Sixties Chick

“Happy Birthday, come on down,” my Brazilian ex-sister-in-law shouted over the phone. “You’ll stay here.  I’ll take care of you while you recuperate.

She was suggesting that I avail myself of her talented–and very reasonable—plastic surgeon who has already performed three facelifts on her. He’s also seen her on more than one occasion for liposuction and, most recently, for a tummy tuck in which belly fat was scooped up and then deposited derriere to correct the inevitable pull of gravity.

“I told the doctor to make me look 20 again,” she said with a laugh. “I’ll never stop.” She’ll be 60 this year.

A few days ago, I officially became a member of what a friend of mine dubbed the Circle of Elders, celebrating a milestone birthday whose number brings with it the inevitable thoughts of aging, its byproducts, death itself. Though it’s only a number, it is formidable nonetheless.

The week leading up to the “big” day was marked by the nagging sense that there was to be a new relationship between me and my mortality. A new plateau, if you will, from which to view what was still to come. How I chose to feel about it, clearly, was entirely up to me.

The notion of circle of elders really helps. I love the sound of it. I love what it conjures up: the go-to wise woman, seated cross-legged around the tribal fire, bedecked with feathers, beads and blanket, serene and all-knowing.

Learned in the ways of the world and the laws of the universe, she is valued for her well-honed wisdom, venerated for her hard-earned open heart. The craggy wrinkles on her face are nothing but a testament to a life fully lived. I like to picture myself around that fire.  I adore feathers.

Still, I confess, my ex-sister-in-law’s pleas pestered me all week long.  A slight snip around the eyes, a little tweak at the neck. Is it so unreasonable to want the crow’s feet gone? Youth is so compellingly beautiful. A siren song to be sure. Even for those of us who know it’s not what matters, it matters.

So I have spent the past week trying to fit plastic surgery into the framework of my philosophy, to justify a nip and a tuck with my yearning for self-acceptance and aging with grace. I cannot seem to reconcile the two.

In fact, I’m feeling that inherent in this question of “circle of elders vs. plastic surgery” lays the  opportunity for an evolutionary leap; one propelled by 80 million of us baby boomers taking a stand for what counts, for what is real—like we did those many years ago. Plastic surgery? The cult of youth? We could just say “No”.

And this “No” could turn out to be our shining moment, our generation’s chance to leave a mark more indelible than, say, rock and roll or even legalized pot. It could be our Rosa Park’s moment, a chance to refute that bad rap we’ve picked up as self-absorbed and indulgent.

But it’s hard to buck the trend. Even Jane Fonda succumbed. She could have taken the lead once again with a clarion call far more radical than Hanoi Jane’s. But we are confused, we humans, so easily drawn to the beautiful package, forgetting that it’s all about what’s inside.

Really, though, at the core, it is about finally dealing with death. It is about forging a new relationship with life’s natural conclusion.

So the question is: Can we, the wide-eyed, love children of yesteryear, can we finally fulfill our destiny and change the consciousness of this culture for the good?

Can we, instead of focusing on our sagging behinds, be the generation that makes it trendy to age, cool to be old and okay to die?  Let’s at least try.

My daughter and I are chatting via Skype; she in Brazil; I in New Jersey. She’s catching me up on her day to day in the luscious world of beaches, bikinis and black beans.

She is coming back to the States after all , but informs me that she won’t be doing a nine to five any time soon. I guess that goes for the cubicle too. Even the compelling power suit holds no sway anymore.

It took her only one corporate job to come to this conclusion. And only eight months at the job at that. Why am I not surprised? I never liked cubicles either.

I flash on the white #10 envelope that arrives each month with her name on it. It’s from her quite single-minded girlfriend, Ms. Sallie Mae, who lent her a substantial sum of money to pay for college.

I bite my tongue. In any case, what can I say? This is one offspring outcome that, in all fairness, can be blamed on the mother and not on Rio.

Inspiration struck one recent Sunday on a visit with Van Gogh at the Philadelphia Museum of Art www.philamuseum.org.

