I love me a good odd number. Like 25. So easy to add, and multiply. The typical age by which the brain becomes fully developed. The only good coin. Christmas day. My son’s birthday. And zipadeedoodah, drum roll, please, the midpoint of this midlife writing adventure. Yup, I’m standing at the top of the mountain, looking out at the view, thinking that the climb to the summit wasn’t so bad,...
It’s been a long time since I jumped out of bed at the sound of my alarm and said, “Hello, morning. It’s good to be alive!” Rather than celebrate another glorious day of existence, the best I can do is offer up a string of encouragements, hoping my engine will eventually turn over: You can do it. Just put your feet on the floor. One at a time–ew, watch out...
In the late spring of 1989, on a Friday night at a trendy restaurant in downtown Toronto, I stood up (with several drinks in me) and announced to a gathering of girlfriends that I wanted to become an actor. For context, I was there celebrating my upcoming nuptials, and, no, I’d never recited a line of dialogue or stood on a stage in my life. My admission was spontaneous and...
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...
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...
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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