51/50: The Magical Adventures of a Single Life (24 page)

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Authors: Kristen McGuiness

BOOK: 51/50: The Magical Adventures of a Single Life
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As I walked into Lidia’s house I saw a “For Sale” sign in her yard. I comment on the fact that I am going to miss her house, and she says so will she. She tells me that she and her husband are splitting up. And I am thrown. I have always wondered how such a strong, magical, sarcastic creature could have achieved the American Dream. The husband, the child. She seemed like so many women I know in her age group: divorced, maternal, and wiser for both. The fact that she was married almost didn’t fit. The fact that I can see the pain of the split on her face when she mentions it makes me realize that even the most magical of the butterflies still have to face the pain of living.
 
Lidia and I get down on the floor for the energy work. She has me choose a stone, and once again, says it’s perfect. I lie down, and she places it right on my pubic area. I trust her enough to do that, and she is so respectful of space, it doesn’t feel weird or awkward. Before I begin wondering why the stone is perfect, she tells me that its purpose is to help us focus on the first chakra, which is the baby-making, lovemaking section of the body. It is the place where we as women find our center.
 
Before we begin, she asks me to picture my ancestors. “Kristen, they are your ultimate spirit guides. I want you to think about the ones that came before you. The women that brought you here. The woman that you are to become.”
 
And I see them. I see me. This long line of women who thought too much, and felt too much, and just wanted to soar because they couldn’t stay on the ground long enough to be hurt. And then I see me. I see me as the woman who finally finds a way to do both. Who lives the adventurous life but is still able to create relationships which stay.
 
“Okay, let’s picture that woman. Picture the grown, strong woman you can be. Bring her into focus,” Lidia tells me. And I can see her. She is taller than me, and she is a healer, and she helps others and is strong and of faith. I am supposed to picture her in an environment, and I see her in a desert. She climbs on top of a boulder. The boulder has soft edges and is large but surmountable. She watches as a storm clears, and then we begin channeling spirit. Trying to use the magic I easily contain in my palms, we start moving the trapped energy between my first chakra and my mind. Moving it up through my gut, my heart, up my spine, and out of the top of my head. It’s funny, but I have become sensitive enough to know when the energy is pulsing and when it’s not, and it’s not at first. I kind of have to pee, but I don’t want to interrupt, and I think it’s more than that. I think it is where the real problem lies. Learning to unite my heart, and my mind, and my spirit, and my loins, in an honest, mature and loving way.
 
Lidia tells me to continue the work every night at home. She asks me if I pray, and I tell her yes. “Then try praying to your ancestors this month. Ask them to guide you wherever you are supposed to go and ask them for the strength to get you there.” If ever anyone has suggested a god in which I can believe, it is this. When I was twenty years old, I studied abroad in South Africa, and maybe that’s the soil, the dark rich ground in which I can believe. Because I learned about this notion of ancestors from my friends there, and though I might not believe in the traditional Creator spirit so many people call God, I can believe that the spirits which shared my blood might get a say in my destiny. We Italians trust family above all else. So whereas a god who tells me what to do and what not to do is kind of terrifying, those crazy Italian, Hungarian, and Irish brethren who left this world before me feel like much better advocates for my life.
 
I get up, and suddenly the energy is pulsing within me. I feel better. But I also feel scared. Because though I know faith is as much about accepting one’s circumstances as it is about changing them, though I believe that I am being guided to where I am supposed to go, I can’t help but hope it’s where I want to be.
 
32
 
Date Thirty-Two: Nana
 
It has been my lifelong campaign to convince Nana that we are Jewish. I have been pushing this for years, but she still won’t give in and confess. The Nazis themselves wouldn’t have been able to break her. Nana arrived yesterday for one of the two-week trips that have become a tradition since I moved back to L.A. and got sober. The day after she comes to town, we lie on my bed talking and as she tells me about her childhood I become all the more convinced of our Hebrew heritage.
 
“We’re not Jewish,” she says, trying to ignore me.
 
“And your father’s depression started right around the time that people would have been finding out about the Holocaust,” I continue.
 
She sighs. “It was the Depression, Kris. Everyone was depressed.”
 
“But your chutzpah…,” I begin.
 
“I’m Hungarian, okay? All Hungarians have chutzpah.”
 
Nana’s obsession with blond-haired, blue-eyed children borders on Aryanism, so it’s no surprise that she bristles at my claims that she is a Jew. But I have always wanted to be Jewish. Growing up, there was only one Jewish girl in my elementary school, and with her menorah and her mezuzah, she was the most exotic person I had ever met. And I wanted to be just like her. I wanted to be Jewish. Once I started finding out more about Nana’s upbringing, I began to sense that we might still have a chance.
 
Which is why Nana’s refusal to admit the truth of which I am so convinced, only makes me surer she is. She is clearly a self-hating Jew. This is why her whole life she wanted a golden, Gerber baby—the ultimate evidence of her goyishness. But after three kids that look more Sicilian than Scandinavian, she only had one final shot at a golden child. And that child was me. And though I was technically my mother’s, with my blond hair, green eyes, and fair skin, I quickly became Nana’s too.
 
When I was in elementary school, Nana dressed me every day and curled my hair and told me regularly how beautiful I was. I never went to school without looking like I was in a fashion show, and maybe that’s because I was in fashion shows. Nana signed me up to model at Bloomingdale’s and Neiman’s. I would strut the little catwalk set up at Prestonwood or Valley View mall, and we would get some free clothes to take home to add to my already fashion-savvy wardrobe. No matter how little money we had, or that I shared a bedroom with my mom, or that we couldn’t afford many things that my wealthier friends could, Nana was determined to make sure that we dressed well.
 
