Category Archives: Uncategorized

What’s Funny Now?

Posted on April 11, 2020 | 7 comments

Families Merging Into One Another. Acrylic and Sand. (Before Coronavirus) H. Jacobson

I’m trying hard to think of funny things happening now. We are all missing interactions with the people we care about, but we also are having other social moments that are awkward and new to us at best.

Three weeks ago I was at my local grocery store, before ordering everything delivered was recommended. I was there to get necessary supplies for the lockdown that was purportedly coming. Before heading to the usual produce, dairy and meat, fish aisles, I wandered over to the beauty section. Looking at boxes of hair dyes, root touch up products, I thought about my friends and I lamenting our lack of hair dresser appointments and the very visible effects of that. On the other hand, we said:”Who is going to see us now?”

Well, I was just on Zoom and guess what everyone saw me. Standing in front of boxes with medium and dark brown root dye, I debated. Suddenly a hand reached in front of me and grabbed the last two dark brown boxes. I turned around to see an older women with a scarf covering her hair.

” Hey, I was going to buy one of those!”

” You need red!” She harrumphed and walked away.

I probably do since my streaks are auburn, but wasn’t that my decision?

Walking my small poodle, Philo, is my main activity outdoors now. If it is cold or rainy, he turns around to go home quickly. On a recent sunny day, we headed over to the Charles River and joined others, walking, biking, scooting, trying to be socially distant. I saw a woman I knew, we waved and she approached us with her small red poodle, a friend of Philo’s.

” I’m picking her up,” she told me.

” The veterinarian said on TV that their fur is not contagious.”

“But what about their noses? “

” I don’t know, ” I answered. I had never thought about noses. A vision of dogs in masks greeting each other made me smile.

How about lists? Everyone has given me or asked me what to read or what to watch on TV. I keep a small notebook next to my favorite TV watching chair where I scribble down all the suggestions. Then trying some, I often realize that I had watched them before or I don’t want to watch any of them. Preferring to scroll through Netflix, Prime, HBO etc, I have found odd movies, old shows. British programs calm me down, perhaps it is their slow, deliberate speech and usually a lack of violence. Closed captioning helps me understand the varied accents.

Books are another matter. My study abounds with books I haven’t read, gifts, or bought by me to read one day. I consider the books I’m reading for my two Zoom book groups as homework. I flip through their required pages, determine how much I have to read each day and often reward myself with cool whip and ice cream when I’m done. I listen patiently to everyone’s literary recommendations, but inside I feel like an illiterate rebellious teen-ager. “Don’t tell me what to read!”

We are surrounded by articles and television shows encouraging us to clean out our closets, organize our files and papers, set up at home work or creative areas to do new projects. I am busy fighting my daily urge to scream at them. I want to yell until I’m hoarse, ” Don’t make us feel bad for what we aren’t doing!”

My children have now reminded me that I am a senior. Telling me to stay away from stores, from people, wash my hands, wash everything that comes in to my home, wear a mask etc. I know I’m a senior! I know there are special early shopping hours for seniors. My first response to that was, “Aren’t they more likely to be sick? ” My second one is, I don’t feel senior but I know the world looks at me that way and treats me like an old lady. The kinder and more helpful people I don’t know are to me, the crazier I feel inside, the more I want to be independent.

Like other seniors, I have developed systems for coping with daily challenges. Returning home with bundles, I unload them by the front door, then go to park my car. I carry them inside and move them up the flight of stairs in shifts, alternating which ones go up a few stairs at a time with me. At the top, I bring them inside my place. I used to go up and down the stairs three or four times but now think this is easier, even though it really isn’t.

Driving requires much more attention and care. When my mind wanders, if my window is open, others will hear me yell, “Focus, Helen! Focus!” I wander around many streets to find a parking space that is enormous or one I can pull into. The new rear view camera I have helps, but can leave me confused as to what the lines are showing me.

Shopping is a new art now, where, how, who, when. Online sites offer too much, tempting me to add items to their carts which I can later delete. After all what do I need? I am one of the very lucky ones, living on a pension, in a nice apartment, near a hospital, with people I can reach by phone and sometimes see outside.

