Sometimes I Feel Like a Nut (13 page)

It’s not like I’d been wearing
Saturday Night Live
pleat-front Mom Jeans and JC Penney pastel-threaded tapestry vests, but for the first time in ages, I felt sexy and cool, not a mom but a badass with a killer shot. People still don’t quite get why I do it, but to each her own. Some do Pilates; some go boxing at Punch; I pull the trigger, pulling myself to a calmer place as I do it. And somehow, as thirty-six dawns while I type this, I feel a little—just a little—bit more centered. Somehow all the changes of the past year have sharpened who I am, helping cement what I want to do in my limited spare time, helping me be happy, helping me hit the target of adulthood.

16

While firing guns does make me feel like La Femme Jillita, nailing rounds of bullets into targets emblazoned with an angry rapist with a big hungry bulge in his pants, it doesn’t take care of the crows’ feet marching across my lined face. I was starting to feel extra old, especially when I looked at my mug in the mirror after waking up. Puffy, creased, spotted, tired. I’d examine each new wrinkle, cringing as I plucked a gray hair. As with all things in my life, I am black or white. Impulsive. Extreme. I went from my mirror to my address book to phone my dermatologist, one of the best in New York. I took the first available appointment.

“So I’m thinking,” I said to the man who was used to just checking my countless moles, “I’d like to get some Botox, please. On my elevens. The two vertical gashes above my nose where I seem to hold my stress. I need them gone. They’re so deep I could canoe down them with my family.”

He looked at me through his glasses, horrified. He took them off and stared at me, shocked.

“I would never, ever inject Botox,” he said. “I’m a medical dermatologist. I could make a fortune doing it, but I don’t feel like injecting poison in people’s faces. If you really want this, you need to get what I call a scumbag dermatologist.”

I shrugged.

Okay!

So I found one. A pal of mine has six kids and got the ’tox; she looks earthy and pretty and so not plastic. Sold. She made the intro to Dr. Anita Cela, who was not at all a scumbag but rather a cool, attractive, un-Barbie New York mom with a thriving practice, chill bedside demeanor, and relaxed, natural vibe. She instantly put me at ease as I explained I was craving a fountain-of-youth fix to freeze the wrinkle sitch. It was not only the number 11 engraved by the burn of time but also four perpendicular lines above it that looked not unlike Freddy Krueger had dragged his razor claw across my forehead.

After a series of the tiny shots, which were little leagues next to my tattoo, I might add, I was finito. I was getting up to get dressed when I had a quickie last question for sweet Dr. Cela, who was already walking out. “Do you mind just taking a quick peek at this mole?” I asked. “My other doctor said it was fine, but it keeps bleeding.”

“How long has it been bleeding?” she asked, coming to check the spot on my right upper thigh.

“Oh, like on and off for over three years,” I said blithely.

“Really?” she asked. “Your other doctor didn’t want to biopsy it?”

“Well, no, I mean he saw it three times and he said it’s benign and that it’s in a highly trafficked area and that it may have been rubbed by a garment or something.”

“Hmm. Well, it looks totally benign, but if it’s bleeding, I’d get rid of it!” She told the nurse to prep and then sliced the fucker off. I didn’t think about it again.

Then, a week later, in a deluge of biblical proportions, I was pushing Fletch in the stroller while holding a massive umbrella when my cell phone rang. It was my doctor with the pathology report. Not the nurse, but Dr. Cela herself. Uh-oh.

“Jill,” she said in a grave tone, “I’m so sorry, but I’m afraid I’m calling with some very bad news.” I stopped on the street, stunned, as my heart started pounding out of my chest like Roger Rabbit’s. “You have a very rare type of skin cancer. I was so shocked when I got the pathology report that I called back the lab to have them double-check the results, explaining you were a young mother, but they confirmed the findings. You need to get to Memorial Sloan-Kettering right away . . .” She went on and I morphed into robot mode, barely hearing a word but nodding and recording the number to call and what I needed to do. It wasn’t until a half hour later, when I heard my parents’ voices, that I lost my shit and burst into tears. Luckily my mom had volunteered at the hospital for nineteen years and within hours of everyone scrambling I had an appointment for the next day.

My surgeon, Daniel Coit, who is the head of tumors at MSK Cancer Center, explained that they needed to take out the lymph nodes in my vag to see if the cancer had spread, plus obviously take out the whole area around the tumor, which was placed at stage 2 because it was growing into my leg beneath the mole. I was slated to go under the knife four days later. I looked at the surgeon’s associate and said, “So, like, what are the chances that, like . . . I die?” He looked at his colleague then back at me, clearing his throat.

“Fifteen percent.”

I
burst
into tears.

“I said one-five, not five-oh!” he said, surprised at my weepiness.

