I done dyed my hair dark reddish brown. And I like it.
I used to dye my hair incessantly. And as I have recently been musing on a lot of things, it occurs to me that this says something about who I am and keep forgetting I am, and it is nice to be reminded.
It all started many moons ago. From the time I hit adolescence, I wanted red hair. Actually I probably wanted red hair since I was seven and saw Annie, but I don't recall it being a sticking point until I was in high school. I didn't grow up in the kind of family that would let me goth out like my peers with the Manic Panic, or go to the kind of high school wherein that behavior would be rewarded with less than 10 and 2, or come of age in a time where emo-experimentation was the rule rather than the exception. So, I stayed towheaded throughout four years of high school, aware that it was enough of an accomplishment to have gone from looking like a blonde version of said Little Orphan first day of freshman year (my one and only perm, which I did not want, having naturally curly hair, but was advised by my mom-manager to get instead of the cool assymetrical bob I wanted) to having long curly hair by graduation. The color was a-ok by me so long as I didn't look like a tool.
As a freshie at university, it was all I could do to get my sorry arse to class every morning. I walked around like a bun-head the entire first semester--get up, shower in gross communal dorm bathroom, pile hair atop head, secure with elastic, and go. I have a slide somewhere of me pensive in Spanish class looking like I was being tutored per child labor laws backstage at ABT. Judging from a photo taken the last day of that year, I began to wear it down or half-up, and I can't say it was an improvement over my corps de ballet look.
Sophomore year the long and curly trend continued as it seemed to go best with the frighteningly oversized striped button-down shirts which were my hot-to-trot frat party outfit du jour. Stayed blonde. It was what it was. I was trying on a life I was never meant to live for a while, and the notion of straying from that path was but a heartbeat away. By spring (I love how life is measured in school terms, because it does not involve the word "winter") things were slowly turning out to be different, but I held onto the locks out of fear of going where I wanted to go. What was framing my face--or hiding it from the world--became a foundation on which to slowly start building the me I was supposed to be.
By junior (mints?) time, it was hair today--gone tomorrow. That year was one of the most exhilarating and painful 365 days of my life. I was in love with an unattainable boy who told me I should bob my hair a la Fitzgerald's Berniece and dye it red if I wanted to. The idea that I could actually radically alter my appearance was a novel one. What, he asked, was the big deal? What, I asked myself, indeed? I don't really remember a lot about being that girl, but I do know that she made a clear and bold (for her) decision to change it up. The circumstances of home life that year made this possible--for the first time ever I did not care what my parents would say about pretty much anything I did. And in an interesting side note, the unattainable was attained. Perhaps there was a connection, perhaps not. I do know that one box of Nice'n'Easy and 25 minutes revealed a whole new me. And I rocked the redheaded look for most of that year, enduring sighs and downright insults at the holiday table (from which I subsequently bolted in order to get on with the attaining.) I didn't care. I thought I looked swell, and I know I felt swell. I was rebelling against everything I knew and ever resented and also achieving something I had wanted since belting out "Tomorrow" in the basement circa '85.
Senior year began well. Back to blonde by that fall, I entered the last year of non-reality-based living excited about everything. That year I cut my hair myself into an awesome Reality Bites inspired 'do that made me feel so fucking good, I still remember every snip of the scissors. That was the year I really settled down into being me. Yes, I would change and grow and develop scads over the next decade plus--and my hair would be every shade of the rainbow in the meantime.
Traumatic events often led to a change in appearance. So do acting parts. I moved to California as a barrette-wearing blonde when I was 21. I came back and got dumped and dyed my hair mahogany--it went well with the red-rimmed eyes--I just looked at a picture--I eventually got undumped and for the most part stayed blonde for my twenties, with some dye jobs (including one ill-advised experiment with henna and yak hair extensions) every few years, and lots of growing-it-out-only-to-go-chop-chop again in between. Eventually I decided to stay goldilocked--I thought it was time to settle into me and not be obsessed with switching it up every few months. And it worked. For a long, long time. And for everything else, there was wigs. I went dark again a few years ago because I felt pissed on and pissed off. It was a statement. It was an attempt to make myself as ugly on the outside as I felt I was on the inside. It worked--and after a while I went back to the b. And it was all fine and dandy.
Recently, though, I colored my hair dark, really dark for me, for the first time in about 10 years. And what I have discovered is that, while you can never recapture the hour of splendor in the grass, you can reclaim yourself for yourself--and from yourself--with some Loreal. I know this new look will not last, but there is something refreshing about realizing that the basis for who I am--which was celebrated way (way way) back when with some rebellious cut-and-color action, is still the basis for whom I am now.
It's a bit of a hair-raising situation, to be sure, but as they say on TV, I'm worth it.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Auld Lang Syne
The day after the new year came upon us, I attended a birthday party for some petite ya-yas that featured the four senior partners of the sisterhood empire. At one point the quartet of us was sitting together, laughing our fool heads off at some inappropriate conversation (cause that is how we do) and I looked over to see the baby wandering contentedly in our sphere with happy toddler-style oblivion, and the queen petite in the corner observing the scene--looking at her mom and the sister-wives with a look of sheer delight in her eyes and a big gap-toothed smile on her beautiful face. And I thought, how cool is that. I hope that somehow this is a memory she will always have in her treasure trove of good times. One of four beautiful women who have been best friends for a terribly long time. Members of a sacred tribe who can finish each others' sentences (even when they should keep their mouths shut), who have weathered many storms and all the births and deaths and celebrations and mean reds that accompany such natural wonders, who have been to hell and back and never let go of each other's hands. And that she (and her sister) will be as lucky as we are, to find so many soulmates on this earth to travel through time with.
