Thursday, September 30, 2010

Why I Go to the Gym

For those of you who remember me as a child and teenager, I was not an athlete. I was chubby, with the lightning reflexes of the dead, no depth perception to speak of, and the eye-hand coordination of a stroke victim. I was—and faithfully remain—a klutz. To this day it’s a miracle that I can get a forkful of food to my mouth without piercing my cheeks or putting an eye out. I had an absolute horror of gym class—and with good reason. In the NYC junior highs and high schools of the 1960’s the Phys. Ed. curriculum was repeated each year without variation. If you dreaded the endless two weeks of volleyball in 7th grade (and who wouldn’t if you had neither upper body strength nor the much touted eye-hand coordination?), you had reason to dread it again in 8th, 9th, 10th… all the way through high school graduation. Volleyball—along with softball, the uneven parallel bars, balance beam and vault horse, some basketball, a bit of tennis and any other forms of torture the NYC Board of Ed deemed essential to forging us into fine, fit adults—returned each and every year with the predictability of locusts. And each year the teachers robotically demonstrated the same basic moves as if for the first time. (And to their credit, the instructors never let slip the slightest hint of annoyance, boredom or disbelief that they were giving the same performance to the same unenthusiastic audience for the third or even fourth time.) This was back in the days of personal responsibility, success and failure. And if you weren’t good at what they were pitching, there was neither coaching nor excuses. You either got yourself motivated to roll over that parallel bar or you didn’t. And God help you if you didn’t. Failure was a real possibility, and the teachers were openly scornful of the klutzes in the class. For someone like me—who can barely make it across a smooth floor without my feet flying out from under me—this was public torture. I don’t know how I ever wore high heels as an adult, much less walked a balance beam as a 16 year old. More about the high heel years another time…

So it came as a miracle to me when, in my mid-20’s, I started to run. I started slow and easy, running, gasping and adding a quarter mile at a time. And suddenly, I felt strong and athletic. Now there’s a statement I never thought I would make in this lifetime. I might have absolutely no upper body strength. I might still have blubbery thighs. I would always be shaped like a pear. But with Don Henley’s The Boys of Summer pounding in my ears, I could push myself to run further and longer. Add to that The Doobie Brothers’ Take Me in Your Arms and Rock Me and I was unstoppable. Except for the traffic hazard I created by being deaf to the world around me… Not a great idea for someone as spatially challenged as me. Chewing gum and walking are a push for me. So running, listening to music and watching out for cars and trucks was not a good combo. And, no I don’t have a good story about being hit by a bus while running to the pounding beat of Eric Clapton.

What’s more, I realized I was as flexible as an Olympic gymnast. Gumby flexible. I could roll out of bed in the morning and rest the palms of my hands on the floor. I could roll myself into a ball—backwards or forwards. I could do splits. I never bent from the knees. There was no need to: I was so limber that I routinely bent double from the waist to tie my shoelaces, kiss the dog, mop up spills, scrub the bathtub.

I was still a klutz. That hadn’t changed. If I got on a bike, I overheated and fainted, or fell off or just crashed into other cyclists. In July 1979 Peter and I were cycling the loop in Central Park when I locked eyes with a cyclist coming towards me. Like moths to a flame, the other cyclist and I were on a hypnotic collision course. When our front wheels collided, I vaulted clear over the handlebars (something I could barely manage to do in high school) and straight into his chest. I suffered a hairline crack to the bridge of my nose. He must have sported a black and blue imprint of my nose and eyeglasses on his chest for weeks afterward. Peter, young and still in his leg-breaker phase of life, got off his bike and picked the other cyclist up by the throat. He was holding the poor man out at arm’s length with one hand, and winding up for a satisfying punch with the other hand. Peter wasn’t going to feel better until he put this guy’s lights out. (But I’m losing my focus… So let me wrap up and get back to my original point.) I convinced Peter not to beat the other cyclist to a pulp. After a few more incidents of overheating and fainting while riding, I decided to retire from my career as a cyclist. And after all, how many more times did I want to break my nose?

Well, at least one more time. Actually, I was out doing my morning run… We were living on 75th Street and York Avenue at the time, and it was 6 AM on a fine January morning. I was chugging down the avenue when I tripped and went down for a perfect three point landing—flat on my nose and the palms of my hands. Limping back home, I encountered Sal, our elderly Italian and eternally dour doorman, who normally wouldn’t acknowledge our existence. Sal took one look at me and started keening the Italian version of Oy! Oy! Oy! I hadn’t seen my face yet, and so this reception was not a propitious omen. I made it back to our apartment and woke Peter with, “Peter, I think I broke my nose!” He peeled open just one eye and regarded me for a second. “Yep, you broke your nose,” was all he said, and with that he opened the other eye and swung both legs out of bed. He pulled on his jeans and a sweat shirt, grabbed me by the hand and hauled me down the street to New York Hospital’s ER. He didn’t stop to so much as empty his bladder. He just marched, with me in tow. (Peter was always good in an emergency.) The ER doctor gave me a tetanus shot, turned me to face a mirror and gently asked me what my nose normally looked like. I may have started keening at that point: I was staring at W.C. Fields’ nose in the center of my face.

