My Must-Have In A Relationship

Some friends of mine were out for dinner and discussing a recent blog I wrote about what a sextysomething considers the most important trait in a long-term relationship. The answers were thoughtful: acceptance, kindness, compromise. I was reminded that I promised to offer my answer.

It’s two words that I think are vital to the durability of a loving partnership. Mental health. Trust me: It wasn’t always my list-topper.

Like many conditions (think weather), it is easier to define what isn’t mental health than what is. Narcissism and a violent temper, for example, are agreed-upon storms that wreck relationships. Addiction is another sign of emotional instability with painful impact on loved ones.  

When I was dating in my 40s after my divorce, I became clearer about what I wanted in a partner. In conversations, in workshops for singles, in researching what makes marriage work, all the qualities I heard, including those my friends mentioned at our dinner, were part of the cluster that for me forms mental health. It is the umbrella of mental health that allows us to be accepting, kind, and capable of compromise. It also allows us to face our shortcomings, own them, and try to fix them to the best of our ability. We are mentally healthy enough to become reliable, giving partners by virtue of the work we do on ourselves over the course of our lives. 

Being human, we all have times when we are less-than, but the bottom line of our behavior stays within boundaries of positive interaction. So, when I made a list of essentials I was seeking in a partner, I put mental health first. Then came kindness to others, as a parent, grandparent, mate and good citizen, and third was generosity. Helping others succeed in life through mentoring and/or financial help was a must for me.

These were the soul-traits of the man I would love and grow old with. Lucky for me, I met him.

What’s on your list? How has it changed?

Staying Safe Watching Baseball

I love baseball. I grew up watching it with my dad who took me to Ebbets Field in Brooklyn to see his beloved Dodgers play. Despite this sports DNA, my older brother rooted for the Giants. I was and am a diehard Yankee fan. My father said I was the only Yankee fan he ever loved.

This loyalty split was possible in my early childhood when New York fielded three viable baseball teams. Come October things heated up in our little den. That small TV box took a lot of verbal abuse as we yelled and cried as our favorite players hit home runs or struck out, taking our hopes for their teams’ entry into the World Series with them.

Yes, life repeats itself. It’s early October and I am married to an avid baseball fan, a man who went to college on a baseball scholarship and played on as many as five teams simultaneously as he aged into playing senior ball. He doesn’t merely love the game; he breathes baseball. He inhabits it, dressing in a uniform from the days of Honus Wagner. He multi-tasks baseball, watching three games at a time: on TV, on his iPad, and on his iPhone. Here’s Jim in fan-action mode

Did I mention that Honus/Jim is a Red Sox fan? He grew up in Rhode Island where the pull of the evil Red Sox Nation wafted over from not too far away Fenway Park. It enveloped him like smog and left him tainted. I write this aware of my hatred, not for the man but his team. I am, as I said, a diehard Yankee fan.

So it’s October 2017, not the 1950s, and we now sit watching the playoffs in a Miami Beach living room on a huge flat screen TV. Yes, Jim has his other two devices turned on, broadcasting the games we are not tuned into on the big screen. Two rules keep us safe in this admittedly hostile environment: no cursing at each other and no hitting.

The Yankees and Red Sox are both still battling it out with Cleveland and Houston. Jim and I have to co-exist. Fortunately, I have had early training in how to live with and love a Dodger fan. This helps me in October as I watch baseball with a man who worships the Red Sox. It’s a cult, and he is brainwashed. By November this hopefully will all be a memory, and we both will feel much better.

No, I don’t love football. Jim can root safely for his team by himself.

Missing You, Missing More…

He’s on a lake in New Hampshire with family and friends. I’m at the ocean on Fire Island, alone. One week: different settings, different lifestyles, different means of happiness. 

For over forty years my husband Jim has spent the fifth week of July at a family camp run by the Boston YMCA. I’ve been his camp buddy since the first year we met and learned to love camp, maybe a pinch less than he did. I brought my daughter there with her family, and now my kids and grandkids are as enmeshed in the camp life and web of relationships as Jim’s family is.

I blogged ecstatically about last year’s camp experience, singing praises of our time together. I was aware change may be coming. Here’s an excerpt of what I wrote:

Getting sick and needing antibiotics is now part of my reality. I will follow medical advice, as I did last year, and hold off making any return decision for now. But if I did sing my last auld lang syne to Sandy in the fifth week of summer, 2016… Wow, was that a wonderful week I had.

