Middlemarch and Me

I can’t count the number of times I’ve read George Eliot’s Middlemarch. Eight times? Ten times? I read it at least three times during my undergraduate years, and maybe another two or three times in graduate school. After that I found that it nourished the soul to read it at least once every decade.

I first read Middlemarch when I was 19. I read it as a romance about Dorothea, an altruistic heroine who wants to do something meaningful with her life. In an earlier century she would gladly have been a nun—a Saint Theresa. But in the enlightened 1830’s, such radical career choices are not readily available to young ladies of the English landed gentry. Dorothea makes some idiotic choices in her journey, including a brief, loveless marriage. In the end, she renounces her late husband’s sizeable fortune to marry her true love. Best of all, she still has her own (not inconsiderable) inheritance to carry her and the true love over life’s roughest shoals. I thought this was grand, but then I was 19—when all of life is viewed through a pulsating, roseate scrim of hormones. (For me, blood lust had nothing to do with violence and everything to do with the panting desire to make babies.)

In these early readings, Dorothea’s quest for a meaningful love made her the central sun around which the 300+ pages of lesser, annoying characters orbited. Never mind that there were scandal, murder and other interesting marriages in the mix. Never mind that Dorothea’s true love was more of a cipher (with a ravishing curve to his nose and a divine mop of brown curls) than a realistic man. The story was about Dorothea’s choices in love, and not my literary criticism.

I revisited Middlemarch at 29, and it was like reading the book for the first time. Middlemarch was about making responsible choices in a life partner. This time around, Dorothea is a bona fide twit whose choices made me want to reach out and slap some sense into her. Her first marriage is to Edward Casaubon, a dried out husk of a man—lifeless, loveless and lacking in either passion or charity. Dorothea thinks of him as a latter day Saint Augustine. But who in her right mind wants to marry Saint Augustine? In fact, Dorothea believes that it would be a blessing to marry a blind Milton if she could be his handmaiden. In the absence of a suitable medieval monk or tortured genius as a suitor, she settles on Casaubon, whose overwhelming draw is a rambling treatise about ancient mythology at which he has been hacking away for 30 years. Dorothea, anxious to improve the world, wants to be Casaubon’s amanuensis, a helpmate in bringing his key to all mythologies to a bookstore near you. And who wants to sit across from either Saint Augustine or Milton over breakfast? Imagine either of those rays of sunshine beaming at you over orange juice and oatmeal.

Dorothea has already passed on two perfectly wonderful possibilities. The first is Sir James, a neighboring member of the local gentry who is eligible, appropriate and attractive in every sense of the word: he’s of suitable age and fortune, physically appealing, good natured and wild about Dorothea. But who would want any of that? The second, Doctor Tertius Lydgate, is as blind as Dorothea; the two meet and pass each other like ships in the night, each dismissing the other as not meeting his and her own ideal image of a mate. Lydgate, intelligent, handsome and fired with noble ambitions about the newly burgeoning sciences, arrives in Middlemarch with the intention of spending his days practicing medicine and his nights performing medical research. Meeting Dorothea at a social function, Lydgate thinks the lovely girl isn’t his cup of tea. And with that, he makes a bee-line for Rosamund, a beautiful bubblehead, whose own life ambitions are more in line with fine society and fine furniture than refined science. Lydgate and Rosamund are quickly married and Lydgate’s noble goals are just as quickly forgotten. Rosamund ruins him with debt (fine furniture doesn’t come free, you know) and Lydgate’s own choice of patrons in Middlemarch’s tight little community smears him with the taint of murder. The bottom line from this reading: Everyone seems hell-bent on marrying in haste and repenting at leisure. With a few notable exceptions, no one seems to talk to their prospective or current spouses to find out who they really are and what they really want. And on those few occasions when the minds do manage to meet, one or the other partner is disappointed, heartbroken or horrified.