I had two black eyes for a week. Fellow passengers on NYC buses—the most hardened and blasé people in the world—did double takes when they looked at me. Friends asked if I’d been mugged. Stanley, the resident wife beater in the building, asked Peter if he had finally belted me. (Peter restrained himself from belting Stanley.) And when my father-in-law ran into me in the supermarket, he also thought the worst and announced that I was to come home with him. I had to explain that this was nothing more than another example of why I should travel around swaddled in cotton batting.

And so that’s why I go to the gym. Make no mistake: I’ve hurt myself plenty in the gym. (There was the unforgettable moment in Zumba class when I whirled around, landed at a funny angle and thought I had managed to unplug my right hip from its socket. Or the squat thrust that threw my back out for a week. Or the shoulder stand that earned me a month-long crick in my neck… The list is nearly endless.) But if I stumble on the tread mill and slide, face down, the length of the rubber track, there is an entire staff on hand to dial 911. If I drop a weight on my foot, there are people around to sort out the pieces and cluck with convincing concern over the damage. And I find that immensely comforting.

Sunday, September 19, 2010

Let's Get Ready to Rumble

Over the past week, I watched the roiling spectacle of Terry Jones, his followers, eggers-on and lunatic fans. As a Jew, it makes me squeamish to hear the ravings of this and the many other latter-day Father Coughlins characterizing an entire religion and all its observers as evil and dangerous. Framing one’s fears into a broad and ugly stereotype is a cheap and age-old publicity stunt. It’s so easy to point at the framed portrait and tick off all the terrifying attributes one can dream up. We just have to take a cursory look back at our own enduring fear of each wave of US immigration: the Irish, the Germans, the Italians, the Jews… Were any of these groups welcomed with open arms? Well, we know the answer to that. Each was greeted with fear, suspicion and open disgust for their foreign ways. Two generations pass and the group that was once foreign and despised has been assimilated and accepted. And so it has been until now, and will be again with the vast majority of practicing Muslims. It’s just a matter of getting beyond the Terry Joneses of this world. Of course, that is easier said than done.

Terry Jones and his followers don’t understand what is staring them—and us—in the face. We are not witnessing the spectacle of Islam versus the world. That is not Islam grimacing at us: it’s the 11th century recoiling from the 21st century. Welcome to the next Hundred Years War—a war of cultures and centuries colliding on the internet and television, in the movies and at local shopping malls. This is the conflict our children, our children’s children and their children after them will be battling. It’s not about God. It’s about culture and custom. So be prepared to back the century of your choice.

In 2009 Afghani women protested newly minted government restrictions on their rights. The NY Times described it this way: “One provision makes it illegal for a woman to resist her husband’s sexual advances. A second provision requires a husband’s permission for a woman to work outside the home or go to school. And a third makes it illegal for a woman to refuse to ‘make herself up’ or ‘dress up’ if that is what her husband wants.” I ask you: What kind of government takes time off from nation-building to vote on pressing issues like ensuring that women submit to their husbands’ demands for sex and dress-up?

The protesting women were greeted by mobs of men throwing stones and calling them whores. You may have seen the fairest flowers of Afghani manhood on the news at the time. (And If that image didn’t give one both pause and dyspepsia, I don’t know what would…) It’s these Kodak moments that make me wonder if Afghani men aren’t secretly sorry that the Taliban got the boot. They were forced to hide their DVD players throughout the Taliban regime, but at least their women were securely under their boot. It was comforting to know that some things could be counted on to remain unchanged.

And now, think back to the TV image of the mob—snaggle-toothed, ragged, filthy, wild-eyed and lathering at the mouth. These are the fashion victims for whom marital laws should be enacted: sexual advances will be welcome when they’ve shaved, bathed and fixed those dreadful teeth. A job outside the home? What woman wouldn’t want a job to keep her busy when her husband spends all his free time in tea shops, taking hits from the communal hookah and reminiscing about the good ol’ days of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves? Dress up? Clean yourself up! Every girl’s crazy ‘bout a sharp dressed man.

