All cooped up with snow place to go

Has it snowed more this winter than last? I have no way to judge. Since my surgery, December 2, I haven't been out much at all. Since chemo began, I've been afraid of public petrie dishes. Most of the time, I don't notice -- but today, while it snowed and I couldn't go out, I felt like a little kid sick on a snow day -- a do-nothing day that I couldn't fully enjoy.

Instead, my mom was here: we toiled together in the kitchen, making comfort food from scratch. My comfort food -- not something she has ever eaten. I called it mac & cheese day, but neither of us had ever made a white sauce. It takes a village when we attempt domestic competence.

We made two phone calls to consult with my friend who gave me the recipe, my friend who is upstate taking care of her mom, who has also lymphoma. It is, apparently, the disease of the season. Her mom and mine are drinking buddies: she and I think it's cute, we who stay away from the bottle, for reasons too complex to detail here.

This winter, I am ill. Last winter, I met The Artist, with whom I am in love. Our anniversary -- that is, in real life, not via email or telephone, is January 29, a Thursday. I had picked the restaurant, my favorite French bistro not 100 steps from my home. It is where I had auditioned, so to speak, many a real life rendez-vous. La Boite closed suddenly in May last year. All I could think was, I hope I never have to go on another first date.

The Artist is sweet and witty and compassionate, and I am grateful beyond measure that she is in my life. This is a hard patch we are going through: no matter how "garden variety" my cancer may be considered, she is stuck going to work, and tending to me while I am home.

I am tired, and sometimes achy, but the largest part of my physical pain has been healing from the five-inch incision in my chest. Chemo has not, thus far, proved the tribulation that made me so nervous.

A winter snow- and germ-bound in my apartment, however, is making me twitchy. I cannot remember the last period of time I was Wonderland-bound for so many months. Last year, January was Alabama, for my niece's birthday; February, my belated JYA in Buenos Aires; and March, my two weeks down in Mexico.

This year, I travel by taxi to the oncologist, five minutes from my house. Last year the heat was turned low, but this year, it is not. This year, my house is awash in Purell, Kleenex, pain pills, and tranquilizers. The freezer is stocked with food other people have cooked. The Artist makes our dinners, each with a reduction sauce she improvises and that impresses me. My mom's friends, most of whom live outside of Wonderland, send flowers, chocolates, books, skin cream.

Most of my social life, except for The Artist, TBF, and one of The Three Sisters, is conducted via electronic means. Certainly it is the season for Facebook. Alas, it is not the season for great writing, given the limits of my concentration if not any other impediments. It is mostly a time for arts and crafts, and I feel kinship with my 5-year-old neighbor, who received finger paints for her birthday.

I have paint (by numbers), coloring books, crayons, glitter crayons, markers, glitter, modeling and baking clay, and a needlepoint kit. I have also designed my own tiara, courtesy of The Artist's dabbling in the children's crafts department at a local store. She herself paints for real, and creates beautiful photographs. What I hope I do with words, she succeeds with art.

One of the Three Sisters has been down this road before: I am her fourth patient in the chemo wars. She keeps me hydrated and laughing and is great, loving company. We have known each other for 25 years, and we are family. We are better than family: we don't have the built-in stress of childhood competition and don't share buttons installed by the same mother.

Most winters I spend time in bathing suits. Now, I wonder how the sun will affect my scars, and whether my sun days are over. I dress oddly, as if in the throws of menopause: hot, cold, hot, cold: my internal thermostat is askew.

I used to wear flannel nightgowns; now my nighttime attire is improvised layered pajamas. Cotton elasticized-waist pants; a long-sleeved, tunic-length cotton T-shirt; a button-down, flannel shirt worn open to be taken on and off as needed; athletic socks; and a cotton cap, to cover my head. The cap is striped; the shirt is plaid, but mismatched clothing seems symbolic.

As a teenager, per my journals, I hoped my life would look seamless, that it would not be all manner of patchwork. Patchwork, however, is the story of how it goes, never more so than now.

Back in the real world, sort of

Home again, home again, earlier than planned. Call me Spanish school dropout. (No graduation day for me.) Just say it in English, because my vocab in espanol is rather limited. So is my knowledge of verbs.

In Argentina, I lived in the present tense. I had no past and no future. It is an interesting way to perceive and the world.

Actually, it is quite apropos, given our brave new world and goings-on in Wonderland and places beyond. The past is history and the future a huge question mark. Will Alice need to find another gig to keep her in the style to which she is accustomed? Or are those days gone, regardless of what gig she comes up with?

Teaching English as a second language seems a possibility. It is a gig with instant credibility, something Alice believes has been lost in her current so-called profession. She thinks Madoff made everyone in her line of work appear as credible as car salesmen are usually wont to be. This does not inspire trust, a necessary element in Alice's work.

In Wonderland Alice is grateful for her health and mobility: TBF (aka Clover's Companion) had a second back surgery in Alice's absence. She will spend months recuperating. Alice would still feel better if TBF would hire a pro for her caretaking, but it's not her choice.

Husband-the-doctor (HTmD), to Alice, appears on the verge of a breakdown. Alice kindly brought him Cuban cigars that she had rolled in a T-shirt in her suitcase. She tells him to take care of himself, but he seems to fall short in that arena.

Today he shopped and brought home the wrong toilet paper, to TBF's dismay. Alice held her tongue. To her, as we know, toilet paper is not created equal. HTmD is a boy; he doesn't make the distinctions Alice and TBF make. He is also bewildered by all things domestic, and Alice wonders how he survived his lengthy bachelorhood.

HTmD is running himself ragged while TBF is incapacitated, calling herself a cripple with a scoliosis-like brace to wear as part of the recovery plan. He is stunningly clueless about their everyday life -- all things remotely domestic.

Alice has never lived in the world of couples, where one brings in the money and the other manages it, much less one in which food supply falls to the female and the male seems unable to manage for himself. Perhaps it is simply all the stress: Alice will buy that. Under stress, brushing teeth can be problematic.

