Midlife Musical Confession

There's a guilty pleasure I just have to confess. And then explain.

Not that there isn't already a list. Belgian chocolates. High heels. Coastal Georgia. Guys in uniform. The movie "Gladiator." Tropical drinks with little paper umbrellas. Down pillows and flannel sheets...as long as the air conditioning is still on.

But this is a chapter, and a phenomenon, all its own.

I'm a grown woman over forty...and I like the Taylor Swift song "Love Story." There I said it. Out loud.

You know the song. You can't possibly escape it on the radio. It's the one where she's Juliet and he's Romeo and it's got pre-feminist-to-the-point-of-Neanderthal lyrics like "Romeo save me..."

Good God, I thought, the first dozen times I heard it...or heard enough of it to change the channel with a cringe. How utterly dopey! How ridiculous. How unreal. How...godawfully uncomplicated and fairy-tale and unconnected to the realities of love and relationships. And for heaven's sake, didn't anyone read to the end of the Romeo and Juliet saga and realize that the star-crossed lovers died?? So much for teenage romance!

So that would be the starting point of the journey to actual affection. Active dislike, morphing into something else. Just like real life. Or any number of romantic movie comedies, such as "You've Got Mail." Okay, Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan had a lot to do with making that one work, but still...it's a formula for romance on the big screen. Even Harrison Ford got to be loathed by Anne Heche in "Six Days Seven Nights"...and nobody doesn't like Harrison Ford.

It was the beat that caught me first. Rhythmic and pulsing and steady and smooth, like the slap of a long plastic jumprope on a sidewalk during summer vacation. Three girls killing time on a warm afternoon, the jumper in the middle always changing, the rhythm as consistent as crickets chirping. Equilibrium as perfectly maintained, despite the occasional shift in positions, as a gyroscope spinning on a picnic table. I found myself humming along, even after I changed the channel. And then I quit changing the channel altogether, and looked at it through a new window.

Everything that drove me nuts about it at first--especially the cloying fairy-tale neediness of it--became a window into being a teenager again. Back in the day when all you could see was what you wanted, absolutely, with all your heart, right now, with no thought for the future other than the credo that love could conquer all.

Remember those days? Mine, I'm sure, were fueled by a childhood spent reading too many romantic suspense novels full of dukes and other noblemen waiting to rescue their damsels in distress and whisk them off to a life of happily-ever-after. It took me years to outgrow that template.

Well, by the time you've passed thirty-nine, you've grown up and figured out that no matter how grand love may be, it doesn't always conquer all. And it certainly doesn't get the toilet fixed or the living room painted or the dog taken to the vet. Real life is full of real frustrations, big and small, and tender eurphoric feelings sometimes have to get put on hold for just a wee bit of time while you run into the corner gas station to buy a carton of milk. Because you just can't live on love all the time...groceries and utilities and clean laundry are usually involved too.

But...

I've realized that when I listen (and even...ulp...sing along to) "Love Story," I don't have to think about real life at all. It takes me right back to being sixteen and absolutely blissfully ignorant of the myriad disappointments and compromises that real life will offer later. By the time the song wraps up with "Romeo" on bended knee telling our heroine to go buy a wedding dress because he loves her and that's all he needs to know...I get a quick fix of bottomless yearning fulfilled and a "when dreams come true" instant that's about as real as the Disney version of Cinderella, and just as much fun. Reality be damned for just a minute!

And as I've learned just not that long ago, those magic moments aren't entirely lost when your teen years are left behind. I had one of my own in the middle of a gardening project at my house with a man whose pickup truck and leather tool belt and love of blooming things beat out any central casting figure of a prince on a white horse.

One Sunday morning, after the plants were in and the mulch was spread and green things were watered and beginning to take root, the subject came up over coffee of how to create a footpath through the flower garden, which was rather deep in places. I, cursed with character flaws of ambivalence and a pathological fear of commitment and absolutely no imaginary sense of the visual, balked at every suggested solution. Hedged, even, at the idea of going window shopping. For rocks.

