Where are you parked?

It's a question we're asked to consider, in a group I'm involved with. "Where are you parked?" asks what's your status? Are you safe, secure, comfortable? Are you in a good place, off the road, garaged, sheltered?

Do you park beneath the trees, where birds poop on your hood and windshield?

Are you out in the open, so no one can hide near your car?

Have you pulled off the narrow pavement, precariously tipped, wheels just inches from the cliff?

Or are you stuck, mired in mud, wheels spinning and going nowhere?

Is someone else in your space?

Do you idle slowly among the rows, watching for back-up lights? Are you motionless, waiting, blocking all behind you, just to nab the best space? 

 Did you pull up to the red curb, motor running, because you're just going to run in real quick and be right out again?

Does the gravel pop beneath your tires as you pull in, signal your arrival, so the kids and dogs all pile shouting out the door greeting you, "She's home!"

Did you feed the meter?

Is the chit from the last place you parked trapped beneath your wiper, fluttering before your eyes through the glass, but you can't dislodge it?

Some people don't care where they park; they pull in fast off the road, take the first open spot, then walk with purpose to their destination.

Others back skillfully into their spot, facing forward, so they can make a quick getaway when they need to.

At work, I park in a private lot, wave a keycard magic wand to open the gate, but when I leave it's one-way out, don't back up into the spikes, severe damage may result.

On the way home, I pull over on the shoulder, stop and smell the ocean for a little while. The beach drops away from the road, below on the sand, the sound of whizzing traffic quiets. Then when I'm ready, I'm back up on the shoulder, behind the wheel, watching in the mirror for a break in the cars to pull out fast, get up to speed and join them.

Where are you parked?

Sad sack

The beach at Castellammare, Pacific Palisades

 Sad Sack was an old comic strip character, dating from the 1940s. He was a lowly private in the U.S. Army, a poor dumb schlub experiencing bad luck, humiliation, and indignities at the hands of an uncaring establishment - and due to his own ineptness.

It's funny, though, to think of how one's sadness or depression would be something you carried along with you, in a sack, or a bag - a piece of scuffed up, awkward, burdensome luggage you can never check.

I've been feeling like a Sad Sack lately. It's 45 days until my job ends, and I still haven't succeeded in finding a new one. Job hunting is always a challenge, and I know from experience how much you have to deal with rejection and uncertainty when you job hunt. But knowing that doesn't makes me feel any less like a failure, and that makes me sad. I regret imagined things I might have done to deserve this; I think of opportunities I failed to rise to. I feel like I am carrying my sack of Sad along with me in everything I do, these days.

New haircut

In preparation for our trip to Paris, I thought I'd better pay more attention to my appearance - my last haircut was in March, and I'd let too much time pass. So yesterday I went to Julianna and got a cut and highlights.

What do you think?


I like a hairstyle that's easy to take care of, because I'm no good at styling my own hair. Or anyone's hair, probably - not having any girl-children means I never had the opportunity to try.

Julianna's a good stylist, and she tries to teach me basic techniques so I can blowdry my hair at home. So I watch, carefully, as she twirls the round brush under the blast of the hot dryer, shaping the smoothly turned-under sides and lifting volume at the crown.

I always ask what product she uses, and sometimes even buy it from her, though I never actually use it.

And the blow-dry lessons? Well this morning I gave it a try.

My hair is less than two inches long. How can it be possible to tangle the round brush so badly I can't get it out?

Helpful Instructions - Lesson Two

In 1902, my great-grandfather George gave my great-grandmother Fanny a little red-leather bound book for her 48th birthday.

This little book, by Mrs. Emma F. Angell Drake, M.D., titled "What A Woman of Forty-Five Ought to Know" was intended to fill my great-grandmother in on the upcoming changes she would soon experience in her life as a woman. Mrs. Drake called this change "the climacteric" - we call it menopause.

Mrs. Drake concurred with the conventional wisdom of the time that a woman's primary purpose in life was to bring children into the world. She believed that women's lives had three stages - carefree girlhood, followed by fruitful years of motherhood, followed by her later years. Mrs. Drake, like most people at the time, believed that at the end of her childbearing years, a woman had no further use for sexuality.

But unlike her contemporaries, Mrs. Drake believed that a woman's post-sexual years were rich with possibility and potential. Her mission was to inspire older women to be active and productive members of society.

Mrs. Drake had a refreshing view of the physical aspects of menopause - for her time. She believed that menopause was a natural process, rather than one of ill health, and that a woman should experience no physical discomfort - that is, as long as she had lived her life properly and fulfilled her womanly duty.

In 1902, my great-grandmother Fanny was the best possible example of the kind of woman Mrs. Drake was talking about.

She had, after all, had started her family at the age of 22. By 1902, she had successfully produced six children. She was married to an accomplished man. She was healthy. She had made her contribution, and was now poised to gracefully enter into the next phase of her life.

