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Socially Distanced

5/25/2020

It was raining and dank when we scheduled Zoom cocktails with a friend for Saturday at 6. But then came the weekend weather report and, with it, an email: “It’s supposed to be beautiful,” it read. “Would you consider coming over to my backyard to have socially-distanced cocktails?”

After a momentary consultation with my husband, Paul, I declined. “We’re just not ready,” I wrote. But while the decision was quick, its aftereffects have lingered.

When our self-isolation began, followed days later by the official lockdown, part of me was excited. Part of me loved that suddenly everything was called off. No longer did I have to arrange activities, buy tickets, make reservations, schedule appointments or head to the gym. I went into my calendar and gleefully hit delete, delete, delete – no excuses needed.

Of course, before long, my calendar filled with Zoom this and Zoom that, and I have been grateful for every single one of those classes and visits and lunches and cocktails. They have been my connection – to my work, to my friends, to my family, to the world beyond my house.

And yes, I complain: too much screen time, not enough human contact. I miss being in the room with people, observing the subtleties and depths that can only be sensed in person.

The reason I said no to backyard cocktails wasn’t only my now-ingrained pandemic caution. It was a reluctance to give up some of what comes with an enforced lockdown. And acknowledging this reluctance has been fraught.

Here are a few of my conflicts:

• Maybe I won’t ever go back to the gym. I’ve been exercising daily, and, truth is, going swimming is a big production.

• When I teach on Zoom, it doesn’t matter what the weather is. It doesn’t matter what I’m wearing from the waist down. And all of my students show up, and show up on time.

• I like not having to drive anywhere. And I like knowing that if I did, there’d be no traffic.

• I relish the challenge of rationing food and supplies. You can’t argue with it economically and ecologically. And it suits my compulsive tendencies.

• And there’s something about those Zoom cocktails – the no-fuss, BYOB, no clean-up, hour-is-just-about-all-anyone-can-take – that I loathe to give up.

Epilogue: We had our cocktails, and at the end, our friend said, “I hope that next time, we can do this in person.”

“I hope so, too,” I said.

But do I?

~ Susan Hodara

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Two Perspectives on Goodbye

7/15/2019

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To Kiss or Not To Kiss

“Bye. See you next week.”

“Yup, bye bye.”

My friend Joan and I are parting after an hour-and-a-half long lunch in a local sushi restaurant. We’ve had many such lunches over the years, our conversations running from what to watch on Netflix, to the angst of family crises.

Joan and I know a lot about each other’s lives – and not just from our lunches. We met nearly two decades ago when I signed up for a weekly memoir workshop she was teaching at a nearby arts center. It was the first writing class I’d taken since high school creative writing.

Joan was petite, her straight white hair cut short, with the front falling gracefully across her forehead. She often wore Oxford shirts and cardigans with jeans and delicate earrings. In class, each student read their writing aloud and the rest of us offered feedback. Joan’s suggestions always impressed me, and I wondered how she knew so intuitively just what each student’s piece needed.

The stories of my life poured easily from me, and I re-enrolled for the workshop again and again. I wrote about my childhood, my old boyfriends, my daughters, my husband, Paul – my persistent goal to find the precise phrases that captured the truths of my experiences. I never thought about what I was revealing of myself. I never felt judged.

I don’t remember when Joan and I began chatting after class, or when I learned that she lived in the same town as I, or when we first met for lunch. I do remember Paul and I bumping into Joan at the opening of a Mexican restaurant and realizing, when she met him, that she knew far more about him than he knew about her.

After a few years I stopped taking Joan’s class. Then she stopped teaching it, and I had the privilege of becoming her replacement. Meanwhile, she and I formed a weekly writing group with Lori and Vicki, who’d been in the workshop, and before long, the four of us decided to collaborate on a book about our mothers.