Doctor-husband cannot ascertain by himself where to put the tuna fish cans. He cannot apply heat to food (nor can TBF). That in itself is not a problem, but his failure to find nutrition that is not on the Chinese food or pizza menu puzzles Alice. Shouldn't an M.D. know what they call a balanced meal? Perhaps order one to be delivered? Cash is not the problem, but common sense is in short supply, or perhaps stress has taken its place.

This is why Alice ran away, and why Alice, once she excavates her dining room table, will be just as happy to get on the plane to Mexico next week. She cannot, it seems, bear witness to that which drives her insane. Apparently Alice is a control freak: who knew? Or is Alice the last to get that memo?

In BA Alice had fleeting maternal tendencies: one day she almost decided to wake up the Twit for school, and another night, while they smoked on the balcony, Alice wanted to lecture her about protein and safe sex. (The women of Buenos Aires have emergency kits for sale in their ladies' rooms: two pesos for a toothbrush, one for a condom. That will see them through the night.) However, Alice refrained.

Twit is massively devoted to Boyfriend, with whom she "chats" for hours via instant messaging, although that doesn't stop her from going out and finding a boy to fuck. One morning she came home and announced that she had gotten laid. Alice hoped that having sex would have calmed her down a bit, but no such luck.

When Alice was 19, she probably acted very much like Twit, except that she kept a bit more of her personal life to herself, and she didn't feel the need to tell anyone how intelligent she was. She was probably more about the hair, makeup, and clothes than she remembers. In retrospect, she was definitely more about the conquests than the intimacy.

Thirty years later, Alice has a different take on the world. She is again dating: tonight is her second date with the Artist, a woman Alice met on line and with whom she giggles madly on the telephone. They courted via email during Alice's hiatus. The Artist's Valentine's Day/Friday the 13th email cheered Alice immensely.

So, brave new world aside, Alice is up for more adventures. Keep your fingers (or other parts of your anatomy, as you choose) crossed for her. She wants something to work out with the Artist. Alice, perhaps, has found something to hope for, something/someone to add to her life.

Dancing in the streets

The news from home is grim on all fronts -- TBF (aka Clover´s Companion) is going back to the hospital for more surgery, and I am thousands of miles away, but in truth, there is nothing I can do for her in Wonderland, other than Be Properly Scared. I am. I am praying to a God about whose existence I am unsure.

Economic news grows more dire each time Alice signs on to Yahoo. Employment prospects look dim at best for the year. Alice has savings, but Alice, as observed last year, is still adjusting to reduced circumstances. (The exchange rate is so favorable in Argentina that it is cheaper for Alice here than in Wonderland.)

Nonetheless, in Buenos Aires, it is Carnaval, and the porteñonos are, as it happens, dancing in the streets. Wearing elaborate sequined costumes with make-up to match, they are celebrating. It is a joyous occasion here, and I am in need of joy. My flatmates I joined one group, made up of people ranging from toddlers to older men and women (not elderly: if you can dance in the street, elderly does not apply) fiercely contorting themselves in rhythm.

Never before have I literally danced in a city street. When Obama was elected, I wanted to dance in the West Village, but a local cop shushed us while we yelled from the concrete stoop, just as the cars were honking madly, before we could our feet could touch the asphalt. Here, we are welcome to dance in the street.

Buenos noches, Buenos Aires!

I am reliving student life, though in fact I never washed clothes by hand, never tried to iron, never washed a dish, and here I am, seriously lacking in domestic competence, and feeling ludicrously proud of my efforts. The apartment is run down, with a computer that runs Windows 98 and a telephone that requires a card for a local call, and my bed is definitely dormitory quality, if that. But what the hell -- my Spanish is improving, poco a poco, and for three weeks, I get to step outside myself.

The other students are young enough to be my children, if I had any, so I am gaining an interesting perspective on Youth.

Youth runs technological circles around me, though I suspect when I was their age and I lived abroad, I was more completely immersed in the culture around me simply because my time abroad predated the computer age. Cyber connections did not exist. We wrote letters, we sent postcards; occasionally my father sent Telexes from his office.

Daddy liked to know how his princess was managing. His princess was having a blast. Our business Telex name was hotdog, a play on my family name. My brother and I still have email addresses containing that name, to honor my father, who loved every new gadget that came along.


No one here can imagine a Telex, or a telegram. To me, the local internet cafe does seem part of the streetscape, but the cabinets where you can telephone the U.S. still seem a luxury, no matter how commonplace Youth might find them. Alice is a baby boomer, late to the global village. Youth is Gen Y or Z and knows of no other town.


Both Alice and flatmate Youth (a 19-year-old Dutch child-woman) think they are getting a great deal. Youth brings Alice coffee in bed. Alice pays for the taxi to school. Alice has been there, done that, and torn the T-shirt to rags on the rush-hour subway front, an overheated crowd new to flatmate Youth.

Other differences? Youth gets cramps; Alice wanted to sell her futures in Tampax on Ebay. Flatmate Youth instant messages; youth texts; youth emails, youth spends an inordinate amount of time facebooking (my verb of the day).

I, on the other hand, still find blogging a 21st century revelation, and if I want to talk to someone, I don´t want to sit at a keyboard and cripple myself. (Youth willl have to invent great voice-activated software. In 10 years, they won´t be able to type.) Call me old-fashioned, but call me. On the telephone.

Muchos gracias and hasta luego.

Alice, far from Wonderland

A guide to living in reduced circumstances

Alice is sad to report, it has come to this. She would much rather produce a guide to living under better circumstances; however, in this climate (read, economy tanked), it seems inappropriate.

Until the recent, shall we say, unpleasantness?, Alice made a living, as they say, from offering financial advice, a field whose existence appears rather tenuous. Thus Alice will offer a few words on the way she lives now.

It may be ordinary for some folks, but for Alice, it is not business as usual, not S.O.P. by a long shot. Alice is a baby boomer, part of a generation that has been known to act as if instant gratification takes too much time.

Food: Alice has rediscovered her kitchen. She markets -- in ordinary grocery stores, where she watches for good prices. She is applying heat to food on a regular basis. A prescription for burn cream has been filled, and Alice slathers it on with abandon.