Mrs. Drake writes:

"Nothing is more important to a woman of this age, than to disabuse her mind of the thought that her usefulness is passed, and that henceforth, she may perhaps do some little thing in the line of comfort...but may not attempt any great or important work. Her life is but at its meridian, and some of the best, if not the very best work is waiting to be done... Possess yourselves of this thought, dear sisters, and take up your work with renewed vigor and painstaking...Are there things that you have longed to do in the days when your hands and heart were full? Then believe that God gives you opportunity now to do them, and go about them with a determination."

I can just imagine Fanny reading this, satisfied that she had been fruitful and brought forth the next generation, wondering what to do next.

What, I wonder, is more lasting or more important - the works that we do or the children we bring into the world?

How did it turn out for Fanny? Well, that's interesting.

Four of her six children had no children of their own. She only had two grandchildren, and only one of them - my Dad - went on to have children of his own. Her only son died in 1921 without passing on the family name.

Yet her childless daughters accomplished many things. Her second daughter served her church and brought benefits to the poor of her city. Her third daughter taught music. Her fourth daughter served as a nurse to soldiers of the First World War. More about them later.

This is a daguerreotype of Fanny as a child in South Carolina, sometime in the 1860s. She's probably 8 or 10 years old. Do you see in her face the woman she became in the portrait above?

Helpful Instructions

I come from a Southern family. As relatives passed away over several decades, my parents' home became the repository of family belongings. When one aged aunt died in the 1960's, dishes from her dining room sideboard were shipped to our house. When another aunt died in the '80s, we received some end tables whose drawers were stuffed with things. When a second cousin died, scrapbooks and boxes of photographic slides arrived.

No one has had time to go through all of this stuff, so when my brothers and I visit Mom, we can open a drawer at random and paw through bits and pieces of family history. It has all become intermingled, so that one encounters an autograph book from 1889 that belonged to my Great Uncle George, photos of my great grandfather's funeral in 1915, followed by snapshots of my mother and her best friend together in 1940, and my own brothers' high school report cards from 1973.

One evening, fueled with a glass of Hiram Walker on the rocks, I found a small red-bound volume titled "What A Woman of Forty Five Ought To Know," authored in 1902 by Mrs. Emma F. Angell Drake, M.D. Although we only have this single volume, the back of the book indicates it's one of a series of turn-of-the-century sex-education manuals for both men and women, called the "Self and Sex" series.

In the flyleaf, written in pencil is the inscription : "To my beloved wife on her forty eighth birth day, with love and congratulations [illegible] - Husband."

I think this was a gift for my Great-grandmother from her husband. Is that sweet, or what?

Being that I'm a bit over 45, I figured I better catch up with Mrs. Drake to see if I've missed any crucial information. So I read the book. And I've decided to bring her helpful instructions to other needy women in the blogosphere.

So...pull up a chair. Pour yourself some Hirams. Let's peruse the lessons in Chapter I, "Knowledge of the Climacteric Necessary."

Mrs. Drake announces that we approach the age "that is large with importance for all our after years," and laments that many women are ignorant of the physical and mental changes yet to come to us, leaving us ill prepared. Hence her efforts here. She helpfully explains that the "climacteric" is another term for the "change of life" or "menopause."

She assures us, "The years which you are approaching have in them nothing to be feared. The Creator fitted you for child-bearing, and when this period has run its allotted course, He reconstructs your physical nature for another line of work."

What an enlightened view. I'm digging the thought of "another line of work." Although, truth be told, at the time My Son was born, I lived a kind of free-lance existence. I viewed motherhood as yet another one of the various things I did, including working in the theatre whenever I could, serving on my union's Executive Board, and gardening. Motherhood seemed...well...not exactly a committed profession so much as something I turned down other work for. I know others of you viewed it differently, but in any case, we are all poised on the brink where the Creator is going to give us some transitional career counseling.

Anyone's drink need freshening up?

Mrs. Drake goes on to emphasize the importance of our Life Career Change: "woman may emerge from the change stronger and wiser, and readier for earnest service, of the kind the world stands most in need...." Now you're talking. Ambassador? CEO? Hillary Clinton?

She reminds us how important our role as childbearers are, that "all your girlhood is shaped by the Creator, to fit you for motherhood. You come from childhood into womanhood with the desire for home and children in your heart, and all the way along until this is realized you are being fitted for it." I can guess that Mrs. Drake would probably not approve of my view of motherhood as a kind of high-demand volunteer committment.

Mrs. Drake closes Chapter I with the admonishment that it is the duty of every woman to "keep hold of herself, mentally, physically and spiritually," so that we can get through menopause successfully.

The world needs us, she claims; to do our "share of work in the world's physical and spiritual redemption."

Does a car come with this job? Because I am so hoping for a pink VW beetle convertible.

In future, this blog shall regularly meet for lessons from Mrs. Drake's good book.