I Feel Bad About My Neck (5 page)

As for waxing what I like to call my bikini, it has become but a brief episode in what the fashion magazines refer to as my beauty regimen, and owing to my ability to avoid wearing a bathing suit except on rare occasions, I rarely need to do it anymore. (In the old days, however, a bikini wax was not just painful—it was truly as painful as labor. I dealt with the pain by using the breathing exercises I learned in Lamaze classes. I recommend them highly, although not for childbirth, for which they are virtually useless.) I understand that some young women have their pubic hair removed entirely, or shaped, like topiary, into triangles and hearts and the like. I am too old for this, thank God.

Speaking of the pain of labor, which I seem to be, I would like to interject a short, irrelevant note: Why do people always say you forget the pain of labor? I haven’t forgotten the pain of labor. Labor hurt. It hurt a lot. The fact that I am not currently in pain and cannot simulate the pain of labor doesn’t mean I don’t remember it. I am currently not eating a wonderful piece of grilled chicken I once had in Asolo, Italy, in 1982, but I remember it well. It was delicious. I can tell you exactly what it tasted like, and except for the time when I returned to the restaurant six years later and ordered it again (and it turned out, amazingly, to be exactly as wonderful as I remembered), I have never tasted chicken that was crisper, tastier, or juicier. The song has ended, but the melody lingers on, and that goes for the pain of labor—but not in a good way.

Exercise

I would like to be in shape. I have a friend who gets up every morning at 5 a.m. and essentially does a triathlon. I’m not exaggerating. She is Ironwoman. She lifts weights. She runs marathons. She bicycles for hours. Last summer she took swimming lessons, and within a week she was talking about swimming around the island of Manhattan. A few summers ago I decided to do some swimming, and within a week I had swimmer’s ear. Have you ever had it? It’s torture. Water rattles around in your ear and itches so much that it wakes you up at night, and there’s absolutely no way you can scratch it short of plunging your finger into your brain stem. My own theory about Van Gogh is that he cut off his ear because he’d made the mistake of taking up swimming.

In any case, I would like to be in shape. I would. But every time I try to get into shape, something goes wrong and makes it impossible. Let me make this clear: Every time I get into shape, something breaks.

Exercise, as you no doubt know, is a late arrival in the history of civilization. Until around 1910, people exercised all the time, but they didn’t think of it as exercise—they thought of it as life itself. They had to get from one place to the other, usually on foot, and harvest the crop, and wage war, and so on. But then the automobile was invented (not to mention the Sherman tank), and that pretty much led to what we have today—a country full of underexercised (and often overweight) people—and a parallel universe of overexercised (but not necessarily underweight) people. I myself swing between the two universes. I spend time getting into shape; then something breaks, and then I spend time recovering and not being in shape; then I recover and I get into shape; then something new breaks. So far, in the breakage department, I have managed the following: I pulled my lower back doing sit-ups; I threw out my right hip on the treadmill; I got shin splints from jogging; and I entirely destroyed my neck just from rolling over in bed. A few years ago, during a wild and committed period of exercise, I happened to be sent a tape of the movie
Chicago,
and I made the mistake of confusing it with an exercise video. It was, without question, the greatest exercise video I have ever worked out to. I could lift weights forever while watching it. For the first time in my exercising life, I was never bored. I could be Catherine Zeta-Jones, and then I could be Renée Zellweger. I pranced around the apartment waving my five-pound weights here and there and singing “All That Jazz.” I have never been happier exercising. But after three weeks, I woke up one morning in horrible pain and discovered I couldn’t move my arms. Millions of dollars in doctor’s fees later, it turned out that I had not one but two frozen shoulders, the result (naturally) of lifting too many weights for far too long. It took two years for these frozen shoulders to mostly thaw, and in the meantime, I had pretty much resigned myself to the prospect of never being able to scratch my own back (or zip up a dress). (Not that I wear dresses, but if I did.) But I am now exercising again. I have a trainer. I have my treadmill. I have my TV set over the treadmill. I exercise almost four hours a week, and I would rather be in Philadelphia (although not in labor).

