MountainMornings

Where were you when Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon? The nostalgia this week is killing me.

The summer of 1969 I was a few weeks away from my starter marriage, living in a basement apartment in Cambridge, MA. My roomie, Alicia and I, had a small TV perched on a chair in the corner; I can picture it now like an old Polaroid developing slowly. We stood there watching the grainy image, marveling sure, but also discussing our plans for the weekend like most young girls.

Alicia’s father had invented some kind of outdoor/basement/door, Bilco? Yup, and it’s still in business! https://www.bilco.com/

There I was in a basement, with an heiress to basement doors, looking at the moon’s surface. I was too young to really understand the significance of what we were seeing. We were both Catholic, and our handsome Catholic President had been shot, then MLK and Robert Kennedy; I’d dropped out of school to work at Harvard, and for no good reason I can think of now, I was planning a wedding. 19 years old and full of my own insecurities and vanities – 1969 was a very strange year.

I agreed with President Kennedy that anything worth doing was going to be hard, and that would make its success so much sweeter. After all, how could we revel in our happiness, if we didn’t know despair? How much despair could a teenager know?

Well, I’d had 2 fathers die, a biological and a step-father, and Bob was going to Woodstock! The love of my life was gone, so I thought, and I was making the best out of a bad situation. Better to marry a law student than to continue seeing the phantom of love lost on the streets of Boston. I dug in my heels and had bridal photos done; whatever they put in Catholic churches about up-coming weddings was publicized in his Ohio newspaper.

Did I tell you that Henry Winkler, aka the Fonz, was an upperclassman at Emerson College on Newbury Street in Boston? I was a lowly Freshman/person when we met and he was bound for Yale Drama School. Did I mention that I broke my leg skiing with a Brown student? There had been a few suitors, including one from Colorado I almost married, but I chose this law student because I thought Nelly Bly and the Flapper would approve, and because he was so unlike my high school ghost.

He was rigid, and rule-bound, an Eagle Scout from Cleveland.

We went to the moon, not because it was easy. And I went to Westchester County, NY precisely because it was hard. Because that’s what girls were expected to do in the 1960s. And we had 2 pretty good years and 2 pretty bad years when I sought the first divorce in Connecticut history due to “irreconcilable differences.” It was the 2nd wave of feminism, and I jumped on board.

Where were you when we landed on the moon? This was us when Great Grandma Ada turned 95 in June!

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My sister Kay is home in her vintage apartment. She’s been here for over 50 years, as long as I can remember. Stunning artwork is sprinkled around her dusty pink walls, it seems that nothing has changed. The old lady upstairs is still moving furniture every night.

Luckily the doormen are divine! That is a very important part of life on the Upper East Side.

When I was a teen I would arrive at the Port of Authority-now I wonder about that moniker but then I took it for granted- and she would meet my bus. We’d hail a cab and head uptown. There were no lines, no Uber.

Kay was my beautiful big sister. She taught me how to walk in NYC, never looking UP like a tourist. She told me not to smile at strange men. We went to the finest restaurants and she would say, “Order anything you want!”

Kay would correct my speech, so that a NJ accent never took hold.

I admired and adored her as only a little sister could. Marriage just wasn’t her thing, she tried it for awhile, but a wild rose is hard to tame. So when she fell and broke her hip she was alone.

Our niece Karen drove up from DC before her surgery and Kay told her a sub-acute rehab hospital was not in her vocabulary. When I arrived on the Fourth of July she was eager to recover. But please people, don’t end up in a hospital when new residents are starting their training, or on a holiday weekend.

Recovery can be slow going.

Today I walked down Madison Avenue making faces at the children clutching the hands of their nannies looking down at their phones. I would always get a smile.

I stopped to pet the French Bulldog who just returned from Nantucket. His name is Gus!

There are more nail salons than I remember. The Armory where the police kept their horses is now a school. Things change, but not my sister’s apartment.

In this heat wave she is worried about running the AC. It is a balancing act; I turn it on and she turns it off. She grew up really poor, whereas I guess I was just poor. She was only 14 years old when our Father died and and the Year of Living Dangerously commenced.

It was a midsummer nightmare on the Fourth of 1949.

Now post-surgery my sister Kay is rallying as usual, walking with a rollator and taking no prisoners. The Flapper would be proud!

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Tonight we had a bonfire on the beach. The Bride’s friend actually lives here, in Old Blue Mountain Beach (yes I get the irony), so we roasted hot dogs and made s’mores over a small fire. It was heavenly, fueled with margaritas and a yellow flag.

The yellow flag means the Emerald Coast is putting on its best show of small waves in a peaceful sea. We’d been floating in the waves all morning like turtles, so this was the perfect ending to our vacation.

I’d just finished reading Chelsea Handler’s new book, “Life Will be the Death of Me,” and was about to start Elizabeth Gilbert’s new book when we got the call.

My sister Kay broke her hip.

Kay is my big sister, the beautiful one who always pulled us out of jams and never told our mother. She was the responsible one. But she also married young and then became a “gay divorcee.” She isn’t gay in that sense, but she did have a lot of fun! Traveling the world as a stewardess with National Airlines, I remember visiting her in NYC and never wanting to leave.

