Tag Archives: Aging

Kiss the Grandmother

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Most of my compassionate friends and now the world know that I have always struggled with weight issues. If you don’t see me for a few weeks, the possibility exists that I may have lost or gained, (more likely gained) a few pounds.  A few years ago, I went to a family reunion in California and when I got home, the pictures my cousins took began to show up on Facebook. That night I joined Weight Watchers.

It took me a year to lose seventeen pounds. Far from being nymph-like, I did feel better about myself and my size twelve jeans didn’t bind in the crotch.  When my mother died the next year, I lost another ten pounds.  By March, I was convinced I could maintain the weight loss on my own and quit Weight Watchers. By June, I’d gained every pound back. The true horror of this was made clear when my son Andy announced his engagement and I had to go Mother of the Groom shopping.  My daughter found a beautiful, silver silk Oleg Cassini suit for me. My reasoning for buying a size sixteen, even though I have never worn a sixteen, was that I could have my dress designer neighbor Kirk alter it for me so that it fit like a custom made suit.

I couldn’t wait for it to arrive. Two days later, the big cardboard box was delivered by FedEx.  I took it into the bedroom and started to strip.  The suit was packed in layers of tissue paper. I couldn’t believe how beautiful it was when I lifted the jacket out of the box, rhinestone diamond buttons set in fake silver marched up the front.  The wedding theme was metallic, so I would fit right in.

Then I tried to get the jacket on. When I say it was too small, I mean I couldn’t get my arms into the sleeves. Even my hands were too big. I was so upset I wanted to first tear it up into pieces and then kill myself. It was simply another reminder that I am fat. My husband can deny it, and my friends will tell me I look great, but now I have proof. I can’t even get a size sixteen on. What’s next? I am only 5’3″. Soon I will be as wide as I am high.

So I swallowed my pride and went to the doctor. I had to get on the scale, which was torture.  He put me on a low calorie diet that was graduated in calorie amounts so my metabolism wouldn’t go into starvation mode. I took a ton of supplements. Fortunately, I had the time to lose enough to get into the suit.

This would be a good place to mention that the Mother of the Bride is a model.

By the wedding day, I felt great, I’d lost twenty-two pounds, I was starving, but what’s a little food, right? I could wear the suit. As a matter of fact, the skirt was too big. With a Spanx the jacket fit snugly, but the bell shaped skirt was too big. You get the picture.

I’ve decided I have reverse body dysmorphic disorder.  When I look in the mirror, I see an average sized, slightly chubby middle-aged woman who without my glasses has smooth skin, albeit a wrinkly neck which is minimized by holding my chin up as high as my cervical spine will allow.  But when the team of photographers at the wedding started shooting their cameras and videos in my direction, I was terrified.  The first picture the photographer showed me made me sick to my stomach. Why couldn’t I look trim and nice like everyone else?

The next horror was realizing that while Andy and I jumped around like maniacs on the stage, having picked We Will Rock You by Queen for the mother-son song we would dance to, the video camera was about chin height and two feet from me. I can just imagine what it will look like.

It was while flying back to Michigan that the sudden epiphany struck me.  I am a sixty-two year old, Greek grandmother. What the hell am I supposed to look like?  This is me! Suzanne Jenkins, chubby, friendly, paranoid and in love with life. I proved that I am willing to put it all out there when I started publishing my own books. I was narcissistic enough to think readers would want to read what I conjured up, and I was right. If I can be that self assured, surely a few horrible photos of me in my son’s wedding album won’t hurt me.

So needless to say, if anyone on Facebook tags photos of me at the wedding, I’ll be removing the tag asap.

Kiss the Grandmother

Kiss the Grandmother

Barometric Pressure

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I have a new publisher, a new website and lots of new advertising opportunities, including a full page color ad insert in Kirkus Review’s newsletter which will be distributed at Book Expo, and a ‘book tour’ with Pump Up Your Book this summer.  I’m also a sixty-one year old woman who doesn’t want to learn HTML, Photo Shop, or any other technical genius that will make me a better ‘marketer’ for my book.  I was an OR nurse for thirty years; isn’t that enough technology?