This year I couldn’t go. I may have sung my last Auld Lang Syne.  My lungs became infected after camp last year – again. I began coughing heavily and feeling flu-ish. I saw a pulmonologist who in winter of this year diagnosed me with MAC, a tree-and-bud cell pattern in my lungs that reacts to bacteria, mold and other goodies that fill my lungs with mucus. Yes, it’s unpleasant, not fatal, and the cure is being on three antibiotics for one year. I do not want to do this treatment. So I stayed home where I can breathe ocean air and hopefully keep my lungs clear. 

I miss Jim; I miss seeing Michael, Camila, Danielle, Jack and all the grandkids enjoying themselves and deepening their friendships; I miss the campers, the friendliest, warmest people I’ve ever met. I miss the camp and the crafts shack where I made collages alongside my creative friends and son-in-law.

Most of all, I miss feeling healthy enough to go where I want to go and do what I want to do. But I am not a high–risk taker. My health matters. I accept the vulnerability of my sextysomething age, and I’d rather dance at another party than make this camp week my last stand. 

Boo-hoo.😂

Camp ends on Saturday. Then I’ll miss my week-long freedom. 

What has curtailed you? Have you changed or ended a long-loved activity? Why?

Mad at Trump? Watch your own mental health.

A Miami Herald column today: …Trump-Induced Anxiety Disorder blues. My Sextysomething blog on Nov. 12, 2016: I Have PTSD: Post Trumpatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

This isn’t fake news. It’s real!

In February the American Psychological Association reported more than half of Americans, 57 %, considered “the current political climate a very or somewhat significant source of stress.” And things were relatively calm back then.

Three months and a blitz of deeply concerning scandals later, WaPo says White House Trump staffers are exhausted and on the edge of collapse. The Wall Street Journal published an editorial noting the “perpetual turbulence” brought on by a president who “who seems to like it this way.”

Trump fuels the fires around him and TV news cable channels score their highest ratings in years. Angst, fear, and anger are in the air. It’s a potential war among families, friends and co-workers who are apt to strike out against the Other on these grounds: 1. Conservative voters who let into the Oval Office an inexperienced and morally challenged celebrity business man who refuses to show mature restraint or his tax returns; and 2. Liberals who voted for a mainstream politico as morally reprehensible and scarred, despite her broad resume and groundbreaking gender.

Being female didn’t matter. “I’m not just voting for a vagina,” a confirmed Hillary-hater told me after the election. There’s nothing wrong with being wealthy, either, she added.

Lots of people agreed, as the election results showed. Now we have to live with the significant impact of Donald Trump on the 24-hour news cycle, on our minds, and in our hearts. Having PTSD (traumatic or Trumpatic) is serious business. We are all affected.

It isn’t fair or accurate to blame tbe media or political parties for this condition. As sextysomethings, we have survived many a controversy in public life. But the man who won the presidency is maddening, and our getting mad, daily, has consequences we all need to acknowledge. I hope as the summer and scandals heat up, we can keep our own mad-ness at a slow simmer and not burn.

How are YOU feeling in the midst of May Madness? Any suggestions for how to weather the political PTSD? 

Snip, Snap, Over.

Incredible that exactly two weekends ago I woke up in Augusta GA the morning after my granddaughter Hannah’s bat mitzvah to host Sunday brunch for the family and guests still in town. We gathered at my daughter’s home on the wide back porch overlooking a serene lake. The menu was southern adapted for healthy hearts – sausage was turkey and biscuits excluded lard – but the cinnamon coffee cake oozed sweet  butter and sugar and Ooh was that good! Not as good as Hannah’s recitation of her Torah portion and her beauty and warmth that lit up her party and candlelighting ceremony. But a palate-perfect second place aftertaste

The special event is over. So long anticipated and so quickly gone. Isn’t that true of so much of life? We wait, expect, worry, even stress out, then delight in the moment, celebrate, and it ends. What’s next is re-entry: a return to normality, to the everyday routines that define us.

For Hannah the focus shifts from her stardom to school. Her parents can retire from event-planning and take back all their other taxing jobs. For grandparents we can rejoice that we were there and quickly scan for which grandchild, if we are so lucky to have more, may be next to chant in Hebrew the ancient words most American Jews don’t understand, but our hearts respond to in a language of emotions everyone shares. Pride, joy, relief, and that moment of recognition that time is passing quickly. It is true for that child/woman in little heels that match her teen dress and the grandmother in high heels praying she won’t fall when called on to come up to the bima. It is a milestone of mortality. I’m grateful to have been there. Please God, let me make it to the next one. 