To my surprise, I discovered a whole body of work I’d never seen before – work from his last three years in which he focused on the familiar but with an eye brought way up close. The head of a sunflower, a blade of grass; the kind of art that requires nothing less than intense focus.

My “Eureka” moment happened while in the second room of the exhibition, there among the nuns and the children messing with their audio players. A voice—maybe Van Gogh himself—broke through the silence of the hushed gallery and whispered ever so clearly in my head (and I swear it was with the slightest Dutch accent):

If you want to accomplish what you say you want to accomplish, all you have to do is… focus. Focus on the next indicated thing.

Right, I thought. Easy for him to say. Though he had to wrestle a few demons in his time, he was living in the 19^th century. Who can focus these days? Too much information, too many distractions. We’re living in our own loony bin,  though, unfortunately, not in the South of France.

So all I have to do is focus. And not on the big, overwhelming, far-reaching scheme but on the next indicated thing.  What about you? How’s the focus thing going for you?

“How does it feel to have a 24-year-old child?” my sister asked me a couple of weeks ago on the occasion of my daughter’s birthday. “To tell you the truth,” I say, “I’m amazed; I never envisioned it.”  But then I never envisioned myself at this age either.

I admit I’ve never spent much time thinking about the future; I’m not one for planning ahead. Staggering student loans and the lack of a  retirement fund attest to that. I used to feel guilty about it. Now I’m thinking it doesn’t matter. It’s 2012.

2012; the end of one world age cycle and the start of another wrote the Mayans some 5000 years ago, predicting a great planetary shift that would bring about a quantum leap of consciousness. A time of brotherhood, they promised. An era of harmony, balance and light. Sound too good to be true?

I’m counting on it. Open to any new beginning these days, I cannot wait for the next adventure, cosmically and personally.  I am ready for change.

To expedite it, and without any other idea for the immediate future, I head for the basement to see if I can’t sort through the stuff that has stubbornly hung on from lives in Elkins Park, Paris, Recife, Key West, Philadelphia, Washington and New York. It’s been almost 20 years in this house alone. There are things boxed and unboxed, stacked and scattered across the unfinished basement’s cold, concrete floor. A lot of things. It is overwhelming.

“Just make three piles,” I tell myself, gearing up for the job. “Toss Goodwill and Keep.”

There are the costumes; the dayglow boas and carnival masks, silver-striped Indian bloomers and yards of white netting ideal for head wraps, all of which were quite smashing under the black lights we set up for our regular dance nights. There are the fossil fish my Ex wholesaled with the geodes, and the painted ceramic animals I shipped back from Brazil to sell, but which never managed to leave the house. Toss, Goodwill or Keep?

There are the photos of Les Halles, Paris, circa 1973, pictures of the demolition site that would become the Pompidou Center.  I am there, young, looking through the rubble for treasures of another time. In back of me, a wall of graffiti reads, Une Seule Solution, La Révolution. Fitting, even then.

Mildewed manila files, stuck together in green jackets, hold catalogs from the jewelry business, radio scripts, programs from the performance art pieces my family never understood, press releases on alternative therapies to sewing machines, and copies of letters I wrote to the school board on the outrage of sugar snacks in the cafeteria and other such grievances.

There’s the child’s chair with its orange toucans bought in Key West when my daughter’s preferred playground was the city cemetery, and a carton of beanie babies that was to make us rich. There is the illustrated book she made for me; I, in the character of an angry cat; and a work of art by a one-of-a-kind Appalachian artist, a friend whom I loved, dead of AIDS in 1988. The painting was too brutally despairing to hang up. Toss, Goodwill or Keep?

It’s hard. Harder than it should be. Is it that I might forget? The past, I remind myself, will weigh you down if you insist on carrying it with you.

Clearly, it’s time to let it go.  The future is now, for the Mayans and for me. And when that planetary shift kicks in, full force, I don’t want there to be any resistance on my part. Nor stuff to hold up the works. I want to be ready when that energy moves. Ready, light, buoyant and free.