Through it all, Joan and I continued to get together and keep each other apprised of our lives – from weddings and separations, to illnesses and injuries, to lots of petty gossip. Many things changed over the long course of our friendship, including the restaurants we favored. But our lunches remained constant, and as I stared across whatever table we shared, so did Joan’s face, with its attentive eyes, wry smile and blush of lipstick, seemingly untouched by time.

I have friends whose cheeks I peck when we say hello or goodbye, but not Joan’s. We don’t kiss. We don’t hug. “Hi,” we say, and “Bye, see you soon.” Then we go our separate ways.

But today is different. In the instant of our parting, my feet already swiveling to go, is a tiny melee of overlapping instincts. A kiss goodbye? No, we don’t kiss. But why not?

“Wait,” I say, and swivel back toward her as she turns around. I think I say, “Let me give you a kiss goodbye.” And then I lean forward and touch my lips to her soft cheek.

There is a tinge of awkwardness, of embarrassment, but they dissolve as we both smile and head into the rest of our days.

~ Susan Hodara

* * *

Hugs or Kisses

People are hugging more and more lately. Really long, tight hugs, with sometimes a cheek kiss or two. I see this in movies and on television. But not in my real life.

There are a few demonstrative women friends who give me a quick hug when they run into me on the street or in the grocery store, but that doesn’t happen often. I used to sometimes encounter a man who engulfed me in creepily lengthy hugs while proclaiming, “You’re the best.” Another man I’ve known for years likes to greet me with a wet kiss; when I see him coming I’m careful to quickly turn my head so his smooch lands on my cheek.

Among my four grown children, two are huggers and two are not. The two seldom-huggers, a son and a daughter, seem to like me well enough and will sometimes grant me a quick kiss. The other daughter is a warm hugger and kisser. The second son is also physically affectionate, but he’s six-foot-six and I’m five-two, and our hugs, although I love them, can be awkward.

Three of my closest women friends are fellow writers. We’ve known one another for twenty years and meet every two weeks to read aloud and comment on our writings, much of which are memoir. Over the years we’ve shared many experiences – illnesses, both physical and mental; deaths – human and animal.

We truly care about one another, we listen carefully and offer words of support, but we’ve never enfolded the others in those weepy, consoling hugs I see on my television screen. When we meet, we smile and say, “Hi.” When departing, we say, “Bye, see you later, enjoy the weekend.” No touching.

Just recently, I met one of our group, Susan, for sushi at a local restaurant. We always have plenty to talk about – our kids’ problems, our health, and, of course, books and writing. We finished lunch, paid our check, and stood to leave. Susan was going out the front door and I had parked in back.

There was a moment before saying goodbye when we didn’t seem to know what to do with our hands. We leaned slightly forward in a possible lead-in to a hug or cheek kiss. Then we pulled away, laughed, and headed in our separate directions.

Why did this happen? What does it portend? What should I do next time we meet? I’m hoping we can forget about it and return to the good old days of a smile and a wave and “So long, see you next week.”

~ Joan Potter

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Kraft American Singles

5/13/2018

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We are watching Ed Sullivan, as we always do on Sunday nights. We are in the den, a narrow space off the living room. A couch lines the long wall beneath a couple of windows whose venetian blinds are shut; a few feet away, an upholstered chair sits in front of the desk where my father comes to pay bills. Now he’s in the chair: dark hair parted and combed to his left, button-down plaid shirt, khaki pants, each foot on the floor. The rest of us – my mother, my two younger brothers and I – perch side by side on the couch, twisting slightly to our right to face the television set.

During the commercials, we can get snacks. Eating while watching television – it’s the perfect pairing. My father likes to have an apple; my mother takes a little bowl of black licorice nubs. I don’t remember what my brothers have. I head for the kitchen, open the refrigerator and peer into its illuminated insides. I consider carefully until I know what I want: cheese.

Kraft American slices – the orange ones, each individually wrapped. I get one in my lunchbox sometimes. Tonight I slip one out of the package where a stack of them looks like shiny corduroy. I bring the piece back to the den intact, and as the program resumes, I start in.