After the party, I was driving homewards solo and thinking of all that had happened in 2010 and I thought, I want--no, I need--to write it all down. A top-ten list of 2010 that encompasses the best of the best. And as I was running through the magic moments that had brought me here, I found myself crazy-overwhelmed by one steel thread running through it all--that all you need is love. I wasn't thinking about the lack of cash flow that trumped most months, the everyday trauma of car problems and heath issues and family dramas and heartbreak and ennui and work bullshit and the type-A worry about everything and everyone at any given moment throughout the capstone of the first decade of the millennium.
Not at all, even though some if not all of these events were preceded by such petty concerns at one time or another. Once into the breach, however, all I recall is the sheer joy of laughing with people I love, and sharing experiences that enriched us all, and I thought there has never been a time I have not been loved. At least, circa 2010-style.
The list includes two weddings, several productions of theatrical and musical natures, a few va- and stay-cations, a few parties, general hang-time with cool people, a standing date for a miniseries event, and some ballgames. The number of people involved in all these things is staggering--new pals and old (silver and gold), family near and far and ever-expanding, neighborhood peeps, and a healthy sprinkling of puppy dogs and pussy cats and one rescued betta fish. I met some dandy folks in 2010 who made my life so much better. I experienced seismatic changes in relationships that gave me the strength for what lies ahead. And generally speaking, I laughed until I cried over and over again and one hell of a time.
I am glad I am me. I hate that my highs must be balanced by some serious lows, but when I look back on 2010 it isn't the lows that stand out, and the highs seem less momentous than just the norm, the way it is, how we roll. Dancing, laughing, kissing, toasting, cheering, working, talking, cooking, eating, singing, whispering, sunning, sharing, enjoying, sleeping, breathing--essentially, it was a whole lotta loving the one(s) you're with.
So, beginning 2011 surrounded by more of the same was pretty swell. Start as you mean to go on as my dear neighbor R. says. I am going to try. I hope that the new year is a happy one for me and mine.
After the party, I was driving homewards solo and thinking of all that had happened in 2010 and I thought, I want--no, I need--to write it all down. A top-ten list of 2010 that encompasses the best of the best. And as I was running through the magic moments that had brought me here, I found myself crazy-overwhelmed by one steel thread running through it all--that all you need is love. I wasn't thinking about the lack of cash flow that trumped most months, the everyday trauma of car problems and heath issues and family dramas and heartbreak and ennui and work bullshit and the type-A worry about everything and everyone at any given moment throughout the capstone of the first decade of the millennium.
Not at all, even though some if not all of these events were preceded by such petty concerns at one time or another. Once into the breach, however, all I recall is the sheer joy of laughing with people I love, and sharing experiences that enriched us all, and I thought there has never been a time I have not been loved. At least, circa 2010-style.
The list includes two weddings, several productions of theatrical and musical natures, a few va- and stay-cations, a few parties, general hang-time with cool people, a standing date for a miniseries event, and some ballgames. The number of people involved in all these things is staggering--new pals and old (silver and gold), family near and far and ever-expanding, neighborhood peeps, and a healthy sprinkling of puppy dogs and pussy cats and one rescued betta fish. I met some dandy folks in 2010 who made my life so much better. I experienced seismatic changes in relationships that gave me the strength for what lies ahead. And generally speaking, I laughed until I cried over and over again and one hell of a time.
I am glad I am me. I hate that my highs must be balanced by some serious lows, but when I look back on 2010 it isn't the lows that stand out, and the highs seem less momentous than just the norm, the way it is, how we roll. Dancing, laughing, kissing, toasting, cheering, working, talking, cooking, eating, singing, whispering, sunning, sharing, enjoying, sleeping, breathing--essentially, it was a whole lotta loving the one(s) you're with.
So, beginning 2011 surrounded by more of the same was pretty swell. Start as you mean to go on as my dear neighbor R. says. I am going to try. I hope that the new year is a happy one for me and mine.
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Truth in Advertising
How is it that some folks can have their cake and eat it too? While others are scrambling for a piece of dried-out melba toast?
I am off all week. I don't have the funds or the motivation to do something with myself, so I have been living rather like the college student I used to be--sleeping a lot, eating lots of cookies, and enjoying lots of television and movies accompanied by a bottle of red. I was asked today by three different people how I am doing with my week off. My response is that I absolutely love it.
Sure, I am rather lonely sometimes. But I am lonely when I have 84,000 things to do, places to go, people to be. So no great revelation there. There are several things I should be accomplishing this week around the house, but I just am not in the mood. I am enjoying he hell out of doing very little, answering to no one, and just doing my thing which is apparently a whole lot of nothing.
I never wanted a career in the post-feminist sense. I wanted to be an actress, not work nine to fine five days a week doing what the rest of the working world did. But my kind of actressing has yet to pay a single bill, so it's off to work I go.
I have had jobs since I was twelve years old. Babysitting year-round (I started at $2 an hour.) My cousin and I ran a snack bar at the pool the summers we were newly minted teenagers. I started working as a page at the public library the day after I turned 16 and I held that job through most of college. I worked in retail a lot. I waitressed. I temped. I spent seven years in a common-law marriage with an evil bloodsucking corporation. I ended up back at my first post-college gig, in a college library, which is why I have the glorious gift of spending the week between Christmas and New Year's on a mini-break from life as I know it.