However, what I am learning is it doesn’t make any difference how much you ‘hire out’ the work. If you want to be a successful self-published author, you had better learn how to update your own website, photo shop a cover mock up for your book, and more. You better reread your final interior proof one hundred times, because no matter how much you pay for copy editing, you will get your hardcopy proof in the mail and find out that you have used that hundreds of times too often, or put commas in too many places, or my worst mistake; use sole rather than soul.

The Greeks of Beaubien Street is in the hands of the new publisher and I am anxiety ridden. Getting used to a new routine and new people, is so difficult. In my former life, I discovered that I preferred to stick with the tried and true rather than venture out. I stayed at a job I didn’t like for years because the fright of starting fresh somewhere else was too difficult.

My little problems are nothing compared to what my friends are going through right now. Life threatening illness, the loss of a spouse, unemployment, legal issues, the list is endless.  What I have noticed is how one reacts to the trouble says a lot. I have a friend who is bald from chemotherapy for breast cancer, and everyday she crawls out of bed and drives an hour to her very physical kind of job. It’s not one at which she is able to sit at a desk. She alone supports her household, and the job provides her health insurance, so she doesn’t have the option to stay home when she feels bad.  In spite of her situation, my friend is the most upbeat woman I know. She hasn’t whined or complained once, and the only way I will know that she is feeling less than stellar is she won’t talk about herself.  I  imagine myself in her situation and the complaining I would do. We talked this week and she said that if she makes being upbeat and positive an act of her will, she is successful, and then she feels better. If she gives in to self-pity, the effect is immediate; she feels awful and makes everyone around her feel awful, too. She still has children at home and an aged mother who lives with her and its important to her that her family stays hopeful, as well.  Cancer is not her identity, nor are her other problems. We have to work at not allowing those things which will tear us down to become our identity. Because if we do, we succumb to feeling sorry for ourselves. Someone else is always worse off.

So the pressure is on. My husband told me yesterday when he was listening to me having a disagreement with the person who designed my website that I am turning into a real !@#$%^&* and he is glad we don’t work together.  That got me thinking about the fine line there is between standing up for yourself or being an aggressive shrew, being positive or feeling so sorry for yourself that it paralyzes you.  There is just so much a stake right now, and I’ve spent so much money and put so much work into everything that I want to get it right. I can’t afford to have any craziness around me, or any negativity. At different times in my life  my friends have been there for me when my glass was half empty, and now I need to knock it off, belly up to the bar, and get it right.

Is It Stress, or Alzheimer’s?

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The Nativity as seen through the eyes of Boston Terriers.

December is the busiest month of the year for most women, and almost most men.  The approaching holidays take their toll on us whether we celebrate them or not.  Just knowing that there is an expectation increases our sense of obligation.  Should I put up a tree?  Do my casual acquaintances really need a gift from me?  What about sending Christmas cards?  The meal? Ham or turkey? Parties? Special outfits?

I decided that this Christmas I would go all out, put up a tree for the first time in years, shop for gifts, make an effort for a change, so that my sister Sarah who is living in a group home since the death of our mother, could come here and have a pleasant weekend with the family.  We got the moldy fake tree out of storage and about ten boxes of ornaments down from the rafters and I began decorating. We put up lights outside, got the Santa coat hanger  hung up, the lighted village of churches on the baby grand.  I even got a pine scented candle.  Then I found out that she doesn’t want to come here for reasons only known to her.  Suffice it to say that I vacillated between several powerful emotions that swung from hurt feelings to anger.  What it boils down to is that she is mentally retarded.  Why had I placed so much expectation on her?  Why wasn’t it enough to make those preparations for myself?  We seek the perfect Christmas.  I think since my children are on opposite ends of the country and Christmas isn’t what it used to be without them, it is just easier not to go to too much bother.  Now next year, when my baby grandson is almost a year and a half, Christmas will be fun.  (There goes those expectations again.)

