I ended up at a 5:30pm spin class the other day. Odd for me because I like to work out in the morning when the world is quiet, and most people are still in bed. Even more strange because 5:30pm is the witching hour, that sensitive and highly unpredictable time of day. Typically, I’m hauling kids between school and practices and tutors. Or I’m at home throwing dinner together, monitoring...
Dear Sylvia, I don’t like writing letters, but given how you’ve been avoiding me lately, I feel I have no choice. I’m sure you’re thinking, I have no idea what she’s talking about. Avoiding what? How about we put the bullshit aside and choose the high road for once. Because I saw the look on your face at Whole Foods. The other day? Riding that pain-in-the-ass moving sidewalk down to...
My husband and I have been together for 24 years. Married for 17 of them. There have been incredible highs and spiraling lows. We’ve had two nickels to our name and stretches of great bounty. Some years go by when we hardly see each other. Which is when things usually come to a head and we start making announcements like, “I’m done!” or “Maybe we should just end it.” Of...
My sister and I were talking the other day. I was home sick with a cold; she had the week off work. Out of the blue, something urged her to check in on me at the exact same time I happened to be walking by my often misplaced phone. I picked up and what ensued was a rare and extravagant two-hour conversation. Honestly, I can’t remember the last time I...
My son is fast. He talks a million miles an hour. Moves with bursts of energy. When he’s excited about something, his ideas spill out of him so quickly that I almost have to follow behind with a bucket just to catch a couple. As he’s matured and gotten to know himself better, he’s learned how to corral that energy when needed. At his school orientation the other day, where...
Six months ago I started this blog. The inspiration came in the days following a friend’s death and a profound moment I witnessed when her 89-year-old mother pointed out that her dying body did not define her; that her spirit was ageless. It was one of those life-lesson movie moments that rarely come around. A moment so timely and exact that it caused me to stop and acknowledge the low-boil...
You know that scene in the movie about an insecure middle age guy who thinks he still has the chops of a 20-year old and tries to prove his virility by taking on some physical challenge that, completely inappropriate for his years and fitness level, lands him in the hospital? There are tons of them, but the first one that jumps to mind is that scene in Daddy’s Home where...
I am a sucker for a dance floor. Maybe it’s because I wasn’t allowed to go to dances when I was young and I’m now trying to make up for it, or because dancing feels like the only appropriate response to hearing a great song, or because when you dance nobody cares who you are, or what the booty that you’re shaking looks like. Indifferent to one’s God, politics, economic...
I can’t seem to sleep lately. When I finally crawl into bed after shutting down the house, flossing my teeth, and setting two alarms (one for 5:20 the other for 5:30, somehow convinced that the 10-minute respite softens the blow), my brain turns on, indifferent to the 18-hour day we just clocked. Head in pillow, duvet tucked around my neck, I stare into the black thinking about death. Death. Inevitable,...
I work out at a barre studio in the SFV of LA. If you’re a valley local, you’ve probably been there at least once, maybe after purchasing a Groupon, or on January 1st having just resolved to get in shape. My friend, Kirsten, took me for the first time 13 years ago when the studio was still relatively new and filled with young women (many of them dancers), plus a smattering...
There’s so much noise around turning 50. Does one deny being a half-century old? Embrace the achievement? Fight like the devil to turn back the clock? Without question, this age instigates a new chapter with bigger stakes and a growing sense of urgency. Given our youth-obsessed culture and my own compulsion to stay young, I wondered how honestly I could write about this milestone. Fifty on Fifty is my experiment.
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