I begin by lifting the cellophane and pulling it back to expose about a third of the slice of cheese, which I fold onto the rest of the slice and watch as it breaks off in a straight line, its edge jagged. I continue folding that third horizontally until I end up with three plastic-y squares. I put one on my tongue and let it sit; the cheese doesn’t dissolve, but it gets warmer, and creamier, and I mash it against the roof of my mouth. Flavor emanates – impossible to describe – a sweet saltiness that is somehow orange itself. Satisfying. It doesn’t take long before I’ve swallowed it, but its taste lingers within the cavern of my mouth.

I do this with the other two squares I’ve already broken off. Then I peel away more cellophane, fold another third and repeat the process until I’m left with the clear, weightless wrapper. Ed Sullivan continues; my father sucks the juice from his apple core. At the next commercial, I get up and toss the paper into the little brown wastebasket under my father’s desk.

~ Susan Hodara

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Dancing in the New Year

3/29/2016

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For the first time in a long time, my mother danced. It was on New Year’s Eve, at an annual celebration hosted by the senior residential facility in Bethesda, Maryland, where she has lived for a year and a half. They hold the event in what they call the ballroom, complete with live music, portable dance floor, instructors to assist the revelers, and, of course, champagne.

My mother attended the party last year, but was afraid to dance, worried she wasn’t steady enough and would fall. She was disappointed, she told me the next day. “Next year,” she said, a promise to herself.

Over the past 12 months, my mother has continued to exercise, but just shy of 89, she has come to rely more on her walker than her cane. Nevertheless, she kept her promise. She announced her victory first thing on New Year’s Day, when I called her from New York. “You’ll be happy to know that I danced last night,” she said. “I’m very proud of myself.”

I fired some questions at her as I tried to conjure the scene.

What did she wear? Her black pants, her embroidered red jacket, and her pearls, she told me. “What I always wear on special occasions,” she said. I knew the outfit; she had probably worn well-blotted red lipstick, too.

Whom did she dance with? First, one of the instructors. “I explained my situation and he said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll hold onto you.’” Then she danced with one of the residents, someone she’d shared meals with in the dining hall along with his wife.

What music did they play? Jazz standards, old familiars. “I danced to ‘It Had to be You,’” she said, the song I’d heard her sing in the kitchen of the house she’d lived in with my father, and where she remained alone for seven years after he died.

There are two versions of that night that I picture in my mind. In one, my mother clutches the instructor’s arms as she moves her feet in tiny, tentative increments. She is small, a little stooped, and her skin is pallid against her short gray hair. She is concentrating, willing herself to stay upright, barely hearing the song.

In the other, she is gliding, her satiny pants flowing around her ankles, her pearls glistening in the light from a chandelier. Her lips form a rosy smile and her cheeks are blushing as she sings along with the music: “It had to be you, it had to be you…” She has forgotten her age, as have I.

~ Susan Hodara

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Elusive Memory

7/24/2014

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Memories are elusive. Sometimes they come in broken pieces, like dreams; sometimes they’re confusing and you find yourself surprised that they happened.

One of the greatest challenges of writing memoir is the choppiness of memory. You might have a strong image of your mother cooking breakfast, but you can’t connect it with a particular event. You might remember that you had measles, but you can’t recall the details of the experience.

People often ask if it’s okay to make things up to fill in the gaps. The answer is no. One of the most basic and important tenets of memoir is that it’s the truth – your truth. It’s the truth of what you carry with you from your past. The minute you veer away from that – add a straw hat or make up a location or throw in a line of dialogue that you don’t really recall – you are breaking your pact with your reader, and with yourself. Memoir comes from your life. If you want to embellish, call it fiction.

There are ways to work with the slippery realities of memory. Often my starting point is a clear but isolated image – like a tiny movie that begins and ends abruptly. I believe it’s there for a reason; it holds some significance. So I describe the image: my mother is here, my brothers are there, the weather is warm, the wind is blowing through the window, I have a sore throat.