I went to college because it was expected of me, because I loved learning, because I wanted to study shoes and ships and sealing wax and speak of cabbages and kings. It was a glorious four years. But as my best friend and I would half-joke at that time, we really went to college to get a husband. Like it was finishing school. And we were living fifty years earlier than we actually were. We didn't want careers, really, though we were certainly awfully bright and we were hard workers. We didn't expect things handed to us. But we assumed that since we hadn't found the one in high school, we would in college.
She actually did. She also went on to be the breadwinner in her household, and her one is now the stay-at-home dad to their two amazing kiddos. That's how it worked out. That is what happened to feminism.
I found the one, too, but he ended up being the one who got away. So post-graduation off I went, not so gently, into that good night of going to bed early to wake up and take that morning train.
The past weeks I have been obsessed with Mad Men. This is the most perfect show I have ever seen on television. Not one episode has let me down. And there is so much going on the world of those Sterling Cooperites, the one they inhabit by day and the one they inhabit by night and the one that turns on its axis 24-7 all around them.
Women living in this man's world had few choices. Abortion was illegal. Adultery was commonplace. Polio was still having its way with their kids. Ladies were expected to attend secreterial school and then type up memos and land a husband, or go off to a woman's college and get married after a brief stint as an artist or a model or an actress. Clothing was restrictive and uncomfortable but it made you look good. You got a wash and set once a week. Your lips were the rubiest of reds. And every night you had a rump roast and a cold beer set up at the dinette for your man, after spending the day in suburban banality tending children, ironing laundry, picking up dry cleaning, and firing your maid.
Then the sixties really got started. And some women yearned for more. They fought hard battles to get more. They burned their cone-shaped bras and wore their hair long and started running their own ships rather than acting as deckhand for one captained by a man. Sex and drugs and rock and roll reigned. Home and hearth, not so much.
Fast forward to the new millenium. We are gender-bending more than ever in terms of choices, what we are capable of, what we want, what we need, what we do. And it's all very confusing. Because with this Ms. title comes a lot of loss. Manners, etiquette, elegance. It is looked down on to not want a career, to want to build a home without simultaneously building your own corporate empire. Your daddy isn't footing the bills one day and your husband the next. And it is interesting because the feminine mystique was never supposed to be about women having to work--feminism is about choices. To be able to choose to be the woman you wanted to be. One who climbs that corporate ladder. One who sleeps with whomever she wants whenever she wants. One who wants five children and one who wants none. One who chooses to live as an artist, a mom, a wife, a best friend, a girl Friday, a presidential candidate. We don't need to stand by our man. We don't need a man at all. And we need to be all of this, all of the time. We are supposed to have it all, but who has it all? Not one person I know in either sex. And why should they? If we have it all, we wouldn't have dreams.
Life for the ladies has always been rough. But the more separate but equal we become, in myriad ways the harder it becomes to be a woman. I relish these days we live in, the opportunities available to me whether I take them or not. Vaccines, and thongs, and not a single white glove in sight. Civil "rights." Equal pay for equal work (which I do not think I have actually ever experienced, but it's a swell theory.) But a week spent home alone, and I fantasize that I could probably live quite cheerfully in a garter belt and Pucci shift planning meals, and redecorating the living room, and dining out in the city to charm the senior partners once a month, and doing some docent work one morning a week at the museum, and having a couple of kids and a doting bankrolling husband and a white picket fence to hide all my racy longings behind.
Mad (wo)men, indeed.
I am off all week. I don't have the funds or the motivation to do something with myself, so I have been living rather like the college student I used to be--sleeping a lot, eating lots of cookies, and enjoying lots of television and movies accompanied by a bottle of red. I was asked today by three different people how I am doing with my week off. My response is that I absolutely love it.
Sure, I am rather lonely sometimes. But I am lonely when I have 84,000 things to do, places to go, people to be. So no great revelation there. There are several things I should be accomplishing this week around the house, but I just am not in the mood. I am enjoying he hell out of doing very little, answering to no one, and just doing my thing which is apparently a whole lot of nothing.
I never wanted a career in the post-feminist sense. I wanted to be an actress, not work nine to fine five days a week doing what the rest of the working world did. But my kind of actressing has yet to pay a single bill, so it's off to work I go.
I have had jobs since I was twelve years old. Babysitting year-round (I started at $2 an hour.) My cousin and I ran a snack bar at the pool the summers we were newly minted teenagers. I started working as a page at the public library the day after I turned 16 and I held that job through most of college. I worked in retail a lot. I waitressed. I temped. I spent seven years in a common-law marriage with an evil bloodsucking corporation. I ended up back at my first post-college gig, in a college library, which is why I have the glorious gift of spending the week between Christmas and New Year's on a mini-break from life as I know it.
I went to college because it was expected of me, because I loved learning, because I wanted to study shoes and ships and sealing wax and speak of cabbages and kings. It was a glorious four years. But as my best friend and I would half-joke at that time, we really went to college to get a husband. Like it was finishing school. And we were living fifty years earlier than we actually were. We didn't want careers, really, though we were certainly awfully bright and we were hard workers. We didn't expect things handed to us. But we assumed that since we hadn't found the one in high school, we would in college.
She actually did. She also went on to be the breadwinner in her household, and her one is now the stay-at-home dad to their two amazing kiddos. That's how it worked out. That is what happened to feminism.