So we took the truck out to a local quarry anyway just for something to do, with the fig-leaf of understanding that there were always supplies for his own place that he could buy and therefore it wouldn't be a trip wasted. We walked, hand in hand in the sunshine, over pretty displays of granite and marble and slate and bricks. And when we reached a stretch of red Arizona sandstone, I could suddenly see my heart's desire. And imagine it among my flowers.

I still hemmed and hawed, pricing it out, trying to figure what I could afford, wondering at the enormity of the project, wondering whether I should go back home and think on it for a while longer. Like another week or two. And then Prince Charming cast his two cents into the pot, roughly rounded up to the fact that this was exactly what I wanted, we had the truck with us, it was a gorgeous day, and we might as well go for it.

I still remember the joy bursting in my heart as I threw my arms around him at that point and kissed him in the sunlight somewhere between the limestone and the crushed lava, casting caution to the wind and simply saying "yes!"

As blissfully simple and momentarily satisfying as the ending in "Love Story"? You betcha!

Sheboygan County Courthouse II

An Art Deco gem on the Lake Michigan shore!

Sheboygan County Courthouse I

I promised pictures of the Sheboygan County Courthouse, kid brother to the One North LaSalle building in Chicago. More to come...

One North LaSalle

I sat in traffic as the rain came down, waiting to make a familiar turn to reach a familiar parking lot in what had become a depressingly familiar routine involving family matters and a courtroom in Chicago. I can't think of what drew my attention to the gloomy, dark scaffolding covering a high rise to my left, but as I idled, waiting for the light to change, I looked out the driver's side window. And a few square feet of ornate trim, nearly hidden from sight, sparked a flash of recognition. I searched for the address, and smiled when I realized I'd been driving past the One North LaSalle building all this time.

I'm not an architecture expert, I'm not a history buff. I can't tell a chevron from a Chevrolet. But for the past nine years I've worked in the only Art Deco courthouse in Wisconsin, in Sheboygan, and I know I'm a lucky person for it. Only blocks from Lake Michigan, the courthouse, built in 1934 as a WPA project in the Great Depression, is a visual gem. I walk down hallways of polished peach colored Georgia marble with dramatic black veining to reach my office, but not before passing beneath white ceilings sporting ornate plaster trim in geometric designs. Charming aluminum lighting sconces and heating grills decorate the lobby, and the mail box in the lobby is a work of art itself.

I was so entranced by the building's design that I researched it on the internet, and found that the Chicago architect on the project, K.M. Vitzthum & Co., was also the principal architect for the One North LaSalle building in Chicago. I found pictures of some of the architectural details from the building on LaSalle, such as the plaster trim on the ceiling, and thought "hey neat! Whodathunkit?" The similarity in the lines of the building are unmistakable, though as you can imagine, there's an economy of scale involved in comparing 49 stories with six, and a Depression era project with something from the end of the Roaring Twenties. It just felt good to walk around knowing that the place I love to work in had such sophisticated provenance, and a bigger, far more elaborate version standing somewhere in Chicago's Loop.

I parked the car, took care of family business, and decided to reward myself on the way home with a cup of Starbucks (soy mocha with whip, please) and a visit to the building on LaSalle. Between the rain and the scaffolding, there was no point in looking up to try to grasp the outer grandeur of the building. THAT, I figured, I could always scope out on line. But as I stepped into the lobby, I felt a thrill of recognition. The polished marble walls. The ornate light fixtures. The elaborate heating grills. The delicately angular ceiling designs in plaster above me. The mailbox!!!

The soul of the building was the same. My little courthouse in Sheboygan didn't just have a kissing cousin down in the Loop, it had a big brother! I added up the extra aggravation involved in returning to my car for my camera, slogging back through the rain, and getting at least a half hour closer to the brinksmanship of rush hour traffic...and decided it was worth it. I knew from experience that the parking ramp was going to cost me thirty two dollars anyway, so I might as well get some more fun for the money.