Since I joined the masked world, I am learning masked communication. Walking Philo, I passed a couple across the street, they were unmasked and exclaimed, “What a cute dog!” I smiled back at them and continued on my way. A few more such interchanges occurred, as well as arm waves. Returning home, I looked in the mirror and smiled at my funny face with its mask and sun glasses. Oh wow, no one can see me smile! I googled how to talk with women in burkas. All I learned was that it was sometimes okay to say hello at a distance. So, now I guess I will wave my arm, or nod my head when Philo or I are greeted by strangers, six feet away.

There is little humor in the world our health care and service professionals are facing every day. Their challenges, dangers and mental and physical exhaustion are heroic. I hope they know how appreciated they are and how much they are in our thoughts and or prayers. I’m mentally joining those who are banging a pot outside to thank them!

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Posted in Uncategorized

A New Vulnerability

Posted on July 19, 2015 | 8 comments

women3“Do you feel it too?“ I asked one of my closest friends. She replied no at first then thinking more about it said: “Yes, I guess it is there for me too. I just never had thought about it this way.” This is what I call my new vulnerability; I am super sensitive to reactions, words, looks, even jokes and comments not directly aimed at me. I see rejection even when unintentional or part of a typical event that I never would have felt badly about some years ago.

I ask myself is this the new me? Is this part of realizing I am an older person now and others may not take what I say or do as seriously? Whenever I read in the paper about someone my age, seventy or so and they are labeled as elderly I flinch. Suggesting things to my children especially makes me feel tentative; years ago I would have stated it much more firmly. At a luncheon recently with others like me, one of the women spoke about being a “duct tape grandmother,”’ we all laughed and I echoed that is often but not always the case for me. I do try harder to think about what I say and write to my children and their spouses.

Lots of things bring me pangs inside that I try to hide from others. I don’t want to be so easily hurt, to feel wounded while holding back my tears or sighs. Writing for my blog or reading my writing to a group and painting pictures are public displays of me. I, of course, enjoy positive comments but questions and negative words leave me open to doubts of my pursuits or my communicative abilities in either medium.

Art is less risky because even I feel it sometimes just pours out of me and I don’t totally control it. However, I still do make decisions about colors to add, ways to change the composition and to better express my vision. I am struck by people’s comments when they tell me they can see my ideas about love and relationships in the people who float in my paintings, some near each other, some do not connect or touch each other. This could be true but is very unconscious I think. I have at times taken out my anger in imagery and colors attacking a canvas wishing perhaps I could do this in real life, knowing I cannot.

Writing is something I can look at, tweak, put away and then edit again. Speaking however is immediate. Telling stories of my past or present and getting appreciative laughter is wonderful though at times I feel like the party clown I used to hire for my children’s birthday parties. Am I there to entertain or do they really like being with me? Can I be my sad, or angry or withdrawn self with them too? At this point in life I do realize that no one but your most significant other wants to see those sides of you and even then it is a gamble to be that open and transparent.

I want the independence that I used to have, the ability to do so much and still be able to take on more. But that is not realistic now. I am finally learning not to order all the food I want on the menu nor buy all the fruit that looks good in the supermarket. It won’t fit in my stomach nor can I eat it all before it spoils in my refrigerator. However, I am comforted when I am well provisioned. That seems important to me now as well. A well stocked refrigerator gives me the satisfaction of knowing I can take care of myself even in a very stormy, snowy winter like this past year.

I recently used the words “our fragility” in a meeting with other educators to describe what was going on. It was the first time I did that even though the idea of fragility was not new to me. When I was asked in that meeting to voice my thoughts, feeling the tension in the room, I decided it was important to develop our empathy for each other. So I talked about all of our fragilities, defining some I recognized, adding my own. I probably would not have done that when I was younger but I was glad to see it helped diffuse some of the anxiety in the room and open people up to sharing their concerns.