I found the one, too, but he ended up being the one who got away. So post-graduation off I went, not so gently, into that good night of going to bed early to wake up and take that morning train.
The past weeks I have been obsessed with Mad Men. This is the most perfect show I have ever seen on television. Not one episode has let me down. And there is so much going on the world of those Sterling Cooperites, the one they inhabit by day and the one they inhabit by night and the one that turns on its axis 24-7 all around them.
Women living in this man's world had few choices. Abortion was illegal. Adultery was commonplace. Polio was still having its way with their kids. Ladies were expected to attend secreterial school and then type up memos and land a husband, or go off to a woman's college and get married after a brief stint as an artist or a model or an actress. Clothing was restrictive and uncomfortable but it made you look good. You got a wash and set once a week. Your lips were the rubiest of reds. And every night you had a rump roast and a cold beer set up at the dinette for your man, after spending the day in suburban banality tending children, ironing laundry, picking up dry cleaning, and firing your maid.
Then the sixties really got started. And some women yearned for more. They fought hard battles to get more. They burned their cone-shaped bras and wore their hair long and started running their own ships rather than acting as deckhand for one captained by a man. Sex and drugs and rock and roll reigned. Home and hearth, not so much.
Fast forward to the new millenium. We are gender-bending more than ever in terms of choices, what we are capable of, what we want, what we need, what we do. And it's all very confusing. Because with this Ms. title comes a lot of loss. Manners, etiquette, elegance. It is looked down on to not want a career, to want to build a home without simultaneously building your own corporate empire. Your daddy isn't footing the bills one day and your husband the next. And it is interesting because the feminine mystique was never supposed to be about women having to work--feminism is about choices. To be able to choose to be the woman you wanted to be. One who climbs that corporate ladder. One who sleeps with whomever she wants whenever she wants. One who wants five children and one who wants none. One who chooses to live as an artist, a mom, a wife, a best friend, a girl Friday, a presidential candidate. We don't need to stand by our man. We don't need a man at all. And we need to be all of this, all of the time. We are supposed to have it all, but who has it all? Not one person I know in either sex. And why should they? If we have it all, we wouldn't have dreams.
Life for the ladies has always been rough. But the more separate but equal we become, in myriad ways the harder it becomes to be a woman. I relish these days we live in, the opportunities available to me whether I take them or not. Vaccines, and thongs, and not a single white glove in sight. Civil "rights." Equal pay for equal work (which I do not think I have actually ever experienced, but it's a swell theory.) But a week spent home alone, and I fantasize that I could probably live quite cheerfully in a garter belt and Pucci shift planning meals, and redecorating the living room, and dining out in the city to charm the senior partners once a month, and doing some docent work one morning a week at the museum, and having a couple of kids and a doting bankrolling husband and a white picket fence to hide all my racy longings behind.
Mad (wo)men, indeed.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
It's a little bit funny
Credit. I have bad credit, financially speaking. I wasn't raised to be fiscally responsible, largely because when I was eight years old my dad quit his high-profile and I presume well-paying job as the PR man for a big NFL team and was subsequently out of work for three years. In this time he made an excellent Mr. Mom, was written about in Sports Illustrated, and almost went on tour with the Jackson Five but declined so as to not leave us alone all summer, which was a good decision as that was the summer my sister broke her little arm.
These lean years were the kindling upon which my deep-seated hatred of numbers were built. I began keeping a diary at some point and remember writing entries in all caps screaming "I HATE MONEY!" from my bedroom while below my parents were loudly arguing over same, or the lack thereof. The financial crisis my parents found themselves in at this time changed immeasurably most things that I took for granted as our lifestyle. Gone were the company cars and the vacations and the Sundays dressed in full green regalia. My mother had to unwillingly return to the workforce she had happily stopped being a part of after I was born, taking a series of shitty retail jobs before landing a long-term gig as a secretary for the local college. My dad eventually found a new position which did not fulfill him but did start paying the bills. Obviously at age eight through eleven I didn't know the details of how things were, but I heard things that stuck with me, which may or may not be true thirty years later. That this one event created a chain reaction heard 'round the walls of our home--that there was no planned-for and much-wanted third child, that my parents almost separated either to save money or because being together without any was that bad, that big trips and the best schools and piano and ballet lessons and annually replenished back-to-school wardrobes were but dreams of the past.
I know that somehow deep down by eight I had expectations for my future. Certainly my mother instilled in me a sense of being upper middle class rather than blue collar once removed by way of Irish Catholic neighborhoods. And it isn't that I was an unhappy child, far from it. I was a kid growing up in the late seventies and early eighties--we made a lot of our own fun. And it's not like I wasn't amply provided for in terms of food, clothing, fun, and affection--I was. But the unhappiness of my parents regarding their financial situation was a constant presence in our lives. The year Cabbage Patch kids were the it gift of the century, we didn't them for no reason as would have been the case in the pre-struggling to stay solvent days. We got them for Christmas, which was the best. Until I heard a snippet on the radio about knock-off dolls that were highly flammable, and I was convinced that my poor parents had probably purchased that version of the coveted dolls and I felt terrible that not only did we have dangerous Preemies but that my hardworking parents had been so duped simply because they lacked enough money to go around. Our dolls were the real thing, but I worried for weeks that they weren't. Not that I ever said anything. But I examined my precious present over and over again for signs of inauthenticity until Easter.