By this time in my own life I clearly understood that prospective life partners should be chosen with an eye to bearable breakfast conversation, a companionable personality and a world view that is tolerably close to one’s own. Marriage is about compromise and acceptance as much as it is about love. The question is not, as Carole King put it, Will you love me tomorrow?. The real question is, Will I love you tomorrow…and all the days that follow?. (Was it Christie Brinkley who said that being a genius didn’t make Billy Joel a nice person? Or maybe that was Claire Bloom reflecting on her unhappy marriage to Philip Roth….) If you shudder at the thought of returning your beloved’s stare over the breakfast table, give it up. It ain’t gonna work. If your prospective life partner is a virago or a dybbuk, no amount of money or genius will make it worth your while or your life. And if their outlook on life makes the blood run cold in your veins, consider yourself forewarned. In the end, compatibility is everything. Marry a mensch.

As I approached my 40th birthday, I went through an 18 month-long maelstrom about the meaning of life. More accurately, Peter went through the maelstrom. We were on vacation in Kennebunkport, walking on the beach, when the angst hit me like a mallet. And so I let Peter have it. What is the meaning of life? Who are you? Why am I married to you? Why are we here? Is this all there is? Birthdays have no such hallucinatory effect on Peter, so when this storm hit, he was taken by surprise. I treated him to a similar tirade almost daily from September 1990 until my 40th birthday in March 1992, and he patiently let it flow over him. That’s what you call love. If he had dished that out to me for a year and a half, I’d have disemboweled him. On the morning of the looming 40th birthday, I woke to the prospect of a birthday celebration at the office and a lovely dinner out with Peter. Like it or not, life moves forward. Get used to it. Peter was relieved to find the rabid virago was gone and I was back. I, in turn, was thrilled to realize that I had, indeed, wisely married a good-hearted mensch.

Around this same time, Middlemarch enjoyed a pop culture revival. It was made into a BBC Masterpiece Theater serial, and all across England yuppies were staging Victorian dinner parties replete with mutton, butlers and period costumes. I settled for rereading the book, and this time the book was about community and how one lives out one’s role in it. The neighbors, business associates, family members and community concerns that make up the warp and woof of our adult lives now stepped forward with their own demands and concerns. In this reading, railroads and the industrial revolution creeps toward England’s bucolic countryside, the very real limits of family finances determine whether sons go to college (or not) and political discussions rage about the value of spending money on refurbishing dilapidated peasant cottages (or not). Even more clearly, the theme of What goes around, comes around flows faintly but steadily throughout the book. There are good eggs and bad eggs in every age and every setting—and while the good eggs warm the cockles of the heart, it’s the self-righteous hypocrites, meddling know-it-all’s and rich relations wielding their money like an auction gavel who capture the imagination.

Throughout the book, Nick Bulstrode, Middlemarch’s powerful banker and most upstanding community pillar has bullied, cheated and shortchanged strangers, family and business associates. He barely registered on my seismic scale in earlier readings, but this time I found it positively gratifying when Bulstrode turns out to be a pious fraud who has spent years concealing his early history of theft, duplicity and deceit. With the discovery of his sordid story and with the suspicious death of a former associate who was blackmailing him, Bulstrode is publicly shamed and broken. At this lowest moment of his life, another minor character comes forward in a moment of sublime grace: Bulstrode’s wife, Harriet, wordlessly promises him her continued love and forgiveness. Grace comes in many shapes and forms. And this time it arrives in the form of Harriet Bulstrode—a gentle, middle-aged dumpling of a woman whose love for her husband is mature and infinite even in the face of public disgrace.

I’m 59, and it’s time to read the book again. I wonder if, this time, I will feel more empathy for the bloodless and sickly Casaubon? The rest of the middle-aged characters will, no doubt, have more to impart to me this time around, too. I can’t wait to be enlightened.

The Doloff Upholstery Shoppe

I am recovering my dining room chairs. This adds up to new opportunities to staple my feet to the floor or simply and directly—to maim myself. The dining room chairs—all eight of them—are handsome, heavy pieces, with wide hips and 25 year old upholstered seats begging to be put out of their misery. I am more than happy to oblige.