Last week, the physical proof of the sequel to Pam of Babylon arrived. I was so excited!  I went over with it fine toothed comb and found a few minor mistakes, included ‘damn’ where ‘dam’ should have been.  I called my publisher and we rejoiced!!!  The book would be corrected and go to the printer.  And then thankfully, for some reason I read it again.  Several major, glaring editing snafus slapped me in the face.  There is a major contradiction that my editor missed and so did I, and four repetitive descriptions that just couldn’t be ignored. It was like a repeat of Pam in which there were four puking scenes in the original manuscript.  I didn’t want it to be the book about women who threw up, so I had to get rid of three of them.  History had repeated itself.  After several more readings, I was able to make the corrections without too much rewriting.  Tomorrow it goes back to the publisher.  Ugh.

Monday night I flew into Philly to spend a few days with Jeni and Carlos and the baby.  It was wonderful; I took my shoes off by the front door when I arrived and when we went to leave for the airport this morning two days later they were still there.  I spent that time in repose, being catered to by my daughter with three home-cooked meals a day, ice water and coffee at my fingertips, and stimulating conversation.  All while a four month old, happy, cooing baby sat on my lap.  I don’t like to fly, but because I didn’t have much time and it was sort of spur of the moment, I got on a plane.  Now next Monday, I am doing it all over again, but in the opposite direction.  Andy is actually in Austin, Texas right now, scouting sets for their next movie, but he is supposed to be back over the weekend.  So I am going to go see my aunt and the rest of my dad’s relatives and hopefully have lunch with my son.  I’ll be gone just a few days.

During this time, Jim has a birthday, we have our forty-third wedding anniversary, and then the Christian holidays.  I slipped up today while I was being goosed by the TSA agent by wishing her a Merry Christmas.

“Happy holidays, you mean,” she said with attitude.  Am I allowed to disagree with the TSA over this? I mean, I know my brasserie under-wires are an issue, and my bluejean waistband is too tight for them to stick their fingers into, but do I have to be corrected about political correctness?  I could feel my blood pressure going up and in my mind I said out loud, ‘No! Merry Christmas!’  But the part of me that wanted to get home tonight and eat Chinese food with my husband just smiled at her and said,

“Oh! Yes! Of course!”

While I was with Jeni I confided to her that I was worried about Jim and wanted him to get an Alzheimer’s test.  Now you have to know my daughter. She has the most expressive face if she wants to get a point across. To the rest of the world she has the best poker face.  But when those words were out of my mouth, she got ‘the look’. It is a sort of lips pursed but slightly smiling with raised eyebrows and a set jaw.  I can’t explain it. Anyway, she said,

“And I want you to get one, too.” Evidently, her nursing assessment of me left her with cause for concern.  So I told her I would get one.  “If its positive, you can start taking Aricept now,” she said.  Its a drug for Alzheimer’s.  Jim and I talked about it on the way home from the airport tonight. He thinks the months of change in our life may account for some of the symptoms Jeni sees in me.  I’m not so sure.  I keep thinking about that book of mine that I have read at least fifty times and the critical mistake I missed again and again.

My sister and I talk hourly about pour-over wills and trusts, things we have to do to make preparation for our death.  I think of the diaries and journals I have laying around here.  Do I really want my kids to read that stuff after I go?  I need to go through my drawers and throw away any ratty underpants so that someday, my son and his wife don’t have to do it for me.  (I may have watched too many episodes of Hoarders.)  Tonight I will lay in bed and think about Jim and I growing old together.  I told my kids once when we all lived in New Jersey and it didn’t look like any of us would ever leave, that when we got old, they didn’t have to visit us.

“Just drive by slowly and throw a bag of groceries out for us once in a while.  We’ll crawl out to the road and drag it in,” I said.    Suddenly, that isn’t so funny any more.  Jim and I don’t fly together because if anything happens, our dogs won’t be left alone.  Our kids aren’t here to check in on us.  I told my daughter today that even when Jim and I drive together in the car, I like someone to know that the dogs are in the house alone, so they won’t cannibalize themselves if we got killed.

She looked at me with that look.