As I grew older and entered high school, I was suddenly confronted with lots more people in the world who had lots more money than us. And ironically, I didn't even go to the private school I always assumed I would go to which was a far richer place because the tuition was too high. I went to the parochial school instead, which was immense and full of kids from wealthier areas whose fathers were doctors and lawyers and chemists and who always had the latest everything--things I didn't even know existed, and things that bought you entrance into the cool crowd. I didn't care about being cool. I didn't care about having things. What I did care about was being myself, and that self need different things in order to flourish. Things that cost money. I don't recall being denied very specific items--and again, my parents did the best they could by me and for that I am very grateful. But the inner child of my teenage self always felt it was sort of second-best, and not what anyone had led me to expect, or what my mom had told me I could be. And always the shadow of the poorhouse hung over us like a phantom menace.
College came and things got even worse on many fronts. Once again, it wasn't about what I wanted and worked to get, it was about the best that could be afforded. And once again, I was confronted with even more kids who had even more diverse backgrounds of wealth and privilege. I got into almost $1000 worth of debt the very first day of school on my brand-new and wildly ill-advised credit card, paying for a phone hookup and books and renting a fridge. I don't know who my parents thought would pay the bill since a 17-year old full-time college freshman with no job and no way to get to one was likely to be making monthly payments, but that is how it happened. And as I needed more and more things that my peers seemed to have the means for--late-night pizzas, a school wardrobe that twelve years of uniforms didn't prepare me for, the occasional dinner out and birthday presents and trips into the city to shows and museums and art galleries--I just used my crazy-high limit credit cards to pay for them because no one else was going to.
Very unhealthy, fiscally speaking, Suze Orman would have a field day with this tale. It's not one of irony and pity, it's one of ignorance and timidity. Being raised in the solid white suburbs of the middle class, what else could have happened? I worked every summer. I had two scholarships to school and still needed to take out insane amounts of money on student loans for an education that prepared me to do very little that would entail prompt and easy payback. I spent so much of high school in a dream world of my own making about what would happen after graduation that I found myself wholly unprepared to have to choose outfits to wear to class every day and attend frat parties with $5 keg cups and go on spring breaks and plan to study abroad. I was taught to be scared of everything and everyone even though I had been half-raised in the city and had street smarts instilled in me from birth, so it never seemed possible that I could get a job off-campus, or better jobs in the summers, or just sit down and try to reason with my increasingly unreasonable parents about the realities of being a college girl in the early nineties. Once again, not a top shelf time. I rebelled later than most teenagers and took matters into my own hands at some point, and did the best I could with the best I had going for me, and I didn't get to go abroad or do three-quarters of what I really always wanted to do in college. And it was fine. College was amazing for me nevertheless. And I was very, very lucky to have been able to go and have the fun I did, get the education I wanted. I was very, very stupid to graduate in heaps of debt with no job recruiters in sight, no friends to room with in new places, and a home life that was completely wasted.
And on it went. At some point it isn't anyone else's fault, but at some point it become impossible to shoulder the blame squarely on one's own shoulders. And the mountain of debt grows ever higher until it is less a mountain than a volcano of ashes.
The point of this tale was less about the money though, than about the pay-it-forward-ness of credit in life. Because it occurs to me that I think I have been pretty generous with my love and my time and my affection to a fair number of people I have been blessed to know in my lthirty-odd years. Family, friends, lovers. My loving people well, if not always wisely, has a credit limit never maxed and always increasing. And the APR is locked down at a crazy-low rate. But the return on my investments is suddenly looking like it's at an all-time low. I swipe my debit card over and over and wipe out my account again and again only to realize that it isn't being replenished really. And like an eight-year old with what was probably an unhealthy sense of dreamy entitlement, taht just doesn't seem fair.
These lean years were the kindling upon which my deep-seated hatred of numbers were built. I began keeping a diary at some point and remember writing entries in all caps screaming "I HATE MONEY!" from my bedroom while below my parents were loudly arguing over same, or the lack thereof. The financial crisis my parents found themselves in at this time changed immeasurably most things that I took for granted as our lifestyle. Gone were the company cars and the vacations and the Sundays dressed in full green regalia. My mother had to unwillingly return to the workforce she had happily stopped being a part of after I was born, taking a series of shitty retail jobs before landing a long-term gig as a secretary for the local college. My dad eventually found a new position which did not fulfill him but did start paying the bills. Obviously at age eight through eleven I didn't know the details of how things were, but I heard things that stuck with me, which may or may not be true thirty years later. That this one event created a chain reaction heard 'round the walls of our home--that there was no planned-for and much-wanted third child, that my parents almost separated either to save money or because being together without any was that bad, that big trips and the best schools and piano and ballet lessons and annually replenished back-to-school wardrobes were but dreams of the past.
I know that somehow deep down by eight I had expectations for my future. Certainly my mother instilled in me a sense of being upper middle class rather than blue collar once removed by way of Irish Catholic neighborhoods. And it isn't that I was an unhappy child, far from it. I was a kid growing up in the late seventies and early eighties--we made a lot of our own fun. And it's not like I wasn't amply provided for in terms of food, clothing, fun, and affection--I was. But the unhappiness of my parents regarding their financial situation was a constant presence in our lives. The year Cabbage Patch kids were the it gift of the century, we didn't them for no reason as would have been the case in the pre-struggling to stay solvent days. We got them for Christmas, which was the best. Until I heard a snippet on the radio about knock-off dolls that were highly flammable, and I was convinced that my poor parents had probably purchased that version of the coveted dolls and I felt terrible that not only did we have dangerous Preemies but that my hardworking parents had been so duped simply because they lacked enough money to go around. Our dolls were the real thing, but I worried for weeks that they weren't. Not that I ever said anything. But I examined my precious present over and over again for signs of inauthenticity until Easter.