First I spent some time getting a 21st century education in the 18th century craft of upholstery: I watched YouTube videos. I’ve watched enough YouTube videos in the last few years to learn that shame and discretion are lost graces and that Charlie Sheen is in need of more assistance than conventional rehab can likely supply him. I’ve even watched the boil-popping video (enough to gag a maggot, but riveting none the less) and Alan Dershowitz doing a stand up routine on oldjewstellingjokes.com. But, there is actually useful stuff out there. After about 45 minutes of culling through videos of expert and not-so-expert upholsterers, I came to diyuphosltertysupply.com. These guys really know what they’re doing, and—best of all—they demonstrate and explain the craft succinctly and clearly.

With my new education under my belt, I headed to my new Bloomingdale’s—Home Depot—for $200 worth of new tools for my new trade. This included a work table, an elegant and functional staple remover, a heavy duty electric stapler and staples, pliers and work gloves. And by the way, that doesn’t include the cost of the upholstery fabric, the polyester batting to put the cush back in the cushions or the cambric liner for putting the finishing touch on the underside of each chair. I was ready and set to make history.

I successfully removed the seat of one chair, pulled the staples from the old cambric liner and the old seat cover and was ready to start stapling the fresh poly batting to the seat. Everything was going nicely until the first shot of the stapler. Have you ever listened to an electric stapler? It sounds like a gunshot. If you shoot several staples in rapid succession, it sounds like a volley of gunfire. And that’s when Teddy suddenly recalled his earlier life as a World War I veteran who fought in the trenches. At the sound of the first shot he hit the ground like a seasoned combat soldier and lost control of every sphincter in his little body. Teddy spent the rest of the day trying to crawl into the arms of whoever would hold him and scanning the ceiling overhead for incoming fire. There was no comforting him. And at 3 in the morning, I had to take him out for a walk. His little bowels were still spasming.

The factory had to close for a day while I figured out what to do with the little dog with post traumatic stress syndrome. The solution seemed to be simple: I gave him a mild sedative, tucked him into his crate/bed upstairs in our bedroom, turned on NPR to supply him with a sound track of civilized conversation and shut the bedroom doors to muffle the sound of gunfire going on downstairs in the living room. I spent an afternoon working on the chairs and when I went upstairs to free the little prisoner, he was shivering with terror, but (Praise be!) didn’t have diarrhea. Okay, so this worked fair to middling well. But how often could I dope the little dog? And besides, even slightly foggy with a sedative, he was still not a happy camper. He continued shiver and scan the horizon of the living room ceiling for the next barrage of shells.

On to the next solution: on Saturday afternoon, Peter took his Kindle and Teddy for a trip to the Watchung Reservation. He would give Teddy a good long walk on the green and then enjoy reading in the car with the dog asleep in his lap. This worked out pretty well, if you don’t mind a lapful of snow-melted mud. But it did work. He brought the dog home, in time for the little veteran to suffer the misfortune of hearing stray stapler fire. Done went the tail, and Teddy resumed his place in Peter’s lap, scanning the skies for incoming and seeking safety from the hell of a vaguely remembered past life. At 5:15 in the morning, Teddy and I once again answered the call of his unhappy bowels…

The chairs are finally finished, and they look pretty good if I say so myself. My hands have been put through hell. I managed not to staple or slice myself, but this is hard work on manicured hands unused to manual labor. No matter! Peter foresees a new career for me. I think he has his eye on some flea market sofa that he thinks I will reupholster from the bones up. But although he’s getting ready to hang out a shingle for The Doloff Upholstery Shoppe, I am not.

The Everlasting Condo

“You can check-out any time you like, but you can never leave.”—The Eagles

The family burial plot—or as I think of it, the condo—has been on my mind of late.

My maternal grandmother, Anna Sulzer, died in February 1963. With her passing, the Sulzer clan needed a burial plot pronto. Uncle Irv, ever planning ahead, suggested that the entire family purchase burial plots side by side in Mount Ararat Cemetery on Long Island. That way, the banter, bickering and general family mishagoss could go on forever. And I do mean forever. The four Sulzer siblings bought a stretch of adjoining burial plots that looked more like a land development deal than a final resting place. With the exception of a tiny patch of plots that had already been bought up by some other family’s forward thinker (and who refused to sell to our clan) and that stood in the midst of the Sulzer real estate, the field seemed to roll on uninterrupted and forever. My own parents bought eight plots. Either this stuff was going at rock bottom prices, or my parents were planning on inviting the neighbors to pitch tents of their own. Anyway, I guess this is what’s meant by buying the farm.

