Swimming Pools and Me

Me as a teen in my childhood home swimming pool

When I was eight years old, my dad and I sat together in our backyard and watched the workmen dig our grass and dirt to put in a new above-the-ground swimming pool. My mom referred to our pool as a "15 Round" which meant that it measured fifteen feet in diameter.  The outside was blue, and it had straight white panels going down each side with the words "Esther Williams" printed on them. My grandmother told me that Esther Williams was a very famous swimmer who starred in Hollywood movies many years ago.   

Every summer, my best friend, Ania, and I spent most of our time in my pool.  Even though she had an oval, above-the-ground swimming pool in her own backyard, we were always in mine.  A few times, we stayed in so long that our lips turned blue!  We loved being in my swimming pool so much that we never realized we were cold - probably because we were always moving and jumping up and down.  One summer, I spent so much time doing handstands and cartwheels underwater that I came down with an ear infection.  I had to take ear drops and wear earplugs every summer after that.  Sometimes, I pretended I was a mermaid and that my swimming pool was a big tank I lived in while on land. Nothing felt better than being in my swimming pool.

But then I grew up and left home for college in Boston.  While I was away, my mom sold the house.  For many years after that, I had a recurring dream that I returned to my childhood home, and the water in my swimming pool turned green.  I was distraught that the pool was unusable. I figured I dreamed this because shortly before I had left home, our pool water really did turn green.  I hadn't been very good at keeping up with putting in the scoops of chlorine and running the filter.  My dad was the one in charge of our pool, but he passed away when I was fifteen.  In my dreams, as soon as I saw that the water was green, I went on a desperate quest for chlorine. Sometimes, I'd look in my shed and other times I'd try to find a store somewhere, hoping it was still open in the middle of the night.  Eventually, I'd find one, and I'd spend the rest of the dream measuring out the chlorine.  

Illustration from Instagram

I've never had my own pool as an adult, but I always enjoy them whenever I get to swim.  One of my favorites is this wave pool in Pennsylvania.  I didn't know one existed until I went in.  It was the best of both worlds, as my other favorite place in the world is the ocean.  One time, I was staying at a hotel in Nevada, near Las Vegas, and the hotel pool was an inground pool that had the pool water streaming right up onto the concrete floor at your feet as you approached it. I was only in Nevada for a couple of days and had a jam-packed schedule with family who live there so I didn't make time to go into the pool.  Ever since that day,  I STILL regret that I didn't go in, and I swear I will one day go back to that same hotel so I can get into that particular swimming pool! 

Over the years, the swimming pool water in my recurring dreams began to appear clearer and less green. I haven't had one of those dreams in a while.  Sometimes, I miss having a swimming pool to call my own.  I can't have one in my backyard now because my small yard is on a slanted hill which is nearly all rock.  But I guess it would be possible to put in a pool if I hired an expert to check the yard out. I mean, if I can find a store to buy chlorine  in the middle of the night, then I suppose anything is possible!

Esther Williams in 1953 (cinemasips.com)

Be Careful What You Wish For

I spent the entire month of January working on a new short story. I edited it and cut it down drastically to adhere to the word count requirements for a submission call.  That meant putting aside the novel I've been writing for the past two years. By February, I knew it was time to get back to the novel, but I always found some reason to procrastinate. I was too exhausted from working all day, or on my days off, I was too agitated from being around people at the grocery store or overly irritated from waiting on a long line at the bank.  I always seemed to need another a break before I had to wake up and do it all over again tomorrow. I told myself: "If I could just have a few weeks home, I could really dive into this novel, make a dent in it, and finish a first draft. I just need a big bulk of time at home." Then, of course, March rolled along, and this wasn't at all what I'd wished for!


I worked my last day in Manhattan on March 16th, and on my walk home from the train station, I realized it would be a long time before I could go into the City again. After reading a few news stories and watching Governor Cuomo's press conferences, I predicted that the earliest I would be back to work was July 1st. This made me sad because I liked being in the City.  I loved eating my lunch in cafes and the hustle and bustle of walking outdoors.  I even enjoyed hurrying around to make the train and ferry connections.  I went to bed feeling awful. But the next morning, I woke up from a dream that I'd met a male stranger (a made-up one I didn't recognize from real life), and in the dream, the chase was so exciting, and I couldn't wait to see how things would unfold.  Then the next night, I had the same dream but with a different mystery man. The third night, same thing, yet another unknown man.  Why was I having pleasant dreams when all the news around me was so tragic, and nearly the entire planet had just been forced into quarantine with terrible fears of this new virus?

