A work in progress

That’s me partying like it’s 1957.

I’m turning 60 later this month. There, I said it.

I know what you’re thinking. “Gee, you don’t look it.”

Work with me here.

The ever wise and wicked funny Anne Lamott wrote a marvelous Facebook post last year about turning 61. She said she thought she was only 47 and then she checked the paperwork. I get it. I don’t know how I got here so fast.

Most folks have a bit of angst about such a milestone birthday and the universe has certainly conspired to humble me as I approach the Big One. Funny, I can remember when 40 was the Big One. At least I think I can remember.

Anyway, my year began with losing my job as the leader of a local AIDS service organization. Now that will do wonders for your self-esteem, especially if you are kicked to the curb as ungracefully as I was. After 11 years of heartfelt service, my office was packed up for me and delivered to my home in four FedEx boxes. Ouch.

I’ve always favored thinking outside the box.

My dear wife has a charming saying she uses in delicate situations: “Now that will hurt your feelings.” That about covers it.

Along with my job, I also temporarily lost faith in what I always thought I knew about loyalty and integrity. That was a terribly distasteful feeling but I’m grateful for the many good and kind people who reached out to remind me that these virtues are still alive and well.

I’m not sure I ever thought much about turning 60 but when I did, I guess I assumed I’d be at the peak of my career, not starting a new one. But perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised. You see, I’ve always been a bit of a late bloomer. I was 26 before I got my ears pierced, 48 before I got my first tattoo (yes, I have more than one) and 57 before I was a bride. Oh, and I was in my mid-thirties before I came out. True story, but when I did come out, I came out loud and proud.

I guess you could say that I’m the slow and steady type and I think that served me well for a very long time but there’s no getting around the reality that I feel the meter running these days. I lost two friends in January – both to cancer – and one of them was only 54. And my oldest friend on earth – we met in the 4^th grade – survived a brutal battle with Stage IV tongue cancer before she turned 60 in April.

You can eye-roll a cliché like “Life is not a dress rehearsal” but it’s true. It’s show time and I plan on making the most of my second act. And now that my bleak career midwinter is behind me, most days I’m very excited about what’s next and on my very best days, I’m even grateful for this opportunity to reinvent myself at such a seasoned age.

A handful of my friends have already retired or are counting down the days but an early retirement was never in the cards for me – not too many careers in non-profit afford you that luxury. And the truth is that I don’t want to retire. Maybe if I won the lottery (which I never play) I suppose I would not work and move to the coast of Maine where I would write the next great American novel. Okay, maybe I have thought about it a few times. (Note to self: Buy lottery ticket.)

One of my favorite books, which was turned into a surprisingly good movie, is The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler. It’s about a rather sullen man who writes travel guides for reluctant business travelers. Imagine Rick Steves not enjoying travel and writing his guidebooks. It’s a delightful premise for a story.

I think I’ve had an accidental career – actually a few of them – and while I very much enjoyed each of them, I’ve never been particularly strategic with my choices. My first career was in retail management as a buyer and then division manager for a department store chain. This was when the economy was booming and the mall was the hub of civilization. “Going to the mall” was pretty much a part of everyone’s weekend vernacular. Yes, kids, there really was a time when people shopped at the mall, in the dark ages before Amazon Prime.

I loved the energy of retail – every day was different. And I loved the seasons, most especially Christmas. You can’t be in retail and survive it if you don’t get excited about the holiday season. I especially enjoyed assisting the husbands who came in on Christmas Eve looking like a deer in the headlights. You could smell the fear – they needed a gift for their wife and the clock was ticking. They were easy prey for an overpriced sale. And they were clueless. Many of them didn’t even know what size their wife wore and they always asked with desperation, “She can exchange this if she doesn’t like it, right?”

Retail could be a real circus during the holidays.

There are so many women out there who have me to thank for the upgrade on their Christmas gifts in the eighties. You’re welcome.

My two stores were in Charlottesville, VA – still the most beautiful place I’ve ever lived – and I got to know a lot of my customers personally. It may sound a little Lake Wobegonish but it felt really good when Mrs. Shifflett came in to buy a dress for her daughter’s wedding and asked me for help. (Oh, you cynics. I don’t eat meat, either, but I know a good burger when I see one.)