A soaring and transformative 2012 to all!

Even Jack Lalanne dies, I thought as I glanced at the headline in the New York Times. Even he, the poster boy for vitality, the father of U.S. fitness, the guy who at 96 had abs firm enough for any 30-year-old, even he dies. Just like the rest of us. Even a lifelong devotion to health and fitness could not save him. “No one gets a pass,” we say as we shake our heads dolefully, but do we really believe it? Are there some of us who secretly believe we might be the exception, that the bells that toll, toll not for me, but only for thee?

I sensed this about my uncle, who at 92 seemed quite taken aback when, several months into his decline, he realized that the road ahead would not yield another promising prescription, but rather a ceasing of medications altogether. Death would come, like it or not, gated community notwithstanding. I wondered at my Uncle’s surprise –denial? — right up to and into his ninth decade. I wonder about my own.

The slick brochure that arrived with the morning mail fueled the self-inquiry. Suspended Animation it read, and it took me a second look to realize it wasn’t referring to the art of cartooning, but rather Cryonics, the low-temperature preservation of humans, carried out right after the heart stops beating, for the purpose of future survival. The future, in this case, could mean decades, maybe centuries, or at least until science discovers how to reverse the process.

It was an invitation to a major Cryonics’ conference in Miami (where else?) and I can only wonder how I ended up on the mailing list. Along with a tour of the facility, there would be presentations on the latest scientific developments as well as discussions on more mundane topics, including a lecture entitled Wealth Preservation for Revival, Rejuvenation and Reintegration into Society.

Though it had never dawned on me, there are, of course, financial issues to this cold storage thing. A lot could happen to your money in a hundred years, especially if you’re not minding the store. It’s one thing to come back, quite another thing to come back and have to cut your own lawn. But just imagine the marketing opportunity for some can-do financial planner: Preserve yourself and your wealth; make yours a stress-free defrost.

So here’s the gist of it. Cryonics promises to preserve your brain, which, according to proponents, is the one organ essential to personhood. Unfortunately, your brain will have to be separated from your body (seems there are complications in preserving whole bodies), but, happily, it is left in the skull so that you, or rather your head, can be safely put in storage (think: iceberg in fridge).

Your brain, they say, will know how to grow a new body with the help of future scientific breakthroughs. Since the brain is already programmed, it will produce the same body–yours–and not, alas, Cindy Crawford’s. Never mind; “You are your brain,” or so saith the Cryovackers.

I didn’t make it to Miami. Personally, I don’t want to come back. Just the thought of trying to use a TV remote in the year 2100 is too much to bear. Though I love my brain and I love my life (and sincerely hope I have many more years of it), I think one time around with this particular suit on is enough.

And as much as I love being here, I really don’t want to leave kicking and screaming; stunned with disbelief, outraged that I too have to integrate death into my life. Rather, I’d like to go courageously and gently into that good night so that I can spend those last months, days, moments loving the ones I love. In the end, I’d like to do as the old tribal wise ones do – know when it’s time and head for the ice floe.

To my dear Uncle, Edgar Louis Gold, may you rest, finally, in peace.

This February 14th, I’m sending myself a valentine. Not because no one else will. I’m fine with that; I know I’m loved.  I’m sending myself a valentine because, after all, who out there should love me more than I love myself?

To My Valentine, Yours Truly,   

Roses are red

Violets are blue

Here are some reasons (a partial list, to be sure)

Why I love you

I love you because you’re a happy, upbeat kind of girl doing your very best to enjoy life. Alone or with others, money or no, you do manage to have a good time.

I love you because you’re kind, compassionate and not too judgmental. A good listener, sensitive and a rooter for the underdog.

A trusting soul.

I love you because you’re passionate, easily inspired, even  inspirational at times

Conscious, creative, adventurous, honest and responsible enough

Open-minded

Fair, flexible and forgiving;  helpful, peaceful, patient and calm

Humble too.

Self-directed and self-reliant

And talk about a unique way of  seeing the world.  Screwy? Maybe. But I love you for it.