As it turned out, the Sulzer condo had only one rule for admission: you had to be a member of the family through blood or marriage. But if the Sulzer condo had its ground rules, so did Mount Ararat, which allowed only for family headstones. Individual graves were marked by brass plaques that were flush with the ground. It was dignified and serene, if somewhat sterile. In contrast to Mount Ararat’s absolute stillness was Mount Hebron Cemetery, where my father’s parents, Charles and Sadie Doloff, were buried. This was an old fashioned cemetery with a headstone sprouting from every grave. Each headstone had personality, art work, exotic carvings, even tiny enameled photo portraits. There were infants lost to at birth, teenagers forever in our hearts, octogenarians finally at peace after tumultuous lives. It was as if every grave’s soul were talking aloud, anxious to be heard. The place was crowded, undignified and busy. And within this bustling village, Charles and Sadie were buried in the Lomzer Young Men’s Benevolent Association. To access the graves you walked through a dramatic entrance gate of tall marble pillars topped with a beautiful wrought iron arch that announced the name of the burial society. The marble pillars were engraved with the names of the association’s first members. If not exactly lively, it still fairly bristled with life.

But back to Mount Ararat… In 1963 there was just the one grave—my grandmother’s. But over the years, the plots were filled by the very people who had thought ahead. My grandfather, Joe Sulzer, died in 1965. The eldest of the Sulzer siblings—Sylvia Sulzer Bram—died suddenly in 1978. Esther Sulzer Danton, my favorite aunt, died in 1991 and was buried in one of the eight plots my parents owned. As each family experienced a death, a family headstone was erected. The plots were slowly filled, the vibrant voices stilled, the aged hands were folded in final repose and the great empty space has filled with foot stones. My mother died in 2003, and my father died in 2007. They lie there now, and my heart is with them.

But cemeteries don’t exist and burials don’t happen without the living. And my family is no exception. My own parents, thoughtful to a fault, had their own family headstone erected in 1997. As my mother put it, This way, you don’t have to worry about it. It’s all taken care of! A little ghoulish, I thought at the time, but eminently sensible. She and Dad cheerfully forked over $8,000 for a headstone the size of a Volkswagen, with DOLOFF engraved on it in huge letters.  I have never felt so taken care of in my entire life. It was about that time that I developed an aversion to the condo, as I had come to call the family burial village. Even with both parents alive and accepting compliments on their brand new headstone, I had difficulty visiting it. That headstone chilled me.

Peter and I have, of course, discussed our own final arrangements. There’s never been any doubt that I would be buried in the condo. Peter’s own family does cremation in a big way. I don’t think any of his family has actually been interred—in the conventional sense—since they came to these shores in the 1800’s. There must be many jars of ashes that have passed from one generation’s mantles to the next—or wherever it is that jars of ashes go. I haven’t seen them, and I fervently hope I never do. And although Peter’s family may not do a bang up job of parking the departed in clearly designated final resting places, they do memorial services with a nice flourish and refreshments about a month after the dear one departs. But I am losing my train of thought…

Peter plans to die before I do. And like the rest of his clan he wants to be cremated. His exact words on the subject are: I don’t care what you do with me after I’m dead. You can hang me upside down outside the front door and paint my balls blue, for all I care. Now there’s an image I don’t care to contemplate closely. What’s more, Peter really wanted our first dog, Chester to be freeze dried, stuffed and kept on our mantle until the whole plan could come together: when I am buried, Peter’s urn of ashes should be tucked under my arm and the little freeze dried dog laid at my feet. He reasoned that any casket in which I was laid would have plenty of foot room for luggage. So far, we have done a slipshod job of executing the plan: Chester was not freeze dried when he died. So it looks like it’ll be just Peter’s ashes and me in my allotted plot at the condo.

Nanook Heads North

Wednesday, January 12
Most people go south for a break in the winter. But not us. No, we make a beeline for the epicenter of everything I detest—snow and cold.