Clothing: Fortunately, Alice was never much of a clothes horse. Now, she is not even a clothes pony. More like a clothes shih tzu, if that. So much for predictions of pricey underwear. It's strictly Hanes -- her way or the highway. As for outer layers, good-bye catalogs; hello, thrift shops.

It's time for pre-owned clothes. Pre-owned shoes. Maybe freebies from craigslist, or bargains at a church rummage sale. (Do they still have rummage sales? Does Alice know how to rummage?) The lipstick factor is prominent in Alice's toiletry plans.

Might even be time to relearn to sew, although that could cost Alice a finger or two, which would push health care out of reach.

Shelter: At least the mortgage is paid off. There will be no improvements to shelter short of hanging already in-house paintings and reorganizing the bookshelves and closets.

Heat may be curtailed, although Alice will be damned if she's going broke in the dark. Perhaps she will rearrange the living room furniture. Or would that be the deck chairs on the ship that may remain nameless?

Travel: all air travel has been postponed indefinitely, with the exception of tickets procured with frequent flyer miles to places where Alice may stay with friends. Inter-Wonderland transit has gone public.

It's subways, buses, and trains. Au revoir les taxis, those little yellow vehicles that have sped Alice from one part of town to another on a regular basis in the past.

Entertainment: Welcome to free movies on demand. Let's watch all DVDs purchased but still sealed against thievery. Read all books acquired with spines still uncracked. Can Alice interest you in a game of Monopoly? (Read about its ironic history here.) Anyone want to ante up for a game of nickel-dime-quarter poker?

Who cares if you lose? It's only money, right? Isn't it? asks the financial planner. What she really wants to know is, how far can we go before we hit bottom? Are we there yet? Please? Even the Wizard off Wall Street, major shareholder in Capitalist, inc., seems a few steps off. (Damn it, Alice should have remembered white men can't dance.)

Is there a 12-step program for the global economy?

Contemplating what to defrost for dinner, Alice is profoundly depressed. Previously she had never considered the freezer section a home for much more than ice trays, nukable proteins, extra smoked salmon, bagels, butter, and coffee.

Now she has said adieu to her menu drawer and has wrapped various meats, first in plastic wrap, followed by aluminum foil, labeling the packets with indelible marker by contents and date received. In the 'burbs, growing up, Alice remembers seeing her father do this with entire filet mignons he had cut into portion size.

It feels different now, and part of Alice is relieved her beloved Daddy isn't around for this 21st century meltdown. On the other hand, he taught her that life was a banquet. It's just that Alice hadn't planned on getting the check.

Here's to hoping the light at the end of the tunnel isn't an oncoming train.

Dazed and confused...

as the song of 30+ years ago says. No, I don't know what to do. Not a clue. I attribute this state of being in part to stepping up my migraine preventive drugs to new heights of spaciness and also to the current state of the economy. Finally, my lack of time, energy, finances, and interest in business school have paid off. I don't know any more than those Wall Street M.B.A.s, but it didn't cost me a dime not to know it.

Ever so proud of the money I saved, I do does wonder how I will make my so-called living as the months unwind and the market tanks quicker than a crack addict's high evaporates. The pace is stunning. Fortunately financial planning is holistic (dreadful but applicable description). It's not just about investments. If it were just about managing money, Alice would be screwed. Talk about your ballroom days being over.... This brings Alice to her next theme.

Chaos: It's not just a theory, it's a way of life. Apparently it's the way that Alice has signed on for, whether she realized it or not at the time. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose? Alice wouldn't bet on it. Her theory on the lack of suicides in the financial district is that most of the newer office buildings have windows that don't open.

You would have to be very determined to that break glass in an emergency, and Alice doesn't think the I-bankers have the upper body strength. She could, of course, be mistaken. She is certain, however, that street vendors whose native language is not English have already cornered the market on vegetable and fruit sales. Depression-era apple selling set up shop years ago. For immigrants, it beats dish washing, and it's an all-cash business.

All-cash businesses are, well, priceless. And everyone needs to eat. The folks in Alice's upscale apartment building are all planning to apply heat to food on a more consistent basis. Say good-bye to last-minute restaurant dinners; say hello to home cooking. Alice's freezer is well stocked with bargains on meat, fish, and poultry. A year ago, she wouldn't have known a good price if it bit her on the ass.

These days she takes great comfort in her menopausal marches around the reservoir. Finally, Alice and nature are on more than speaking terms. Turns out she loves walking and even running under the trees -- far from the sound of the phone ringing or the computer chirping. She doesn't understand the multitasking walkers who have a dog leash in one hand and a cell phone in the other, or the mommies jogging behind a stroller outfitted with two children.

Domestic incompetence is looking increasingly less attractive. Still, Alice can't open the cap on a bottle of soda, much less change a light bulb or do laundry without turning everything pink. You can bring Alice into the kitchen, but you'd better bring the burn cream along, too. Given how flaky her thumb tendons are, Alice wouldn't mind a sous chef, but she suspects that position has been lost to what is most assuredly a recession.

On the money management front, Alice as family CFO has been bailing out of financials for the past year, a move not taken with any prescience about the fall of Lehman Bros. et. al, but one that looks pretty damn good no matter what its impetus. Still, it looks like that retirement Alice was dreaming of will be postponed for the indefinite future.

She is, however, keeping her carbon footprint small by not attending any financial planning conferences this year. A week in Whistler with the socially responsible folks, and Alice would have gone postal. (They seem to respect trees more than intellectual property, and Alice has a big problem with that.) A trip to Hershey to discuss baby boomers retiring, and Alice would have been puking chocolate for days.

We baby boomers are, not to put too fine a point on it, fucked. All those great plans we had, the country houses and the sojourns to foreign countries, well, not going to happen -- not unless great Aunt Matilda conveniently leaves a seven-figure cash inheritance ASAP. In real life, half the boomers Alice knows are scraping together college tuition money or shoring up their own finances, and another, larger-than-expected portion are supporting one or more parents.