I feel like I got to work in the Golden Age of Retail and I was fortunate when the fall came to be able to transition to a new career in fundraising. A friend of mine from retail was working for the Paralyzed Veterans of America (PVA) in Washington, DC and told me about a brand new position in planned giving. I had no idea what that even meant but I was lucky that their program was just getting off the ground and my track record as a good salesperson was enough to get me in the door.

To my utter amazement, I got the job and thoroughly enjoyed my eight years on staff there. PVA was the first time I was out at work and I was received incredibly warmly by the veterans’ community. Those guys loved me and I loved them back. God, they were funny and disarmingly optimistic. And they drank like the sailors many of them had been.

Veterans Day, Arlington National Cemetery, circa 1996. So proud to be an American.

I learned so much – about science and heart – getting to know so many wonderful people in the spinal cord injured community and I can tell you that not a day goes by that I don’t have a moment where I am intentionally grateful for my mobility. That was PVA’s gift to me.

Those good folks also kindled my patriotism in ways that have remained with me over the years. I think of my time there every Veterans Day – on the 11^th hour of the 11^th day of the 11^th month.

If my time at PVA taught me about sacrifice and courage, my time at my last job taught me a lot about stigma and poverty and how they are the natural enemies of HIV prevention. My position also gave me a front row seat to magnificent acts of generosity and compassion – some large ones that came with checks with lots of zeros and some small ones that came in cases of green beans from Costco. All of them mattered.

Fighting the good fight at my last job.

It is an extraordinary thing to spend your work days with passionate people who share a vision and my time there broke my heart wide open in remarkable ways that will inform the rest of my life. And it has ruined me for ever just working for a paycheck.

Nope, I need a side order of a mission statement, even if it’s just one of my own making.

The upside to a forced sabbatical has been the luxury of time to do a lot of pondering about my past and my future. I’ve thought a lot about my parents. Certainly losing them both just a few months apart from each other in my mid-forties was the watershed event of my life. Their deaths, or rather how I handled their deaths, changed the course of my life.

I came across a line in a book recently that stood me still. One of the characters, who has lost a son, explains that he and his wife will often not speak to each other for hours at a time because, “We’ve learned that grief can sometimes get loud, and when it does, we try not to speak over it.” I know now that I tried to escape the deafening din of my own grief in destructive ways and it cost me a great deal. I deeply hurt a few of the people who I held most dear and that can never be undone. And, of course, I hurt myself in ways that only I can fully know.

This has led me to thinking a lot about regrets and for the record, I don’t really buy it when people say they don’t have any. It’s an arrogant reflection on life. I have 1,001 small ones – that I didn’t learn to play the piano, the tragic dress I wore to my senior prom (picture Laura Ingalls in polyester organza) and my early insistence that John Edwards was not a cheater.

Me and my high school doppelgänger, 1973.

But it’s the big ones that I stumble through like thickets at 2:00 AM. I’m not ready for a full confession on those but I will say that I regret saying no more than I regret saying yes. I need to remember this.

I was actually feeling pretty good about myself at 60 until I listened to Bill Clinton’s 42 minute recitation of Hillary’s resume at the Democratic National Convention last week. As I brushed my teeth before going to bed that night, I was afraid to look in the mirror for fear of seeing the reflection of a sloth. Oh well, I still believe in a place called Hope.

That’s me in the mirror. #ImWithHer

I’ll be in California for my actual birthday visiting my younger (damn her) sister. I couldn’t imagine not celebrating this birthday with her. I love her beyond measure and no one knows me as well and deeply as she does. We share an emotional GPS that alerts us when the other is off course in any way. It is an indomitable connection that has kept me tethered to this world in my darkest storms.

Sisters, Sisters. There were never such devoted sisters.

My sister is known for her extravagance and I’m a little nervous about what she might pull out for this celebration. Sissy, if you’re reading this now, I was just kidding about the Tom Ford sunglasses. Sort of.

I didn’t want a big party. I never want a big party. And I most certainly NEVER want a surprise party. And so I will have a sushi (my fav) dinner out with my wife and my sister. The icing on my birthday cake is that my best friend from college will join us the weekend before my birthday for some revelry. She turned 60 in June and is anxious to have me join her in this new bracket so I’m approaching it like signing up for a very exclusive wine club.

I’ve always preferred the more intimate dinner party.

She just sent me the loveliest email that might just be my wish when I blow out my candles. She wrote, “I’m hoping our time might have a magic slow quality to it.” I’m hoping the rest of my life has this quality.