But then I started growing up. I started choosing what shoes I wanted to wear and how I wished to style my hair, and the fight began that rages to this day. The wrong shirt was enough for Nana to hurtle insults at me that lasted well into the week. And so I was caught between desperately trying to please her and, at the same time, trying to assert my own style. Whether that meant wearing fake Doc Martens, or socks over my tights, or the year I started sporting a bow tie, Nana would have none of it. And it only takes a week into her trip for a new battle to erupt. Like the debate over our Judaism, but far, far worse.
 
We are getting ready to go to Nordstrom’s because Nana only likes to go to three places: Nordstrom’s, Neiman’s Last Call, and Walmart. Since the only Walmart in L.A. is in the hood, and the Last Call is about an hour and a half away, this will be our third trip to Nordstrom’s this week.
 
I put on a dress that Nana had bought me so I know that I will be safe with my choice, but then I decide I want to add a bright, summer scarf. I know it’s hot out; I know that most people don’t wear scarves on eighty-degree days, but I am part of a culture that does. We wear our scarves all the time. Nana does not agree.
 
“I’m not going with you if you wear that,” she tells me.
 
“What?”
 
“That stupid scarf. I’m not going out with you in it.” She sits down.
 
“Too bad for you then,” I tell her. “Because I’m wearing it, so you’ll be sitting here alone.”
 
I go about getting ready as she watches me, smoldering. “You look ridiculous, Kristen.” She never calls me Kristen, always K or Kris, or more often, Krii-iis, but I know she’s mad. There is nothing like an ill-placed accessory to piss my grandmother off. I know it’s dumb; I could remove it, but this is what family is for. We are there to argue about the principle of things. About what is right and what is important and how we all should have the freedom to live how we wish. Even if that means wearing a scarf when it’s hot outside. She finally relents, getting back up to finish putting on her makeup.
 
She gets in her final comment as we walk out the door. “You look stupid, just stupid.”
 
Later that night we go to a big meeting for sober people held in my neighborhood. Nana was originally against my admission of alcoholism because if wearing a bow tie was bad, being a coked-out drunk was far, far worse. But then she came to a meeting with me, and she began to see how much hope was in it. And then she saw me change. And now she frequently tells me how proud she is of me for being sober. As we sit there waiting for the meeting to begin, my scarf conspicuously absent from around my neck, she takes hold of my hand and says, “You’re the prettiest girl here.”
 
I smile at her and squeeze her hand, and then I see him. Ben. Toxic, sober alcoholic Ben. We haven’t seen each other since that night at the bowling alley, but then the speaker gets up, and all I can do is motion for Nana to check him out.
 
I go up to him after the meeting as Nana watches from a short distance.
 
“Hey, do you remember me?” I ask.
 
He smiles. “Of course, the 51-dates girl. Kristen, right?”
 
“Yeah.” I smile. “Ben, right?”
 
As though I am not sure of his name. As though I didn’t know it before the night of the bowling alley. As though I haven’t recorded and even repeated it here. And as though there haven’t been a few lonely nights in bed when I may have uttered it in my fantasies.
 
“So, you still down to be my last date?” I attempt to flirt.
 
“Of course.”
 
“Okay, get ready then.” I toss my head and giggle. And somehow I think I say this twice because he looks at me like I am a little crazy and says, “I’ll be sure to wax.”
 
I’m not sure what I think of that. I don’t know how I feel about the guy who always has to make the lewd comment. I used to be really perverted in my humor, but I also feel like I am kind of over using sex as an easy joke. But I decide not to hold it against Ben. As my 51st date, he might just be my last chance for recorded love. And though I am still not sure whether I am the prettiest girl in the room or stupid, just stupid, I think there’s something about Ben that would get all that too. He is Jewish after all. Surely his mother is not so different from the woman lurking behind me while I talk.
 
I take Nana to the Observatory on her last day in town. As we walk up to the building I take pictures of her with my phone. And she looks so young and sweet and pretty that I forget all about the unkind words that have been uttered between us. Because there will be no greater pain for me on this earth than when my grandmother dies. As much as my relationship with my mom is perfect, and as much as my father is significant, it is Nana who completes me. As we walk around the Observatory holding hands, we are mesmerized by the same words, the same images, the same pretty, pretty things. She stops with me to read about the Sparkling Ribbon of Time and look at the large pieces of meteor that might one day send us into our brilliant, obliterated end. And I know as she slowly shakes her head at this one overwhelming image of our universe that she too recognizes what an impossibly small role we play.
 
On this trip Nana told me that more than any man, more than any of her children, that I alone am her soul mate. And I know I am. I understand her when no one else can, and likewise, every time I have found myself lost, not knowing where to turn, it is Nana who has guided me. And though there are certainly differences in who we are and how we dress, she and I, we are cut from the same cloth.
 
33
 
Date Thirty-Three: The Chores of Romance
 
Nat comes into my office today and asks how the dates are going. I generally get riled by this because I can sense an air of engaged superiority in her sing-song questioning. And it’s not that she doesn’t genuinely want me to find someone, it’s just that I can sense her disapproval on how I am going about it. She feels I demand too much and that I appear to prefer to be single, both to her and to my respective mates. The worst part is, I don’t think she’s wrong. I just don’t want to be forced to admit that. But on the other side of her charges is the fact that in my heart I know what I want, and I know that I just haven’t found him yet. And I don’t want to waste my time on a futile and false relationship.
 
“So…,” Nat leans in my office. “Who’s the lucky guy tonight?”
 

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