Another migraine shreds my nervous system. They’ve been showing up more frequently the past couple of years. The assault starts in my shoulder, moves to my neck, then travels to my head where it squats for three days (always three days) before mercifully moving on. My family and close friends who know the pattern roll their eyes and plead, do something, already. I whisper back that I will. And they...
A few months before I moved to Los Angeles I had back surgery. A bulging, cranky disc between my L4/L5 vertebrae suddenly ruptured scattering fibrous shrapnel throughout my spinal canal and leaving me unable to walk. The pain was so intolerable that I pounded scotch just to keep my wits about me for the two weeks it took my doctor to recognize that I hadn’t merely pulled a muscle. An...
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...
When I was 22 I won the lottery. Not the California Power Ball or Mega Millions, but the U.S. Green Card Lottery, circa 1989, awarded by the State Department to 50,000 American wannabes from around the globe in an effort to promote diversity amongst its immigrants. My fiancé at the time (a very white Canadian man) had thrown his name into the hat, and when we arrived home from our...
I am restless. Squirrely. I pace around the empty house with time on my hands and contemplate what substantial project I can undertake to fill the minutes: reorganize our abysmal office, start on taxes, dig into some research I’ve been putting off. But I can’t sit still long enough to focus. Or become interested. So I watch an episode of something on Netflix. I poke at the daily crossword. I...
I’ve been thinking a lot about my twenties. In particular, the drama. All those insatiable and untamable emotions hovering just beneath my skin, instantly accessible at the slightest provocation. Emotions that fueled over-the-top meltdowns filled with gut-wrenching pain and minute-long rants strung together with ingenious expletives. The meltdowns, in turn, producing crying so intense that my abs hurt for the next three days and I was forced to wear sunglasses...
The first time that I ever lied about my age was a couple of years ago. Up until that point–excluding my underage attempts to get into R-rated movies and be served alcoholic beverages– I’d been truthful about my years. The indiscretion in question happened when at my writing group. By the way, I love my writing group. I’ve been in this one, the Tuesday nighters, for about five years. The...
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...
Fifteen years ago, give or take, I took a series of Awareness classes. I’m not sure if I remember, or can even properly explain what they were about beyond the obvious title, but I’m guessing the objective was to learn how to live in the moment (rather than fixating on the past or future) in order to achieve true awareness of one’s feelings, patterns, and the endless looping stories that...
Hallelujah, the tree is down and I am done with Christmas. Thanks to a particularly dry Noble Fir-turned-to-kindling, my family gave me their reluctant approval to kick it to the curb a full week early, so that by 10 a.m. on Boxing Day it was in the bin, the ornaments packed away, and the needles vacuumed up. Don’t get me wrong, I love the holidays: the decorating, the giving, the...
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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