It makes me happy when I just think about looking at those three beautiful faces all in one place for a few precious days.

Me and my best friend from college before hair products were invented, circa 1981.

Sometimes I imagine a soundtrack for my life when I’m processing things in my head.Who needs Pokemon Go when you have an overactive imagination? Lately, I’ve been hearing this Iris Dement song – My Life.

My life, it’s half the way traveled

And still I have not found my way out of this night

My life, it’s tangled in wishes

And so many things that just never turned out right

But I gave joy to my mother and I made my lover smile

And I can give comfort to my friends when they’re hurting

And I can make it seem better for a while

It is an achingly beautiful song and if you ask me, it’s a pretty damn good resume, too.

I’m embracing 60 with joy.

(All photos property of Addison Ore)

Do You Hear the People Sing?

les mis

Faces of kind strangers – that’s where my mind went racing after I learned of the horrible attacks on Paris last Friday.

I immediately thought of the robust older woman behind the Metro ticket window who reminded us of a character from The Triplets of Belleville and teased us about our spotty French as she helped us figure out our route to Versailles; the handsome young waiter who cheerfully and patiently translated an entire menu into English for us; the two little girls gleefully running around on a perfect Saturday in the Tuileries Garden; and the owner of the patisserie who smiled sweetly and playfully told us that she would speak English to us if we spoke French to her.

So many kind faces under attack.

Yes, yes, all lives matter but I have to be quite honest, this feels more personal to me than some of the other acts of terrorism across the world. Just last week I posted about my magical trip to Paris six weeks ago. It was my valentine to the City of Light. It was a bright and joyful post written before 129 faces were brutally erased. I could not write that post today.

I was grateful on Friday evening that my wife and I had made plans earlier in the week for a movie and dinner with dear friends. Otherwise, I’m sure we would have been glued to the television all evening. As it was, when our movie ended I checked my phone for an update on the situation and was so touched to have a handful of text messages from family and friends telling me that they were thinking of us and were grateful that we were home and safe.

I couldn’t help but wonder if those faces that had touched us were home safe, too. I felt afraid for them and heartbroken that their beautiful city had been attacked.

These global tragedies seem to bring out the best and the worst on Facebook. I find comfort in mass mourning on a public forum – like an ancient wailing wall. “Pray for Paris” was the overwhelming trending message on all social media Friday night.

This Instagram post went viral after the attacks on Paris.

And then, of course, before the blood stains were dry, came the blaming for the attacks. Pick one, pick two – Obama, Bush, Cheney, religion, Muslims, always the Muslims.

Why are we so afraid of intentional silence? Why can’t we be comfortable creating a space to ask ourselves some hard questions before spewing out empty answers?

I suppose it is fear because, deep down, we know we don’t have the answers.

I know I found a balm, as I so often do, in the words of others much wiser than me.

Saturday morning, I saw the author Anne Lamott’s post pop up in my feed. I felt better before I even read a word of it. If you’ve never read her stuff, leave this post and go straight to Amazon to download one of her books. I mean it. Go. You will thank me later.

On Facebook she writes in a rambling and raw stream of consciousness that makes you feel like she’s drinking coffee with you at your kitchen table in her bathrobe. Here’s an excerpt from her post on Saturday:

We’re at the beginning of human and personal evolution. Whole parts of the world don’t even think women are people.

So after an appropriate time of being stunned, in despair, we show up. Maybe we ask God for help. We do the next right thing. We buy or cook a bunch of food for the local homeless. We return phone calls, library books, smiles. We make eye contact with others, and we go to the market and flirt with old or scary unusual people who seem lonely. This is a blessed sacrament. Tom Weston taught me decades ago that in the face of human tragedy, we go around the neighborhood and pick up litter, even though there will be more tomorrow. It is another blessed sacraments. We take the action and the insight will follow: that we are basically powerless, but we are not helpless.

I have no answers but know one last thing that is true: More will be revealed. And that what is true is that all is change. Things are much wilder, weirder, richer, and more profound than I am comfortable with. The paradox is that in the reality of this, we discover that in the smallest moments of amazement, at our own crabby stamina, at kindness, to lonely people who worry us, and attention, at weeping willow turning from green to gold to red, and amazement, we will be saved.

Amen.