Remember Goldie Hawn as Private Benjamin? She signed up for the Army with the private rooms and maid service. Looks like we're all joining her in the barracks, at an age when the kindergarten virtue of sharing has long since paled.

Fasten your seat belts. It's going to be a bumpy night.

A high chair in the dining room

My brother, sister-in-law, and niece came to New York for the week. It is the first time my sister-in-law, "A," has been north of, say, Washington, D.C. My niece, Kayanna, 10-months-old, had her first airplane ride and encounter with the T.S.A.

I wonder if they looked in her diaper for a concealed weapon. I think the odor of a ripe diaper would have been a perfect way -- and so subtle -- for Kayanna to express what I feel when I am disrobing to go through the metal detector. It would certainly have marked her as a member of Aunt Alice's family. We don't suffer fools easily.

Hard to believe I'm saying "sister-in-law" after my brother has only been married for 14 months. Wives one, two, and three were relegated to the status of "my brother's wife." This one, though, "A," mother of my niece, may be a keeper. Kayanna has my family's bloodline, for whatever that's worth. Meanwhile she's adorable.

I'm hoping Kayanna's gene pool will swim with common sense and high intelligence, and forgo the migraines and depression common to "A's" family and mine. In that sense my brother is brave; I was never willing to take the genetic roulette wheel out for a spin.

I like "A", babe in the woods that she is, more than previous models. She's bright, she's funny, she shares my family's sense of humor, which, if you didn't know us, you would have a hard time following, and not only is she intelligent, she wants her daughter to go to Harvard. She wants Kayanna to have more advantages than she did, and I don't doubt that she will try her damnedest to make sure that happens.

(I don't think "A" realizes that she has married into a family that has the financial advantages to make sure Kayanna gets the best education she can receive, but that is a story for another time.)

"A" and I even like the same TV and books. We are House and Law & Order: CI fans. Her favorite book is Pride and Prejudice, which give her the seal of intellectual approval from my over-educated self. (Previous wives were fond of Entertainment Tonight and that ilk, and I don't think any of them touched an actual book.)

Kayanna hasn't quite perfected her crawl: after a few steps on and and foot, she relaxes into the Army crawl, pulling herself along solely with the strength of her arms, and dragging the rest of her 20-pound body behind her. However, she can stand up, and if you hold her hand, she can walk.

This may be banal for anyone who writes a mommy blog or who has had their own children, but I'm the Aunt, and my exposure to babies has been very limited. Judging from my mother's anxiety before the Southern ("A" is from a Tiny Town in the deep South, where my brother had taken up permanent residence) contingent arrived, it would be difficult to tell that my mother had raised two children of her own, and those in the era before the participatory dad.

The stories she tells about us are getting more entertaining. Once, she lost my brother, age 3 or so, in Central Park. Another time she offered him PB&J or caviar for lunch. He was about 4. He went for the caviar. I said, no wonder we aren't mainstream. As a baby, I ditched the house key in another park, so the nanny had to go to the super's office to so we could get into the apartment.

What else happened when my mom was raising us? At Schraff's, circa 1964, I refused to wear a napkin tucked into my chin unless my mother and her friend did the same. They complied. Amazing what power I possessed as a 3-year-old. Then there was the time I tried to drown my brother in the wading pool, a story my mother repeats time and again, as if eventually I will remember the incident. I also don't remember pushing his pram into traffic, but it's another of mom's greatest hits.

Onto the high chair: my brother and "A" came to dinner at my house last night, with the baby. I had invited them in part because my mother has become the take-out queen, armed with menus and her VISA card; no one has seen her apply heat to food since the Southerners appeared. I thought they might like one of my rare home-cooked meals, not to mention a meal without my mom (something I was also looking forward to).

They said they thought they would feed Kayanna in her all-purpose baby seat/stroller seat/car seat, until I said, do you want a high chair for her? Next-door, my neighbor has a grandchild about 2 years older than Kayanna, so I called. In less than 5 minutes we had procured the high chair.

Now it sits, pulled in as close to the dining room table as my grown-up chairs. Kayanna and her parents have returned to my mother's, leaving me with an empty chair that says "your niece ate here."

I hope she comes back for more, soon.

Aunt Contrary's birthday

For years I have mocked my father's sister's family, with the exception of my cousin and his family in Maine who adore me, and, occasionally, my cousin and her family in Philadelphia.

The middle cousin, their sister, otherwise known as the Midtown princess, traded in her Subaru for a BMW because someone told her only lesbians drove Subarus. Odd, I would have thought a Subaru a family car, and no one would mistake the Midtowner for a parent. On the sexuality front, me thinks thou dost protest too much, and no one actually cares.

When my father died, I didn't even think to telephone the Midtowner, his niece, who has demonstrated less compassion over the years than a piece of shirt cardboard. Cardboard, after all, bends. My friends got me to my parents' house, held me though that whole mind-numbing new reality for months, if not years.

The Aunt of "Happy Chris-mukkah," a post I wrote in 2004, is Aunt Contrary. Her husband, Uncle Pompous, is dead, his ashes in a Brooks Brothers shoebox that I do not plan to see buried.

Our longtime family housekeeper, who retired about 10 years ago, after 15 years of daily coffee with my grandmother and subsequent 10 years of weekly cleanings at my house, had mentioned over the years that Aunt C. and Uncle P. were jealous that my dad had gone out on his own, taken some chances, made some big money, traveled when and where he wanted, with and without us in tow.

Yes, Daddy did, and he paid some huge prices along the way, while Uncle Pompous Chicken toiled for someone else until he was pushed out of working misery with a gold watch at age 65.

My parents didn't attend the retirement party; they said they were in Haiti. Well, they could have been. My mother has also been known to be unavailable for Passover post-Daddy, chez Aunt C. and Uncle P., claiming she was in Paris. Apparently Paris and Wonderland have a lot more in common than one might imagine. Right now my mother still owes me one for that bat mitzvah she avoided in 2004. Should our presence be requested at any religious ceremony for a member of Aunt C.'s family, it's her turn.

