Early Retirement

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Melissa stood at the crosswalk waiting on the light to change.  It had been long enough now that she was concerned the button wasn’t working.  When for the second time, the north-south traffic lights turned green she was certain of it. 

She wondered again where her strict adherence to rules came from.  The thought of crossing against the light without a walk sign gave her the jitters.  She was close to sweat popping out on her forehead.  She stopped, channeled her yoga instructor of thirty years earlier, and breathed three long slow inhalations and exhalations.  Elaine’s voice popped into her mind, “Three deep breaths at times of stress will almost always relax you enough to cope. “

Photo by Noah Silliman on Unsplash

Melissa needed all the coping mechanisms she could get. 

On the other side of Third Avenue, she headed right towards her office.  The sun was warm on her back and the thought of confining herself to her office on this lovely lovely birthday eve day was anathema. 

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Encounter with a stranger I never saw again

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The woman was sobbing as they rolled my gurney into the hospital room.  Her curtain was pulled so I couldn’t see her, but her sobs would have been heartbreaking had I not been in a state of euphoria.

I had just given birth to my miracle baby.  It was a miracle we conceived him.  It was a miracle when I sensed something wrong and went to my OB’s office.  It was a miracle my OB was out of town and another doctor with much smaller hands ended up tying the knot in the cervical cerclage stitch that closed my cervix and kept me pregnant.  It was a miracle that I was in labor for 9 weeks and the drugs kept me pregnant long enough for him to be viable.  It was a miracle that he was born 9 ½ weeks early and suffered little complications.  That’s no big deal now, but in 1985 that was a miracle.

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Barbie

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Barbie’s birthdate is March 9, 1959.  I was born a bit later on August 3rd.  Barbie has always been with me.  Good or bad, she has been woven into the cultural zeitgeist of this here baby boomer.

Photo by Sandra Gabriel on Unsplash

Of course, I had Barbies, but I think my mom was more into her than I was.  My mom made my Barbie clothes.  For Christmas one year, I got a whole box.  It seems Mom spent her days while I was in school making tiny evening gowns.

It was impossible during my youth, to put girls of a certain age together without the dolls coming out  When I was 10, I had a book of short stories about Barbie as a high school student.  Funny, I always thought her much older.  What high school student in the 60s traipsed around in stiletto mules and ballgowns all the time?

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The Vanilla Milkshake

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The first time I ever went to a drive-in theater with a date, I arrived home with a lifelong dislike of vanilla milkshakes.

I don’t remember his name or him asking me out or anything about the event other than his vanilla milkshake and his tongue halfway down my throat. I was repulsed in so many ways and just wanted to go home but was too young and too stupid and too fucking polite to tell him to stop. I was raised in an era and by people who believed women were put on earth to please men. To placate them. To serve them. And to diminish ourselves in the process.

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

We were double dating, or it easily would have become a date rape scene. Or perhaps, had we been alone, I would have pushed him away. The women’s movement was burgeoning, but in those early days, it was about sexual liberation not me too.

At least it wasn’t chocolate. I would hate to have had that disastrous date affect my lifelong love of chocolate milkshakes (and malts.) Small mercies.

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