“I
know
!” I said through my tears. “That’s still bad! I have three kids! That’s one in six! Point something!” I froze. People around me went into action, sending flowers, notes, and chocolate, but I was in panic mode. I just couldn’t imagine dealing with years of battling this crap of scans, blood tests, radical diet change (fourteen Sprites a week became one, and buh-bye to Britney Spearsian snack food, including a Cheeto-dust-free existence), and more vitamin horse pills a day than I have fingers and toes. As if I had time!

Four days later, I went in and was facing going under anesthesia for the first time in my life. I was freaked but knew people did this every day and it was no biggie. I just didn’t wanna chunder. Before my surgery, I had to go for tests in Nuclear Medicine, where they injected a radioactive dye into the site and the nodes and I had to lie in a tube.

“Like . . . lie still?”

“Yes, totally still. You can’t move or we have to start over.”

“Okay, so, it’s like twenty minutes?” I asked, recalling a thyroid scan I’d had years back.

“Nnnnno, it’s seventy,” the nurse said.

Sweat. Pouring.

“
Seventy minutes?
” I gasped. “Oh my god, I can’t, I can’t do it.
I CAN’T LIE IN THERE FOR SEVENTY MINUTES HOLY FUCKING SHIT!”

The nurse calmly explained they would sedate me with a megadose of Klonopin and that that I’d be fine. I started breathing so heavily I feared I’d lapse into hyperventilation that would necessitate a brown paper bag, just like when I tried to show off in a camp color war minimarathon and collapsed in a red-faced wimpy mess.

I swallowed the pill and felt the beats of my heart speeding up rather than decelerating. I was shaking from the cold of the hospital creeping through my little gown and I thought I wouldn’t have the strength to deal. And then something happened.

The door opened and in walked another patient for the same procedure. She was eight. I instantly felt so shitty and so loserish for freaking when this precious child—a second-grader two years older than my oldest daughter—was facing the exact same thing. In that moment, my whole world changed. Of course I always knew there were sick kids, but when faced with my own mortality I spun into self-protection mode and never realized how
lucky
I was that it was me and not one of my three children. I thought about this cute girl’s mother, sobbing there in the claustro waiting room with tattered issues of
National Geographic
. I pictured it being me and how I would pray to switch places. So, see, my wish came true. It was me over my kids. And from then on, I never complained, never felt scared. Not even once.

Okay, except when I woke up and saw the eight-inch scar up my thigh. And that wasn’t even the bad one—the vag one was way more painful an area, as the groin holds tender nerves, but eventually the pain subsided. (Thank you, Percocet! And Colace, for dealing with what accompanied the Percocet!)

And now as I face my first bathing suit season looking not unlike Sally from
The Nightmare Before Christmas,
I’m okay with it. Actually, better than okay—I weirdly dig it. It’s a jagged badge of honor that shows how lucky I am. And it’s a reminder that I need to slather sunblock on my kids like I’m papier-mâchéing them in zinc. Can’t be too careful! And can’t be too grateful. My vanity saved my fucking life. Thank the lord for scumbag dermatologists.

17

Weirdly, even though I don’t believe in God, I still usually spell it G-d just in case I piss him off. Jews have this weird thing about not spelling His Name but meanwhile I text people “OMG” all the time, and once I stupidly e-mailed my mom “OMMFG” and she almost shat when I told her what it stood for. Oops. Sorry, G-d! You’re so not a motherfucker!

Well, despite my agnostic Jodie Foster–in–
Contact
stance, minus the whole desire-to-travel-through-space thing, I must say I love me some Jewy songs. I go to temple most Friday nights and probably put the “sin” in “synagogue” when I say that I use it for peace, not prayer. I love the gorgeous sanctuary. I love the music. The cantor, Angela Buchdahl, has a voice that is so gorgeously spine-tingling it almost makes you believe in gifts bestowed From Above and whatnot. My rabbis are brilliant, so it’s like a lesson, even if I can’t buy burning bushes and seventy-year-olds getting knocked up.

Judaism to me is about soul and humor and warmth and food and family and our conspiracy to take over the planet. Just kidding. But I totally sometimes get how people think the Bernie Madoffs of the world are running rampant. Even I, as a proud Jewess, sometimes understand how peeps might think the bewigged Hasidic wives patrolling Madison look kinda sickly and the well-preened BlackBerrying Japs with their Escalades and blowouts and six-inch Louboutins are stereotypes that are upheld for a reason.

But still I partake in all the normal holiday traditions, including the Passover Seder. In the past it was all about finding the Afikomen and scoring me some cizzna$h (I know, how Jewy of me), but now, in my old age, with little money-hungry tots of my own searching for the hidden matzoh, I just love the tradition. Namely the wine. Manischewitz tastes like Robitussin and I fuckin’ love the shit. It’s sickly sweet and goes right to your head and helps you deal with the looooong Haggadah until actual mealtime. Plus, let’s not forget, the Exodus is some pretty heavy stuff, yo! Locusts? Death of the firstborn? Bottoms up, yo!