I have been deeply moved and inspired by the resilience of the French people, so brave and adamant in vowing to retain their way of life, their precious joie de vivre. Yesterday, Charlie Hebdo, the satirical magazine, responded to the attacks with a provocative cover of a bullet-ridden man drinking a glass of champagne. The cover translates from the French: “They have weapons. Fuck them. We have champagne.”

charlie hebdo

This is not to imply that their reaction is at all cavalier. They are in deep mourning and carrying a grief that cannot be contained in the graves of the dead.

Love > Terror

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American Girls in Paris

Oscar Wilde once said that “When good Americans die, they go to Paris” and while I’m certainly not ready to test his premise, I certainly hope that it’s true.

My wife and I spent a week in Paris in late September and we may never get over it.

We’ve been home several weeks now and when someone asks how our trip was, we both still crumble like a flaky croissant and swoon.

People almost always ask the same question, “What was your favorite part?” My wife has the best reply – “All of it.”

I know we’re hardly unique. People have been falling in love with Paris for centuries for all of the same reasons we did – the art, the history, the architecture, the food, the wine, the baguettes…Okay, you get the picture.

We followed The Gospel According to Rick Steves for our trip as did every other tourist in Paris. I was sitting on the Metro one morning beside a beautiful Asian woman who was pouring over our exact Rick Steves’ Paris guidebook – only hers was in Mandarin.

The Book of Rick

On the platform waiting for the train to Versailles, a Midwestern woman traveling with her husband and two grown sons struck up a conversation with us and announced with great fervor, “We’re following Rick Steves.” We felt compelled to bow in reverence and say, “And also with you.”

Throughout the week we overheard folks prefacing comments with, “Well, Rick Steves says…” Make no doubt, when Rick Steves speaks, tourists listen.

Funny how an average looking Joe in a camp shirt and Mom jeans became the Travel Messiah for the free world. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a believer after following his recommendations saved us from standing in line in so many places.

One thing is for sure – you won’t see any Mom jeans in Paris – even on moms. Parisians are an intimidating lot when it comes to fashion. My dear friend Jeff and his partner Michael were in Paris a week before us and had prepared us to feel not worthy. Jeff posted from Paris on Facebook, “I feel like I just climbed out of a Salvation Army donation box.”

Granted, the French have an advantage over us because they are all beautiful. No, I’m not kidding. There are no ugly Parisians or they must keep them in a remote arrondissement far away from high traffic areas.

So you start with beautiful and then add a minimum of two artfully draped scarves and you have your “average” looking Parisian. I really do think part of their secret is in the scarves. They are all Houdinis when it comes to tying one. Even the children! I swear French children learn to tie a scarf before they tie their shoes. And everyone looks so natural in them – not pretentious like us. (Granted, that didn’t stop me from wearing mine to try to assimilate.)

Oh, and while we’re talking about children – Parisian children all look like they just skipped out of either Madeline or Le Petit Prince. They are well-behaved and charming and we adored hearing them speak in their tiny French voices.

We want one.

We really didn’t do any shopping because we were on an Amazing Race pace to see everything that Rick Steves told us to see but we joked about nabbing a French child as a souvenir.

If I had to pick one favorite thing about Paris I think it would have to be the iconic cafes. I loved sitting outside at lunch every day with a glass or deux of rosé just Parisian watching. I learned a lot, especially about French women.

First, the term “gluten-free” does not exist in the French language. You never overhear people saying things like “Can I get that dressing on the side” or “No, thank you, we don’t care for any bread.” In short, Paris is where low-carb diets go to die.

The café life

I could devote an entire post to French baguettes. They are, in a word, perfect – light and airy with a thin crust. And they are an accessory in Paris. You see people throughout the day carrying them under their arms. It was especially fun to see young mothers with small children buying baguettes in the evening for that night’s dinner.

My wife had done all the homework for our trip and trust me, the Invasion of Normandy was not as detailed as her itinerary. My task was making some dinner reservations. Which reminds me, how did people travel before the internet? I perused TripAdvisor and used thefork, the European version of OpenTable, and made some fairly educated selections which all worked out deliciously well.

Say cheese.

I made most of our reservations for 7 or 7:30 knowing that we would be hungry and tired after a frenetic day of sightseeing. Who knew that a 7:00 PM reservation in Paris is the equivalent of the Early Bird Special? We were amazed to see folks coming into a restaurant after 9 – even on week nights. Damn the French – we had chic envy.