Possibly because subconsciously, I was excited about the idea of finally having enough time to do my writing at home. As a natural born introvert, I've always spent most of my time at home.  I crave alone time. I long to write. But even though I was home, the state of the world was tragic and scary, and I found it difficult to concentrate on my novel. I was fortunate enough to be able to earn money from home, and the only thing I feared particularly about being in quarantine was running out of things I needed. Luckily, home deliveries of food and chocolate, non-food essentials and, of course, liquor, kept those fears in check.  So, as long as I stayed home and didn't have to worry about catching the virus, I felt okay.  But many of my friends and people talking about quarantine on TV weren't feeling okay at all. I could understand their continued anxiety and their depression if they were out of work and struggling with money, but many of them were either also working from home or being supported by someone who was.  They just couldn't get used to the idea of being indoors and not being out in the world, but I had adjusted. I tried to figure out why.

My best theory is because as a writer, the joy and satisfaction I feel is not related to being out among other people but rather in challenging myself.  Creative writing is not dependent on crowd interaction.  I think if a person's art is dependent on outside validation and applause, then being quarantined must be extremely difficult.  Another theory is that as an introvert, I gain energy by being indoors whereas extroverts are energized by being outdoors. I believe that my extrovert friends' lack of energy has slowed some of them down into a deep depression.

On a more positive note, judging by what I see on social media and TV, it seems that many people, both artists and non-artists, although somewhat depressed and anxious, are trying to make the best of quarantine by doing things they wouldn't have time for if they were out in the world right now. I'm checking off the same things that they are: I've already made homemade pizza and baked brownies; I've binged new series on Hulu like "Dollface" and "High Fidelity"; I've watched as many indie movies as I can find on Pluto TV; and I regularly watch "Cuomo Prime Time" so I can laugh at the banter between the Cuomo brothers. On weekends, I go for walks in the neighborhood or to the harbor. I've also cut my Shih-Tzu dog's bangs and often hang out with her on the deck when weather permits.

The best part of my quarantine is that I'm finally getting some writing done. I've started a brand new short story and have been working on it nearly every day which is a regularity I could never achieve before the quarantine. I'm entertaining myself and keeping up my writing chops, but I still can't really dive into the novel! I can't make a dent in it, and I haven't gotten close to finishing its first draft. Maybe the key to being comfortable in quarantine is to lower our expectations. I'm not making great progress on the novel, but I have started a new short story that wouldn't exist if I hadn't been put into quarantine.  Overall, the most important thing any of us can do is to try and stay as healthy as possible and do our part to keep others healthy as well.  We won't be indoors forever.  Time always passes much more quickly than we wished it had, and sometimes, we need to be careful of what we wish for.

Goodbye, Louise

On Labor Day, my co-worker, Louise, died after suffering for several months from a horrible illness. I haven't been able to cry about it or even truly process her loss in my mind yet. The only thing I've been sure of is that I need to write about it and to memorialize her in this blog.

Louise and I got off on the wrong foot in June 2000 when I first joined the company I am presently working for. We were both legal secretaries who type for attorneys. Back in 2000, we were still using cassette tapes that the attorneys recorded their voices on and then put the tapes in brown envelopes for us to listen to and type. During my first week, Louise would keep a basket of the tapes I had to do, and what was on the tapes was written on the outside of these envelopes. Of course, I tried to take the envelopes that had the things I wanted to do, like long letters where I could just daydream while typing them rather than taking motions that had 75 billion exhibits that had to be meticulously copied and then delivered to the courthouse. Louise noticed this and didn't appreciate it. "I like to pick and choose too!" she said sarcastically, meaning that since I was the "new kid on the block," I should just be happy to type everything that was in there. She was not happy with me and had no problem expressing it. After a few days of this, I said, "You obviously have a problem with me." You'd think I'd said, "You obviously need to be locked up in a mental institution where they throw away the key," because after our exchange, she refused to talk to me period. Not one word. Not a hello, a goodbye, or even a "thank you" one day when I found her glasses on the floor and had gotten down to pick them up to give them to her. This went on for a year, by the end of which, I had a dream that she and I were talking and became friends.  I woke up wishing for that so much but knowing that it would take a miracle for that dream to come true. But shortly after my dream, 911 happened.