As I grew older and entered high school, I was suddenly confronted with lots more people in the world who had lots more money than us. And ironically, I didn't even go to the private school I always assumed I would go to which was a far richer place because the tuition was too high. I went to the parochial school instead, which was immense and full of kids from wealthier areas whose fathers were doctors and lawyers and chemists and who always had the latest everything--things I didn't even know existed, and things that bought you entrance into the cool crowd. I didn't care about being cool. I didn't care about having things. What I did care about was being myself, and that self need different things in order to flourish. Things that cost money. I don't recall being denied very specific items--and again, my parents did the best they could by me and for that I am very grateful. But the inner child of my teenage self always felt it was sort of second-best, and not what anyone had led me to expect, or what my mom had told me I could be. And always the shadow of the poorhouse hung over us like a phantom menace.
College came and things got even worse on many fronts. Once again, it wasn't about what I wanted and worked to get, it was about the best that could be afforded. And once again, I was confronted with even more kids who had even more diverse backgrounds of wealth and privilege. I got into almost $1000 worth of debt the very first day of school on my brand-new and wildly ill-advised credit card, paying for a phone hookup and books and renting a fridge. I don't know who my parents thought would pay the bill since a 17-year old full-time college freshman with no job and no way to get to one was likely to be making monthly payments, but that is how it happened. And as I needed more and more things that my peers seemed to have the means for--late-night pizzas, a school wardrobe that twelve years of uniforms didn't prepare me for, the occasional dinner out and birthday presents and trips into the city to shows and museums and art galleries--I just used my crazy-high limit credit cards to pay for them because no one else was going to.
Very unhealthy, fiscally speaking, Suze Orman would have a field day with this tale. It's not one of irony and pity, it's one of ignorance and timidity. Being raised in the solid white suburbs of the middle class, what else could have happened? I worked every summer. I had two scholarships to school and still needed to take out insane amounts of money on student loans for an education that prepared me to do very little that would entail prompt and easy payback. I spent so much of high school in a dream world of my own making about what would happen after graduation that I found myself wholly unprepared to have to choose outfits to wear to class every day and attend frat parties with $5 keg cups and go on spring breaks and plan to study abroad. I was taught to be scared of everything and everyone even though I had been half-raised in the city and had street smarts instilled in me from birth, so it never seemed possible that I could get a job off-campus, or better jobs in the summers, or just sit down and try to reason with my increasingly unreasonable parents about the realities of being a college girl in the early nineties. Once again, not a top shelf time. I rebelled later than most teenagers and took matters into my own hands at some point, and did the best I could with the best I had going for me, and I didn't get to go abroad or do three-quarters of what I really always wanted to do in college. And it was fine. College was amazing for me nevertheless. And I was very, very lucky to have been able to go and have the fun I did, get the education I wanted. I was very, very stupid to graduate in heaps of debt with no job recruiters in sight, no friends to room with in new places, and a home life that was completely wasted.
And on it went. At some point it isn't anyone else's fault, but at some point it become impossible to shoulder the blame squarely on one's own shoulders. And the mountain of debt grows ever higher until it is less a mountain than a volcano of ashes.
The point of this tale was less about the money though, than about the pay-it-forward-ness of credit in life. Because it occurs to me that I think I have been pretty generous with my love and my time and my affection to a fair number of people I have been blessed to know in my lthirty-odd years. Family, friends, lovers. My loving people well, if not always wisely, has a credit limit never maxed and always increasing. And the APR is locked down at a crazy-low rate. But the return on my investments is suddenly looking like it's at an all-time low. I swipe my debit card over and over and wipe out my account again and again only to realize that it isn't being replenished really. And like an eight-year old with what was probably an unhealthy sense of dreamy entitlement, taht just doesn't seem fair.
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Boxing Day
Strange items of cheap clothing that make me wonder how it is possible I am so little-known by those who made me, check. Snoopy calendar with over 200 stickers, check. Love Actually and a bottle of red on Xmas Eve and no actual love present and accounted for, check. Dogs dressed in reindeer antlers and a Santa suit, respectively, check. Nice dinner with the immediate family, first with an official brother-in-law, check. Mass texts of holiday wishes, check. Personalized message of cheer from ex-boyfriend in lieu of Christmas beers, check. Thoughtfulness paid forward with little return on the investment, check. A blizzard on its way and no milk or eggs or bread in the house, check. A nice and uneventful holiday, check. Nothing good on television, check. Bored now. Check.
Friday, December 24, 2010
And so this is Christmas (Eve)
And so here I go again on my own. The downstairs is decorated in what I feel is a festive manner. Thanks to my best friends' help carrying and drilling the shit out of its trunk I have a tree now adorned with pretty things and lights that makes me happy.
I attempted to shop starting yesterday and overspent on the first gifts I got, then got screwed by a bank error so not in my favor, so had to screw others over on the gifting. I have decided to make myself alfredo from scratch for dinner and am worried it will not turn out which may result in me eating spaghettios for dinner. I also am so wildly unmotivated to begin to cook that I am worried I will be eating spaghettios cold straight from the can for dinner. What the hell happened to me? This is so not me! I bumped my head last week--did I give myself amnesia from festivating?