Aunt C., meanwhile, held up her end as helpmeet to Uncle P. til death did them part. In the 1980s, she was all in favor of feminism so long as it didn't interfere with their dinner as a couple. In the 1990s, they fled the town in Long Island where both had grown up (pre-WWII, pre-Levittown, when their town was actually in the country) to retire to warmer climes in Florida, along with half of their friends and neighbors whom they had known their entire lives.

I do not know if Aunt C. has any friends that she has not known 50+ years, which I find astounding. I know Aunt Contrary's female friends were all "couples friends"; that they socialized as Noah would have wanted, two by two. As a single woman, I cannot fathom this way of life: wanting to see me does not require the presence of my partner, whether I have one or not.

Aunt Contrary played piano; she played tennis; she chauffeured her children around town -- even to Wonderland -- to music, art appreciation, and other cultural and athletic lessons. She did some paid work that she could turn off at a moment's notice (or when the employer tired of her), and she ran the Long Island household with the help of our (my generation's) baby nurse, a housekeeper, and a laundress.

To this day my female cousins and I know how to scrub a toilet simply because we attended Camp Hell-in-the-Woods, where we learned tasks we would never perform as adults.

At her 80th birthday last weekend, a "ladies' lunch," Aunt C. chatted away. (My cousins were under the impression that if if were women only, Aunt C. might not realize her husband, Uncle P., was no longer among us. No one ever voted either of them "most observant." Most of Aunt's friends are in her age bracket, and few have remained standing in the two-fer position of the 1950s.)

To this day, she considers the former owner of Camp Hell-in-the-Woods a dear friend. Mr. Camp Director, a widower, lives in the same neighborhood as she in warmer climes, Florida. If an 89-year-old man can said to be doing such, he is dating a relative of Uncle P. who is no relation (teetotaling is not our genetic strong point) to me. When Mr. CD wants a drink, he calls Aunt Contrary.

"Send him a bottle of rum. With my compliments," I suggested. For when Mr. CD had kicked me out of summer camp, urging me not to darken their door again and telling my bunk mates that I was "disturbed," an alcoholic [at 13], and the proverbial Bad Influence, he had done so because I brought a bottle of rum, taken from my parents' extensive liquor cabinet, to camp, and I had shared it with my bunk mates. (At least I shared.)

Mr. Camp Director was so afraid of bad press for Camp Hell-in-the-Woods that in lieu of taking me straight to the local hospital for alcohol poisoning, he made the camp nurses sleep in shifts, each one taking watch for 10 minutes at a time, until the next morning when I awoke, in the infirmary, my hair somewhat worse for the tantrums and wear, but my body feeling not a trace of a hangover.

In all the literature about what we could (gum) and could not (candy and snacks) bring to camp, neither alcohol, cigarettes nor drugs merited a mention. Name tags topped the list of necessities.

No one thought to ask me what was wrong. No one at Hell-in-the-Woods had paid attention to my previous years of misery. From my vantage point 30+ years down the road, if Mr. Camp Director had been so concerned that I was going to be an increasingly Bad Influence (from age 8, I showed fierce tendencies in that direction), it would have made much more sense for him to let my parents know that Camp Hell-in-the-Woods and I didn't particularly get along, as I had tried to tell them in letter after letter, summer after summer.

Instead, Mr. Camp Director and wife took my parents' money and ran. (Sleepover camp, in those days, cost about $26 a night per child, the equivalent of about $102 in today's dollars. Refunds were not available upon request. For $102 a night, I can find a decent bed and breakfast on a lake, no housework required.)

In the process of pocketing my parents' check, Mr. CD seared a hole in my adolescence, a third-degree burn I fault him for applying much more than I fault my parents for missing that same burn. I hid from my parents during that era, emerging only when I excelled at what they craved: great academic results. Camp required an entirely different set of talents, all of which I lacked the agility and coordination to display, and none of which I cared or was capable of mastering.

I was a camp failure: not only was I a washout at athletics, I never cared to commune with nature. I did so only to escape the actual camp premises, where we had to swim twice daily in a lake with leaches. You would have thought I was Julie Andrews, climbing every damn mountain in parts of New Hampshire and Maine. Trust me, I didn't do it with a song in my heart. I was lured by the lack of uniforms and promises of Dairy Queen before returning to that wretched camp.

We also had to compete -- not just participate -- in "land sports," those team-sports-bonding games involving the kicking or throwing and catching or hitting of a ball, something no counselor managed to teach me to learn -- a clue that athletic competition was not going to be my forte, one might think.

From the age of 9 onward, I figured out that sleepaway camp was a place to give my parents a two month respite from me. On the outside, it looked very caring, to send your daughter away from the sweltering Wonderland heat, to enjoy the cool mountains in rural Maine. My brother was sent off as well, at a younger age than I. Did either of us want to be there? Well, not so much.

I never did, shall we say, share in the camp spirit, something patently obvious to everyone but the person in a position to profit from it. You had to be legally blind not to notice my lack of aptitude and my attitude.

Given that we were at camp 24/7 for 8 weeks, at a ratio of 4 campers to one counselor, with weekly comments sent home by our counselors, it seems to me Mr. CD tripped over his bank account and well under even the low-1970s standards for monitoring the health, happiness, and well being of his pre-adolescent and adolescent charges.

Mr. CD and wife, I think, owed that much to our family, whether to Aunt Contrary, whose two daughters had put in seven to 10 summers a piece, as both camper and counselor, or to my dad. Dollar signs, however, seemed to blind him, despite his role in loco parentis. (I do not think Mr. CD and wife had any children of their own, fortunately.)

Mr. CD and wife could or should have, but didn't, take the approach of my prep school, which suggested that my brother (who managed to absent himself from ninth grade) might be happier elsewhere. It would have been, dare I say, responsible of him to observe my nature in the five full summers I spent under his eyes, instead of leaving it to the sixth very truncated season to discover how much trouble I could be.

At Aunt Contrary's 80th birthday luncheon, she told me that she thinks about my father every day. I didn't ask what she thinks. Once I heard how cozy she and Mr. Camp Director are, I was reminded that, as her cousin, Superman's fiancee, characterized her and my father repeated to me, she is a sanctimonious cunt.

