Why My Third Husband Will Be A Dog (8 page)

I’m not sure when I officially stopped mattering, but I think it began at age 40. I know this because I’m a great reader of fashion magazines, and
InStyle
recently told me that I no longer mattered, if indeed I existed at all.

They didn’t even let me down easy. And I subscribe.

The article I was reading was called “Great At Any Age.” It was about beauty tips for women as they got older, and the article was broken down by age groups. The first page was addressed to women in their 20s and told them that “nothing topical gets rid of cellulite completely.”

Funny, I can remember my 20s, and it was the one decade of my life that I didn’t have cellulite. I had an orange Mazda, my first VISA card, and several thousand law school applications, but no cellulite.

Never mind. I turned the page

The second page was addressed to women in their 30s and informed them that their “skin was thinning.” That didn’t ring true to me, either. Every woman knows that as she gets older, her skin doesn’t get thinner. On the contrary, it gets thicker. Those of us who used to be thin-skinned simply stop caring about what people think of what we say, write, do, or wear. I always thought this was called perspective, but boy, was I wrong. InStyle told me so.

I turned to the next page, which was addressed to women in their “40s+” and told them that “gentle exfoliation” would stimulate their circulation “for a smoothing effect.” I wasn’t worried that I wasn’t smooth, but nevertheless, I resolved instantly to start exfoliating and to be gentle about it.

I turned the page. But there were no more age groups in the “Great At Any Age” article.

The “Great At Any Age” article was over.

The top age limit to be Great At was 40s+.

Now, wait.

I had thought I was Great At Any Age, because that’s what they told me at the top of the page. But they really didn’t mean it. I was Great Only At The Ages of 20 Through 40. They were the only gals who got their own age categories, instead of being lumped in all together. What about the ages of 42, 47, 52, 65, 75, 79, 83, and older? At those ages, I wasn’t Great. I might actually Suck.

The article should have been called: “Sucking At Any Age Over 40.”

I flipped the page and tried not to take it too much to heart. After all, as I say, my skin is thicker now, and nothing bothers me anymore.

The next article was entitled, “How to Wear . . . a Sporty Jacket.” The ellipsis are theirs. Don’t ask me why. I’m 40s+ and can barely take care of myself in the bathroom. Ask a twenty-year-old with cellulite.

Anyway, I was excited when I saw the article about how to wear . . . a sporty jacket. I’d never thought about how to wear . . . a sporty jacket. I had always assumed that you . . . put
your arms in the sleeves and slipped it . . . over your shoulders. But what do I know?

I was eager to learn about sporty jackets.

Only one problem. The sporty jacket article was addressed to age groups, too. Since when does a sporty jacket come with age limits? This is America. I always thought I could wear . . . a sporty jacket at any age.

Boy, was I wrong. Again!

Unbeknownst to me, sporty jackets had a shelf life. In fact,
I
had a shelf life. I’d thought if I was alive, I mattered, but
InStyle
set me straight.

Oddly, the age groups for sporty jackets were different than the age groups for cellulite creams. The first page of the article pictured a sporty jacket with a hoodie, for women in their “20s/30s.” The second page showed the same jacket with a white shirt for women, in their “30s/40s.” The third page showed the jacket with a set of plastic beads, for women in their “40s/50s.”

Whew. What a relief. A number with a 5 in front. I did exist, at least as far as sporty jackets were concerned.

But I was confused. I existed for sporty jacket purposes but not for cellulite cream purposes. Doesn’t this seem backwards? I don’t want to reveal too much, but my 40s+ self has more need for a cellulite cream than a sporty jacket. Unless the jacket is sporty enough to cover my tushie.

Plus, the article raised new questions. Am I too old for my handbag? Too young for my ballet flats? Are my clothes snickering at me behind my back?

Then I thought of something.
InStyle
didn’t ask me my age when they cashed my check for the subscription.

Ya think they’ll ask when I cancel?

I’m wary of writing about religion, and though I want to say a word about Easter and Passover here, you’ll see that the following has more to do with saturated fats than Christianity or Judaism.

I was raised in a family that qualified as the Worst Catholics in the World. We didn’t go to church because my mother was excommunicated, since she had been divorced before she married my father. And if my mother wasn’t going to church, none of us was. As a child, I understood only that the Church didn’t like my mother, and since I loved her, I was on her side. So for me, Easter was about chocolate.

And plastic.

What I remember about Easter morning was that my brother Frank and I got a pink plastic basket full of green plastic grass. Nestled within were chocolate eggs from Woolworth’s, cream-filled, and a huge chocolate bunny, unfortunately hollow, because we were on the low-rent side.

I feel nostalgic for those multi-colored mornings, for neon-orange peanuts and chrome-yellow Peeps. For fat jellybeans, from before there were “gourmet” jellybeans that taste like popcorn or daiquiris, which is against nature. When I was little, all jellybeans tasted the same.

Like sugar, as God intended.

The only jellybeans I really wanted were the cherry ones that washed your teeth in a scary red juice, or the licorice ones that blackened your tongue like a chow’s.

We also got dressed up on Easter morning, and there are plenty of pictures of me looking stiff in a crinoline dress and brother Frank in a little gray suit, a red bowtie, and short pants with knee socks, topped off with a round cap that had a chin strap. Much later, we would learn that Frank was gay, and I still maintain we should have been tipped off by that Easter get-up.

I can get nostalgic about every Easter memory but the spray-painted chick. Spray-painted chicks were a big thing in my old neighborhood. I still can’t imagine what anybody was thinking, to do something so cruel as to take a live baby chick and dye it an “Easter” color. But my parents fell for this every year and they’d buy us a red, green, or purple chick. The novelty would wear off in an hour, not coincidentally with the sugar crash, and then nobody seemed to know what to do with the poor chick.

Our red chick and our green chick died in short order, but the purple chick, against all odds, didn’t die after the first week. Or even the second. Of course, we had no idea how to raise him. We fed him Cheerios and meatballs. We covered the floor of our bedroom with newspaper and kept him there. In time, he lost his purple feathers and grew to be a chubby brown chicken, whom we named Herman. He had a friendly personality, hanging out with us and walking through our legs like a house cat. He lived a full year, and when he died, we cried so hard that it made Easter the anniversary of his death, rather than the resurrection of anything else.

When I got older, we moved to a neighborhood that was
predominantly Jewish. I got invited to bar and bat mitzvahs, and I learned that Jews celebrated Passover. My best friend Rachel kept the traditional fast on the first day. I didn’t understand Judaism much better than I understood Catholicism, but her family invited me to their seder, where I had a great time and got to ask a question, which I didn’t understand either.

But what I did understand about Passover was that Rachel’s family was together around a full and lovely table—two wonderful parents, three fun-loving brothers, and my best friend in the world—all joking around with each other, laughing, and inviting me into their family. And to this day, I still am in their family, as they are in mine.

To me, that’s what every holiday is all about.

That’s even what every religion is about.

Love.