Older But Wiser

Being A Mother Sucks…Part 2

/ Gardy Loo Pismire / 7 Comments

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She didn’t like the art museum. Okay, I kind of “get” that seeing pictures of old men with shrunken penises and heads being lopped off may not be your cup of tea but what about the woolly sheep standing in a brilliant green field or the pretty cuddly kitten chasing after a butterfly. Surely out of the thousands of paintings on display you could find ONE you liked. Just ONE. NOPE.

She didn’t like our dinner. She ordered pizza…what’s not to like? It’s a dish she requests time and time again but today it was as if the waiter brought her a plate of liver and onions.

She didn’t eat much of the blueberry pancakes she ordered. What the heck…we have blueberry pancakes all the time! But with hotel prices at $12 a plate for blueberries and batter she couldn’t stand them. ARE YOU KIDDING ME!

She didn’t like the Field Museum…one of the greatest museums in the world. You mean to tell me Ancient China isn’t amazing? NO. Or the gemstones the size of small hills? NO. How about SUE the most complete T-Rex in the world? NO. Really? You didn’t like her either? BORING.IMG_4388

Maybe the Ancient Egyptians with their mummies…thank you… NO!IMG_4429

Or maybe the animals mounted and stuffed in all their glory? GROSS. There was nothing in the entire building that caught her fancy.

Okay, BOLD MOVES by the Joffrey Ballet. This one I was a little worried about. I have really never loved ballet but figure I am giving her some “culture” and if nothing else ideas for her routine. images-6 Of course, she developed a nosebleed in the first part of the performance but I’d be damned if we were leaving. Here is a kleenex. Stuff it up your nose. And so we sat through the three performances and I wept like a crazy old cat lady during the final one. Never have I seen something so beautiful and moving in my entire life. Never could I relate so well. Today I learned to LOVE ballet…my  tween daughter…not so much.

As a mom sometimes it feels like nothing you do is right.EVER. But then you finally catch on and realize it isn’t about you at all. It’s the hormones and your daughter is turning into a bitchy, selfish soon-to-be menstruating maniac and you remember back to a days when your mother could do nothing right. You didn’t like the dress she bought for you…it was too old fashioned just like her. You didn’t do the dishes and she did them for you because it was easier than dealing with the likes of you. You wouldn’t eat her pot roast and sulked like a two-year-old because there was only vanilla ice cream and not chocolate. You refused to SING ALONG WITH MITCH and instead turned up the volume on Led Zeppelin. And that is when it really hits you…horror of horrors… you realize that she has returned as you when you were a horrid cruel totally-into-yourself-snotty-14 year-old. Suddenly you have become your mom… old, boring and certainly not cool. Then, like the principle dancer who hastened her demise and threw herself upon a sword, you briefly consider doing the same, just so you can experience a quick and easy death rather than deal with a reincarnation of a teenage you in the house. That’s when you fall to your knees and wish for just one more hour with your mother so you could apologize, beg her forgiveness and tell her how great a mom she was and that you remember how hard she tried to create moments so special that you would remember them for the rest of your life but not appreciate them until your own daughter’s hormones went awry. And then you cry yet again because suddenly teenagehood is upon you and YOU aren’t ready to give up that sweet little girl that once hung on your every word, freely cuddled with you and loved you back without restraint. Yep, the teen years are upon us…God help us all!

Our Bodies Ourselves

/ Gardy Loo Pismire / 4 Comments

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As women it seems like we have spent a lifetime trying to keep men away from our bodies uninvited. From the little girl who subconsciously realizes that having a man’s hands down her pants is somehow wrong, to teens who fight the pressure to go to “second base”  if you “really love me;” females are always having to fight men who are constantly deciding what “is right for them.”

Many years ago when I was in grad school I interviewed and surveyed over 100 teenage girls in regards to how they viewed feminism. Many didn’t know what feminism was. Even more commented that it was not relevant to them and that there was no need for feminist thinking in this day and age. I was shocked and dismayed.

As a child who grew up in the last 60’s and 70’s, I remember the feminist revolution very well. I remember Phyllis Schaffly condemning women who wanted something more for themselves than a frying pan in their hand. I remember women working hard to try to achieve equal work for equal pay. I remember women waking up to their own sexuality and unique health care/reproductive needs, and realizing that they could and should take those matters into their own hands especially when “those matters” concerned their own bodies.

Lately, the political right wing is getting louder in their demands to further control women’s bodies. In this day and age where access to abortion is harder to obtain than purchasing an assault weapon, and Planned Parenthood, where so many millions of poor women receive their gynecologic health care, is under attack and  being defunded; it amazes me how few women are doing anything about it. Once again men have their hands “all over our bodies” and once again women’s needs and wants are subjugated to men in power-conservative men in power who really want to put women “back in their place” where “they belong.” Yet, what I find really disturbing is that if God did indeed give us each free will that conservatives fail to honor this principle of self governance given by God when it comes to women’s minds and bodies.

When, I wonder, will women finally realize it is ALWAYS in their best interest to control their own reproductive health, their bodies and their souls? And when will these ideas that others should control a woman’s  body for their own political and religious gain ever stop? It’s time we end these outdated practices and let women live in peace without having men’s unwanted hands all over us.