So here we are in Maine. I am seated at the kitchen island, enjoying a view of the relentless snowfall outside the window. How bad can this be? I’m warm, drinking coffee and working on my computer. For starters, I had to drag poor Teddy out into the snow for his morning walk. Dragged isn’t quite accurate. I shoveled a path for the little prince. The snow was too deep for the little dog to make his own way through. I put his red leash on him, even though I knew I wouldn’t really be using it. Teddy wouldn’t venture far off in the snow. But thinking ahead, there were contingency plans to be made: if he sank too deep in the snow, the red leash could provide a visible trail for me to locate him. I eyed the little dog, thinking even further ahead, If all else fails, that is a source of meat. Visions of the Donner party are never far from my mind.

Two days ago—long before it ever snowed—I was making a pot of soup. (You can never have enough stick-to-the-ribs soup on hand throughout the winter. And at this rate I will be foraging in the snow for root vegetables to make more soup.) Peter came up beside me and offered instructions, “You’re cutting the carrots too small.” Jesus Christ! Get out of here! I screeched. If I run out of dog meat, Peter may be my next source of protein.

Peter just told me he thinks the falling and drifting snow is pretty. Pretty? I think it portends death and starvation. But that’s just me. I’m not a Georgia on My Mind kinda gal. I have more of a Wisconsin Death Trip outlook on life. Well, if not all of life, then certainly winter. Wisconsin Death Trip was a 1973 book of photos that testified to the unsettling effects of Wisconsin winters on rural townspeople. The book is chockfull of wild-eyed portraits of the living who look like they’ve recently dined with Death, of the dead sweetly tucked up, dressed up and ready to meet their Maker, of elaborate funeral wreathes, of mutilated bodies and other evidence of the less than salutary effects of prolonged winter oblivion. Without benefit of cable TV, Facebook or (most important) antidepressants to while away the endless winter, raging cabin fever and bursts of inexplicable violence passed the time.

Where was I heading with that? Oh yes, if Peter doesn’t stop micromanaging the minutia of life, I may lose my mind. How big are the carrot slices? I can see blood in the snow already.

Thursday, January 13
My sister-in-law (a licensed family counselor with tales of dysfunctional families that would curl your hair) tells me that a single day stuck in the house does not beget cabin fever or any form of winter/snow madness. She was explaining this to me on my cell phone while I was driving from my favorite coffee house to my favorite antique shop in town. After more than two feet of snow, the secondary roads have been completely and exquisitely cleared, and even the tertiary roads are plowed. Our landscaper plowed our driveway yesterday. We had only to shovel out the excess snow blocking the garage doors. The sidewalks, curbs and streets in Brunswick are easily walk-able in shoes (rather than boots). I have to admit: They really know how to manage snow up here. No muss. No fuss.

So perhaps I was over-reacting yesterday. After the antique store, I met Peter for lunch in town. After that I trotted off to the super market where I picked up some lovely Clementine oranges. Okay, so we’re not the Donner party, and Teddy is not on the menu for the time being.

Friday, January 14
We had dinner in a charming little Italian restaurant last night. I am refreshed and restored to my usual equanimity—such as it is. Pasta and wine are wonder drugs.

Making the Breast of the Situation

Righty & Lefty. A & B. Teeny & Tiny. Frick & Frack. I have called the ladies many names over the years, as I have come to terms with their stature—for want of a better term. I have been blessed with modest breasts. I think I stood on the wrong line in that heavenly motor vehicle department that doles out physical attributes. I waited patiently on the line that distributed generous portions of butt and thigh. And so to my never-ending chagrin, the ladies are what they are: small.

When I was younger I desperately wanted cleavage. Was that so much to ask for? I wasn’t asking for the world. I would have settled for completely filling my 34A fiber filled cups. But no, it was not meant to be. When I looked down, I had a clear view of my feet. I could hold bags of groceries between my breasts. I mean I could clutch them directly to my breastbone—no breasts to speak of getting in the way. Let’s call it the grocery bag test.

I have experimented with padded bras, acquiring along the way, an extensive knowledge of the limits of polyester and foam padding. Miracle Bras are just that: miracles of male engineering. No woman would have spent time coming up with a tourniquet that squeezes your breasts up to your collar bone. No, it’s not painful. But it doesn’t feel or look natural. And for me, it still doesn’t quite achieve real cleavage. True, I can’t hug the groceries directly to my breast bone, but I can still see plenty of daylight between the ladies.

