wider.

She says I do too, but she’s just being polite. My tight red cap isn’t doing me any favors and I’m barefaced and scared-looking. I share that I’ve joined the Y to learn to swim.

“Or, re-learn, actually,” I add. She looks interested, so I continue. “I have trouble with the part where you turn your head to the side. I always keep my head up for too long and then the whole rhythm gets messed up…”

I’m going into too much detail, but she’s kind. She smiles sweetly. She is, indeed, very pretty.

“Do you go in the other lanes and do laps?” I ask.

“No, I just hop around in this lane,” she says. “We all do.”

She waves at another flower-capped woman.

“It feels good to get wet and it’s nice to just….play!” She laughs.

How I want to grab a noodle and stand around with these playful pretty ladies, but I’ve promised myself I’ll do at least one lap. She joins her friend as I duck under the rope.

The slow lane is fairly empty. I push off from the side, enjoying the boost. I take two strokes, hearing my father instructing me. My hands are cupped and I kick beneath the water - not a splash out of me. I turn my head to the left, my mouth above water. I open and close it. But not quickly enough. Water gets into my mouth and nose, and as I sputter, I revert to a frantic doggy paddle. I force myself to try again.

This attempt too, results in a sputter.

I repeat my sad performance a few more times, with increasingly less success.

As I tread water, I notice the lifeguard standing and yelling, and I wonder what the commotion is.

“You ok?” he shouts, and I realize that the commotion is me.

A few concerned swimmers look over.

I wave, way too merrily. “Yes! I’m just swimming!” I shout, then, unnecessarily add, “This is how I do it!” I’m about halfway down the lane and fully out of steam.

I try again the next day and the next.

Sputter. Paddle. Rinse. Repeat.

Clearly, things are not going swimmingly.

A week later, I get an instructor.

Stan, who’s worked at the Y forever, emphasizes key words in a way that I find condescending. But what I really hate is the way he starts sentences and leaves the last word off, for me to fill in. The last word is never obvious to me.

“So, when we swim, we breathe so we can…” he says, gesturing toward me.

“So we can… swim?” I say.

He sighs, not hiding his annoyance. He doesn’t tell me what the last word was supposed to be, and peevishly, I think he doesn’t know either.

He paces as he instructs, and I think it’s unfair that he gets to stand outside the pool while I have to stand in it. He pantomimes a swimming stroke and I do it with him.

“So again. It’s one, two, breathe,” he says.

“One, two, breathe,” I say, as I row first one arm, then the other in the air. I cup my hands, hoping Stan is impressed. When we get to the word “breathe” I turn my head to the left and open my mouth.

I’m good at it as long as I’m standing in the shallow end and don’t have my head in the water.

“Fix it,” Stan says, in the annoyed tone he reserves for every single thing he says to me. I think about what word I may be called upon to fill in.

Fix it…now?

But no. This isn’t a word-drill. And Stan is not happy that I don’t seem to know what “it” is. He pantomimes pulling something over his ears and I realize my bathing cap has ridden up. Again.

“It’s because I put conditioner on my hair before I put my cap on,” I say. “To protect it from the chlorine.”

Stan doesn’t have much hair and doesn’t want to talk about mine. I’m pretty sure Stan hates me. Which is fine because I hate him. But not as much as I love the way his posturing makes me laugh. Plus, I want to learn to swim.

With a sigh, I pull my cap down.

We do more stroking and breathing. I feel my cap riding up again, but Stan and I are mid-stroke and I dare not break the rhythm. I feel it slipping higher on my head and then, higher still, and then. Oh God. It pops into the air, like a manhole cover with too much pressure from below.

“Holy moly!” I say, laughing.

A certain someone doesn’t find this funny, which makes me laugh harder.

Stan folds his arms and shakes his head as I go after my cap, which is floating a couple of feet away. As I lunge for it, I lose my footing and my head goes under water.

“No putting your head in without a cap!” Stan shouts, sighing at my inability to grasp even this concept.

“I didn’t mean to!” I shout back and our eyes lock.

“Obviously,” I add, glaring as meanly as he does. A rivulet of conditioner drips down my forehead and I swipe at it, refusing to lose the staring contest.

I put my cap on, sarcastically pulling it extra hard, so it forces my eyebrows down to just above my eyes. Stubbornly, I refuse to adjust it, or my attitude.

To both our pain, I continue my lessons. After two months, I’ve improved enough to do a full lap without stopping. And, to our mutual relief, this enables me to say goodbye to Stan.

I force myself to the pool three times a week. I have no idea what people are talking about when they say swimming is peaceful. But I continue, waiting for the moment when it all clicks in, as my friends promise it will.

They’re liars.

I taper off to twice, then once a week, then finally, admit that the only thing I like about swimming are those flowered caps in the fun lane.

Step.

Work has become intense, and without my Stan sessions, I have little reason to get to the gym. But I miss going. My mind is wound too tightly and my stomach muscles aren’t wound tightly enough.

I’d go after work, but I’m not just a creative director; I’m also a mother. So I race home to relieve our caregiver. Thelma, one of the sweetest women I’ve ever known, has fed and bathed Ava and Ben, so that when I arrive, they’re shiny-clean, with comb marks still fresh in their wet hair. Sometimes the three of them are singing The Itsy Bitsy Spider and, with a pang, it hits me that I’m paying someone to live the best part of my life.