I’ve found that through the process of writing, more memories emerge. When we decided to write our book, one of my biggest fears was that I didn’t remember enough. I worried that I wouldn’t be able to fill my section with stories. But by sitting down and starting with the few distinct memories I had, other moments resurfaced, details unfolded, and new truths were revealed. It was like finding buried treasure, and I was finally able to tell the story I wanted to tell.

~Susan Hodara

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Just Write

6/2/2014

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Whenever we do readings, many audience members are anxious to tell us how much they identify with our experiences, and to share stories of their own mothers. In response, the four of us have been offering mother memoir workshops. After we’ve read from our book and talked a bit about memoir, the participants write about their own mothers. It might be for fifteen minutes, or even just five, the scratching of pens and the clicking of keyboards the only sounds in the room. Then one by one they read aloud what they’ve written.

Images of mothers materialize, this one in a wide-brimmed hat, that one sunning herself at the beach. Daughters idolize their mothers, or hate them, or can’t wait for them to come home from work. They watch their mothers reading magazines, preparing food, applying lipstick, and zipping up a fancy dress. One women wept as she read about her mother being beaten by her father and calling to her for help. In her story, she was a little girl; now her long gray hair was piled onto her head, but the memory still burned.

I am always inspired by the power of the details and the depth of emotion that emerge so quickly, so spontaneously. These snippets of memories culled in just minutes demolish the excuse of not having enough time or of not being in the right frame of mind. They are testimony to the long-running wisdom behind the craft: just write.

~Susan Hodara

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Phoning Mom

1/5/2014

Growing up, I felt I had little to say to my mother. Now I speak with her on the telephone every day.

I don’t mean a quick hello-how-are-you kind of checking in; often we talk for nearly half an hour. And because we’ve spoken the day before, there isn’t much news we have to share. But I know the particulars of my mother’s life: the television programs she watches, the trouble she’s having with her Hebrew homework, the stir-fry she made with all the vegetables in her refrigerator that were getting old. I know about the books she’s reading, the floor she’s having installed in her kitchen, the walk she took or is about to take when we say goodbye.

It started a few years ago when she ended up in the hospital after a fall. Following a visit of several days, daily phone calls were the best way to alleviate my worries about her, and to offer her some distraction until she could return home. When she did, my calls became less frequent — until she fell a few months later and was back in the hospital once again.

I’m the one who calls her, usually late in the afternoons. And because I’m generally not one for prolonged telephone conversations, I prefer to talk when I’m doing something else. Sometimes I chop garlic or unload the dishwasher or fold laundry; if the weather’s nice, I’ll use my cell phone and go for a walk. I have to confess that there are days when I wish I could take a break — when the call begins to feel like an obligation.

Then the other day I got an early morning email from my brother, who lives with his family a few miles from my mother. On the subject line I read “Mom (she’s fine)” and my breath stopped. My mother had been in the hospital the previous night, I learned. She’d been feeling dizzy, something related to the timing of her blood pressure medication. “She was discharged about 3 a.m.,” he wrote. “She’s probably sleeping now.”

I waited an hour before I called her. She filled me in on the details of the episode; she was okay, she said, planning on taking it easy for the day. As I listened, it struck me that no matter how mundane our conversations, they have become a part of my life. They are a touchstone, a simple pleasure that I already know I will miss. It is a gift that I get to have them at all.
~Susan Hodara

On Second Thought

7/30/2013

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It wasn’t until my mother’s second reading of my section of our book that she told me it made her sad. The first time she read it (as I waited for days, edgy and unsettled, terrified about how it might make her feel), she seemed to like it. “Some of the early scenes were a little upsetting,” she said on the telephone, “but it ended up so nicely.”

I tried not to think about the brash histories I’d written and my damning observations: my mother’s submission in the face of my father’s temper, the persistent yearning I carried for an emotional connection with her, and my often misguided activities as a young woman that I insinuated were the result of her passivity. But my mother was happy that our book had been published, and she bought copies to give to her friends.