Acknowledging being weaker in any way is very scary to do now. I want to be seen as vibrant, still having a lot to contribute and definitely as part of this new technological world. Yes, I do text, though not with abbreviations, I do Google everything I can and offer to do so for others. Am I comfortable with all of this? No, but I shudder to think of admitting it to people. “I’m not a luddite,” I once declared out loud unsure of its total meaning and trying to be so modern. The next step will be to add a twitter account and Instagram for pictures. I will do it soon, I tell myself.

So, are these feelings here to stay? I think they are. They dissipate when I am actively involved with others, reading a book I enjoy or at an engaging movie, play or performance where my mind does not wander into its depths. There is another piece of this that colors everything; it’s the realization that everything is more finite now. What we choose to do or not, whom we see, how we react will not go on forever. Like the Shakespearean monologue “All the World’s a Stage” I memorized for a speech contest I didn’t win in seventh grade, I recognize the trajectory of the future. Now I think that it is “mere oblivion, sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything” that I am fighting against and winning this battle means being more courageous not less at a time when risking is harder.

Leaving the beach late yesterday with a friend we commented on how it was more difficult to walk uphill on long sandy paths now. “Yes, “I added, ”that is why they say getting old is for the brave.” We both laughed and trudged onward.

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Posted in Uncategorized

Why Monkeys?

Posted on June 9, 2015 | 2 comments

YonkelToday I can ask myself that question: why was I so intrigued by monkeys when I was growing up? I dreamed of having a chimpanzee living with me. I thought about how I would take care of him; I wondered was this the brother I always wanted but never had? When I found out at age twelve that we were moving from the States to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, my thoughts about monkeys became more prevalent. I knew there were monkeys in the jungles and imagined visiting them. Rio was a large modern city and we lived in Ipanema, near the beach in an apartment building that didn’t look at all like a jungle dwelling. This was the Rio before huge shiny glass shopping malls, just small stores and a weekly “feira” or market where we bought our fruits and vegetables and many other household items which I paid no attention to. My mother had reassured me when I asked her how I ‘d ever learn how to cook and do other kitchen chores:” you will have plenty of time in your life to do that. Right now you don’t have to.”

This was true, full time live in help was about twenty dollars a month so we had a maid, a cook, and a laundry woman working for us. I began to talk a lot about monkeys after we were settled in our apartment. Returning from the feira one day my mother proudly handed me a small Marmoset monkey with a white beard and white ear tufts. “Here’s your monkey,” she said giving him to me. I glanced at him, disappointed at his size but happy nonetheless to begin my primate adventures. I named him Mickey after the famous mouse and I took him everywhere I could. Walking to the beach, sitting on our small veranda and running around my room he and I bonded. I studied his brown eyes for responses to mine, listened to his chatter when he ate a fruit he liked.

Sometimes the maid would feed him bugs and I later learned this is what killed him because they were full of chemicals the exterminator sprayed. There were no screens on the windows and large crickets and other flying insects plagued my sleep at night. Once I awoke screaming as a large brown insect thudded against the walls of my room. The maid rushed in waving a kitchen knife and cut the cricket in two. Huddling beneath my covers I contemplated being calmly asleep at my grandparent’s apartment in Buffalo, New York last year and wondered why I was now living here.

After Mickey’s demise I put him in a shoe box and wrote: “Here’s Mickey, God,” on it in crayon. We buried him in the nearby Gavea hills. I asked for a Wooly monkey and my mother demurred saying it was too big and too wild. “We won’t be able to control that monkey if he gets angry.” She then bought me a Capuchin monkey. This breed is called the organ grinder’s monkey or known as “Curious George” in children’s books. Finally a real monkey I thought and named her Lucy. She sat on my shoulder, eating and chattering and jumped around our apartment. My father nicknamed her “Loosey” spelled l o o s e y because she left souvenirs from eating so much fruit. I didn’t care that my friends and my boyfriend never really liked her. She however had her own opinions about people. One day escaping from her cage, she took a lipstick from the maid’s dresser top and scribbled all over her mirror. I thought this was hilarious and very smart but no one else did.

Leaving Rio to go to college, I gave Lucy to the daughter of the family who moved into our apartment. I was saying goodbye to the warm beaches, my first love and my monkey to go to Ann Arbor at seventeen for college. To become an American as my father said I had to do. My parents were moving to Geneva where the European headquarters were located for his continued work in immigration. I was heartbroken knowing my home was now going to be Switzerland, a cold country I did not know. After I was settled in my dorm, I received a letter from the family in Rio telling me they could not keep Lucy and took her to a sanctuary for monkeys. A follow up letter told me she had been attacked by the other monkeys and died. That night I cried silently into the pillow on my bunk bed.

No more monkeys for me I thought. Four years later I eloped to marry my first husband and we moved that summer to his parent’s Long Island home. My mother came to join us, meet him and plan our rabbinical family wedding in June in Buffalo. She told him stories about Lucy and he told her he’d also like to have a monkey. She promptly went out to buy him a Capuchin monkey at a nearby large chain store. He named our new pet, Yonkel and we let him roam around the yard causing quite a stir in that Long Island neighborhood. We went to stay with my aunt in Buffalo for our “real” wedding bringing Yonkel. My aunt told me she had her guest bedroom repainted after we left. It seems no one would stay there after Yonkel had.

On to Ann Arbor where I was finishing my degree and we decided to purchase another monkey, a male, planning to breed them for fun. But we soon discovered we had two females, the genitalia look the same. We didn’t know Yonkel was a female nor did the store who sold him/her to us. The two female monkeys got along most of the time but did squabble over treats and our attention. Yenta, as the new arrival was named, was larger and much wilder having recently left the jungle. She could sail twenty feet across a room through the air landing smoothly on a wall. She quickly learned how to open the refrigerator door balancing her feet against it and pulling the handle back. Escaping the cage was easy for her, I remember coming home from class to find her sitting on the kitchen table next to a bowl of onions eating one and weeping, refusing to let me take them away.

My sister tells me she remembers having dinner there with other guests while the monkeys hopped around taking food from our plates. I think I blotted that memory out. We planned a trip to Europe to visit my parents and brought the monkeys to his family on Long Island to be monkey sat in their basement. Returning, my mother-in-law said: “Never again, they were awful. They kept unscrewing the light bulb in the ceiling and smashing it on the floor. When they escaped the basement, I had to find a girl with long dark hair like yours, “she said pointing at me,” so they would jump onto her head and we could finally grab them. You can bring me a grandchild anytime, but no more monkeys!”

After Ann Arbor we moved to Cambridge and since Harvard Housing for married couples didn’t allow monkeys, we rented a very rundown apartment in Porter Square. There they occupied a large cage and swung from rope to rope inside of it. Occasionally we took them to the Arnold Arboretum and watched as people exclaimed:”did I really see a monkey in that tree?” Laughing we would collect them and go home. When the mice ran around our bedroom so often that I couldn’t stand it, we moved again.  At our new rental, we added a husky puppy to our menagerie. She learned to love grapes, being pelted with them daily from their cage and to enjoy monkeys riding on her back.

Yenta matured and decided my husband was hers, attacking me viciously one day when I was hugging him, sinking her teeth into my arm and scratching me. We contacted the local Simian society where members showed up at meetings with monkeys in baby carriages, diapers and clothes. They weren’t like us we realized but they were helpful in finding a monkey refuge. We headed to Logan Airport to fly Yenta there and setting her travel cage on the counter, I watched horrified as she pulled the agent’s blue jacket from his chair into her cage. She loved its gold buttons and pulled at them trying to chew them off. We said goodbye and patted her while they reluctantly agreed to take her on board.

Soon after I learned that I was expecting our first child and that we were moving to California. Now we had to find a home for Yonkel, putting her in a sanctuary too. In California I read a book called: “Babies are Human Beings,” and realized I needed to understand more about human development, not just apes. Children became my monkeys after that, even though I still pined sometimes for a chimpanzee. I parented four children whose antics kept me going for many years. I watched them become adults and now happily observe my grandchildren as they grow up.

Monkeys taught me many things during the three years we had them. I watched them love, groom and support each other; I saw how they gave and took from us and from one another. I was fascinated by their open expressions, their happy chirps and loud fury, their ability to acquire what they needed to survive physically and emotionally. They helped me understand how human beings could and often did relate; although we are more subtle and  more devious as we plan our life adventures. Monkeys are much more direct about what they desire, perhaps that is the real lesson I learned from them. It certainly is one I know I still have trouble doing and need to practice. I envy their ability to seek and fulfill their basic wants, whether it is sustenance, shelter, fun or love, they know how to demand it vociferously and to make it happen.

Thinking and believing that we have evolved from them, I wonder if we gave up too much of that honesty, too much of that openness as we became more complex beings. We began to play more games with each other, to lie, to deceive, to make up reasons, to hide our real feelings, to mask what we want and need from each other. A simple grunt of appreciation, a taking of what we want, a scream of joy or a growl of anger might make us all happier and more satisfied!

 

 

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Posted in Monkeys and Humans, Uncategorized

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Great Sex!

IMG_0835-2Some years ago while watching the Tonight Show I listened to Anne Hathaway, the film star, talk about when her parents were asked the secret of their twenty eight year marriage and her father’s instant reply was: “Great Sex! I cringed at his answer thinking it was too juvenile, perhaps too specific. I was reminded of the Cat on a Hot Tin Roof movie when Elizabeth Taylor‘s mother in law pats the bed and says something like: “this is where it all happens, if it goes wrong here then your marriage is over.”

Yes, I think there’s a lot of truth in that. Having learned that my brain is my most important sex organ I have tried to control it and to have “sexy” thoughts during sex. I have tried to push out all those other tensions, worries, funny thoughts even while performing or being performed upon. Should someone write a book about what people really think about during sex or is it already written or do any of us want to read it? Does the sex get us beyond all of the other annoying things we find in our partners? Why have I always believed that that is truer for men than for women? And thinking more about his answer, why wasn’t Anne’s mother also asked the question? How does one refute the answer and not seem unsexy?

Years ago a friend told me the success of her marriage depended on her stepping over the piles of dirty clothes her husband leaves around their bedroom. She wanted me to know she did not pick them up nor did she complain. She walked away and somehow it all got resolved! I was so jealous then of her self control- knowing I would have kicked them, and tossed them into the laundry while yelling at him and adding that I was not his maid!

Walking away from battles is often a good option. I finally learned that it was not what I said at the moment but what I kept from saying that helped me relate to my partner. My mouth has gotten me into trouble many times over the years. Keeping quiet has also been difficult when seeing injustice or lying or social ineptitude. Sometimes I am on the right side in a discussion, other times the eyes staring at me while I am talking portray some confusion, some pity but it is often unvoiced. Why? What are we all afraid of?

I started this about sex and went off into so many areas that cause relationship problems because sex can be great or not, how do you change it? Women’s magazine articles plead for communication, direction, relaxation, mood setting, prioritizing. All of that works if you want it, but you can mess it up with sickness, appointments, the tired end of day syndrome, feigned interest or not. Ultimately it has to be what both of you want to do and how you do it has to be a joint decision even if one of you is more eager to proceed.

Great sex is so much more than sex. It means you care to give and receive pleasure. It means you take care of each other at other times. It means you can laugh at things together and cry if you need to. It means you can share feelings that are buried or on the surface and not be asking for help or accusing- just sharing. It means you can accept each other’s problems, idiosyncrasies, differences, while enjoying the ways you complement each other.

I applaud Anne’s father’s answer even if I would find it hard to say. It makes our children uneasy; it makes our friends who cannot answer that way uncomfortable. It causes looks of jealousy, disbelief, and smiles that this really is a joke for people our age! Is sex the last frontier of relationship honesty, getting in bed  together and holding each other? Would I still be angry about that pile of clothes on the floor?

 

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Posted on April 27, 2015 in Uncategorized