I put A&B to bed and finish emails as Philip makes dinner. After we eat, I spend another hour going over decks, and flop into bed, but don’t sleep well.

I need exercise.

So I exchange my red bathing cap for a tank top and yoga pants and set my alarm for 5:45. I get to the gym by 6, and home, by 7:15, in time to make breakfast and pack lunches. Sometimes I pack with one hand while pecking out emails with the other.

Once breakfast is finished, Thelma arrives and helps the kids get ready for school while I shower. I stand at the door in a robe, kissing their sweet faces as Philip marches them off.

It’s exhausting, and far from a perfect routine, but my morning workouts, and the dusty pink just-risen sun that congratulates me afterward, are pure replenishment.

This is my gym uniform, but without the skateboard. Or the tattoo. Or the perfect BMI.

Not only that - I’m part of a gang. The other two members are best buddies, in their late 70’s. One is short and sturdy-looking, and clearly, the mayor of early morning. Everyone gives Dave a clap on the shoulder as they pass him.

Dave’s buddy is taller, quieter, and infinitely amused by him. Dave always uses the second elliptical in. Friend of Dave likes the one that faces it, and I go to Dave’s left. Like kids in a lunchroom, we take the same places every morning. They talk. I put my earbuds in.

One day, as I trudge along while watching Morning Joe, I feel a little smack on my arm. Dave.

“I just wondered, have you ever been on a conference call?” he asks.

I scoff, because conference calls are practically my life. This is before the pandemic, and we have no idea that Zoom will change everything.

“Yeah, I do them all the time at work,” I say.

“Well. Let me tell you,” he says, “I was on one yesterday, and it was a doozy.”

Dave is retired, but sometimes gets called in as a consultant. I’ve heard him explain technology to his friend before, and now it’s my turn.

“Everybody sits with the phone in the middle of the table, and we’re talking to this other group,” he says.

“Yeah, I know how that works,” I answer, trying to sneak a look at the TV.

“And then!” he continues, “Everybody’s talking. You know, bla, bla, bla. And all of a sudden, one guy, on the other end, goes, ‘yeah, I got this rash on my back and I think it’s spreading down to my butt!’” Dave is laughing so hard he can hardly get the word “butt” out.

I have to laugh too.

“He was doing the call from home and he thought he was on mute!” Dave explains. “See, there’s a button you can push so nobody can hear you, and he thought he did. The poor guy was telling his wife to look at his butt, and then he stops, and he goes, ‘hey, can you guys hear me?’”

He’s stopped stepping altogether because he’s laughing so hard.

Dave’s friend appears. As he mounts his elliptical, I hear, “Hey, ya gotta hear this - I was on a conference call yesterday - a real doozy…”

Dave tells stories the next day and the one after that, and while it amuses me, I miss my solitude. I could go to a different elliptical, but that seems rude. So I mix a few new things into my routine.

Which is how I remember that I love to…

Row.

I’m actually pretty good at rowing, since I used to take classes at a place called Row House, where we “rowed as one” and I had to keep up with some very strong 25-year-olds. It almost killed me.

Rowing on my own is lovely. I do it for 10 minutes at a time, usually, when Dave tells a new person about the doozy.

With my earbuds in, and music up loud, I feel like I’m watching, a movie that I’m in.

Proud Mary is eight minutes long and inspires me to challenge myself (because, like Tina, I never, ever, do nothing nice and easy. Or so I like to think.) I love putting the resistance up all the way, and grunting as I pull the handles back, as fast as I can.

At the end, as I cool down, I play The Ballad of Easy Rider, which is anthemic and moving, and I love it. The rowing machines face the indoor track and I study the runners and walkers.

There’s a frail woman who walks very slowly, sometimes taking the arm of the aide who accompanies her. And a rather obese man who keeps his eyes straight ahead as he puts one foot in front of the other and never fails to show up. There’s another guy who boxes while he jogs and I think he looks famous. There are fast runners and slow joggers, and moms with kids, going round and round as I go back and forth.

Occasionally, I skip a day to walk Ava and Ben to school, and feel teary as they march off, holding their lunch boxes like little executives.

Those days are precious. But rare.

Usually I’m at the Y.

Rowing fast, then slow. Silently cheering for the elderly woman, admiring the man who doesn’t miss a day, wondering who the boxer is.

And always, focusing on the moms. The ones who jog around the track with their kids, the ones who walk, as their kids run like banshees.

And the ones who come alone, grabbing what time they can before running home to pour Cheerios into bowls and pack lunches.

They walk. They run. They do their imperfect best.

My people.

I glance behind me. Dave high-fives a regular.

I smile, a little happily and a little sadly.

At all I’ve gained, and all I’ve missed, by coming here.

To this place that has (with the obvious exception of Stan) accepted me as I am.

This place that has revived me. Healed me. Made me happy.

As I row, I feel joy, but a little guilt creeps in.

I should be walking my kids to school.

Or keeping up with the morning’s emails.

Or doing any of the hundreds of “should’s” that crowd my brain.

But I shake them away.

This time is necessary. And cherished. And dare I say it, sacred.

Because it’s something no other hour of the day is.

Utterly and completely mine.