Then, a few months later, without my knowing, she read it again. This time, she told me she felt bad about the kind of mother she’d been to me. She wasn’t angry; she didn’t try to defend herself. She knew it was all true, and it filled her with regret. “I wish I had a second chance,” she said.

I sat holding the phone, reeling. I searched frantically for words to obliterate the sentences I’d written. “Oh, that? That’s not really what I meant,” I wanted to say, but how could I? I’d written exactly what I’d meant. What had I been thinking?

The fact was, I hadn’t been thinking — not about how my mother would react to my stories. I put her aside while I was writing. It was the only way I could be honest in how I presented my past.

My mother’s response was to be expected. What saved me was the way our story ended: she and I finding each other, establishing the kind of mother-daughter relationship that had been thwarted decades earlier. She was redeemed, and so was I.
~Susan Hodara

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Thursday Mornings: "Missing Our Mothers"

4/24/2013

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There was a period when we were working on our book that we recorded conversations about different aspects of our experience together. We called them “Thursday Mornings at Ten.” Here’s one titled “Missing Our Mothers.”

Lori: I’ve found that when something’s going wrong, when something feels very dramatic in my life, or if I’m sad, I want to call my mother.

Joan: I know what you mean. When Roy was in the hospital after his cancer surgery, my mother was on my mind all the time. It was like she was hovering there, which was really weird. I wished I had been able to talk to her about it, and gotten her support.

Susan: Even though my mother is still alive, I already know what I will miss. It’s not so much her advice, but there’s something about her responses, the way she’ll say, “Oh yes, things can be hard,” or, “Time will make it better” — they’re clichés, but I know I can count on her to say something nice, completely judgment-free. That unquestioning acceptance — it’s so simple and kind.

Joan: I’m sorry my mother isn’t here to see some of the good things. She knew her first great-grandchild, Julia, when she was a toddler. Julia was such a terror, and my mother would say, “Oh my goodness, what is going to become of that child?” I would love for her to see Julia now, singing and playing her guitar.

Vicki: Yes, there are all those things they’ll never know. I remember moving into my house in 2001. I loved the house, but I had such a hard time when I moved in. Then my sister said to me, “You know, this is the first place you’ve lived in since Mommy died.” And she was right. I was making my home in a place that my mother would never be a part of.

Lori: I have no illusions that my mother would have changed. She would have continued to want attention, be difficult and demanding. But I think now I could have served her better, and that would have made her happier. That’s what I was always looking for: to make her happy, to see that smile.

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The habits...the set of a brow...

1/31/2013

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In his recent The New Yorker Personal History, “Becoming Them,” James Wood noted the similarity between his legs and his elderly father’s. “The other day,” he wrote, “I saw that I have the same calves, with the shiny, unlit pallor I found ugly when I was a boy, and with those oddly hairless patches at the back…”

I was reminded of my mother — of my mother’s leg, and by extension, of my own. In Still Here Thinking of You, I wrote about a parallel incident of suddenly spotting the likenesses between my legs and my mother’s while glimpsing her rarely seen bare leg on a visit to her home: “Then it strikes me: this is my own leg.” In my story, I am momentarily sad.

Wood’s piece is about the ways we take on elements of our parents as a way of mourning them, even before they are gone. The habits, the turn of a phrase, the set of a brow: we go on about our lives, but our parents are there.

The sadness I felt in identifying my mother’s leg as my own certainly anticipated her loss, and the role that my leg will then have in embodying a part of her that no longer exists. It is a role that I — that we who are all partly our parents in one way or another — rarely think about.

~Susan Hodara

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Socially Distanced

Two Perspectives on Goodbye

Kraft American Singles

Dancing in the New Year

Elusive Memory

Just Write

Phoning Mom

On Second Thought

Thursday Mornings: "Missing Our Mothers"

The habits...the set of a brow...

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