Our office is one block from where the World Trade Center terrorist attacks took place. Some of my co-workers watched from our windows and saw people jumping off the Towers. One of my former co-workers, Sally, was so traumatized, she just ran out of our building and walked from our office on downtown Broadway all the way uptown past 101st Street. But Louise and I were both still on our way to work, and our buses turned around. I'll never forget how I felt when I saw smoke and flames coming out from the tops of those beloved Towers in the distance through my bus windows. Our office was uninhabitable for over a month, and when we visited it for the first time about three weeks after the attacks, I saw my sweater still draped over my desk chair, both of which were covered in dust. We realized we had to remain a little longer at our temporary office on Water Street and didn't even want to visit our office again because the electricity was still out and was being run by generators that would shut down the elevators by late afternoon. I knew that Louise was just as shocked and saddened by the Trade Center attacks as I was, so one morning in our Water Street office, I decided to just take a chance and say "Hello" to her. "Hi," she finally said back, her voice still shaken and slightly breathy. That was the moment that my dream came true, and we finally became friends.

Louise was an enigma to everyone at our office.  She was fiercely guarded about her personal life, both past and present, but because we used to see each other every day, she began giving me little glimpses into what her life had been and as it was now in the present.  For most of the years I'd known her, she was a single woman in her fifties and then sixties who lived alone with her parrot, "Scarlett." She never had any children but told me she had been married once and was now divorced for many years.  But even this simple fact was not common knowledge in our firm.  Even our prior boss (a male attorney who is now split from our firm but who had worked with Louise for many years) didn't know Louise had once been married. Several years ago, when she had fallen ill and was briefly hospitalized due to a perforated ulcer, he had answered the phone when her friend called to let us know. "Oh, Louise is in the hospital," he told one of my former co-workers. "Yes. Her partner called to let us know." "Her partner?" my co-worker asked, confused. "Yes," he said. "That lady who always calls here for her. I know that she lives alone, but that woman must be her partner! Have you ever heard her speak about any man since she's worked here?" No, I guess she hadn't to him. But to me, she had.

In addition to her divorce, that surprisingly I seemed to be one of the only people to know about, not only did she have a crush on actor Sean Connery, but she often stayed up late at night to watch reruns of "Married With Children" because "young" Al Bundy reminded her of her ex-husband. "Oh, I've seen that actor in other things today," she'd say, "But now he looks very different. I'm talking about young Al Bundy. I love to stay up late and watch him." Her expression softened when she spoke about him. She spoke about "Al" a lot.

Besides looking just like Al Bundy, she told me that her ex-husband used to enjoy going to the racetrack a lot, and the two of them had gone there often and even saw Secretariat win the Triple Crown at Belmont in 1973. She said it was such a thrill to have been there in person! She and I even had a racetrack-oriented joke between us: We all had been having trouble with our computers, and one afternoon, a man named Dan who worked for the computer company, "Corstar," had called about coming to fix them. One of the attorneys named Ed took the phone message and had written down: "Corstar's Dan called." Louise brought me the note from the bulletin board and said, "Look at this. Ed took a phone message, and he wrote 'Corstar's Dan!' I mean, who called us anyway? A racehorse? That's how they name racehorses, you know! Sometimes they use the horse's father's name and then pair it with the name of the horse. That's what this looks like - Corstar's Dan - a racehorse!"  She always came up with silly things like this to ease the tension of our law office and to make me laugh.

Louise was thin and tall, always wore plain, comfortable pants and t-shirts, and wore her long brown hair wrapped up in a simple bun. The only make-up she used was concealer, and she had tube after tube of it in all different shades in her work drawer.  But again, because she said very little about herself, nobody would have expected how much into hairstyles she was. "I love to go to the beauty supply shop at lunchtime," she told me one afternoon. "When I was younger, I was really into hairstyles." She'd watch hairstyle shows on TV and give me pointers on how to keep my own long hair tangle-free.  "The key is to run your fingers through it first, and separate the sections before you use the comb." Thinking about hairstyling, I had gotten her to watch one of my favorite TV shows, "Mad Men," and she liked it and watched the entire Season 1 but lamented: "That Peggy, always wearing her hair in a ponytail! This is supposed to take place in 1960, right? Women did NOT wear their hair in ponytails in 1960!" I explained to her that was the point of Peggy's character in Season 1. She was supposed to be awkward and out-of-style. But Louise was always set in her ways, and she seemed fixated on the idea that they should not have had Peggy's character wearing a ponytail in 1960. I believe that's why she wouldn't continue onto Season 2.

