50 years ago today, a teenage girl in the Bronx gave birth. After, one hopes, a sufficient period of rest – and, I’m told, a fair amount of argument and determination – she was allowed to see her baby.  It was a girl, with fine red hair, like that of her erstwhile lover, wherever he was.  Vera had been toying with the name “Titania” for a girl, after the fairy in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”; but at the last minute, filling out the birth certificate paperwork, she decided to drop the “Tit” and just go with “Tania.”  The name of the baby’s father, she left blank.  “It’s none of his business,” she muttered.  She signed the form.  Then she signed the relinquishment papers.

“Are you sure?” had asked her best friend, barely 17 herself, and in awe of everything Vera had ever done, and was about to do. “This is serious.”  But once Vera had made up her mind about something, she was determined.  She would not take that baby home.

Vera had a cousin Christine who was adopted, an only child. Christine always seemed to have the best of everything.  “Lorraine,” Vera had explained, “when people adopt a child, go to all that trouble and work to get that child, that child is their LIFE.  That child gets everything possible from them.”  That is what she wanted for Tania, to be Christine (I am not making this up).

Vera’s hitchhiking days were over after Tania. She went home to live with her parents.  She worked in their store.  When they got old, she took care of them.  She only married late in life, and didn’t have any more babies.

But she was a tremendous aunt, big sister, and cousin to her younger relatives; she was crafty, making them costumes and toys and dolls. But one doll that she made, she kept for herself and wouldn’t let any of them touch.  “That’s my baby!” she would admonish them.  It was a red-haired Raggedy Ann kind of doll that she called Tania.  Her younger sisters and cousins would only put two and two together about that doll much later, when Tania herself had shown up on their doorstep.

We are all dealt our most important cards before we are even born, at conception, when our genes come together. I was dealt a big fat fateful card just days after my birth, when a 19-year-old girl made a big decision.  And then, seven months later, I was dealt the formative cards of a mother, a father, and an older brother.

Now, there’s the cards you’re dealt, and then there’s how you play them. I think I’ve played a pretty tight game here.  I’ve come up with some odd strategies that have nevertheless worked well for me, and when something has worked well, I’ve tended to stick to it, doggedly.  Like Vera, I guess, I can’t be swayed.

And then, this card game itself is embedded in a larger game of dominoes. (Stay with me here.)  Each moment of our lives is a domino, knocked down by the moment before it, and itself knocking down the next domino.  Branching out from every single domino are the other paths which represent the choices or events that could have happened but did not.  We are relentlessly knocking the dominoes forward.  When something crazy happens, and you wonder, “Why did that happen?”  “What a coincidence.”  “Why did have to get hit by that car?”  “Why couldn’t I have looked where I was going?”  The answer is, because, something had to happen, and in this universe, that was the thing that did.

Vera, if you imagined a picture-perfect Life of Riley for me, where I’d be wearing satin frocks and playing with a small yappy dog, you might have been disappointed. I think I ended up in a neighborhood much like yours and surrounded by similar people.  But I had one extremely important thing that you could not give me: I had two parents, always, the same two parents throughout my whole childhood and beyond.  Though during the worst years I often wished that one of them would get the hell out of there, I do realize and appreciate the irreplaceable benefits of family and home stability to a child.  I had two parents and I had the best education they could provide.  This was no small card to have been dealt, its impact on my game not to be overlooked.  Thanx, Vera, and Barbara, and John, for playing the cards that provided me with that.

Jean Talon, Montreal, QC

Awesome pre-birthday weekend.

And if you ever get the opportunity to see Cirque du Soleil, run, do not walk.

 

One more week of being in my sucky 40s.  The second half was light years ahead of the first half; still, gotta say they averaged out to darn sucky.

Think of this: it’s not terribly common, but not unheard of, for someone to die of natural causes at my age.  & it’s not terribly common, but not unheard of, for someone to live to 100.  That’s a difference of an entire lifespan.  I could die next week, or I could live another entire life the length of which I’ve already had.

 

College Street.

You can see the new seating area they created for El Cortijo out of a parking space.

Phoenix Books to the left.  The next block to the right with all the lights is the prettiest block in town, I always thought.

Downtown Burlington is good for my soul.

 

 

Us on our anniversary a couple days ago, waiting for Richmond fireworks.

Literally “Swamp of the Cherry River,” Le Marais de la Riviere aux Cerises is a square kilometer or two of marsh, woodland, gravel trail and a boardwalk through the marsh over a kilometer in length.  Alas, walking only; no biking.  Kayaking and standup paddleboarding too.

Speaking of which, “You seem like a stand-up guy.  That’s why I’m not inviting you to my sit-down dinner.”

My

Mary improved the coloring and has kept it bright all these years, but I’m proud to claim the composition as my own!  GOAT!

Smash the Wellness Industry  – a NYT editorial by Jessica Knoll

I’d like to start my commentary by quoting Red: A History of the Redhead by Jacky Colliss Harvey: “[Red hair] is, with me, as with many other redheads, the single most significant characteristic of my life.  If that sounds a little extreme to you, well, you’re obviously not a redhead, are you?”

I am a woman; therefore, I diet.  If that sounds a little extreme to you, well, you’re obviously not a woman, are you?

It’s time we did “Smash the Wellness Industry”.  What does that mean?  Well, make no mistake, as Knoll says, “at its core, ‘wellness’ is about weight loss.”  “Wellness” has now become one of my trigger words/phrases, like “lightly breaded” and “light cream sauce.”  Oh, we are all about health and wellness, that is why we are avoiding dairy and doubling down on grain bowls… yeah right.  You’re trying to lose weight; whether directly and consciously or indirectly by approaching it sideways, you are hoping this will make you thinner, er. more “well”.  (Or keep you that way, if you’re already there.)

The article is fantastic start to finish.  But here’s the other best part – those who do attempt to finally throw the whole dieting thing out the window are often counseled to do so by first accepting and loving their bodies as they are.  Why, Knoll asks?  Why indeed.  “I think loving our bodies is not only an unrealistic goal in our appearance-obsessed society but also a limiting one.  No one is telling men they need to love their bodies to live full and meaningful lives.”

Part of my hopes and dreams as I transition to the big 5-0 involves finally shedding the mentality of the dieter.  Just let the whole thing go.

That said, this should be my final word on the boring subject.