We are a family of divorce and death. No grandparents are living on Hannah’s father’s side, and both my ex-husband and myself have remarried. Hannah has two grandmas, two grandpas and various relatives from each of these pairings. We have learned over time how to come together and enjoy the blessings together. We laugh, cry, and blend as well as people who respect the sanctity of an important occasion can. I personally marvel at the healing that has taken place that allows us to sit in one another’s cars as well as next to each other in the synagogue. Maturity comes with good therapy!

One last thought: What did I finally choose to wear for the party? My sextysomething readers may recall the gold gown I wrote about along with the Cavalli hand-painted jacket? The same ensemble I wore to Hannah’s mom and dad’s wedding? Yes, I took this outfit to my wizard dressmaker for an update.

The gown passed muster as is, but the jacket needed tapering and shortening. A few snips and I was dressed for 2016, not the 1990s. I slipped the re-do into a garment bag and flew down to Georgia. In a New York minute the night-before dinner, the Saturday ceremony, lunch, and ballroom gala at night, the Sunday brunch wrap-up, were over. My memories now await being relived through the photographs that were snapped by the sneaky people with cameras, aimed at capturing all those special moments I dreamt of from the time Hannah’s bat mitzvah date was announced until now. We all are waiting, impatiently.

When I realized that two weeks ago today I was at my own Sunday brunch with my whole family after that extraordinary milestone, I was struck by my calendar notation for today. At noon I am meeting dear new friends for Sunday brunch in the Carillon Hotel in Florida. Geography shifts, time flies, marked by very different associations with similar events. Turkey sausage, anyone? I’ll definitely have a biscuit and pass on the sugar-laden coffee cake today.

What are some of your memories of significant events in your life? 

DWT… Driving While Terrified

My daughter had her second PET scan today, about three months after the first which elated us with a clean report. This test result was less rosy: more cell activity than in the first test was seen; the existing tumor which had shrunk is about the same size; and the tiny spot in her hilum reappeared. Her doctor wants her to take a tamoxifen-like drug to ensure there is no estrogen production in her body to fuel a further spread of cancer.

I was driving when she called me. Nine years ago I was driving too when she called to tell me she had breast cancer. Seated next to me was my almost 90-year old dad who was going on his first overnight stay at his girlfriend’s home in south Jersey. This was his first serious relationship following the death of my mother. They were married for 66 years. I tried to take in what my daughter was saying. “I have cancer, Mom.” Then tears. My heart skipped a beat. I felt my hands perspiring on the steering wheel. My father was hard of hearing, a blessing in this situation. I didn’t want to tell him what I had just heard. It would worry him intensely, I thought, and he deserved a good visit with his new love. So I didn’t say a word to him, although he kept looking at me, obviously aware I had just heard troubling news. “What’s wrong?” he wanted to know. His first grandchild held a special place in his heart, and the telepathy was strong. “You’re not telling me what’s going on,” he said. “Oh, it’s about the kids, and they are upsetting her today.” He didn’t believe me, but I was stone-faced and insistent. “It’s nothing, Dad. Relax.”

Neither of us relaxed. I was driving on the New Jersey Turnpike, a road I barely knew. After the phone call ended, I promptly got lost, driving past the exit we were supposed to take. We were invited for lunch and now we would be late. I called my father’s girlfriend to let her know what happened. Her response was sharp and angry. But I gave you excellent directions, I recall her protesting, and our lunch may be spoiled. I disliked her immediately. I told her I’d explain in more detail when we got there. It was not a very happy lunch.

All these memories flooded back as I took Danielle’s call in my car this afternoon. The road was also flooded as the rain fell in pellets on my windshield and the road. I felt the same fear closing my throat and my heart beating harder. I told her that I had heard excellent things about the protocol her doctor was suggesting. That the evidence showed amazing success in battling her type of breast cancer. That our family friend who is an excellent physician had just reassured me about its effectiveness in recent trials. I told her that I loved her and was optimistic. Then I told her that it was raining so hard that I couldn’t talk and drive safely. I reassured her that I wasn’t just hanging up– I’d call soon when I got home.

It took me 3 hours to get there. The parkway I was driving on was flooded and suddenly closed to traffic. Police cars blocked the road and we were forced to exit. I traveled on side roads, once again feeling lost. The windshield wipers cleared the blurred glass. But I had nothing for my eyes. Or my choked voice. I don’t have words that can wipe out the fear we both feel. I do have faith and we have science that is tipping the scale toward higher and higher survival rates in this type of cancer. Every three months my daughter has to undergo a body scan. What it finds is what we have to deal with. It’s a brutal monitor and a lifesaver. This is the reality of living with cancer in 2015. It can drive you crazy, while driving or not.

What is the most difficult conversation you have had in your car?