Sometimes, I liked to imagine what Louise had been like as a young woman in the late 1960's through the 1970's. I pictured her lounging around in her apartment, drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. She told me that back then, she woke up every morning and immediately grabbed for a cigarette, smoked it, then took an aspirin, washing it down with a cup of coffee.  In those days, she worked for a law firm she spoke very highly of. I believe it was there that she met the man who I think was probably the love of her life. Again, she only told me snippets, but apparently she had what she described as a secret relationship with one of male partners at the firm, and she told me that part of the thrill was all the "sneaking around" - the idea that people could only guess at what their actual relationship was, but nobody really knew. But "NG," she would say to me, meaning, "No Good!" She said that these things always ended badly, but at the time.....

"I tell you this because you and I have been friends for a long time, right?" So many things Louise said to me were prefaced like this. She was a worrywart who always had a lot of concerns regarding procedures at work and the way she perceived people were treating her. One former attorney she worked with once told me: "Louise is constantly worrying about nonsense!" She and I had a lot of chats about things that bothered us. We always talked about our work, what the attorneys thought about our work, and what our other co-workers thought about us. Sometimes, she'd obsess on something that happened during the day and kept on bringing it up to me again at various times, over and over, reiterating things like: "When I told her she came back late for lunch, I was just joking. I didn't mean to accuse her of coming back late for lunch, it was just a joke. It was because she came back carrying all these bags, saying I've discovered Chambers Street! So I told her she was late. But I didn't mean to say she had done anything wrong by shopping and coming back a few minutes late." Sometimes I vented to her about other people too. She always listened, and when I'd apologize later for my somewhat angry rants, she'd say: "Listen, we're friends. We help each other out."

She often took me even further into her confidence. A few years ago, we sat together during our office Christmas party, and I believe she took the opportunity that I'd had a little too much to drink to tell me a strange story about how years ago, one of her female friends came back to her apartment and made a pass at her. She said she told the woman she was NOT interested in her and to please not do that again. I think she believed I wouldn't remember this story the next day, but even when I'm very drunk, I always remember everything, and I'm always in control of what I'm doing. Of course that didn't prevent me from dropping my pizza bagel onto the floor at the ferry station on my way home from the party. A woman in line behind me ordered the man working behind the counter to get me another one since I'd dropped it. The worker was annoyed, looked me in the eye, and asked, "Was it MY fault that this happened? Or was it YOURS?" "Mine?" I answered feebly. But the woman didn't care, she still ordered the worker to give me another pizza pretzel. I wish I had this woman to walk around with me as my staunch supporter on a daily basis!

Louise had been extremely healthy for many years and had the best attendance out of everyone in our office. Even after her perforated ulcer surgery, she returned to work after a mere three weeks when most people who had that same surgery would have taken at least six. She often told us that we were really her family because outside of the office, she had no family (she and her sister were estranged, and she had only a handful of friends).  I think that's why she always wanted to be at work - because it was lonely at home, and she wanted to be with "her family."

Last winter, she left work after being diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus. She had treatment and was in and out of the hospital. One afternoon, she called the office, and I answered it. "I'm so glad you answered and that I got to talk to you!" she said as if she realized this would be our last conversation. I told her how I always think of her when I watch Pat and Jamie on NY1 in the mornings because we both always watched them before we left our house for work, and she and I used to joke about their banter and just about them in general. Then her voice turned serious, and she said, "I wanted to make sure I told you this: That all these little things that used to concern us during the day, all these worries about work and people and all the little problems we used to worry about? Well listen, they just don't matter. Nothing that gets us upset during the day is important. Try not to let those things bother you at all, because after all, it's just not worth it."

Obviously, it's hard to lose a family member, any relative or close friend, but there's something different about losing someone who you've seen almost every day for the past fifteen years that is a special kind of loss that just breaks your heart. They're a part of your everyday routine, and that brings you comfort. It's scary when they go. You just expect them to always be there.

I Dream Of Brooklyn

Last Sunday's episode of HBO "Girls" had everyone confused.  It was a dreamlike episode, unfolding surreally.  We saw Hannah as we never had before.  She wasn't eating Cool Whip out of the container in her small Brooklyn apartment, complaining about her horrible love life.  Instead, she spent two days with a handsome doctor, barbecuing steaks on the patio of his brownstone and taking a sauna in his giant bathroom.  The episode was like a fantasy of what Hannah's life could be in the future if she stopped struggling and earning $40 a day at "Grumpy's Cafe" and instead lived the lavish lifestyle of a doctor's wife in an expensive Brooklyn brownstone.  Hannah was awake, but she was dreaming.

Not too long ago, I had an actual nighttime dream about Brooklyn.  I dreamed that it was an early Saturday morning, and I called up my best childhood friend, Ania, and told her that there was nothing I wanted more in this world than to go to her condo in Brooklyn really early in the morning and hang out together.  The desire in the dream was so strong.

