Ode to Dad

I was eleven years old when I attended the second audition of what was to be too many to count.  I attended a small ballet company on the east-side of Columbus, the second of the three ballet schools of my youth, and in my opinion, the best in the city.  The audition was for membership in "The Company" which performed publicly and at schools around the city.  I had not made the cut the year before, but now, at eleven, I had so much more going for me...!  By the time I was eleven, I was probably in dance class four or five nights out of the week.  Both of my sisters danced.  My mom took classes, and also, for a period of time, taught movement classes for very small children.  Someone in our family was at dance class at Alan Miles Ballet Academy on almost any given night between 1983 and 1987.

My father did not take ballet classes.

Remember Me Tall

Among the many steps into adulthood that I must take is the uncomfortable action of creating a will.  I guess its time.  It's always time, isn't it?  It is always the perfect time to make a will, just like it is always the perfect time to break-up with a married man or start those exercise videos or that watercolor class.  All choices, I recently read, are made from either faith or fear.  Let's see:  I choose to sort the stacks of Cd's in our apartment rather than create a will out of . . . ?  

Yet, I am married now, and the thought of my husband having to make difficult decisions without my advice fills me with more fear than faith.  I mean no offense, only that I think about these things, and he doesn't, and when I bring them up, I have little faith that he will remember the conversation at all.  Especially if I am dead.

Abundant Sunshine

This morning, the light fills our little apartment in Queens in a way that makes me feel hopeful beyond any shred of reason.  Nothing particularly special is scheduled for this day -- unless you are of the belief that the world is coming to an end.  I think that's pretty special... and I don't even know which end of that boxing match I want to be on.  Either, I float up to the sky and feel 'chosen' - a middle-child's dream come true- or I am left to suffer the ruins of our planet and forge a new world with the little that we have -which doesn't seem that different from what we're already doing.

where's the vino? where's the bean?

where's the vino
I've given up drinking for a while.
(Waiting)
No, I am not pregnant.  Naturally, this is the first questioned I am asked after I drop the on-the-wagon bomb.
No, not pregnant, just need a break from my favorite escape.
No, I have not given up coffee too.  That would be cray-cray.  (The "bean" in the title refers to the me-bean, not the coffee-bean.)
The vino has been released of her duties for the time being.  The bean is laying low.
There is, however, a quarter-bottle of red wine on the kitchen counter, which on my (drinking) watch could never have survived the days between last Thursday --when it was opened and so cooly abandoned by the male guests we had that night-- and now.  The quarter that remains is probably embittered. With its label directed ever-so-slightly out the window it appears to be looking away haughtily, defiantly:  "Fine.  You won't have me?

i got dance in my pants

Three years old was "too young" to participate in Miss Linda's Ballet Academy in the mid-seventies in Columbus, Ohio . . . or so it had been decreed.  "Ballet I" For Children would consist of primarily five-year-olds, though Linda Robinson would occasionally accept a "Mature Four."

I was not yet four.

To say I was a "Mature Three" prances beyond oxymoron and does a double pirouette on the word "lie."  My mother is a truthful lady, so she didn't even try.

Thus, week after week, three-year-old me was expected to wait patiently for 30 or 40 minutes of torture as the Fives and "Mature" Fours plie-ed and relevee-d and -oh!- performed leaps across the floor diagonally (!) at Miss Linda's store-front-sorry-excuse-for-a studio in suburban Ohio on Wednesdays at 4:00.

Cut my three-year-old heart out.

I will die.

6 inches of st. patrick's day

Please click here:  http://www.examiner.com/ny-in-new-york/le-pain-le-park to help my writing success on Examiner.com.  Each article is 200-300 words about the coffee shops where I write the real stuff for vino and the bean.  Below is the real stuff.


St. Patrick's Day had been a rough day.
Teenagers in green tights under scandalously short shorts and shamrock make-up cluttered the streets, the sidewalks, and even Central Park.  Why are you in Central Park?  There is nothing adolescently sexy about this place.  They must have been Juniors or Seniors in high school because their clothes were just provocative enough that they might be confused with college kids, but their presentational smoking was not.
She glanced lazily in their direction, not wanting to be bothered, not wanting to look their youth in the face, or in the midriff, or anywhere.

do you think they have facebook in heaven?

A:  Do you think they have Facebook in heaven?
B:  Nah, they have better things to do.
A:  Hmm.  Do you think they have Facebook in hell?
B:  No way, dude.  No pleasures in hell.
(Pause, while A. considers this.)
A:  Do you think they have Facebook in limbo?
(Pause, while B. considers this.)
B:  Facebook is limbo.

The sixteenth anniversary of my older sister's death came and went.  I buffered myself with a visit from my long-time friend, Megan.  A pedicure.  A pancake.  A few drinks as the sun set on the Sarasota water.  The subject did not go untouched, but it did not drag the day into a melancholy ditch, as I have been known to burrow on other occasions.  When the moon replaced the sun on February fourth this year, it literally smiled on Megan and me.  (And, you know, dear readers, how infrequently I use the word "literally.")  The moon appeared as just a sliver of a thing, but turned on its butt with its pointy ends up.  In the middle of the sky!  It was impossible to document on my digital camera, so you must just take my word for it.
Lots of people remembered her, my deceased sister, on Facebook, which I find sweet, and yet, odd, in this way:  having died in 1995, she would not even know what "Facebook" is.