Henny Youngman used to do a routine pantomiming a woman squeeeeezing herself into a girdle that rolled her body fat up and into her bra. That actually looked like a good idea to me. My bottom half is zaftig enough to make that work. And while Henny’s routine was just a dream, surgical breast augmentation is not. The first augmented breasts I ever encountered were those of a dorm-mate in college. At least I think they were augmented. Ronnie always wore a baggy gray Stony Brook gym shirt and no bra. The girls—two unnaturally perfect globes—pointed optimistically towards the sky whether Ronnie was cold or not, and the boys followed Ronnie and the girls around like puppies. She never said that she’d had surgery, and in 1971 no one even knew to ask. But honest to God, those could not have been natural human endowments. I recall a group of hall mates discussing the famous pencil test. (The pencil test is simple. Place a pencil under your breast. If it’s held in place by a fold of flesh, then do everyone a favor: Wear a bra.) Everyone shook their heads no, they didn’t pass the test. Everyone except Ronnie and me. Smiling from ear to ear, Ronnie announced that she certainly did pass the test. I remember thinking she was positively chirpy—as she had just discovered something brand new about herself. Well, God bless her and her two close friends. Ronnie would have failed the grocery bag test.

After graduating college and working for a couple of years, I discovered my first breast cyst. I shot straight into locked-down panic mode, with the emergency klaxons blaring in my head around the clock. If I were destined to die young, I was going to India and live in an ashram before I departed this life. I would visit Tibet. I was going anywhere, but I was not going to spend my last few months at a desk in the Pension Department of Mutual of New York. Until that moment, I may not have thought of myself as being especially fond of Rhett and Scarlet, but I was amazed to discover just how attached to them I was. It’s one thing to take complain that Frankie and Johnnie are not everything I’d like them to be. It’s quite another to imagine being disfigured or dead. My family doctor was a bit more sanguine about it and suggested a mammogram as a first step to determine the nature of the lump.

In 1975 a mammogram was quite a different experience than the tourniquet and torture it is today. What it lacked in pain, it made up for in humiliation. The machine resembled a free standing fireplace in a ski chalet. Stationed in the middle of the room, it consisted of a stove pipe that hung from the ceiling and widened into a square stainless steel hood. The open end of the hood was filled with an enormous white balloon that extended out like an upside down muffin top. Below this contraption was a glass topped table, with the mammo film under the table. The technician instructed me to hop up on the table, lie on my side and lay Frankie flat on the table. That was easier said than done. The hood would be lowered toward the table, squeezing the breast between the balloon and the glass table top for the picture to be taken. Sounds reasonable, no? It is reasonable if you a reasonably sized breast. The technician struggled to gather enough breast tissue to pin down under the balloon. I obligingly rolled from side to side, angled my ribs, my back and my hips. But the mammary in question was not to be reasoned with. I don’t know if the tech ever did get a useable picture. No matter, the doctor pronounced it a benign cyst. My mother explained that the entire family (my grandmother, my mother and both her sisters) had cystic breasts. (“They come. They go. It’s nothing.”) I never went to India, but I did go back to work. Most importantly, I had gained a new appreciation for Ethel and Lucy. To paraphrase the US Army slogan, they were being all that they could be. And they were not to be faulted for what they were not meant to be.

Over the years, the ladies have come into their own. As I approached 40, and went through a brief midlife crisis lamenting the loss of youth and questioning the meaning of life, Teeny and Tiny made it possible for me to once again go bra-less. Once I was satisfied there was life after 40, I regained my sanity and put my bra back on. And even as I round the bend approaching 60, Abbott and Costello are still perky. I can’t complain.

Let me see the cruel shoes.

Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but she did it backwards and in high heels.

Let me tell you about my life in high heels. It lasted about 25 years, and then I had my feet surgically taken apart and put back together. And that was that. But until then….