Skin

In my bathroom there are many bottles. There are also many jars. Most of these bottles and jars contain products for the skin, although none of them contain something that is called, merely, “skin cream.” Instead they contain face cream, or hand lotion, or body lotion, or foot cream. Remember when we were young? There was only Nivea. Life was so simple. I know in my heart that all these labels on these bottles and jars are whimsical and arbitrary and designed to make vulnerable, pitiable women like me shell out astronomical sums of money for useless products; on the other hand, you will probably never see me using foot cream on my face, just in case.

Here, for example, right next to the sink, is a bottle of something called StriVectin-SD. For exactly five minutes in 2004 StriVectin-SD was thought to be the Fountain of Youth. It instead turned out to be simply skin lotion, a bottle of which cost an arm and a leg. But meanwhile, for one brief shining moment, I believed it was the answer to everything. The woman who sold it to me at the cosmetics counter behaved as if she were slipping me a bottle of aged whiskey during Prohibition. It had just come in, she whispered. It was down in the basement. They couldn’t put it out on display, or it would be gone in a twinkling. Only certain customers were being allowed to have it.

Now it sits on the bathroom counter, taking up space, alongside similar testaments to my gullibility—relics of the Retin-A years and the glycolic-acid era and the La Prairie period. One of my good friends once gave me a tiny jar of La Mer cream, which I think cost about a hundred dollars a teaspoon. I still have it, since it is way too valuable to use.

The point is, I have cream for my face. I have lotions for my arms and legs. I have oil for my bath. I have Vaseline for my feet. I cannot begin to tell you how much time I spend rubbing these moisturizers into myself. But I still get pimples on my face and rough patches on my arms and legs. What’s more, the skin on my back is so dry that when I take off a black sweater it looks as if it’s been in a snowstorm, and the skin on my heels has the consistency of a loofah.

I have no doubt omitted something where maintenance is concerned. The world of maintenance is changing every second, and I may not know about all sorts of things that women my age are up to. (The other day, for instance, I had lunch with a friend who assured me that I hadn’t lived until I had tried having some sort of facial that seems to include a mild form of electroshock.)

What I know is that I spend a huge amount of time with my finger in the dike, and that doesn’t begin to include all the things I promised not to go into—the pathetic things. I have done any number of things that fall just short of plastic surgery. I even had all the fillings in my mouth replaced with white material, and I swear to God it took six months off my age. From time to time my dermatologist shoots a hypodermic needle full of something called Restylane into my chin, and it sort of fills in the saggy parts. I have had Botox twice, in a wrinkle in my forehead. Once I even had my lips plumped up with a fat injection, but I looked like a Ubangi, so I never did it again.

But the other day, on the street, I passed a homeless woman. I have never understood the feminists who insisted they were terrified of becoming bag ladies, but as I watched this woman shuffle down the street, I finally understood at least my version of it. I don’t want to be melodramatic; I am never going to become a bag lady. But I am only about eight hours a week away from looking exactly like that woman on the street—with frizzled flyaway gray hair I would probably have if I stopped dyeing mine; with a potbelly I would definitely develop if I ate just half of what I think about eating every day; with the dirty nails and chapped lips and mustache and bushy eyebrows that would be my destiny if I ever spent two weeks on a desert island.

Eight hours a week and counting. By the time I reach my seventies, I’m sure it will take at least twice as long. The only consolation I have in any of this is that when I’m very old and virtually unemployable, I will at least have something to do. Assuming, of course, that I haven’t spent all my money doing it.