As I combed many stores today and yesterday trying to find good thoughtful awesome gifts at reasonable prices, it occurred to me that there are quite a lot of things I would like to have and cannot afford to purchase. There are also many things I wish others to have through my intercession and this also I cannot afford. I am tired of being poor. I would like to be rich. Not for material gains so much as just less worry, less ridiculousness going on at every turn.
Once I spent Christmas in a dingy motel somewhere in Texas where it was freezing and my boyfriend, my sole companion, was in a foul mood all eve and day and night. It didn't feel like Christmas at all, like it just never happened that year, because there were no family, friends, church, stockings, presents, Santa, dinner. It was interesting to experience.
Once was enough to experience the Christmas that wasn't, I have always felt. Fool me once....yeah yeah. Happy hols.
I attempted to shop starting yesterday and overspent on the first gifts I got, then got screwed by a bank error so not in my favor, so had to screw others over on the gifting. I have decided to make myself alfredo from scratch for dinner and am worried it will not turn out which may result in me eating spaghettios for dinner. I also am so wildly unmotivated to begin to cook that I am worried I will be eating spaghettios cold straight from the can for dinner. What the hell happened to me? This is so not me! I bumped my head last week--did I give myself amnesia from festivating?
As I combed many stores today and yesterday trying to find good thoughtful awesome gifts at reasonable prices, it occurred to me that there are quite a lot of things I would like to have and cannot afford to purchase. There are also many things I wish others to have through my intercession and this also I cannot afford. I am tired of being poor. I would like to be rich. Not for material gains so much as just less worry, less ridiculousness going on at every turn.
Once I spent Christmas in a dingy motel somewhere in Texas where it was freezing and my boyfriend, my sole companion, was in a foul mood all eve and day and night. It didn't feel like Christmas at all, like it just never happened that year, because there were no family, friends, church, stockings, presents, Santa, dinner. It was interesting to experience.
Once was enough to experience the Christmas that wasn't, I have always felt. Fool me once....yeah yeah. Happy hols.
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Holidaze
Most Decembers I am involved in a show that begins at the start of the month and races through three weekends until suddenly I find myself at Christmas, for which I have become increasingly woefully unprepared.
This year is no exception. I am in a play--a play which coincidentally is pretty much about Christmas--and we close tonight, exactly one week before Christmas. As I have spent the past two months running around at rehearsals and costume shopping and memorizing lines on top of a full-time job and rehearsing for my next outing onstage, my house looks like a clothing/junk mail/wig/fish tank/shoe bomb exploded, my cupboards are bare, and I have little hope that Saint Nicholas soon will be there since I haven't hauled out a single stocking.
I am hoping that once the curtain drops on this particular run, I will be better able to wrap my home and subsequently myself in the joys of the season. But I have my doubts. I've lost that festive feeling.
For about seven years now I have lived on my own for Christmas. And in that time I have discovered that one really does have a blue Christmas without you--whoever "you" are.
Christmas is, of course, first and foremost a religious occasion celebrating the birth of Christianity. It was designed by wise old men afeared that their new cult wouldn't get off the ground if they didn't throw the pagans a bone for winter festival rituals. So, to begin with, if you aren't into organized religion, which I am not, there is something lacking in your Xmas factor.
Christmas is also a highly profitable enterprise. What was crass and commercial in Charlie Brown's day is now quaint and retro. Christmas is even more so all about getting the right gift and stuffing those stockings, big red bows on shiny new cars in snow-driven drives, the latest in Apple products, new wardrobes, cool toys. But if you aren't topping anyone's list, regardless of how naughty or nice you've been all year, there is something missing from the proceedings. Ditto if you have checked your list and realize that while there are several gifts to be got for all your fellow elves, you haven't much in the way of feliz navidad dinero to grace others with much more than your presence in lieu of actual presents--you are missing out--remember that Mrs. Claus and Santa are kind of a package deal.
Christmas is often a great day for kiddos. This goes with the corporate culture of it, but it's grand to hear the oohs and aahs as the little nutcrackers see all the shiny new things awaiting them beneath the tannenbaum's lovely old branches. It's fun to dress 'em up too with red velvet bows and candy cane ties to parade them around the local church, which fulfills the obligations to the oh holy night-ness part of the holiday. So if you don't have children in your family tree, which I do not, you are without that certain something that makes all your Christmases bright.
Now with these three kings of Orient being in place, I could surmise that when one lacks religion, money, a partner, and children, the holidays are somewhat lukewarm. Then there are the traditions and the notion that we all live on a movie set full of rambling old houses covered in snow and aglow with lights and holly and bickering relatives. Most of us just get the bickering relatives part. Getting colder.
Even the songs are designed to take the wind right out of your seasonal sails when you're a singleton. If all I want for Christmas is "you" and I'm not getting it, how can Santa Claus come to town and take us on a sleigh ride filled with jingle bells to a destination where chestnuts are roasting on an open fire, the halls are decked with boughs of holly, and oh ho the misteltoe will trap me in cause baby it's so cold outside and the next thing we know it's baby's first Christmas away in a manger and we'll meet forever in an auld lang syne? Frozen.
I have my own Christmas traditions. They involve gifting as many of those that I can with things I hope they will love, playing Harry Connick Jr.'s Christmas albums, making ravioli for one on Christmas Eve, trimming a tree whose firry goodness will make me happy until Epiphany. I usually see my immediate family and we do presents and maybe share a meal at some point. Sometimes I even get to play with my friends late on Christmas night, or go see a movie. I dress my dog up as Santa Paws. I relax in my cheerfully decorated house and watch my favorite holiday movies and drink spiced apple wine. I hostess a New Year's Eve get-togther for those I love most dear and friends new and old. I keep Christmas with me in my own way. And it's always worked out. I end up having myself a merry little Christmas.