Being a sucker for sleepaway camp has always been behind her drive, my distaste for the concept not withstanding. When I was a child, vacationing with her always wiped my parents out. The woman could not sit still; she needed regularly and frequently scheduled outdoor activity prior to cocktail hour.

As a kid, for me, one half-hour tennis lesson (I dressed well, but I sucked at and didn't care about the game.) and one water-ski run around our Adirondack lake sufficed. Dad played golf; my mom needlepointed, read, and showed up for afternoon tea at 4 pm; my brother was left to his own devices; and the entire family met for predinner cocktails nightly.

On rainy days, we played countless games of backgammon and cards, and my father had an ongoing gin game with my de facto uncle, who owned the hotel where we stayed each summer. I learned to operate an old-fashioned switchboard without disconnecting callers.

A few theories about Aunt C. and her role in our family: Jealous, much, Aunt C.? You were handing in your algebra homework while your cousin, prior to her incarnation as Superman's fiancee, was photographed frequently in Life magazine at various social venues where, had you been of age, you would not have been sufficiently sophisticated to hold up your end of the conversation. You might, however, have held up your end of the alcohol consumption. That is how I know we share the same genes.

It has been confirmed that you and your best friend used to throw parties where all the guests were boys, so you two could have your pick. I suspect Grandma liked the idea of a popular, smart (Seven Sisters grad in the days of restricted admission for Jews), daughter, and that you convinced her not to care who might get hurt along the way, people like my high school best friend's mother, who, at 80, still feels slighted.

Still, my life and my brother's have had much more of a Superman's fiancee edge to it than have any of Aunt C.'s overly responsible offspring. I can't tell if who she resents more: me, my brother, my mother, or my late father. I'm sure she disapproves of us all. My response? Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.

It's also hard to tell which of her offspring she disapproves of most: My eldest cousin, the Philadelphia connection, after being force-fed culture, is the outdoorswoman in the family. So much for her ever-so-cultured childhood. My middle cousin, the Midtowner, failed to marry and reproduce, though she is one hell of a shopper and her income probably exceeds her siblings, mine, and my brother's combined. My youngest cousin, the Maine connection, married a Presbyterian and is bringing up their kids as some variation on mainstream Protestantism. So much for his bar mitzvah.

Sibling rivalry, much? Once I empathized: she is the elder sister, deemed the responsible one as was I, and my father, her brother, was the younger child, like my brother, both deemed the "bad" boys, and determined to live down to their reputations). Now my attitude is, you're 80 years old; Daddy died at 59, 16 years ago. Grandma died more than 20 years ago. Get over it, lady.

Incidentally, I need a phone call to be reminded of the day Grandma died or was born about as much as my mother has needed a call wishing her a happy anniversary -- to a man to whom she is no longer married. My dad cannot come to the phone, not now, not ever. Aunt C., grow the fuck up.

Aunt Contrary thinks about my dad? About what? How much she must have taken perverse pleasure in the trouble that my brother and I tended to find ourselves, compared with her children? About how orgasmic she must have felt getting my father blackballed from a country club to which one of her good friends belonged?

That friend was a birthday party invitee whose name was mentioned so many times I finally made the connection between where she lived and for what hurt she had been responsible, which reverberated as a deed not favorable to Aunt Contrary's history of sibling rivalry with my father.

Think about how much she loved her brother -- my father -- and me to the point that if she can, even now, twist a knife, she had no qualms about doing so. She even did the family housekeeper (whose work did not meet Aunt Contrary's standards, but did fine for my grandmother and me) out of the plants the housekeeper had tended over the years, in favor of her daughter who had hightailed it to Philadelphia, out of local reach.

I once entertained the notion that Aunt Contrary might not be conscious of her words and actions. But over the years too many instances have illustrated that "unconscious" was far too polite and agreeable a term. The term malicious springs more rapidly to mind, and not simply because it starts with the same letter as martini, the predinner beverage of choice at her house.

After my grandmother died, we were told that all five grandchildren would gather on a specific day to choose which of my grandmother's possessions we wanted. Next thing I heard, cousin Philadelphia and husband were coming with a truck. As if they had been living on orange crates and futons into their 30s. Grandma's kitchen equipment? Offered to the offspring of one of Aunt's friends. Photos of Grandma's childhood I was promised? Grandma died in 1985 and I have yet to see a one.

Blood ties have been convenient for Aunt C. : they are certainly not thicker than water, as the saying would have it. In mid-life, I have finally realized, I need not spare another drop in her direction.

No cousin from that family tree, regardless of the distance of the relation, has turned out to be an improvement on the original set with whom I grew up, my first cousins, offspring of Aunt C. and Uncle P. My mom is an only child, from the South, so the only cousins she has there are distant even to her.

Yes, you can pick your nose, you can pick your friends, but you can't pick your family. That old cliche holds. Friends truly are the family we make, the people with whom we make a concerted effort to hold on, to remain connected.

When Aunt Contrary goes off to meet Uncle Pompous, there won't be a wet eye in this house.

How to hem a pair of pants

Alice and her mother, as it has been observed by many and verified by independent sources, are not the go-to women when your need is for something domestic. From an early age Alice learned how to hire the housekeeper (she has done a better job than her mother at keeping "help," as her mother would call it), realized that lightbulbs are best changed by those taller than she; that washing machines and laundry apparatus were best kept floors apart and not to be operated by Alice; and that her mother never applied needle and thread to cloth.

With the exception of sewing name tags (for which Alice had to demonstrate use of the sewing machine, a gift from her father, whose business was textiles and on whom Alice relied for lessons in all things domestic except cleaning, where he followed Alice's mother's need and hired out.), Alice's father taught her to sew and cook; her mother taught her to make the proverbial reservations and how to decide when clothing needed to go to the dry cleaner or the tailor/seamstress, depending on complexity.

The other day, Alice and her mother attempted a new venture: Mom had found a role of double-sided cloth-fusing tape from some long ago and far away venture of Alice's father, and Alice had velour black pants that needed to be shortened. First, where was the iron? Alice had to double check. Was it a steam iron? Check again. Now, the ironing board.