Blind as a Bat

I can’t read a word on the map. I know we’re on Route 110 heading east, because we just drove past a large sign that said so. Now we seem to be in Fort Salonga. I’m sure Fort Salonga is on the map, but I can’t find my reading glasses so I can’t read the map. One of the nicest things about being about to read a map, which I used to be able to do without reading glasses, is that you’re never really lost if you can find yourself on a map. But those days are over; we’re lost. We hate being lost. I hate being lost, he hates being lost, and our marriage hates being lost. On the other hand, I have to admit, we’re getting used to it. And because it’s my fault (and not my husband’s) that I can’t find my reading glasses, although it’s his fault (and not mine) that there’s no magnifying glass in the glove compartment, I say mellow things like “Well, at least we’re headed in the right direction.” My husband says mellow things too, like “Well, we’ve never come this way before, so it might be interesting.” And he’s right. It might be interesting. Except that it’s very dark outside, and the only thing I can see clearly is a sign that says we’re on Route 110 heading east through Fort Salonga. Wherever that is.

I can’t read a word in the telephone book. When I was a young newspaper reporter, I always began by looking in the telephone book. You’d be amazed at how many people were right there, listed, waiting to be found. Years later, I tried to convey this to my children, but they ignored me. It drove me crazy. My children thought that calling Directory Assistance was free, on top of which they always pressed “1” to be connected, for an additional charge of thirty-five cents. This drove me even crazier. Now that I can’t read the fine print in the telephone book, I’m forced to call Directory Assistance. I speak to a recording. I miss my relationship with the telephone book. I miss what it stood for. Self-sufficiency. Democracy. The belief that you could find what you were looking for in a place that everyone in the world had access to. Just thinking about the telephone book makes me misty about a world where everyone—or nearly everyone—was in the book, and what’s more, I could find them without the assistance of a disembodied recording that doesn’t understand a word I’m saying.

I can’t read a word on the menu. I can’t read a word in the weekly television listings. I can’t read a word in the cookbook. I can’t do the puzzle. I can’t read a word in anything at all unless it’s written
in extremely large type, the larger the better.
The other day, on the computer, I pulled up something I wrote three years ago, and it was written in type so small I can’t imagine how I wrote the thing in the first place. I used to write in
TWELVE-POINT TYPE;
now I am up to sixteen and thinking about going to
eighteen
or even
twenty
. I’m extremely sad about all this. Mostly I’m sad about just plain reading. When I pass a bookshelf, I like to pick out a book from it and thumb through it. When I see a newspaper on the couch, I like to sit down with it. When the mail arrives, I like to rip it open. Reading is one of the main things I do. Reading is everything. Reading makes me feel I’ve accomplished something, learned something, become a better person. Reading makes me smarter. Reading gives me something to talk about later on. Reading is the unbelievably healthy way my attention deficit disorder medicates itself. Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; it’s a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up, and it’s a way of making contact with someone else’s imagination after a day that’s all too real. Reading is grist. Reading is bliss. But my ability to pick something up and read it—which has gone unchecked all my life up until now—is now entirely dependent on the whereabouts of my reading glasses. I look around. Why aren’t they in this room? I bought six pair of them last week on sale and sprinkled them throughout the house, yet none of them is visible. Where are they?

I hate that I need reading glasses. I hate that I can’t read a word on the map, in the telephone book, on the menu, in the book, or anywhere else without them. And the pill bottle! I forgot to mention the pill bottle. I can’t read a word on the pill bottle. Does it say take two every four hours or take four every two hours? Does it say, “Good until 12/08/07” or “Expired. Period. End of Story”? I have no idea what it says, and this is serious. I could die from not being able to read the print on the pill bottle. In fact, the print on the pill bottle is so small I doubt if anyone can read it. I’m not sure I could read it even when I didn’t need reading glasses. Although who can remember?

Parenting in Three Stages

Stage One:
The Child Is Born

I want to begin by saying that when I gave birth to my children, which was not that long ago, there was almost no such thing as parenting as we know it today. There were parents, of course, and there were mothers and fathers (and mothering and fathering), but the concept of parenting was in its very early stages, if it existed at all.

Here’s what a parent is: A parent is a person who has children. Here’s what’s involved in being a parent: You love your children, you hang out with them from time to time, you throw balls, you read stories, you make sure they know which utensil is the salad fork, you teach them to say please and thank you, you see that they have an occasional haircut, and you ask if they did their homework. Every so often, sentences you never expected to say (because your parents said them to you) fall from your lips, sentences like: