Author Archives: themidlifesecondwife

Marlo & Me—Prologue

16 Wednesday Nov 2011

Posted by in Relationships and Family Life, The Cultured Life, The Writing Life, What's the Buzz?

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It’s only taken 50 years, but last night I was photographed with another member of the famed Thomas family: Danny’s daughter Marlo. Photo credit: John Rich

The Scene:
Backstage at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre on Broadway.

The Time:
Present day. An evening performance of the Ethan Coen/Elaine May/Woody Allen play Relatively Speaking, and immediately afterward.

The Players:
Marlo Thomas (Award-winning actress, author, producer, and activist); Marci Rich (The Midlife Second Wife); John Rich (The Midlife Second Husband)

Synopsis:
A writer and blogger from Richmond, Virginia, learns that an essay she submitted to a  contest sponsored on Facebook by Marlo Thomas was selected as a winner. Her prize? Two free tickets to see the actress perform on Broadway in a one-act comedy, George is Dead, written by Elaine May—part of a three-act play called Relatively Speaking. The writer and her husband embark on a whirlwind, 24-hour trip by train to New York City to see the play and, hopefully, meet the actress. Waiting backstage after the performance, the writer reflects on significant moments in her life in which either the actress or the actress’ late father, famed entertainer Danny Thomas, played an off-stage role.

Prologue: The Writer Remembers

It must have been 1960 or 1961. I was five or so. I remember because the dress I’m wearing in the photograph was my favorite dress when I was in kindergarten. The famous entertainer Danny Thomas had come to Cleveland, and I had my picture taken with him for a Cleveland-area newspaper. My father is also in the picture; he’s the one holding me, hoping that I’ll stop crying long enough for the man with the camera to get his picture.

I remember the evening well. My father, George Abookire, had been a regional volunteer for ALSAC, the fundraising organization that Danny Thomas had established to help him realize his dream: a hospital dedicated to children who were suffering from cancer. ALSAC had benefited from the work of volunteers such as my father, who helped raise money for what would become St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. A keynote ALSAC event was taking place at a ballroom in a Cleveland hotel, and the guest of honor was Danny Thomas himself.

I knew who Danny Thomas was; he was revered in our house for several reasons. To begin with, he was a first-generation American born to Lebanese parents, just like my father. Danny Thomas was born in Toledo, Ohio; my father was born just 90 miles east, in Elyria, Ohio. Danny Thomas had married a woman of Sicilian descent; so had my father. There is family lore, possibly apocryphal, that it was a first cousin of Danny’s, Ralph Jacobs (also from Toledo), who had married my father’s first cousin, Renée Mady of Windsor, Canada.

Even more important than these connections was the fact that Danny Thomas’ great success in the entertainment industry—in films, nightclubs, and as the star and producer of his own television shows—brought tremendous pride to the Lebanese community. At a time when minority ethnic and racial groups were not represented on television, Danny Thomas, a man of Lebanese heritage, brought a slice of our culture to millions of homes across America. The importance of this cannot be overstated. This meant everything to a little girl growing up in Elyria, Ohio, who looked different from everyone else because of her thick, dark curly hair; a nose that was decidedly not Anglo-Saxon; and an unpronounceable last name. Danny Thomas’ presence on television validated my ancestral identity. My parents and I adored Make Room for Daddy and watched it religiously; the episodes featuring Danny Williams’ Uncle Tonoose, played by Hans Conried, were especially beloved. Uncle Tonoose reminded me of my grandfather.

There was one small problem.

Like most children, I was highly impressionable, especially when it came to visual images. My first infant memory is of a male relative carrying me in my grandmother’s house; I glimpsed my reflection in the mirror hanging on the wall. So much of what I would later see on television as a child remains as vivid to me now as that first mirror image; they are imprints, effortlessly recalled. A nightmare that I had when I was still a baby forms my second memory. The eye logo employed by CBS turned menacing in my dream. I awoke crying in my crib, frightened and inconsolable.

And so I well remember the little girl who played Linda, Danny Thomas’ daughter in his television show. Like me, she had dark hair. Like me, she had a slightly mischievous spirit. And, like me, she could sometimes exasperate her father to distraction, eliciting a reaction from him that, like the CBS eye, suggested menace: a raised voice, a sprint across a room to chase the little imp.

I had been told that I would be meeting Danny Thomas that evening in Cleveland. And as the evening wore on, I remember growing tired and cranky. It was a school night, and the back of my legs itched from the rough velvet seats on which we’d been sitting for what seemed like hours, waiting for the star to make his entrance. These feelings, then, combined with the growing awareness that this man could very well begin yelling at me as he occasionally yelled at his television daughter, filled me with apprehension.

The room darkened, and a great spotlight appeared. Danny Thomas was entering the ballroom. My father grabbed my hand and ran with me over to the photo op.

“You’re going to have your picture taken with Danny Thomas,” he said, smiling. My reaction surprised him. I started to cry.

My poor father. Poor Danny Thomas. My father tried to comfort me, and Danny Thomas—no doubt disappointed by my tears—nevertheless rose to the occasion and posed, smiling, behind us.

Years later, reading the newspaper clipping, I learned something new. After the picture was taken, I apparently stopped crying, clambered into Danny Thomas’ arms, and gave him a kiss.

Strange phenomena, memories. I don’t remember doing that at all. But it was in the paper, so it must have happened.

To be continued …

Broadway Bound

15 Tuesday Nov 2011

Posted by in The Cultured Life, The Writing Life, What's the Buzz?

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Paraphrasing Oscar Wilde: I never travel without my blog. One should always have something sensational to write in the train.

Four a.m. is not the hour I’d pick to start my day. Let’s just say that I’m less a morning person than, oh, a mid-to-late-morning-after-coffee-and-breakfast-and-newspaper person. But how could I possibly complain? Three hours ago, John and I boarded the 7 a.m. train to New York City, solely because something that has only ever occurred in my dreams is really and truly happening. I wrote an essay and submitted it to a Facebook contest sponsored by the actress Marlo Thomas. And I won. Tonight we will pick up my prize: two free tickets at the box office of the Brooks Atkinson Theatre to see Ms. Thomas perform in Elaine May’s play, George is Dead, one-third of Relatively Speaking, a triad of one-act comedies directed by John Turturro.

I planned for our departure with such scrupulous attention to detail as to make a Broadway producer proud. Pet care? Check. Our good friends and neighbors, Jerry and Amy, would watch our dog, Sandy. (Zorro, their Shih-Tzu, is Sandy’s love interest.)

Sandy, on the right, with her love interest Zorro. Sandy is nearly five; Zorro is one. Sandy is a cougar.

Amy will also feed our cat, Nellie. Clean clothes? Check. I picked up John’s shirts from the laundry and did one last load of laundry. Vehicle transport? Check. I put gas in the car so we could make it to the train station without incident, and printed out our AmTrak confirmation vouchers. Lodging? Check. I printed out the confirmed reservation for our hotel. Nourishment? Check and check. I picked up pastries at Can Can (a cranberry scone for John, a cherry and mascarpone cheese croissant for me) for our train breakfast. At Jean-Jacques Bakery I ordered two roast beef and Havarti cheese sandwiches (sides of fruit and green bean salad) to secure our train-picnic lunch. Coffee? Ah…This required a trip to Target to purchase a thermos. I set up the coffee maker last night. Apparel and necessities? Check. Telecommunications devices and photographic equipment? Check, check, and check. Laptop and iPhone fully-charged (but power cords packed) and ready to go; ditto camera and batteries.

Did I say scrupulous attention to detail? I forgot to pack an extra pair of socks.

We are now stopped for about an hour or so at Union Station in Washington, D.C., and I want to post this while I still have battery power (the electricity apparently gets shut down during layovers).

So here’s to John, who tucked a sweet card into the pile of clothes to be packed and arranged for time off work to accompany me; here’s to Marlo Thomas for her generosity, and her support for writers; here’s to Amy and Jerry (and Sandy and Zorro! and Nellie!); and here’s to old Broadway!

—My thanks to AmTrak for having free wi-fi, and to Can Can for their incredible pastries.

A Tale of Two Deaths: Losing My Mother to Alzheimer’s—Part I

14 Monday Nov 2011

Posted by in Relationships and Family Life, The Healthy Life, Transitions

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A note to readers: This post was honored by BlogHer, the Women’s Publishing Network, with a Voice of the Year award for 2012. I have since retitled it and it will appear as Part One of Have You Met My Daughter? My Mother, Her Alzheimer’s, and Me in an e-book anthology jointly published by BlogHer and Open Road Media. I am working to complete Have You Met My Daughter? and will post forthcoming essays, in serial form, on this blog.

A person with dementia (or Alzheimer’s Disease) suffers two deaths. The first death occurs when you discover the illness taking hold, erasing the vivacious mind and the vital spirit of the person you once knew. The second death is when the physical body expires. For these reasons, a bereaved person who loses a loved one—first to dementia, later to death—grieves twice. And although much has been written about mid-lifers—the so-called “sandwich generation“—who are caught between caring for ill or elderly parents while still raising children, perhaps there is room in the literature for one more account. This November, to mark National Alzheimer’s Disease Awareness Month and National Family Caregivers’ Month—and in honor of my mother—I am beginning to write a series of essays about how I loved my mother and how I lost her—not once, but twice.

“Have you met my daughter?”

This was the question my mother, who had impeccable manners, regularly posed to co-workers or acquaintances when introducing me to them for the first time.

“Have you met my daughter?”

This was the question my mother regularly posed to the women seated with her at a table in the secured-wing of the assisted living facility where I regularly visited her. Without fail, each and every time I entered the room, she would ask these same women:

“Have you met my daughter?”

There was, of course, tremendous solace in the fact that despite her illness, my mother did recognize me as her daughter. Nevertheless, it was heartbreaking to see how her memory, her very sense of self, had deteriorated.

The signs had been there for a while; it just took time for me to connect the dots. My mother had always been what used to be called “high-strung.” She suffered from panic attacks, and was fearful of many things, including learning how to drive after my father died.

She had also always been something of an pack-rat. Today, there is a name for this: compulsive hoarding. But at the time when I was grappling with this issue in terms of my own mother, I did not know it was an illness for which there might be a treatment; I simply put it down to another of my mother’s eccentricities. I would clear out as much of the clutter as she would permit (there remained piles that I was forbidden to touch), and a week or so later, my efforts were obliterated. It was not at all unlike Sisyphus pushing his boulder up the mountain.

After several years of this, the hoarding had gotten so out of control that I began to fear for my mother’s safety. I was able to convince her that she needed help; she allowed me to hire a cleaning woman to do her laundry, dust, vacuum the floor, and keep the bathroom and kitchen clean.

It was ultimately the cleaning woman—or, more to the point, the existence of the cleaning woman—which brought home to me the awful realization that something was far more seriously wrong with Mom than eccentric hoarding.

She and the cleaning woman didn’t hit it off, largely because Mom did not like anyone else touching her things. The woman, goodhearted and a good worker, called me to complain about what she could see was a losing battle. I was struggling over how to handle the situation when it resolved itself. Mom called me late one night in a real panic; I needed to come over at once. There was a terrible problem.

When I arrived, she pointed to a hole in the dining-room window screen—no more than two inches in diameter.

“That woman you hired is stealing from me,” she said in a tremulous voice tinged with outrage. “Do you see that? That’s how she’s getting in. She’s sneaking in, crawling in through that hole.”

To be continued …

NOTE: The Alzheimer’s Association is not responsible for information or advice provided by others, including information on websites that link to Association sites and on third party sites to which the Association links. Please direct any questions to weblink@alz.org.

The Instant

13 Sunday Nov 2011

Posted by in The Life Poetic

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MorgueFile Image

Some of you know that I began my writing life as a poet. It occurs to me that a section featuring some of my poetry might be a nice addition to the blog, so today I bring you The Life Poetic.

Hope that you’ll find it to be a nice addition, too. Any previously published poems of mine will be indicated as such, and will include the appropriate credits. As it happens, today’s poem is making its debut here on The Midlife Second Wife.

The Instant

Remind me to remember
Remind me not to
Don’t forget
The light is on
Don’t forget
To turn the light off
We must bank the light
For when
It will be dark when
We most need it
light

It will be dark—
The darkness we know
Or the darkness we don’t know

Let’s just keep standing
Here, beneath the full-moon light
Breathing our vivid breath
Let’s just keep standing
Your hand in my hand
In your hand

How lovely not to know
Where I begin and you end.

—Marci Rich

Walk as Though Your Life Depends on It

12 Saturday Nov 2011

Posted by in The Healthy Life

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Canadian geese on the Vita Trail at Byrd Park in Richmond

My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was 60. She’s 97 now and we don’t know where the hell she is.

—Ellen DeGeneres

I’ve never been much of a runner. Oh, who am I kidding? I’ve never been a runner. I remember getting winded in high school before ever reaching the first curve in the outdoor track. Now that I’m older, my knees are shot. And it wasn’t from running, I can tell you that. And so, especially after my back gave me so much trouble this fall, I’ve begun walking regularly—physical therapist’s orders. My friend Andrea and I meet at Byrd Park in Richmond three mornings a week and walk two miles on the Vita Trail, or walking path. I took this picture of Canadian geese in September with my iPhone, during a layover in their Southern migration. (I know they’re looking for food, but seriously, why walk when you can fly?)

In truth, I have always liked walking. My mother never learned how to drive (well, she did after my father died, but that’s another story), so we walked a lot of places. Or took a taxi, which I found excruciatingly embarrassing, especially when it involved going to the supermarket where I was certain someone from school would see us; or we would bide our time until she could line up my grandfather or one of her friends to drive us where we needed to go.

I remember running—walking—errands for her when I was young; going to Dombrowski’s, the corner store, to pick up milk and bread. If she wanted something that they didn’t carry, I’d walk down one more block to Frank’s Market. I walked to church (one mile); to my grandparents’ house (a quarter-mile); and—when I was really in a jam, home from high school (just under three miles). And all of this before anyone ever really thought of walking as exercise. Back then, it was just the easiest way to get from one place to another.

Never an athlete, I looked for the path of least resistance when it came to my physical education requirement in college. That’s how I discovered power walking. It was great! I could actually burn calories, get my heart rate up, and tone my legs simply by putting one foot in front of the other at a brisk pace. Who knew?

Now that I’m in my fifties, exercise is more crucial than ever before, and not just because of my age. My father died of a heart attack at the age of 48, so genetics isn’t necessarily on my side; I need aerobic exercise to help combat the hand I was dealt. The genes that my mother contributed brought their own shortcomings to the table. She had severe osteoporosis; a fractured hip, her second, led to her death in 2000 along with complications from dementia. I’ve been diagnosed with osteopenia, so a weight-bearing exercise such as walking is hugely beneficial for someone with my history. I’ll be writing more about issues of bone loss in future posts. But as for walking, it is clear that the health benefits are legion.

It’s not easy to incorporate regular and varied exercise into your life if it was never really there to begin with, so for me, walking is the least expensive and most advantageous thing I can do right now. I do have to be cautious, however; after breaking my left leg at the knee several years ago, I find myself in pain if I start out too quickly. With the weather turning colder, both knees are stiff and sore. I know that I’ll have to find a walking substitute soon.

I might try this new thing called Walk-ilates, moves that focus on weak muscles affecting one’s stride. That sounds good. (Although you apparently need a magic circle and a foam-roller-thingie to do the exercises. I used to have a magic circle, but I can’t remember—did I sell it before moving to Virginia? Is it packed away up in the attic? These are the thoughts that deter me from getting on with an exercise program.)

Walk-ilates won’t fulfill my need for aerobic exercise during the winter months, but for that I might be able to incorporate the steps in our townhouse. Or pretend to be a goose and chase the cat around.

The Shortest Blog Post Ever: An 11-word story in honor of 11/11/11

11 Friday Nov 2011

Posted by in The Writing Life

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—MorgueFile Image

 

Evelyn would never forget the day when people stopped recognizing her.

If you would like to read more, please drop me a line in the comments section below. (It can be more than 11 words.) I’ll write the story and post it here at a future date.

Your Kindle Can’t Do That

10 Thursday Nov 2011

Posted by in The Reading Life

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I love my Kindle—its efficiency, its portability, and the way the device instantly transports me—like some digital form of astral projection—into the world of a book simply because I thought of a title and clicked a key. But the love that I have for my Kindle will never surpass my love of books.

I recently tweeted, in essence, that I was cheating on my Kindle by reading Walter Isaacson’s best-selling biography of Steve Jobs in hardcover, which I bought the other day. Using a traditional media format to read about the greatest inventive entrepreneur of the digital age strikes me as an irony if ever there was one.

A slight digression about tweets. I know, I know. You’ve read me blog about them before, comparing them to chocolate. And I’m not recanting. But if you’ll permit me to mix and match my metaphors, I’d like to add that I also find these marvelous digital encapsulations of information akin to the notes that we midlifers used to pass surreptitiously in school. (Like a convert to Catholicism, there’s no zealot quite like a late-adopter.)

This morning, a tweet traveling down the Twitter conveyor belt so captivated me that I had to pass it to my neighbor in the next row by re-tweeting it. (Admittedly, a book cannot do that.) Here is what I discovered when I unfolded the intriguing morsel:

old book smell.
Did you know?

“Lignin, the stuff that prevents all trees from adopting the weeping habit, is a polymer made up of units that are closely related to vanillin. When made into paper and stored for years, it breaks down and smells good. Which is how divine providence has arranged for secondhand bookstores to smell like good quality vanilla absolute, subliminally stoking a hunger for knowledge in all of us.”

—Perfume: The Guide

Isn’t that a fascinating piece of new information? Isn’t that a lovely notion? And it  makes so much sense (intended pun) at every level. Most of us love books because of all that they evoke—past memories, past experiences, past sensual and tactile pleasures.

Have you ever read Pat the Bunny to a child? If not, then try to recall the very first book shipment you ever received, and what it felt like to see your name on the outside label, to open the package, and to hold in your small hands the book that you yourself selected and purchased. My own memory takes me back to St. Mary’s Elementary School in Elyria, Ohio, and the TAB book club. I can still remember those catalogs, and how I would circle each book that I coveted. It was a good day at school when those shipments arrived.

Part of a bookstore’s lure is the way that it feeds all of our senses. I’m thinking especially of an old bookstore, one that deals in rare and used books. The memories that these bookshops elicit, especially the olfactory ones, can be profound. I think that Diane Ackerman was correct to have started off her book, A Natural History of the Senses, with the sense of smell, which she calls “the mute sense.”

Nothing is more memorable than a smell. One scent can be unexpected, momentary, and fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the Poconos, when wild blueberry bushes teemed with succulent fruit and the opposite sex was as mysterious as space travel…Smells detonate softly in our memory like poignant land mines, hidden under the weedy mass of many years and experiences. Hit a tripwire of smell, and memories explode all at once. A complex vision leaps out of the undergrowth.

The aged-paper smells of an old bookshop remind me of my grandmother’s attic, where piles of folded newspapers and books commingled with old sewing patterns and scraps of fabric, and the light streamed in through narrow windows, revealing trumpets of dust motes hovering above the steamer trunks and dress forms. These objects, combined with the properties of physics and memory, are called forth by the scents of mustiness, of age and locked time. Madeleines did it for Proust. For me, it’s a bookstore.

Do you remember your first time visiting a library? I recall walking with my mother down the sandstone sidewalks to the Elyria Public Library’s children’s room. It was located in the basement of a grand old mansion. One had to walk down sandstone steps and hold on to a black iron railing to enter the space. It was a place of mystery for one who had just learned how to read, as impressive as a church, although not quite as intimidating.

Photo courtesy of Elyria Public Library, Elyria, Ohio

Smell, sight, touch, hearing, and taste. I have book memories for all of these. Even for the last one. I’m sitting in the library—I’m in high school now—and I’ve just run my Number 2 pencil through the hand-cranked sharpener that is mounted on the wall. I return to the heavy wooden table, sit down, and begin poring over my notes for a book report, absentmindedly chewing on my freshly-sharpened pencil.

No, a Kindle can’t do that for you.

An exegetical acknowledgement: The original tweet that elicited this post came from blogger Iris Blasi and was re-tweeted, where I discovered it, by the Book Lady of The Book Lady’s Blog. As we crawl further up the conveyor belt, we see that Blasi credits CuriosityCounts (by way of book editor Peter Joseph) for the image, which, ultimately, takes us all to the original source, the book Perfumes: The Guide.

Yes, it always comes back to a book.

Holiday Candied Pecans

09 Wednesday Nov 2011

Posted by in Food for Thought

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Bah, humbug. The news isn’t good for those of us beginning to plan our holiday menus. The Associated Press reported today that due to drought in parts of the South and high demand from China, the price of pecans is going up. In 2008, the retail price for a pound of pecans was $7; last year it rose to $9, and this year experts are predicting that consumers can expect to pay around $11 per pound. It’s a good thing I still have a stash stored in the freezer, because in our house, a holiday without candied pecans is like a Yuletide without It’s a Wonderful Life.

I typically make candied pecans around Thanksgiving, and this is one of my favorite cooking traditions. They are easy to prepare, they keep beautifully throughout the season if stored in an airtight tin, and they make wonderful hostess gifts if you’ve a round of parties to attend. And while we’re talking about storage, the pecans in my freezer will be just fine. According to New Mexico State University’s Cooperative Extension Service (College of Agriculture and Home Economics), shelled pecan halves will keep from 12 to 24 months if stored below freezing (20- to 30-degrees Fahrenheit).

HOLIDAY CANDIED PECANS

—Makes 6 cups. You can also divide this recipe in half.

6 cups pecan halves
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 cup light corn syrup
1 cup sugar, divided*

1. Preheat oven to 250-degrees. Divide pecans in two batches and spread out evenly on two 13 x 9 x 2-inch baking pans.

2. In a 4-quart saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat. With a wooden spoon or a silicone spatula, stir in the corn syrup and one-half cup of sugar. Stirring constantly, bring to boil over medium heat. Once the candied syrup has reached the boiling point, allow it to boil—without stirring—for five minutes.

3. Pour the hot syrup over the nuts, taking care to stir the batches constantly (and quickly) in order to coat them evenly. (Be careful—the syrup will be hot.) At this point, I find that using a silicone spatula works better than a wooden spoon; the candied syrup doesn’t stick to it as much.

4. Bake in a preheated 250-degree oven for one hour, stirring several times. I stir the trays of pecans at four 15-minute intervals, using my kitchen timer as a reminder.

5. After removing the pans from the oven, sprinkle the pecans with the remaining one-half cup of sugar and toss to coat evenly.

6. Spread the pecans onto sheets of freezer paper (shiny side up) that you’ve set out on your work surface, and add additional amounts of sugar until you’ve nicely separated them into their individual halves and coated them with sugar. You can also perform this step on greased cookie sheets, but I find that the freezer paper eliminates the need for additional butter and works just as well. It also gives you a wider surface area in which to work.

7. Allow the pecan halves to cool, then store them in tightly covered containers.

* Plus additional sugar for coating

Wherein I Win an Essay Contest and Populate One Blog Post With Several Diverse Celebrities

08 Tuesday Nov 2011

Posted by in Humor Me, The Cultured Life, What's the Buzz?

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Screenshot of Gina Lollobrigida as Sheba from ...

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First things first. The woman in this picture is not me. I’m talking especially to those of you who know me. Now, for those among you who do not know me and have never seen a picture of me, I will permit you, just this once, to visualize the Midlife Second Wife as resembling, somewhat, this paragon of pulchritude. Except imagine her wearing glasses.

And to those among you who do not know the identity of the woman in the picture, patience. All will be revealed in due time.

Last month I entered an essay contest sponsored by the actress Marlo Thomas on her Facebook page. (Perhaps you’ve heard of her?) Incidentally, the woman in the above picture is not Marlo Thomas. This is Marlo Thomas:

Ms. Thomas is starring in the Broadway hit Relatively Speaking, which is a collection of three one-act comedies, all directed by actor John Turturro (Barton Fink, Quiz Show, The Cradle Will Rock). The plays are Talking Cure, written by filmmaker Ethan Coen (Fargo, The Big Lebowski, No Country for Old Men); George is Dead, written by actress, screenwriter, and director Elaine May (The Heartbreak Kid, Heaven Can Wait, The Birdcage), and Honeymoon Hotel, written by Woody Allen (Midnight in Paris, Annie Hall, Manhattan). Ms. Thomas stars in George is Dead as Doreen, a woman whose husband has just died. Yes, I said this is a comedy.

Ms. Thomas invited friends of her Facebook page to submit their very best essays about a family member. The essays, she advised, could be funny or poignant, but they had to represent one’s best work. Five winners would be selected, and they each would receive a pair of tickets to see Relatively Speaking.

Yesterday I received an e-mail from Ms. Thomas’ assistant telling me that I was one of the winners.

Have you ever been in a situation where you’ve received incredibly amazing news and, due to the circumstances, were unable to adequately express your true feelings? I think I pulled a muscle trying to curb my enthusiasm. I was in a meeting with our financial planner at the time, happened to glance at my iPhone while she was looking something up, and saw the e-mail.

I need a new word for thrilled. Also for gobsmacked, jazzed, stoked, excited, happy, and on-cloud-nine.

Here’s the announcement from Ms. Thomas’ Facebook Page. If you click on the link you’ll probably have to scroll down a bit, so to save you the trouble I’ve inserted it here:

I’m so excited to announce the winners of my Relatively Speaking essay contest! Thanks to all who entered. The winners are…. Siobahn Weiss, Anthony Martin, Nina Meditz, Kathleen Marshall, and Marci Rich. We will email you the play vouchers shortly!

John and I are now scrambling to make plans to get to New York. The tickets are valid from today through December 1. Yes. That’s right. Just one more thing to add to my to-do list during National Blog Posting Month.

Marlo (may I call you Marlo?), thank you for choosing my essay. John and I can’t wait to see the play. I hope I’ll have the chance to thank you in person after the performance.

And now, about that woman at the top of the page. She’s a central figure in my essay, so if you can just hold on a moment longer, you will soon know all.

“That Not Lollobrigida!”

Sunday nights meant only one thing when I was a child: a drive to Lorain, Ohio, with my mother and father, to visit my Sicilian grandmother.

Grandma Monia, my mother’s mother, was a widow who lived in the family home with the youngest of her four children, my unmarried Aunt Helen. Grandma spoke very little English; she had arrived at Ellis Island, as did so many immigrants, early in the 20th-century.

An only child, I was the youngest of my cousins. By the time I came along, my grandmother was so hobbled by arthritis and osteoporosis that she was confined to the house, and walked, doubled over, with the help of a cane on wheels. Because of this, her world was small. It contained a window, though: the flickering light of the black and white console television that my aunt had bought with her secretarial salary.

Grandma’s two favorite television programs were broadcast on Sunday evening—the Lawrence Welk and Ed Sullivan shows. She rarely commented during these broadcasts (and, truth be told, she could not understand much of the dialog), but we knew which guests and segments held her interest. She would smile in approval at the harmonizing Lennon Sisters, for example. She would clap with delight at Topo Gigio’s antics; she certainly knew that he was an Italian mouse, and if she couldn’t quite make out what he was saying to Ed Sullivan, she was nevertheless charmed by his sweetness, especially when Mr. Sullivan “keesed” him goodnight.

Acts that were, in her view, less wholesome (dancers gyrating to the Twist, say, or a tad too much cleavage in a female performer’s costume) would elicit a frown or a shake of her head. She might be at a loss for English, but she was still a critic.

One such evening in her living room, with my parents engaged in conversation with my aunt and me preoccupied with my Barbie doll, we were startled by a most unexpected reaction from her. Ed Sullivan was announcing his guests for the evening, and one name filled her with excitement.

“Lollobrigida! Lollobrigida gonna be on!” she exclaimed.

Now you have to understand something about my grandmother. Italy, and all things Italian, reigned supreme in her estimation, and were surpassed only by the Pope, who was, in those days, Italian, too. All of the food that she prepared was Italian, including the bread that she baked twice each week, despite her arthritis; she regularly mailed dollar bills to an Italian orphanage; she loved Perry Como. She was so biased in favor of her language that she stubbornly refused to learn English, even when her children would beg her: “Ma, please. In English! Say it in English!”

The thought, then, of my grandmother welcoming into her living room the great Gina Lollobrigida, an actress who had brought pride and acclaim to Italy (despite her frequent décolletage, which, for some reason, my grandmother conveniently overlooked), was beyond thrilling. If there had been time, she would have asked Aunt Helen to place an overseas call to the relatives in Palermo, so that she could inform them of the great thing about to happen in America.

So focused were we on Grandma and her reaction that we hardly paid attention to what the estimable host was saying about his guest. We were now, with her, poised for the advent of the glamorous Lollobrigida.

The moment my grandmother had been waiting for had arrived. Ed Sullivan stepped to the microphone and announced:

“Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome my next guest with a warm round of applause—the exciting star of Sea Hunt, Lloyd Bridges.”

And out walked a man in a scuba suit, legs splayed, flippers flapping across the stage.

My grandmother, crestfallen and confused, could only exclaim:

“That not Lollobrigida!”

—THE END—

What Are Your Secrets (to a Happy Relationship)?

07 Monday Nov 2011

Posted by in Relationships and Family Life

≈ 10 Comments

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You know, I’m not the only one with opinions around here.

My readers are smart, savvy, funny, and wise. I can tell from the comments they post and the e-mails they send me.

So, for a change of pace, I thought that today it might be fun to let them do some of the work. And by them, I mean you. If you’re reading this on BlogHer, you’re invited to chime in, too!

What are your secrets to a happy relationship?

I’ve created a new page on my site where I’ll be listing your suggestions.

If you prefer to remain anonymous, that’s fine. Or you may simply use your initials (although I’d love to know what state you’re from). If you’d rather shout from the rooftops your secret to a happy, healthy relationship, then please, by all means, include your full name and the state in which you live.

If you have a favorite quote about the topic that you’d like to share, please share that, too! All I ask is that you include the name of the person you’re quoting, and, if you discovered the quote in a book, the name of the book. That way we can all expand our reading list.

It’s easy to participate. Simply share your quote in the comment section at the bottom of this post—either on The Midlife Second Wife’s site or where the post appears on BlogHer. You may also send an e-mail to marci dot keyword at gmail dot com.

That’s it! I look forward to reading your additions to our compendium of wisdom.

Thanks & love,

Marci, aka
TMSW