Alice purchased this full-size item several years ago, at The Croquet Player's request. He can wield his way around pressing croquet whites and dress shirts without a second thought. (He remembered to call Alice to inquire about the state of her ironing equipment, knowing full well that she was unlikely to have any on hand or to know how to use what she had.)

Perhaps he remembered her last demonstration of domestic impairment: she was at a college in the late 1980s, for a writing seminar, and her laundry had reached the breaking point, so she hauled it over to the campus laundry center.

Insert clothes, turn button to "permanent press," measure detergent and voila! Or, not so much. All of Alice's clothing that summer started as white, black, or pink. She ended the summer a study in pink. When a high school student came into the laundry to ask for advice, Alice was pulling out her new pink wardrobe. Her one suggestion? Sort your colors.

But I digress: this pair of pants that were not going to shrink to an acceptable length needed a hem. Alice's hands, still in splints, just weren't up to the task. Besides, she is middle aged and needs reading glasses to have half a chance of threading a needle. She also hasn't hemmed or sewed on a button in years, and manual dexterity is obviously not her strong suit.

Hence, the mother arrives, with cloth fusing tape. She measures the pant legs, determines a hem length. Then the fun starts: how to measure a hem. Does Alice have tailor's chalk? Try soap instead. As for measuring, they decide on three inches, and the total is marked to match the needed length.

This fusing tape requires a) a steam iron -- with water -- set on wool; a damp ironing cloth (previously known as a dishtowel), and a timer. Ten seconds per pressing. Mother lines up the cloth that comprises the part of the hem to be taken up, layers in the fusing tape, lines up the rest of the cloth, and says, "ready."

Ready is my cue to go to the microwave, hit the "1" button, announced the start time, and, ten seconds later, announce the stop/remove iron time. Repeat six times, with inspections between fusings. Finally, time to stash the ironing board away -- Alice's mother has trouble figuring out how to close it, Alice doesn't have a clue, but finally her mother hits lift-off.

We don't anticipate a repeat performance at any time in this decade. So, the next time you find yourself without a needle, and you don't want to Scotch tape, pin, or staple your hems, remember iron-on fusing tape is a no-fail option, guaranteed by the domestic incompetence of Alice and her mother. Just don't ask Alice to do it.

Camp hell-in-the-woods

Among my recent chick lit reading was a novel by Isabel Rose that attempted to deconstruct the summer camp experience; however, as a survivor of such an experience myself, I noticed a few glaring omissions that she might want to address. The novel could have satirized the experience -- or even embraced it -- with far more attention to the irony of the enterprise than Rose seems to possess.

Ninety-year-old-plus summer camps for overprivileged Jews, at least in Maine, completely omit -- or they did in my day -- any religious references whatsoever. These are not the summer homes for the just-moved-from-the-Bronx-to-the-'burbs children; they are the homes of those whose mothers attended the same such summer camps in the 1930s and 1940s, if not earlier.

My cousin's children, for example, are third generation campers and one has already graduated to college age. She is teaching rock climbing this summer at the camp I was asked to leave -- and was I ever glad to go.

(Apparently there was an unwritten rule about 13 year olds bringing their own supply of cocktails to share with their bunkmates. Don't ask me what happened that night. All I know is I woke up in the infirmary the next day with an exceedingly bad case of bed-head hair, and I did not have a hangover. My parents were dispatched to pick me up in short order.)

It was a nasty, athletically competitive environment. Team sports have never been my forte; throwing and catching a ball of any size has never appealed to me. If my sister campers got to pick who they want on teams, I was dead last. Destined for the outfield, where I could do the least amount of damage and participate as little as possible, I suppose it was nice that no one expected much of me. That way, no one was disappointed.

Pre-adolescent and adolescent girls can be cruel -- as a late bloomer, physically and sexually, I took more than my share of comments about my flat chest and lack of make-out experience. The only thing I liked to do was go camping and mountain climbing, because it got me off the premises. The only way I would ascend a mountain today is if sherpas carried me. Apart from that, nature and I are not the closest of friends.

I bring this up because it's summer camp season, and as an adult, I wouldn't mind eight solid weeks of playtime, even if I would have to write my mother twice a week to get into dinner. Granted, I much preferred the art and dance focused camp I later attended, when my tennis game was considered sufficiently passable for me to play co-ed tennis with the boys camp, but that speaks less of my athletic ability than the fact I was a 14-year-old warm body, belatedly blooming, with proper tennis attire. I liked to be creative; I did not like to sweat.

The other revelations in the chick lit entry that lack clarity are a) the discovery that although you may be level competitors (not that I was or wanted to be) on the various playing fields and competitive sports teams, when you reach the age of the standardized test, you will realize that some of one's sister campers have less cognitive ability than others.

And b) not all princesses are created equal. Some are second or third generation inheritors, and as these women mature, they tend to become more aware of economic discrepancies than those who assume, incorrectly, that every camper has a nearly identical socioeconomic background. Most lacking is any indication that it is possible to be a) nominally Jewish b) well-off and c) not having any princessy tendencies.

I do wonder why we were taught to scrub bunk toilets when the chances of our doing so in our own parents' homes, much less as adults were slim to none (so that we would know how to instruct the maid, observes one of my genetically WASPier friends), much less make beds without contour sheets. Should I be grateful the camp I attended didn't push do-it-yourself laundry on us?

As an adult I have achieved heights of domestic incompetence that enable me to call myself domestically impaired, if not disabled. That I cannot blame on the summer camp bunk chart-wheel: when it was my turn to do left sweep, I swept. Right bathroom, I scrubbed. But it is a blessing that no one let me near a hot stove (last week I burned myself making a frozen pizza) or the laundry room (where I overloaded the washer with soap and flooded the entire room).

Then, too, there is an observation I honestly fail to understand: if we children knew, circa 1970, of certain counselors' Sapphic tendencies, why does it come as such a surprise to a younger generation? I went to all-girls camps from 1969 to 1975 -- the sexual revolution was in full swing, and, as Crosby Stills & Nash used to sing, "if you can't be with the one you love, honey, love the one you're with."

