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“I love you”

2010 June 18
1 Comment
by Geri

When love is in the air

I was scheduled to have a colonoscopy and endoscopy today to check out my insides, so my wonderful friend, Lois, emailed to wish me well. I emailed back to thank her and to tell her I love her.

She wrote back again and said: “You tell me that more than Eliot does. I love you, too.” I’ve been laughing at her response all day. Eliot is Lois’s husband.

Seriously, I love to tell people I love that I love them. And I love when people tell me that they love me.

I don’t mean quickly muttering “Love Ya” when you’re saying goodbye to a friend, writing LOVE at the end of an email, or during a passionate moment.  I mean saying “I Love You” just because you really do. Slowly, right to someone’s face, when he or she least expects it.

David sometimes tells me he loves me in the middle of a conversation or when he calls to say hello in the middle of the day. He even tells me he loves me when I’m being a pain in the neck, which can be frequently.

Listen to 30 seconds of Charlie Rich singing a “A Very Special Love Song.” You’ll get just what I mean. It’s one of those FOF songs.

from → Fab Over Fifty

What a terrible choice he had to make

2010 June 17
1 Comment
by Geri

The man who recently drove me to the airport escaped Burma a couple of years ago. A political activist, he had protested his country’s military government and faced certain arrest if he stayed. Worse, he had to leave behind his wife and two teenage children. Most definitely, they would not have all survived if they tried to escape together, he told me.

The Burmese military throwing tear gas at demonstrators

What a tragic state of affairs. He stood up for his principles and had to sacrifice life with his loved ones. I assume he thought it was better to be apart than to be thrown into a Burmese prison.

Reportedly a rare photo inside a Burmese prison, taken by a Chinese photographer

But will his escape cause harm to his family?

“Maybe the government will change,” I said, hopefully.  “Yes, it might, but it won’t be for a long time,” he answered.  (As a matter of fact, the military prohibited a parliamentary government from convening in 1990, I learned from Wikipedia. The military has ruled Burma for 50 years.)

When I try to put myself in this man’s shoes, the idea of leaving my children and family makes me crazy. But living in jail because I protested my government would make me crazy, too.

No human being should have to make choices like this.

from → Fab Over Fifty

Make yourself (un)comfortable

2010 June 16
3 Comments
by Geri

My mother, May, did not like to leave her comfort zone. She craved routine. My father was offered a position as a career officer in Europe after WWII, but she said nothing doing. Leaving the security of home would have been overwhelming to her. She stopped working when dad came back from England, and I was born nine months later.

Mom went shopping for groceries every Friday, went to the hairdresser every Thursday evening, served us dinner on snack tables (hey, it was the 50s and 60s) in front of the TV every night at 5, vacuumed and made the beds at precisely the same time every morning after breakfast.

I tried to convince her to start working when my sisters and I were grown, but she refused.

She was forced to leave her comfort zone when she was 66 and my dad died. She moved to an apartment in Manhattan, joined the 60 Plus Program at the 92 Street Y and spent the next 20 years in a new comfort zone she created for herself.

She went to the Y practically every weekday, played bridge, Rummy Q  and Mah Jong on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, attended Shakespeare classes on Wednesday, and had dinner out with Y friends on Friday.

She rarely ventured outside of her CZ. If my sisters or I invited her to do something new, she made excuses. “That’s bridge day. I can’t disappoint the women,” she’d say.

I didn’t inherit a CZ gene. I thrive on change and challenge.  I once loved gold jewelry exclusively; now I prefer silver. I’ve never bought the same shade of lipstick twice and my fave perfume is never fave for too long. I’ll knit obsessively for three years in a row, then I won’t pick up the needles for the next two. My “look” has been preppy, nerdy, sexy and avant garde.  I’ve created new jobs for myself since I started working at 21, and taken up pilates, followed by weights, then yoga–with a treadmill fixation in between.

I’m not comfortable if  I’m feeling too comfortable, I get restless easily and relaxation isn’t my strong suit.

Although I’m not a fan of routines, I do enjoy some of them: Walking the dog, watching reruns of Two and a Half Men at 11 pm, and going to my sister’s for Thanksgiving and July 4th. David and I also took mom out for dinner most Saturday nights the last couple of years of her life. It’s sad that  routine ended.

from → Fab Over Fifty

The road not taken

2010 June 15
3 Comments
by Geri

Robert Frost, by artist James Chapin

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

I was telling Lina and Shelley today about Leon, a man I met at around the same time I met David, now my husband.  I was crazy about Leon.  He looked so much like Robert DeNiro that hostesses rushed to give him tables in crowded restaurants.  He loved his family. He adored traveling. He was sexy.

But I chose David.  He has no resemblance whatsoever to DeNiro.  He doesn’t care about traveling and he’s not the family man Leon was. I can’t tell you the exact reasons I decided to be with David, and they don’t matter at this point. I’ve been with him for almost eight years.

As I told the saga of Leon, I thought about Robert Frost’s poem The Road Not Taken and all the different roads I took.

The Daily News offered to give me back my job as a feature writer, a year after I was laid off. Although I wanted to return, I declined the job and stayed at Fairchild Publications, where I later became a Publisher.

I chose to go to Syracuse University instead of Queens College, the city school near my home.  I hated Syracuse and promptly left after the first semester, worked for nine months and went to New York University, where I met my (first) husband.

I decided to sit near the front of a plane on a trip back from Atlanta, instead of with my friend, in the smoking section in the back.  Sitting next to me was a man I’d be involved with for 12 years.

I have never regretted my decisions, which have taken me to unusual places. It doesn’t matter which road we take, just as long as we make the trip worthwhile.

from → Fab Over Fifty

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