Leaving the beach will be hard but seeing my sister again will be just what the doctor ordered. She’s had surgery only two days ago and has already been discharged to her apartment on the Upper East Side. She is so much like the Flapper, strong and resilient. When PT tried showing her how to walk slowly with a rollator, she insisted on going faster!

So long powdery sand. So long beach. And Happy Fourth of July everyone. I’m never driving on this holiday but I will be flying north.

Bob is the sun to my moon. He took this picture tonight while we were catching sand crabs.

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Ever since the kids were little, we’ve headed for a beach. At first it was a caravan to Martha’s Vineyard with dogs and friends for a month each year. Gay Head was the destination, a wild and wonderful coast lined with rosa rugosa.

Then we moved to the Jersey Shore so we just lived on the beach every summer. There were birthdays and weddings at the beach club, but mostly we spent long, lazy days swimming in the ocean and reading in our cabana. The Corgis joined in the fun, waddling in the waves.

It’s been over 30 years now that we’ve been going to our paradise in the French West Indies. Our adult children still want to travel there with us and in retrospect, it’s a blessing when your children grow up and like spending time with you. Lucky for us, their spouses enjoy it as well!

So now that we have a Love Bug in school, we’re trying out a new beach summer vacation. It seems that Nashville folks migrate to 30A on the FL Panhandle for fun in the sun at the beach. The L’il Pumpkin loves to make sandcastles while his big sister likes to read. Bob and I stroll holding hands at the water’s edge, like otters who sleep holding hands so they don’t float away.

30A is a blend of Long Beach Island and Oak Bluffs. The planned communities like Watercolor are not my style but there are plenty of charming options for everyone.

Tonight we’re cooking in and maybe watching the debates – should we turn on the TV?

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That’s Bob’s answer for anything bad that happens – you forgot your passport, an event is cancelled, your plane is delayed, a friend is getting a divorce… You name it and my stoic husband will most likely think for a few seconds, before reminding me that indeed, nobody died! Skip straight ahead to the point of most ER doctors, avoid all that mushy, sentimental feeling stuff in between. Unless of course, someone did die.

We were having a great day with the Grands; lunch at Panera and an early afternoon movie, “The Secret Life of Pets 2.” In the middle of the movie Bob asked me if I had my purse? Of course I said, it was right on my lap. I always sit with my purse on my lap in a movie theatre because once when the Bride was in high school she had her wallet stolen right out of her purse which she had placed on the floor!

Unbeknownst to me, my husband was getting some fraud alert texts on his cell. I didn’t know it but so was I, on my silent cell, in my purse, while he must have felt the buzz in his pants pocket. The movie was over, the evil monkey got shot out of a cannon and disaster had been averted, all the pets were back where they belong, the credits were rolling and Bob stood up and asked me if I had my wallet?

Well it’s true nobody died, but my heart sank as I searched inside my purse in that semi-dark theatre. How is this possible? Then it felt like I’d been gut-punched – my wallet was gone.

The thief was a pro I’m sure, but my purse was some boho macrame backpack that didn’t have a zipper or a latch to close it. It had to have happened during lunch, with two kids, while it was slung over the back of my chair. Going forward I will need to keep my purse on my lap during restaurant meals too…

In the course of maybe two hours the thief had charged over $5,000 on my credit cards. FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS.

We didn’t know that until we were calling the banks in my car outside the theatre, trying to explain what fraud means to two children sitting patiently in their car seats in the back, while we listen and juggle and push numbers on our phones to finally get a human voice on the other end and explain what had happened. Chase. Barclay’s. Target.

• What is your mother’s maiden name?
• What are the last 4 digits of your social?
• What is your zipcode?
• What is your driver’s license number?

I was shaking, the thief had my license too. How could this customer representative ask me for my driver’s license? Bob was driving home because I couldn’t think clearly, I’d been assaulted in every way except physically. I had to cook Sunday dinner for the Bride and Groom, and I had to wait for a lovely police woman to come to my house so I could file a report.

As it turned out, the Target card, the one I only use at Target and must put a PIN number in to use, was the charm. While other cards were declined, the Target card was accepted as a credit card at every store they hit with my wallet. The special wallet I bought to ward off theft with a magical RFID blocking technology is of no use to an old fashioned pick-pocket.

And all that extra added protection Target claimed to have implemented after their 2013 data breach didn’t help my situation at all.

Just now, I realized that my Medicare and Anthem health insurance cards were also in my wallet. I wonder now, if I did begin to die from a broken sense of trust in the world, would my medical bills be paid? I wake up in the morning feeling refreshed until seconds later I remember, and a sense of dread falls over me like a veil. How long does this last? This feeling of incompetence and stupidity? Will it just blend into Alzheimers until the end?

I didn’t know that the banks decline paying for those fraudulent charges, I will not be responsible for them, and that it is the actual store that will have to pay for $700 worth of gift cards. $300 worth of cigarettes. I experienced a theft, but it’s each individual store that is being defrauded. Maybe nobody died, but still. This was my #MondayMood

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