The first heels that that caused me memorable pain were a pair of white strappy sandals with 2” high heels. It was June 1970, and I stepped into this adorable pair of brand new heels to spend the day bopping around Manhattan with my first true love, Bill. By the end of the day the straps had raised blisters the size of pigeon eggs across my toes and had rubbed the back of my ankles to raw meat. But at 18 years old, I wouldn’t have cared if I were bleeding from the mouth—much less my feet—because I was with Bill.

The next pair of shoes to bring tears to my eyes were the heels I bought to interview for my first real job. They were Buccellati’s, little woven huarache-style sling backs, and utterly fetching—except for the fact that the shanks (the steel support that runs under the arch of the foot and keeps the shoe functionally rigid) in both shoes were broken or missing or something… (And looking back on it, that’s probably why they were affordable—because they were defective.) The shoes flexed and bowed with every step. It was like walking on springs or foam rubber. The shoes were fine when I walked very slowly. But once I ramped up to a normal pace, they were all over the road.

By the mid-1970’s, I was regularly stomping around in high heels on my way to and from work. My most enduring memory of that era is the agonizing walk down the IND subway entrance tunnel at 179th Street in Jamaica. Slowly I walked...step by step... inch by inch… Every bump, heave, hole and crack in the pavement is still with me as I recall each painful step. I cheered myself on with the thought that I was ½ way through the tunnel, and now ¾ of the way through the tunnel…. And once I had made my way up the lumpy, uneven stairs to the street, I was faced with a looooong block of broken and uneven sidewalk before I could plop down in my car.

In the late ‘70’s I attended an after-work seminar with my boss at the Roosevelt Hotel. My boss, Dick (a handsome, strapping man blessed with a majestic 6’ 3” frame and the gender–conferred privilege of wearing wing tip shoes) planned to catch the M104 bus to get to the seminar. That meant that we would have to walk the distance from 42nd Street to the Roosevelt Hotel at 45th Street. I was wearing a handsome pair of brown, high-heeled boots with 2½ “ stacked wood heels. Very professional and sharp, but also God Almighty painful. “Let’s take a cab,” I suggested. But no, Dick could see no reason why we wouldn’t take the bus. “Well, fine, then. When we get off the bus you can carry me to the hotel.” I remember the look of horror on the poor man’s face. He wasn’t sure if I was kidding or not. In any event, Dick didn’t see the humor in that remark, and so I walked the excruciating three blocks from the bus to the hotel alongside a very tall man with very long strides. I thought I was going to die.

The happiest day of my life was April 1, 1980: the first day of the New York City transit strike and the day that changed fashion history forever. Until then, women wore high heels on subways, buses, railroads and—worst of all—NYC streets. It was a question of convention and pride. Once they got to the office they might very well change into their bunny slippers. (And some did just that.) But the ritual and regalia of the commute were sacrosanct.

All that changed during the transit strike. Someone arrived at the utterly brilliant idea of wearing running shoes to hoof across bridges, boroughs and boulevards. You changed into heels when you arrived at a civilized destination with carpeting, level floors and elevators. O frabjous day! After that, the freakish sight of women dressed to the nines, topped off with Nikes and sweat socks, became the norm throughout the city.

Flash forward to Christmas 1988. I was wearing a towering pair of red stiletto heels to Peter’s office holiday party. This was the one time in my life when I couldn’t resist a pair of 3” heels. They were absolutely captivating. But I literally tottered and swayed as I walked in them. Peter asked me why I kept hanging on his sleeve. “You wanna know why? Because I can’t stay on my feet in these f***in’ shoes!” Oh well, in that case just hang on, he agreed. (Who says Peter’s not a saint?) I spent the evening shifting my weight from one throbbing foot to the other, praying for the night to be over and wondering how I was going to walk back to the car.

These days I admire pointy-toed high heels from a distance—like a recovering addict giving his drug of choice a wide and respectful berth. Once in a while I give in to the temptation to try on an irresistible pair of stilettos at DSW—where I am ostensibly shopping for sensible Keds or driving moccasins. I slide my feet into those beautiful shoes and pivot in front of the mirror to get the full effect. In the right pair of heels, with a low instep, even my ankles look good. I shudder with the pleasure and the pain…. And then I slip them off. Who am I kidding? I can’t sit upright at a dinner table in the damned things—much less walk in them.

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.