And if any of us is unsure that having kids is right for her, she’ll have five of us living, breathing, spit-up-covered pros-and-cons lists to help her decide.
For the last twenty years, these girls, now women, have been my brain trust. Thanks to them, for the last two decades I haven’t had to figure anything out alone.
And Baby Girl, you will always have a high chair at our table.
Spot On
Lisa
It turns out that my past is spotty.
And yours may be, too.
I learned this when I turned sixty.
(I’m still getting used to saying that, much less seeing it in print.) All of us women have to cope with the signs of aging, and some of us do so better than others.
I mostly ignore it.
I’m not a model, so I don’t earn a living by the way I look, and I’ve come to like my face, even with its laugh lines, since I like to laugh.
I know that sometimes my cheeks look drawn and hollow, which is the kind of thing that tempts some women to opt for injections of filler.
I don’t judge, but that isn’t my style.
As soon as I hear “injections,” I’m gone.
And the only filler my face needs is carbohydrates.
The same is true of face-lifts or cosmetic surgery. I don’t blame anybody who does it, but my fear kicks in at “surgery.”
Though I have to admit that I’ve been tempted recently, a fact I discovered by accident. After summer was over, I noticed an oddly dark spot on my cheek, and since I wasn’t always careful about using sunscreen, I worried it was cancer. The very notion sent me scurrying to the Internet, where I looked at various horrifying slides and learned the acronym ABCDE, which stands for asymmetry, border, color, diameter, and evolving.
Now you learned something, and so did I.
The last time I had memorized an acronym with as much interest was when I was getting engaged, and I learned about the four C’s for engagement rings.
Cut, clarity, color, carat.
Much more fun.
Worried, I called around and found a dermatologist, a woman reputed to be a great doctor, though on the brusque side.
In other words, a woman of few words.
I hadn’t even known such a creature existed.
Obviously, she’s the direct opposite of me, but I wasn’t looking for love, just to stay alive.
Anyway, the dermatologist suggested that I come in for a mole check.
I agreed, though she’d said it so fast, I thought she’d said “mold check.”
Which was probably more accurate.
I’m not getting old, I’m getting mold.
Or maybe I’m molting.
Either way, I went to the dermatologist, who examined the suspicious mole and determined it was benign.
Yay!
I promised myself never to skip the sunscreen, ever again.
But then the dermatologist frowned behind the contraption that magnified her eyes to two brown marbles. She pointed to my temples and said, “You have quite a lot of keratoses.”
Again I didn’t understand because she was looking at my forehead, not my toesies. “What did you say?”
“These brownish spots on your temples. You have so many.”
Thanks, I thought, but didn’t say. “They’re from the sun, aren’t they?”
“No, that’s a common misconception. They’re hereditary.”
I remembered then that my father used to have them, which might have been the reason I never minded them. Because they reminded me of him.
The dermatologist said, “They’re not related to age, but they age you, and I can remove them.”
“Really?”
“Hold on.” The dermatologist left the office, then returned with a styrofoam cup of what looked like coffee, because a curlicue of steam wafted from inside the cup. Before I could understand what was going on, she swiped a Q-tip inside the cup and pressed it to my temple.
“Ow,” I blurted out. “What is that?”
“Liquid nitrogen. It burns, right?”
“Right.” I bit my lip as she swiped the Q-tip back in the styrofoam cup and pressed it on a few other places on my temples.
I wanted my mommy, but didn’t say so.
Because that would have been immature.
The dermatologist finished up, saying, “That’s all for now. Call my office in a week or so and make an appointment to remove the others.”
I thanked her and left the office, my forehead a field of red dots, like a constellation that spelled out:
WE AGE YOU
A week later, the red dots had turned brown and fallen off, and in their place was fresh pink skin.
I could see that I looked better, maybe even younger.
But I have to say, I missed looking like my father.
And I think I’ll leave the other ones alone.
Recipe Ambition
Lisa
Everybody knows that the holidays are crazy busy.
But what we don’t know is why we make them busier.
Or rather, why I do.
I begin by saying that as of this writing, there are less than two weeks left before Christmas and I have not begun to shop. I’ve bought some gifts online but I still want to go into an actual store, not only because it’s fun, but because I want actual stores to remain open.
This is one thing I’ve learned in my dotage.
If you want something to exist, you have to support it with actual money. So as much as I love to shop online, I make sure I spend my money in the bricks and mortar.
Vote with your boots.
And your bucks.
So you would naturally think that this is a story about me going shopping for gifts, but it isn’t. Because at about the same time, I decided to try a really unusual holiday meal for Christmas.
The holidays are the time for Recipe Ambition.
Please tell me that I’m not the only one who decides that the busiest time of the year is the perfect time to make the fanciest recipe ever, for the first time.
It’s worth noting that I first had this idea for Thanksgiving, but I got too tired.
But now that Christmas is coming up, I wanted to give my Recipe Ambition a trial run. The last thing you want to do is cook a new dish at Christmas and have it fall through, so that you end up serving cereal with a side of beer.
And since Francesca and I are vegetarians, we’re always looking for something to substitute for turkey, and our days of Tofurkey are over. No disrespect, but Tofurkey reminds you that you want real turkey and we’re making a clean break.
In other words, we’re going cold turkey on Tofurkey.
I had been reading my recipe books and feeling my Italian heritage, which is the kind of thing that happens at the holidays, when I get nostalgic for hard-core ethnic food that no one in my family ever made, because we got too tired.
Which brings me to fava beans.
You may not have heard of them, except that if you watched Hannibal Lecter, you know he likes fava beans with liver.
But like I say, we’re vegetarians.