But this year I just feel spent over the whole ordeal, and it hasn't even begun yet. I don't feel Yulish. I feel worried about the path I am on as we flow into a new year. I feel annoyed that for seven years I have awoken with no excited anticipation of the coming celebrations. I feel sad that I view Christmas as a time of stress and fear regarding my family. I feel like I am somehow missing the whole point, and I dislike not being in the know. I'm not depressed--but I am starting to feel like some of my lights have gone out. I've got the peace and love and goodwill, but the joy has yet to surface. And maybe making the best of how things are for so long has grown staler than a dried-up fruitcake from last year. And through all my musings, I know that so many people out there have it way worse than I do this time of year--and I am grateful for what I do have and sorry for those that have less. But for the me I have to live with, I just wish this year it will be different.
Here's to hoping for a Christmas miracle.
This year is no exception. I am in a play--a play which coincidentally is pretty much about Christmas--and we close tonight, exactly one week before Christmas. As I have spent the past two months running around at rehearsals and costume shopping and memorizing lines on top of a full-time job and rehearsing for my next outing onstage, my house looks like a clothing/junk mail/wig/fish tank/shoe bomb exploded, my cupboards are bare, and I have little hope that Saint Nicholas soon will be there since I haven't hauled out a single stocking.
I am hoping that once the curtain drops on this particular run, I will be better able to wrap my home and subsequently myself in the joys of the season. But I have my doubts. I've lost that festive feeling.
For about seven years now I have lived on my own for Christmas. And in that time I have discovered that one really does have a blue Christmas without you--whoever "you" are.
Christmas is, of course, first and foremost a religious occasion celebrating the birth of Christianity. It was designed by wise old men afeared that their new cult wouldn't get off the ground if they didn't throw the pagans a bone for winter festival rituals. So, to begin with, if you aren't into organized religion, which I am not, there is something lacking in your Xmas factor.
Christmas is also a highly profitable enterprise. What was crass and commercial in Charlie Brown's day is now quaint and retro. Christmas is even more so all about getting the right gift and stuffing those stockings, big red bows on shiny new cars in snow-driven drives, the latest in Apple products, new wardrobes, cool toys. But if you aren't topping anyone's list, regardless of how naughty or nice you've been all year, there is something missing from the proceedings. Ditto if you have checked your list and realize that while there are several gifts to be got for all your fellow elves, you haven't much in the way of feliz navidad dinero to grace others with much more than your presence in lieu of actual presents--you are missing out--remember that Mrs. Claus and Santa are kind of a package deal.
Christmas is often a great day for kiddos. This goes with the corporate culture of it, but it's grand to hear the oohs and aahs as the little nutcrackers see all the shiny new things awaiting them beneath the tannenbaum's lovely old branches. It's fun to dress 'em up too with red velvet bows and candy cane ties to parade them around the local church, which fulfills the obligations to the oh holy night-ness part of the holiday. So if you don't have children in your family tree, which I do not, you are without that certain something that makes all your Christmases bright.
Now with these three kings of Orient being in place, I could surmise that when one lacks religion, money, a partner, and children, the holidays are somewhat lukewarm. Then there are the traditions and the notion that we all live on a movie set full of rambling old houses covered in snow and aglow with lights and holly and bickering relatives. Most of us just get the bickering relatives part. Getting colder.
Even the songs are designed to take the wind right out of your seasonal sails when you're a singleton. If all I want for Christmas is "you" and I'm not getting it, how can Santa Claus come to town and take us on a sleigh ride filled with jingle bells to a destination where chestnuts are roasting on an open fire, the halls are decked with boughs of holly, and oh ho the misteltoe will trap me in cause baby it's so cold outside and the next thing we know it's baby's first Christmas away in a manger and we'll meet forever in an auld lang syne? Frozen.
I have my own Christmas traditions. They involve gifting as many of those that I can with things I hope they will love, playing Harry Connick Jr.'s Christmas albums, making ravioli for one on Christmas Eve, trimming a tree whose firry goodness will make me happy until Epiphany. I usually see my immediate family and we do presents and maybe share a meal at some point. Sometimes I even get to play with my friends late on Christmas night, or go see a movie. I dress my dog up as Santa Paws. I relax in my cheerfully decorated house and watch my favorite holiday movies and drink spiced apple wine. I hostess a New Year's Eve get-togther for those I love most dear and friends new and old. I keep Christmas with me in my own way. And it's always worked out. I end up having myself a merry little Christmas.
But this year I just feel spent over the whole ordeal, and it hasn't even begun yet. I don't feel Yulish. I feel worried about the path I am on as we flow into a new year. I feel annoyed that for seven years I have awoken with no excited anticipation of the coming celebrations. I feel sad that I view Christmas as a time of stress and fear regarding my family. I feel like I am somehow missing the whole point, and I dislike not being in the know. I'm not depressed--but I am starting to feel like some of my lights have gone out. I've got the peace and love and goodwill, but the joy has yet to surface. And maybe making the best of how things are for so long has grown staler than a dried-up fruitcake from last year. And through all my musings, I know that so many people out there have it way worse than I do this time of year--and I am grateful for what I do have and sorry for those that have less. But for the me I have to live with, I just wish this year it will be different.
Here's to hoping for a Christmas miracle.
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