Then there’s that kick-ass rebellious streak of yours. I love that too.

I am awed by your wisdom, no matter how long it took to get

Proud of your willingness to grow

Delighted with your wide open heart

And  grateful, God knows, that you can laugh at yourself!

So deary, this valentine–sent straight from cupid’s bow–comes with the hope that one of these mornings, when you catch your aging face there above the bathroom sink, you’ll stop with the  “Oh dear God, such a wreck,” and lovingly declare instead, “What a beautiful creature that is!

Happy Valentine’s Day, Mayzee!

I swear to you; there it was right in front of me, right there on the monitor screen. You are related to Albert Einstein, it read. That’s right; according to the genealogical website Geni, I am related to the greatest mind of our time, the man whose very name is synonymous with genius.

It seems that my Aunt Ruth’s great great grandfather, Lazarus Einstein, was a second cousin to Albert’s great grandfather, Rupert Einstein, making my Aunt Ruth and Albert fifth cousins once removed. Never mind that Ruth was my Aunt purely by dint of having married my Uncle. It’s close enough for me.

Damn, I think, where was this information when I needed it, when I could’ve used it most? It sure would have been helpful growing up to know that Albert and his brains were part of the family, no matter how tenuous the bond.  It might have made me feel smart. It might have saved me a lot of heartache.

A late bloomer my mother called me. But long past the blooming, I spent years convinced I wasn’t smart enough. After all, wasn’t I passed over for safety duty in 6^th grade? Anyone with half a brain could figure out that the coveted job of student crossing guard with its early dismissal from school had gone to the brightest in the class: Jeanie  Lifter, David Soden, Judy Stein. Of course, they were all tall, too, I deduced as they marched to the front of the class as their names were called. But in the end, Elayn Rockower was among them, and she was shorter than I was.

This notable family connection might have helped ease my shredded self-image the following year as well, when in that first year of Junior High, a class of gawky preteens were divided into six sections according to (guess what?) intellectual aptitude. When the class genius landed in #17 and the “most challenged” in #67, it didn’t take an “A” student to understand where you fell on the continuum. Thanks to a group of very practical childhood educators, the fate of this  self-doubting 12-year-old was sealed for years to come. Did they think us dummies were too dumb to notice?

Einstein and me? Hmmm. If I’d known back then, I might have found the stamina to conquer quadratic equations or the confidence to face the dreaded SATs with optimism and resolve. I might have believed that a high score could be mine, or forgiven myself when it wasn’t.

Today, although I’m delighted to claim Albert as kin, it no longer matters. Somewhere, way past my school days, I decided I was smart enough. I also decided that smart is overrated. Not that I don’t love a razor sharp mind. It’s only that over the years I’ve gotten to see some of the “brightest” in action. It left me wary and wiser.

Take any one of those oily Enron guys, the “smartest in the room,” or those high-ranking, militant masterminds with plenty of  good reasons why other people’s kids should  go to war. Kissinger, McNamara, Rumsfeld, Cheney to name just a few.

Pick any of those slick Wall Street wizards who in their paneled board rooms pulled off a heist that have brought an entire country to its knees. Obscene profits, other people’s risk. You can’t get more brilliant than that. (To be a smart citizen of the world, the documentary Inside Job by Charles Ferguson is a must see, www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2DRm5ES-uA .)

Whether it’s for power or good old greed, the world is full of people who are way too smart, not for their own good, but for everyone else’s.

So after careful analysis, culled not from years of exhaustive, double-blind studies paid for by fellowships from Ivy League institutions, but from my own powers of observation over five decades; I have determined that intelligence is not what it’s cracked up to be.

Since I’m smarter than I’ve ever been, I’ve got a whole new take on it. Smart, for me, is an awareness of the planet, of other people, of how we’re connected and interdependent.  Smart is  examining my truths, being conscious of my actions. Smart is knowing who I am. With all due respect to Cousin Albert, what more do I need to know?

P.S. Here’s a treat from a really smart guy. www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUfS8LyeUyM