So last year it just so happened that the eight-day holiday’s beginning landed square in the middle of spring break. We were with my in-laws, who took us to Colorado, specifically Aspen (which, while beautiful, is basically New York with snow). I spied all these yummy mummies from home decked out in heels at ski school drop-off while I was in my parka and robotron ski boots. These girls get blowouts in the
mountains
. It’s simply too fancy-pants for me. I like being mellow. I like to hide. I like restaurants without a deejay spinnin’ it. We’re out west! Give me a big fucking moose head, not a Skeletor hostess with ’tude! I can get that back home! To top it all off, my mother-in-law announced that for Passover we would be having Seder at the (very upscale) Hotel Jerome. Oh no.

The eleventh plague:
dinner with 150
strangers
.

With white tablecloths! And a three-hour service! Holy shit. My kids would trash the place!
They’d better serve Manischewitz,
I thought.

I got the kids all dolled up in their cute outfits, trying to explain that it was not a party but a service and they would have to sit still. We pulled up to the hotel and found a long line to check coats; already my kids had ants in their pants, and they were darting around the high-ceilinged lobby. I gulped, hoping to gracefully pull through the endless evening ahead of me. I looked at Harry and did a deep-breath-eye-roll combo, as if to say, “This. Is. Going. To Suuuuuuuuuuuck.”

I walked in to find hordes o’ Jewsteins in a large barroom with a thirty-foot ceiling, milling around, mostly the L.A. Hillcrest genre with black T-shirts and gray mullets that say, “Who, me, aged?” The two huge sets of mahogany double doors leading to the ballroom were closed and we were told they would open in an hour, which, like dog years, has to be multiplied when chasing three small children. I was going shithouse.
Oh, lordy, this is going to blow.
I got a glass of wine. I lost one of my kids, found him again, and then spied a few kids coming in with crayons and coloring books. Shit. I wish I had thought of that! But who thinks of that when it’s a Seder? Then I saw that in fact a woman was handing them out!
Géniale!
We went up to her and saw that in fact they were Ten Plagues coloring books, complete with cheerful bubble font for each page. One of them said “Cattle Disease!” and the kids could color in the sideways dead cows lying on the grass. Good times!

I flipped through one to see if they would “go there” with the dead babies, and yes, there were little papooses with
X
s for the eyes. Insane. My kids had already settled down to coloring in their little locusts when all of a sudden, the doors burst open to the ballroom, revealing . . .

Purple and red lights, a disco ball, and
a full black choir in full robes
singing “My Girl,” except it was “My God.” “My God, my God, my God, talking bow-ooo-out my Go-o-o-d, my God!” I burst out laughing. After the Temptations cover, my temptation to bolt was quashed. This was actually mildly amusing.

Then we were led to our table and my jaw dropped. The entire silk quilted tablecloth was covered with rubber insects. Plagues! It was
hilarious
.

But there were also about twenty Ping-Pong balls. All over. Next to the wine, the bread basket, everywhere.

What’s with the fucking Ping-Pong balls?
I was thinking as my son grabbed one and promptly chucked it across the table.

“Oh my god”—I answered my own question as it dawned on me—“HAIL!”

FUCKING BRILLIANT.

I almost peed myself with delight when the lights went out and remixed music blared.

“
Lady Gaga!
” both my two- and three-year-olds chimed in unison. (No “Baby Beluga” or “Hot Potato” in Casa Karg! Screw the Wiggles and the Qantas plane they flew in on.)

I could barely tell what it was at first but then through the pounding bass and darkness I somehow made out the opening chords of “Poker Face.” But it was slightly different. On two huge screens flashed images of all the Jewy celebs, from Amy Winehouse to Seinfeld to Gwyneth Paltrow, and the reworked song title was “Kosher Face.”

“K-k-kosher face my k-kosher face! I’m gettin’ hot, for bagels and lox, sh’ma-ma-ma . . .”

Midgulp, I did a full spit-take of Manischewitz and almost fell on the fucking floor.
You can’t make up this shit.
Then they passed out the Haggadahs, which were in fact not three-hour tomes but rather a McService called 30MinuteSeder.com. Like literally the dot-com was in the title. Perfection. After the insta-Seder, the choir got back up and rocked out to some tunes, and then a deejay took over. The entire ballroom devolved into a huge bar mitzvah
blowout
. We were shakin’ ass in Aspen and I felt like a total a-hole for freaking out so much. I thought it would be a plunge into the seventh ring of Hades but it turned out to be pure heaven. We shimmied for two hours and did everything but the chair dance. It was insane. I howled laughing, pocketed some locusts for posterity, and left knowing that I would cherish it as the best Seder ever. I also took home the lesson that sometimes the things we dread the fuck out of turn out to be our most treasured memories. I so did not see that coming and whenever I think about it, this k-k-k-kosher face cracks a huge smile.