At camp hell-in-the-woods, I can't say there was anyone I even had a crush on; at my artsy-creative camp, I was entranced by a few girls.

But that was more than 30 years ago, and now summer vacation is a few long weekends at best. Alas, it is the one thing I would like to bring back from my childhood -- only with better food, fewer athletic demands, and maid service. Send me off to writer's camp, and I'll have leisurely mornings, intellectual afternoons, lengthy swims in the lake of my choice, and a few drinks at the local pub chatting about literature before retiring for the night. That, at the moment, sounds like the good life.

"the trick is not to get frightened..."

So says a character in Wendy Wasserstein's play Isn't It Romantic, regarding the prospect of living alone and not sharing a life with a partner. Ten years older than I am, Wasserstein wrote plays and essays described the dilemmas of a generation -- the baby boom. She was on the leading edge, and I, trailing in her wake.

Wendy Wasserstein died today, at age 55, leaving one daughter, Lucy Jane, age 6 or 7, in addition to the living members of her "family of origin." The news reports say she "succumbed," after a "battle with lymphoma."

I am sorry her death was so horrid and painful, yet I can't help wondering: why is being treated for cancer a "battle" one might win, when so few other illnesses, mental and physical, receive this war-like description in the obituaries?

I imagine Wasserstein's definition of family was much broader than her blood relatives: she was good friends with countless playwrights and actors she knew through Yale Drama School. In her plays and essays, she depicted to my friends and me what awaited us when we left college.

She posed the big question previous generations of upper-middle class women did not have to face. Should we "have it all"? Is that what we wanted? The ages and stages of womanhood, from college through middle age, and how these stages transformed themselves, perhaps when we were not yet able to understand the difference between how we had been raised and what we were suddenly expected to become.

My understanding was that women wanted equity, not necessarily equality, with men. Men do so much -- play such games -- that women need not emulate to prove their capabilities in the workplace, and so little, statistically, to pick up their share of running a household and child-rearing while their spouses/partners hold down equally demanding jobs.

Yes, the trick remains, "not to get frightened." Hearing some of my friends' divorce stories, and their realization that none had ever lived in a home alone before the decree came down, I realized I have practice and am mostly comfortable with my living situation, where no one squeezed the toothpaste from the middle excecpt me, not to mention more major eccentricities.

I know I am rare: I have never rented an apartment. I have owned the two places I have lived. I have never had roommates -- I could afford not to, and couldn't think of anyone who would want to live with me, a woman who woke up screaming in the middle of the night, with bad dreams and excrutiating migraines. (My housekeeping/domestic skills are far from being on a par with the consistency of my insomnia and headaches.)

I saw Isn't It Romantic in 1983 with a WASPy friend, to whom I had to explain the few Jewish jokes I knew.

Much had ostensibly been resolved or remedied by 1970s feminism by the time we reached the workplace. I did not, for example, have to type to get an entry, entry level editorial (journalism) job, nor did I make coffee for my boss. Indeed, the woman came to work frequently without Tampax, cigarettes, or car/bus fare home, and I often spilled my coffee over my desk, because I wasn't awake enough to hold the cup, nor did I care to be.

However, as an editor 15 years my senior, 20+ years ago, accountable for a $1 million-plus magazine budget, she ought to have learned to be responsible enough to remember when she had her period, and learned long ago not to leave the house without what my grandmother would have called her "mad money," the cash you carry when the situation becomes one you wish to leave. I hold that belief to this day, and have added only the ubiquitous cell phone for further safety.

I lost all respect for this grown woman who counted on her under-, underling to keep her in cigarettes, cab fare, and Tampax. When I said, "isn't there something wrong with this picture?", she didn't get it. What part of, "I get paid pennies an hour; you make something resembling a real salary," did she miss?

The whole damn thing. I had to explain it to her. After that, she didn't ask for cash or Tampax anymore -- she took her begging down the hall to the art department, where pages were designed.

No one there stood up to her to say, "if you're the responsible adult in charge of putting out this magazine, and you can't remember a token to get home on the bus, exactly what part of your juvenile behavior is meant to earn our respect?"

I couldn't find any part. And when I left, she took the staff (all 6 of us) out to lunch, and was pleased as punch to make a fuss over her gold AmEx card. I couldn't resist, innocently (yea, okay, not so much), saying, "when I was a teenager, I didn't know AmEx came in any other color."

This woman also said, "you don't want to grow up and be like A." A. was our contributing editor, who came and went as she pleased, single at 40, and not looking to change her marital/partnership status. From where I sat, at 23, A. had the life closest to the one I wanted to achieve, the one where you earn money on your own terms, vacation when you would like, and rely on a close circle of friends.

I think A. was straight, though it was she who pointed out that it would not be appropriate to describe the window of a San Francisco kitchenware shop by its predominant design, blue jeans with different color handkerchiefs in different pockets.

I almost fell out of my chair when I heard her tactfully explain why this was not suitable for a PG, half-Midwestern audience, not in the age of AIDS in particular. My boss, the editor, lived 15 blocks from Greenwich Village, and she had never observed that the handkerchiefs were more than a fashion statement.

At it happens, I have known for 25+ years about the handkerchiefs and their symbolism. (When A. had to explain to the editor-without-a-clue why the term "honey pots" was inappropriate, I almost fell off my chair.)

I have never been in a corporate workplace long enough not to make sure I took all the vacation I was allowed, and I announced I was taking two extra days at Christmas, for which I didn't care if I were paid. I was well on my way to, who do you have to fuck to get out of here? I quit before I verbalized that sentiment, went to graduate school, and never held a 9 to 5 job again.

Wendy Wasserstein knew intimately the lives of women like me and our choices, and she remains a woman I deeply admire, one who had the courage of her convictions, regardless of where they led her.

Late at night, when I can't sleep, the line from Isn't It Romantic reverberates: the trick remains not to get frightened. Morning will, after all, arrive soon.