When Did I Cease To Exist…297 Days To Fix This

/ Gardy Loo Pismire / 1 Comment
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Today I went to the store not wearing something that 10 years ago I swore I never would…no makeup. And I paid for it dearly just like I thought I would during all these many years of not venturing out the door without, at the very least, a good coat of mascara. As far as I was concerned my lack of an encounter with the sales girls confirmed my suspicions that no makeup=no service. So I just stood there at the counter while two young sales clerks had a gossip fest that would make Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons proud. Finally, I started to get annoyed. But here is the thing. It wasn’t so much that the girls were ignoring me that upset me but it was the fact that I was all but invisible to them. HUH? Since when did this cloak of inconspicuousness begin to envelop me? I mean it seems like just yesterday that I was twenty-five and men would whistle and sales women couldn’t wait to give me the time of day. So when did I become invisible?
I wish I could pinpoint a time that I began to disappear. A day or an event that I could look back on and blame would be nice. A moment at which I could say “Ah ha. It was the day you stopped dying your hair,” or something significant like that. Yet, if the truth is told, I do have a vague idea of when this slide into nothingness began. It was around my 40th birthday when I gained twenty-five pounds and crows feet all in the same day. It was the year the Dow dropped precipitously and so did my boobs. And it was the year my collagen supply diminished and my shoe size increased as everything in my body suddenly let go and “loosened” up. Instantly, I was no longer youthful nor desirable to Madison Avenue or the man on the street. Society began to dictate no more cute low cut dresses, open toe shoes or fishnet hose for me. In fact, the sales girls in some sort of giggly, jiggly, conspiracy started steering me towards the matronly woman department. You know the place. It’s where they sell swimsuits with huge explosive pink flowers with aprons to cover your “older but wiser” big ass. Here you can find shoes without heels and interchangeable inserts for shoes and bras. It’s the one place on earth where the minute hands are removed from watches so as to not remind you of your impending demise. And it’s where White Shoulders perfume strangles the air. Come to think of it, after turning forty I never again received free samples of tanning lotion, sculpting gel or feminine deodorant spray in the mail. Now its just, AARP news, denture cream and life insurance spokesman Ed McMann that clutters my mailbox.
This invisibleness I have taken on is not of my choosing and somehow it doesn’t seem fair nor does it suit me. I mean, come on, when my mother was forty she was OLD. I on the other hand, well, I am hip, sassy and can still have a decent conversation with “the girls” about sex that would make even Oprah squirm. In fact, I almost jumped into the sales girls conversation when it started venturing towards men’s body parts. But instead I laughed out loud thinking about how young, inexperienced and naive they were. It was then that they turned, and gave me “THE LOOK” that told me they thought that dementia was settling in and making a permanent home in my soon-to-be grandma brain.
“May I help you?” shouted a nineteen year-old bleached blondie named Brittany who had a permanent Botox IV drip inserted under her skin. She sashayed over to where I stood in her perfect size 00 hipsters; her perky boobs still able to arrive at my side of the counter five minutes before the rest of her.
“I believe you can. I want the biggest jar of anti-wrinkle cream you have,” I said. I remembered to smile while trying standing a little straighter in a futile effort to raise my boobs an inch higher so I would not inadvertently knock the samples to the floor.
She gave me the “poor pitiful you there is nothing that can help” look as she placed my purchase in the bag with her set of perfectly polished two inch nails.
“Oh, I threw in some free samples of the newest and most technologically advanced firming creams on the market,” Brittany said patting me on the hand. “They guarantee that it will make you look ten years younger. It really helps women YOUR age.”
It was at that precise moment a miracle occurred and I grew comfortable in my aging skin. For in that second, I knew without a doubt, that invisible and fifty-five was a thousand times better than insecure and nineteen. Sure she may have the world by the tail but give it a few years and Brittany would soon be directed to the matrons department by girls just like her. But there would be one big difference. She would arrive scared, not confident. She would be feeling dread, not optimism. Instead of my BRING IT ON attitude she would the type who would cut, lipo, shape, tweeze and pilate her way into middle age. Eventually, she would begin to develop a flat head as she engaged in twenty minute headstand marathons trying to get her breasts somewhere up near her shoulders again. Then she would discover gravity doesn’t work that way and it would be all downhill from there.
Luckily, I am one of those that “Age” has been speaking with for a while now. I have slowly gotten used to having her around. Sometimes she speaks softly to me offering encouragement. At other times “Age’ becomes loud and brassy with a “Take A Look At Me Now” attitude; daring the world to see what I see when I look in the mirror…naked. She gives me a comforting yet gentle push to the future even as I resist her intrusion into my life. We have a love/hate relationship going on. Yet,I am fortunate because for others “Age” is not so kind. She digs her stilettos in, fighting to remain in the past, fearful of what’s to come. It was obvious Blondie would be one of those.
I took pity on the nineteen year-old. I reached into my bag and placed the new miracle of science back into her hand.
“Darling you take it,” I said with a laugh. “In fact, take all of it,” I laughed shoving the samples back into her hands. “Believe it or not someday you will need it.”
And with that, I turned and headed over to the hat department. There I found a vibrant scarlet red one; it’s upturned brim spotted with leopard material. It sits in my closet waiting as I bridge the gap between young and old, wise and wishful, content and always searching. Every once in awhile I put it on to remind myself that I am not invisible even if the youth of society and Madison Avenue wants me to be. It reinforces the fact don’t intend on bowing out quickly and quietly as a nearly invisible shadow of my former self. Instead, I have chosen to live my life celebrating my age, my lines, my sense of humor , the wisdom I have acquired, my many accomplishments to date, and my verve. I’ll be the one to decide if and when I will cease to exist, not some blonde bimbo at Bloomingdales. I may be older and grayer than the ME generation but I still have my power and I‘m still feeling pretty damn groovy.
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