The art. Sacre bleu! Where do I begin? You could spend a year in the Louvre alone but we took St. Rick’s advice and made a bee line for our “priority” items first. For me, that was Venus de Milo.

Venus is out of this world.

Growing up, my beloved Aunt Phyllis had a small replica of this statue in her living room and I thought it was the most exotic thing I had ever seen. My uncle was an Air Force officer and he and my aunt lived abroad for several years and collected some beautiful mementos.

I would be mesmerized by my aunt’s tales of travels all over Europe. She knew I loved her Venus statue and as she began to downsize in her later years, she gave it to me. I treasure it and to see the real thing in person at the Louvre took my breath away and I felt as if Aunt Phyl had her arm on my shoulder.

My wife’s moment came at the Musee d’Orsay when she saw Monet’s Field of Poppies. I saw her tear up and asked what that was about. She told me that her high school English teacher (not her favorite) had a poster of the painting in his classroom and that she would zone out and escape into the beautiful fields during class. To see the original exceeded even her high school imagination.

It’s not your English teacher’s Monet.

And perhaps that’s the true elixir of travel, particularly to lands foreign to us. Travel makes our world view so much larger. As Saint Augustine noted, “The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page.”

I’m only a few pages in on my book but I can’t even pretend to be blasé about Paris. And I think the author Paula McLain perfectly articulated my magnifique obsession in The Paris Wife when she wrote, “Though I often looked for one, I finally had to admit that there could be no cure for Paris.”

I can live with that.

C’est si bon!

Happy, happy, joie, joie!

We’ll always have Paris or maybe it’s really Paris will always have us.

Excursion Diversions

blogathy

blog – uh- thee

noun

1. absence of blogging or procrastinating from posting on a blog

2. lame excuse for not blogging

Yep, that’s me. I’m suffering from blogathy and the only cure is to post posthaste.

I can now confess to having a deeper appreciation of those who blog on a regular basis – like more than once in a blue moon. It’s harder than it looks.

Seriously.

I’ve posted several things in my head over the last couple of weeks but even though you read my blog, you can’t read my mind. At least, I hope you can’t, and if you can, Jodie Foster was simply making a cameo appearance.

Truthfully, I’m having a hard time focusing on anything of late but my upcoming trip to Italy with my wife. We got married in May and we’re calling this our honeymoon because sometimes it’s fun to talk like straight people.

I traveled to Italy four years ago with three other (fabulous) women. I was still raw around the edges after a tumultuous breakup and the journey was a healing balm for me in ways that I could have never imagined.

One day on our trip we were hiking through a tiny Tuscan village when our beautiful guide, Francesca, stopped to speak with an older woman tending her garden. The two women embraced and kissed on each cheek and spoke animatedly to one another for several minutes.

When Francesca returned to our group, I said, “How nice, you ran into someone you know.” She looked at me sweetly with a confused expression and said, “No, I just met her.”

That’s Italy.

Italians savor la dolce vita in all aspects of life – food, nature, people – and you can’t help but fall under this spell when you’re there. The Russian poet Anna Akhmatova eloquently captured this feeling when she wrote, “Italy is a dream that keeps returning for the rest of you life.”

This is the first “big” trip my wife and I have taken together and I’m hoping we’re a good travel match. She’s never been to Italy and has read her Rick Steves’ guidebook from cover to cover.

I’ve tried not to be annoyed at night when we’re in bed reading and she feels compelled to share some unknown factoid about Venice with me. Besides, who knew only three to four gondolier licenses are issued annually? Exactly.

I’m usually an obsessive planner with a vacation but this time I agreed to a tour and I’m blissfully letting someone else be the boss for a couple of weeks. I barely even know our itinerary and that is exhilarating to me.

I just know that some lovely stranger is going to schlep my over packed bag from hotel to hotel for me. What’s not to like?

Now I’m shamelessly hoping that my prologue-travelogue has made you forget about my sorry blogathy as visions from pizza to Pisa dance through your head.

I promise to be a better blogger upon my return.

Ciao, ya’ll!

Italy is a dream that keeps returning for the rest of your life.

Bookends

Two writers. One blog.

Rick Steves

A work in progress

Do You Hear the People Sing?

American Girls in Paris

Excursion Diversions