Death and Sex, Tigers and Tightrope Walkers

The first dead person I saw was my grandmother in her open coffin when I was twenty-five years old. That doesn't count the shadow of a dead person I might have seen when I was sixteen years old, the flash of blonde hair through the windshield, the eyes, before our cars were irretrievably smashed together. Like I said, I'm not sure that I really saw this or imagined it, afterward, as I recovered. That is another story. I walked up to my grandmother's coffin holding my father's hand tightly. I've never seen a dead person, I said to him, right before we reached his mother and bent over to kiss her cold cheek. I know he wouldn't have said it then, but at some point afterward my father said, How could you never have seen a dead person? I probably saw scores of dead people before I was half your age! That photo above is some dead relative of mine. The little girl, perched on the stool, is my aunt, the woman behind her my grandmother.Perhaps that is my great-grandfather. Evidently, posing with your dead relatives was a common thing in southern Italian culture. And my father apparently posed in much the same way as my aunt, many times during his childhood. They were accustomed to death.

When I show this photo to people, they peer at it and wonder if it's real. Death. We don't like to think about it very often, we do our damn best to avoid it, and when it comes we're shocked, shocked. Sex and death. We're shocked by both. And we certainly don't write about it until we do.

I am an animal today, pacing my cage or circling the tightrope walker above me. She doesn't see me, doesn't remember how she shed her tutu, plunged from the wire, naked, and wriggled into this skin. How do I get back? Where is the Master of Ceremonies? Sometimes we need the proverbial provocation -- the stick, the prod, a crack of the whip, the leap, a roar, talons unsheathed, the naked body devoured or devouring the beast.

Speaking with your hands

My Italian grandmother (standing) with her sister in Mendocino

My kids make fun of me for many things -- lately it's the "mom selfie" which entails a certain angle that curtails the double chin effect, and they always mock how I use my hands when I talk. My father, whose family is from the Calabrian region of southern Italy sent me the following video with the suggestion I start teaching Italian hand-speak to Oliver as a homeschool option. Here were his exact words: To ensure Oliver's retention of his Italian heritage while being home schooled you might include this as part of his curriculum.  I will test him myself. Last night, I posted my thoughts about the CNN documentary on both Facebook and here and got an overwhelming response which included a heated argument about me expressing the tiniest bit of sympathy for the insufferable Governor Christie and the way the media edits and shapes a debate, so today I admit to feeling a lassitude that calls for something light. Picture me without a double chin, using my hands to say all that.

Enjoy:

)

My dad's visit

Right around the corner from my house and cross the street from this art installation titled Madame Mao on Lenin:

is this:

I just left my father and Oliver wandering the aisles where I imagine they could  live if someone brought them food. There are projects afoot -- lighting and gardening, sprinklers, an end to the large foam sheets that lie in the shed from the last visit. My father is 77 years old and in remarkable shape. We went for a long walk before the OSH odyssey, and during that walk, he told me his life story from about age 12 when he had his first job delivering groceries in upper Manhattan to age 25 when he began what became a nearly fifty year career at Saks Fifth Avenue. There was army service in there, meeting my mother, working as a stockboy and then a clerk and then a very young executive. He went to night school in Brooklyn for nearly ten years but never got a degree.  He is the son of southern Italian immigrants who immigrated to the United States through Ellis Island in 1920. His father owned a bar and grill in Harlem, and last night we had pondered the question of prohibition, wondering whether the business was a speakeasy. Here's a photo of the bar and grill that I've posted before:

So many stories, and I'm excited and grateful to have this time with him to hear them. I intend to write them down, gather up the stories, maybe write a book to share with our family.

More later --

On Being a Peasant

My grandmother (standing) with her sister  at home, Mendicino, Italy

A while back I went to the doctor for the first time in three years. Not the OB-GYN kind but the regular kind although my doctor isn't all that regular as she works in what's called a center for integrative medicine. It's the kind of place where tabletop fountains make a beautiful noise and the receptionist asks you whether you'd like a cup of green tea as you sit on the little sofa in the waiting room and leaf through yoga magazines. Santa Monica breezes waft through the room, It would be nauseatingly politically correct if it weren't so damn peaceful, and while I have to submit paperwork to my insurance company because the center doesn't deal with insurance companies (a plus, in my book, actually!), it's worth the extra hassle and money.

It turns out that I'm perfectly healthy -- my "numbers," the blood work, all that jazz, are well within normal range and for that, I'm very grateful.

Except that I need to lose weight. I knew that already.

Sigh.

A while back I wrote an essay on the tyranny of exercise, how much I hate it, how much I hate that it's so good for you. I think I tied it up with the tyranny of Roman Catholicism, too, but that's another story. But speaking of Roman Catholicism, my Italian grandmother, a devout Catholic, was an incredibly strong woman. It's said that she could carry many bags of groceries blocks and blocks in New York City and then up many flights of stairs. She had worn, leathery arms, one of them covered by a large scar that was the result of stirring tomato sauce that spattered when she was a child. She was quite stout and not particularly cheerful, but she was a good grandmother, tucking dollar bills into our hands for the ice-cream man and urging us to eat more and more of her astoundingly good food.

I doubt my Noni ever worried about her weight and probably took her physical strength for granted. She became quite demented in her old age but died at nearly ninety years of age.

When the doctor laid out the results of my blood work and cheerfully told me that everything looked fine, except for my actual weight, I felt a tinge of annoyance. I'll admit to the insane thought I had that it would almost be easier if there was a life or death reason to lose weight. It seems like I have the constitution of a southern Italian peasant but the desire for a Sophia Loren body.

Today is the second day of a doctor-directed 21-day Cleanse. I'm eliminating sugar, caffeine, dairy, wheat, beef and pork from my diet for 21 days in the hopes that I'll kickstart my metabolism and perhaps take some weight off. I'm going to try to appease the exercise tyrant as well.