That’s not about God. That’s about fearing the familiar world will spin off its axis and out of control. When a millennia’s worth of cultural beliefs and ancient customs—which have been mistaken for the immutable laws of physics and the will of God—are threatened, what does one do? The Afghani legislature and mob have one answer. The Taliban has its own less than humane response to life’s uncertainties. Terry Jones takes his solace in hating all things Islamic. Personally, I’m not finding many answers or much solace anywhere these days. Anne Frank’s touching and gracious statement that people are essentially good at heart tugs at my own heart to this day. Her faith in the ultimate triumph of good over evil and ignorance was a timeless, universal prayer that hasn’t been answered yet. As for me, I have no intention of ending my days swathed in a burka because some cliff-dwelling yutz is still carrying a grudge over the Crusades.

So if this clash between the 11th and 21st centuries is on, let’s get ready to rumble—through education, universal civil rights and tolerance backed with enough muscle to fend off the cliff dwellers. I will not go gentle into that burka.

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Where in The World is Carmen Sandiego?

For those of you who are wondering how I came to be a field hand, and where I might be fulfilling this life-long goal of working the land as if it were 1875, here’s the explanation.

Peter and I have been vacationing in Kennebunkport for over 30 years. We love the Maine coast, and hoped to have a house there someday. Over the last couple of years, we thought the time was finally right. We came to this conclusion just as Lehman Brothers was being sucked into the black hole of the financial apocalypse that it and the rest of Wall Street had so thoughtfully created. It was September 2008, and we were driving around the country roads of southern Maine, listening to that card-carrying CNN cretin, Rick Sanchez, on Sirius Radio as he cheerfully whipped up the panic about the financial collapse. (I will go on about the irresponsibility of the 24/7 commercial news cycle some other time.) So we put our conclusion aside for awhile.

We continued to look around even while the economic winds of fortune blew like a hurricane. We are firm believers in that old adage: location, location, location. I found a lovely little lot that backed on the Webhannet Golf Course in K’Port. For a mere $900,000 we could own property on which we might afford to build a quonset hut. We wouldn’t have enough spare change to erect an outhouse. Luckily, since we couldn’t afford to clear the land, there would still be enough forest to afford me the privacy that the outhouse would have provided. I’m sure the neighbors would understand. And best of all (remember location, location, location) I would be able to observe President George H. Bush (aka 41 or the Bush with brains) while he played golf on the Webhannet course once a year.

So, with real estate prices that rivaled Scarsdale’s, Peter decided K’Port might not be the garden spot for us. I have no idea how he came across Harpswell, Maine. But anywhere, here we are: owners of a house on 2 acres of wooded property, with a beautiful (if overgrown) garden built on tiered stone walls. The house is a 2,700 square foot saltbox, about 25 years old, in need of new bathrooms, a new kitchen and the expected cleaning-out that goes with 25 years of accumulated detritus.

My approach to anything that needs to be cleaned, painted, raked or weeded is to attack it with gusto. My favorite form of gusto now comes in the shape of cash: Let’s hire someone to do that! But Peter has suddenly become the very soul of financial responsibility and sober judgment. That used to be my role in this marriage. But with menopause comes wisdom, patience and a new, mellow approach to life. (Just ask Peter how mellow I’ve become.) My new approach takes the shape of live-and-let-live, and Let’s-hire-someone-to-do-that! Peter’s new-found maturity has taken on the persona of fiscal conservator for the Rockefeller Foundation. So when it came to the initial hands-and-knees scrubbing of the house’s kitchen, bathrooms, floors, cobwebs, and more, I spent nearly a week going at it hammer and tong. Had I known how grimy the house was, I would have hired a cleaning service to do it. I mentioned this to Peter, but he thought that would be a waste of money: no one would clean it with the zeal that I brought to the job, or to my satisfaction. And besides, you’re so far along, why not just finish it? I should have climbed up on a milk crate and smacked him right then and there.

We are back in NJ for now, having lived through the heat wave (that reached handily up to Maine) with no air conditioning. By the last week of August I took to spending large chunks of the day in the blissfully cool and comfortable Brunswick library. If I stayed at the house, I inevitably fell to hacking at overgrown shrubs, raking leaves or ripping out yard-long golden rod stems by main force. The arbor vitae and the rose hips were so intertwined as to be virtually braided together, the rhododendron had grown tall enough to cover the second story windows, and the rose bushes were over 6 feet tall. They called to me to come out and do battle. Better to be in the library than sweating in the mid-day sun and heat.

I lost my train of thought… We are back in NJ, and I am unemployed. (I will go into that story at length and with great gusto another time.) For now, while I am searching for work, I will actually be a housewife. This is entirely new territory for me. I’ve never been a housewife before. Wish Peter luck.