is a single mama in the city, super-savvy editor, writer, video host and shameless shoe whore.
Monday, July 27, 2009 Because this was waiting for me in my mailbox when I got back from BlogHer. To the publisher or nice PR lady who sent these to me, I hear you, sister.
Monday, July 27, 2009 Do you remember the advice I doled out so confidently about how to make sure your tootsies survive BlogHer? Not only did I give it out, I actually followed it (this time).
To prove it, I've posted the here. The proof, which was burny and blistery and properly and immediately bandaged by the 400 Band-Aids in my bag, and then cushioned by the sweet relief of flip-flops-in-waiting, came from a delightful night spent blissfully wearing whore shoes to party after party packed in the hotel.
Sure, some of you giggled at my feet swathed in plastic strips, but the pain in my soles subsided long before the pain in my temples (damn hotel conference room air).
How about you, BlogHerz? How are your feet feeling a few days later? And for those of you walking around in sassy shoes in your life, what are your best sole-saving tips? Share, share!
Sunday, July 26, 2009 101. The number itself doesn't sound like a lot in a world of gigabytes and billions of dollars made and lost and earned again, 101 doesn't pack the same punch as it did when people stooped to pick up change when it fell from their pockets and before allowances were counted in dollar bills.
But when you pair the number with a person, a living and loving person, then 101 becomes so much.
Today, my grandmother is 101. She has surpassed the century mark by a whole year, and lived far beyond anyone's expectations.
She was once a feisty, opinionated, adventurous woman who made amazing noodles from scratch and rolled my hair carefully into spongey pink curlers. She laughed with me, sang to me, quilted for me, patted my arm in the night when I could not sleep. She saved JC Penney catalogs for me so I could cut out paper dolls to play with at her house and she fished out romance novels -- only the ones with sexy parts -- from brown paper grocery bags in the bottom of her clothes closet for me to read. She called me to read me my horoscope when it was good and to caution me to be careful when it was not. She was not perfect, but she was so much who she was.
She is not that person anymore. Perhaps in spirit, but not to the rest of the world. She sits, mostly contentedly, in a wheelchair or her bed in a nursing home downstate. She has had Alzheimer's the whole of Lil E's life, possibly much, much longer. She doesn't know who I am any longer. She doesn't know where she is. She doesn't know how old she is or even that all those candles and all that light belong to her.
We are not there to celebrate. It was too much to drive there for the day following the chaotic and full weekend, and sometimes it is just too hard. I made my peace with her and with God and with whatever twist of fate or cells or physiology took her memory and her presence and her personality from us all. I got to that place because I also was at peace with her life -- the long, long, full and joyful and not-very-easy life my grandmother led and then shared with me.
I am my grandmother's girl. My mother has always said that, and it is true. And today, while my mother serves cake to the nurses and other Alzheimer's patients in the week, while she helps my grandmother blow out the candle and sings to her and holds her soft, vulnerable hand, I will be holding what I have left of my time with her like a glass ball in my palm.
I will hold it, hoping to catch a reflection or even a glare, any little sign that at 101, she is still with us.
This is one of my favorite photos of my Grandma Alice and me, taken at her kitchen table, just before the Methodist Women's Tea at her church when I was in my twenties.
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