From the time I was 8 until 18, Ania and I were inseparable.  We spent almost every single day together.  She lived on the corner across from my street, so I would call her up and we'd meet outside and hang out all day.  She was always just a phone call away.

The next day after the dream, I e-mailed Ania and asked, "Can we set a date to get together? Like at your house?"  She wrote back, pleased.  "You want to come to Brooklyn? I'd love that."  So we set a date for breakfast.

On the scheduled Saturday morning, my family set out for Brooklyn to have breakfast with Ania's family.  Her husband cooked eggs with salsa and Mexican cheese.  Ania made vodka breakfast cocktails.  My daughter and her son took turns riding his scooter back and forth on the hardwood floors while the rest of us sat on stools and talked all morning.

Last spring, Ania said that she'd often come home from work to find the HBO "Girls" film crew sitting on the front steps of her condo.  They were filming the second season in her neighborhood right in front of her house.  And now Hannah and I were both fantasizing about alternate lives.  Hannah imagined what it would be like to have the material things and lifestyle the doctor had. I fantasized about what it would be like if I could revisit my childhood -- the constant daily steadiness with Ania, playing Connect Four on her front steps at 9:00 in the morning when no one else in our neighborhood was outdoors yet.  This is the fantasy of my alternate life.

But Hannah doesn't really want to go into the future and be settled yet. She'd lose her edge, her writer's restlessness and her need to, in her words, "Feel it all."  I don't really want to go back to my childhood, all that uncertainty and second-guessing.  I finally feel secure with a fierce sense of responsibility.  But sometimes, it's nice to dream with the background setting of a really nice condo or brownstone in Brooklyn.

Why Believing In Santa Claus Is Essential To Your Health

When it came to believing in Santa Claus, I was one of the last holdouts.  There was nothing more exciting than going to bed on Christmas Eve and waking up to find a bunch of wrapped presents under my tree that were delivered by Santa Claus and his reindeer in the middle of the night.  On the big night, we had a tradition in my family where one of my parents or my older brother would read "The Night Before Christmas" as my bedtime story.  The book had a big colorful illustration of Santa right on the cover.  Little did I know that out of the four of us, I was the only one who still actually believed that Santa really would be visiting our house in just a matter of hours exactly as the book said.

When I was in first grade, one of my classmates, Scott, told me that there wasn't any such thing as Santa Claus.  I still remember his exact words:  "You REALLY think that a fat man wearing a red suit who has a long, white beard slides down your chimney in the middle of the night to deliver you presents every Christmas? You REALLY think such a thing is possible?"  It was the middle of December, and I knew that Scott had already been getting one gift every day for several days, all leading up to the big present he would receive on Hanukkah, which didn't seem like a bad deal to me, so obviously, he didn't need to believe in Santa Claus!  He celebrated Hanukkah, and I celebrated Christmas.  Of COURSE there was such a thing as Santa Claus!

When you're a kid, you have many dreams and fantasies of how your life is going to be when you grow up, and there are many things you can believe in if you let your imagination run wild.  When I was a kid, I thought for sure I'd be a famous actress by now, living in a mansion in Hollywood.  Seems like my dream was a near impossible one, but it reminds me of that quote from "Alice in Wonderland's Through The Looking Glass" where Alice laughs at the White Queen, and says, "There's no use trying...one can't believe impossible things." The White Queen disagrees and responds: "I daresay you haven't had much practice...When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."  Even though I no longer desire to be a Hollywood actress, I would like to believe that I got so much practice believing in things when I was a child, that I still haven't completely lost my ability to believe in impossible things.

My friend, Tara, once told me that people who are severely depressed have often lost their ability to fantasize and dream and are no longer able to lose themselves in their imagination, and that this is what ultimately leads many of them into feelings of hopelessness and despair.  It makes sense to me because when things get tough, you need to escape into an imaginary world to allow yourself some much-needed respite. If someone has lost his or her ability to escape, then the world and its problems become too much, and he or she can never escape reality or the pain of unpleasant things.  As we get older and more realistic, it becomes even more important to never lose that ability to fantasize and to believe in "impossible things."

So even if you don't believe in Santa Claus anymore and have decided against "crazy" goals such as moving to Hollywood to become a famous actress, it is still important to believe in some near impossible things, for instance, ideas that you can become "The Thinking Man's Danielle Steel" or that someday you MAY even be able to retire!  Scott will definitely be able to retire.  He is a very successful corporate attorney.  But for his sake and sanity, I REALLY hope he hasn't lost his ability to fantasize.