Enjoy! Pictures of the Sheboygan County Courthouse to follow one of these days!

In Plain Sight

In all the years I've been picking Lilies of the Valley, plunking them into vases, swooning over their wonderful perfume and even buying a fragrance called "Muguet des Bois"... I'd never turned them over to look inside until now.

Voila!

Love in the Time of Cupcakes

The last of the "tennis ball" cupcakes set sail this morning, a small but telling harbinger of the fact that I'm going to be facing an empty nest in the fall. Twenty seven years of "hands on" mothering symbolically reduced to two dozen clumps of devil's food cake in little foil baskets. They swooshed out the door with my youngest son, for what would turn out to be his last tennis meet of high school. He graduates in another couple of weeks, heading for college in the fall and instantly turning any use of the words "high school" into the past tense.

I've been making cupcakes decorated like tennis balls--light yellow frosting with the slightest tinge of green, arced with curves and swoops of white icing--for fourteen years now, ever since my oldest daughter signed up for high school freshman girls tennis before the school year even started. Call me OCD, I don't mind! I consider it a badge of honor.

There are fundamental differences between "girls tennis" and "boys tennis" and only some of them have to do with testosterone levels. Girls tennis season starts in late summer and continues barely to early fall, guaranteeing splendid and warm afternoons and entire weekend days watching budding young ladies flit around on the court in bouncing pony tails and miniskirts, suntanned legs flying. Girls tennis, from my experience on the sidelines, has involved matching hair doo-dads with color coordinated ribbons, team posters, lots of conversation, and a great appreciation for cute snacks. Hence the tennis ball cupcakes, a big hit for both my daughters and their teams for a bunch of years.

Boys tennis, on the other hand, starts just on the cusp of very early spring, when winter hangs on for dear life. And here in the upper Midwest, winter's claws are deep. More than one tennis season for my sons has started its first practice as snow flakes were falling. The weather leans more toward rain, and cold, and wind, and if there's coffee involved for blanket-wrapped spectators under grey, stormy skies, it's been hot, not iced. Very few boys sported pony tails, and nobody wore matching barettes. The guys still appreciated the cupcakes...but I don't know that they even noticed the decorative flair right before they inhaled them.

And still, despite the fact that for years my cupcakes have been nearly vaporized in haste (and without a single squeal of how "cute" they were) by their entirely masculine patrons, I clung to tradition. At least once a season I needed to send those sweet, fluffy treats along to a meet, even if, as the years went by and my job schedule got less flexible, another tennis mom would actually have to deliver them for me. Call me crazy, it's been done before.

While the tennis ball cupcakes stretch back fourteen years, the cupcake thing has actually been a fixture for something more like twenty four. Long ago enough that my oldest daughter would have needed to bring a birthday treat for kindergarten. Or preschool. So through the next two and a half decades, the miniature confections were a constant and a comfort amid the multi-tasking, crisis-response mentality that goes into raising four kids with a minimum number of trips to the emergency room. There were cupcakes with sprinkles for birthdays, cupcakes with candy dots for art shows, cupcakes decorated like little ghosts and jack-o-lanterns for Halloween.
This last tradition--the Halloween cupcakes--nearly drove me into the ground once. I had three kids in the same grade school at the same time. The youngest wanted Halloween cupcakes for his second grade class party. I signed on for two dozen, half of them orange and half of them white, with little ghost outlines and pumpkin smiles drawn on with melted chocolate, eyes made from chocolate chips. Then the fifth grader chimed in. I signed on for another two dozen. And then as I started the baking, when I thought of my daughter's class in eighth grade going without my cupcakes on this festive day, I threw caution to the wind. Halfway through decorating seventy two little ghosts and jack-o-lanterns with dribbly chocolate I rethought my enthusiam...but it was too late to turn back.

I was planning to dress up for the second graders' party, and I tweaked my daughter with the thought of showing up in costume to deliver the goods. She's got a dark, sultry beauty to her, and she warned me off. "Mom, don't you dare!!" she said ominously, her eyes flashing like the fiery gypsy in Carmen. I filed that thought in the "hmmm..." pile. Made some soothing mention about bringing a change of clothes.

The next day I dutifully and precariously loaded six dozen cupcakes into the minivan, and set off for school. Fifth grade cupcakes were dropped off and put out of mind. The second grade Halloween party was so cute it could make your back fillings hurt. I think that was the one where I'd made my son a little royal blue cape with fake ermine collar, for his part as the "king" in a teeny tiny little play.

And then the lunch bell rang. I grabbed the last two dozen cupcakes from the van and walked them down the length of the school to my daughter's eighth grade classroom. As I stood in the doorway, her back was to me. A friend she was chatting with looked up, and announced slyly, "Sarah, your mom is here." Slowly she turned... and there I stood, a shallow cardboard box filled with treats utterly overshadowed by my appearance in a Pocahontas style beige fringed tunic with red embroidered trim, black leggings, and a feather in my hair. I bit back a grin, but it was really hard.

My daughter flashed daggers at me with those dark brown eyes. If looks could have killed, I'd be writing this from the great beyond. But at the same time, despite her fourteen year old peer-reviewed fury, I could see the corners of her mouth start to turn up in a smile in spite of herself, at the sheer perversity of my guest appearance. I delivered the goods and quickly exited stage left, fighting back a laugh.

Eight years later we were chatting on the phone as I drove to drop off yet another batch of tennis ball cupcakes for her younger brother's meet the next day. I was going to have to miss this contest too, and so once again the cupcakes were going to stand in for me, making me feel like I was still sharing a part of the adventure. We shared a good laugh about the day I showed up looking like Pocahontas at her eighth grade classroom. At the age of twenty-two, you develope a lot more perspective and forgiveness for antics like that.

I bemoaned the fact that with her in college, I didn't have the opportunity to bring festive or seasonal or downright ridiculous treat to her classes anymore. "Mom, you can bring cupcakes to my class any time!" she assured me. "We'll eat 'em!" I could resist pushing the envelope. If it was around Halloween, could I wear the Pocahontas costume again? There was just an instant of hestitation, then..."okay!" I could just imagine her eyes rolling across the miles between us. Maturity comes in many forms, and learning to humor a mother during a fleeting moment of insanity is a remarkable milestone for a daughter of any age.

I never did drive eighty miles to a college classroom after that to bring a sugary treat to a bunch of accomplished and sophisticated college students. Life just got a little too busy, it seems, though in hindsight I wish I'd grabbed the opportunity. But I still remember laughing at the memory with her, and the beautiful thread of give-and-take the offer and acceptance held, binding us tightly and preciously with love and affection despite the distance.

They were just cupcakes. And then some.

Back in the saddle

The coastal breeze on Sea Island carried a bouquet of aromas. The tang of salt sea air from the Atlantic coast nearby, the lush marshes beside the causeway, palmettos, white gardenias in full bloom. But it was the familiar fragrance of horse hide and fly spray that hit me like a gentle glove across the cheek and made me smile and inhale deeply in recognition.

I was about to go horseback riding on the beach in coastal southern Georgia, and this was a very big deal for several reasons. Despite owning horses for close to thirty five years, I hadn't been on board more than twice in the last fourteen, ever since the riding accident.

I'm a very lucky person. I took a long fall off a tall horse in a jumping lesson when I was pushing my limits in more physical ways, and ended up in a body cast for three months with a fractured vertebra in the middle of my back. Every day, I remember how fortunate I am that I came out of the accident alive, and came out of the body cast hurting...but still walking. The accident was one of those transforming events that divides the world as you know it into "before" and "after." I got braver, I got more intuitive, I went to law school and tested my limits in ways I could never have imagined before. When you start law school with a severe tendency to hyperventilate when called on for public speaking, what are the odds you'll not faint from nervousness when you have to argue before the state supreme court? Pretty slim. If anyone had placed bets, they'd have a nice little nest egg now.

But the horseback riding, which had been part of my life since I was a pre-teen, fell to the side. At first it was a case of still recovering from the accident. I went for a whole year afterward, measuring just how much pain it would cost me to pick up a dirty sock, and keeping a running tally of the number of times I could reasonably bend over in a day before my back quit holding me up. And then I started law school. My theory at the time was that as my kids got older, they would need me less and I'd have more time to devote to school and other things. Any parent of high schoolers who participate in sports would have laughed his or her head off at my naivete. I found that as they got older, I only got busier...but by then it was too late to rethink the plan.

But free time was only part of the problem. As my body gradually regained some semblance of "normal," I found that by that point my horses had finally grown too old and decrepit with age to ride. One suffered from arthritis, the other from emphysema and the occasional case of "founder." They lived out the rest of their thirty-plus year lifespans as expensive and pampered lawn ornaments, their nearness a comfort and a thing of beauty but their "useful" lives done with as far as remotely earning their keep.

I climbed into a saddle only twice after that. Once was a trail ride a few years after the accident, with my eleven year old son and a group of other children who had taken some basic riding lessons through the local recreation department. This, I thought, would be easy. A nice, gentle, completely supervised reintroduction to a part of me that I truly missed. I confess I was scared to death the entire way, uneasy in the saddle, hestitant and unsure. The next time was a few years later, when I took one of my daughters out West for a trip before college. A trail ride through the woods near the Grand Canyon seemed like fun, we thought. Again, I remember an overlay of dread and not much else.

But here I was, staying down on St. Simons Island, Georgia, taking part in the "Scribbler's Retreat" writers conference, and visiting my favorite place on the planet with a whole new perspective. Recalling wonderful week-long spring vacations on St. Simons when the kids were all young enough to get the same Easter breaks, I had wondered, before I hooked up with the conference, whether I would ever have a reason to return to this serene place. And how it would feel to walk the beach solo, without a herd of four children to count heads on continually, like a mother duck checking her trailing brood.

I settled in just fine. Picked up a rental car for a day of "me" time before the conference started, sat on the beach beside a tidal pool and watched a Great White Egret move in stop-motion as he stalked his dinner, admired the last of the blooming azaleas in the area, climbed to the top of the lighthouse, shopped for souvenirs at a delightful stained glass shop, "Pane in the Glass," which had been completely off the register for me before despite driving past it dozens of times on earlier trips with the kids in tow. The same way someone leading a bull by the nose would be reluctant to take him into a china shop.

And in reclaiming myself on the island, I asked my island friend Jeanie to set me up with a horseback ride on the beach. No better place to confront the fears of the past, I thought.

And so here I stood, as the trail steeds rested in their shaded stalls, all freshly groomed and saddled and sprayed for the first ride of the day, steadily munching their hay and smelling like a familiar trip through most of my life. I was matched up with a well-mannered little chestnut mare named "Penny," and once we were properly cinched up and our stirrups adjusted for length, our little band of four riders and a guide set off at a leisurely walk to the shoreline.

I ached in various places for pretty much all of the two hour ride. Knees, ankles, thighs, hips--all were body parts that hadn't been shifted into this position on a regular basis since I'd started having kids. Twenty some years ago. But the rhythm felt good, and the morning sunlight on the ocean was beautiful, and for the first time since the accident I could say that I wasn't afraid.

The ride triggered a sea of memories for me. Weekend riding lessons with my aunt in grade school; Friday evenings spent cantering through the woods on the outskirts of Chicago with my friends in our high school riding club; lunging my buckskin in large circles with voice commands, a long-handled whip cracking the air gently behind his haunches for encouragement; Sunday mornings spent on trail rides when I was eighteen, worshipping at the altar of nature with just my favorite livery horse for company.

It was a delightful trip through banks of memories, and it's still far from over. And it all started with the smell of horsehide and fly spray...