looking back

(This photo —I can’t even!)

For about six months back in the 1970’s I left my armpits unshaved.

For me, it was a bold and calculated act.

I wanted to fit in with the California hippy subculture whom I held up as the greatest examples of what was current in the world around me. They were the touchstone for all things necessary to fit in as a young, budding feminist in the post-patriarchal zeitgeist at the time.

Plus I saw pictures of Joan Baez and Grace Slick with long black hairy armpits. And besides that, the twin’s older sister Martha, who listened to Frank Zappa, and was so naturally organic and liberated, made it look pretty. Almost sexy.

Then I decided to let the hair on my legs grow out.
Mostly because no one noticed my radical armpit statement on account of the fact that the hair was blonde…and relatively sparse… and also because I wore a short-sleeved white cotton blouse as part of my uniform in Catholic High School so my pits were perpetually covered.

So, just as a watched pot never boils, my leg-hair took forever to grow long. But when it did, it shone in the sun like a pair of corn silk knee socks beneath my minuscule pleated plaid skirt.
I loved it.
Everyone loved it.
Even Martha, whose opinion meant the world to me, thought it was “rad.”

There was about a year or so in 1974-75 that the hair on my legs was longer than the hair on my head.
My dad actually pointed that out at Thanksgiving dinner with all of our relatives present—and not in a “proud father” kind of way.

Everyone I knew had long, straight hair, parted in the middle that fell to the middle of their backs. I wanted to be different so I cut mine to barely 1/4 inch all around. Think Jean Sebring or Twiggy.

This rendered Martha speechless the first time she saw me. She actually dropped her cigarette and missed a few lyrics to Ziggy Stardust. I had not received a higher compliment before—or since.

When Martha daned to drive the gaggle of her twin sister’s young friends to the movies or the mall or somewhere else fabulous, I caught her, several times from the back seat, staring at my hair in the rearview mirror.

If we had all perished that night in a fiery crash I would have died happy, completely satisfied—with a smile on my face.

I’m not exactly sure why I’m telling you this. I suppose it has to do with finding my way in the world. Maybe you’ve had similar experiences. Figuring out who you are is hard. And hairy. There are a lot of options out there to embrace.

Perhaps you’re like me and others of a “certain age” who are in the process of a mid-life re-invention.

Standing here at fifty-nine, there is not a single thing about me that is the same as when I was sixteen.
My hair blonde hair is course and gray, my stomach, once taught and tight is now soft and squishy, and black hair grows in places I’d rather not discuss.

But I can feel those teenage emotions like it was yesterday. How new and invigorating each act felt. Like I was both the sculpture and the sculptor with my hands the clay. Creating myself as I went along.

I want to feel that again, don’t you?

Without apology, I am a culmination of all of those decisions. Good, bad and ugly. And so are you!

You can’t tell me you didn’t absolutely LOVE your mullet when you first got it.

Or that ghastly tattoo on your ankle that you had removed on your thirtieth birthday.

What about the multiple self-inflicted ear piercings?

Or the bust developer you ordered from the back of The Enquirer.

Mohawk? Nice.
Purple eyebrows? Even better.
Lambchop sideburns for the guys? Meow.
Pierced tongue? Ouch, but okay.

What we did to define ourselves along the way helped make us who we are today you guys. Some are mic-drops. Most are not. I can only hope I do as well this time around.

When I look back I really have no regrets. Except…

I will have to live with my disco era over-plucked eyebrows until the day I die.

What are the best fads you followed from the past? And what would you rather not remember?

Carry on,
xox

Oh, Holy Christ on a cracker is that ever true!
We just had a Capricorn new moon and that my friends, facilitates jettisoning all that is not working in our lives.

We get a cosmic do-over. A universal re-write (the best kind of re-write there is).

Wait. This all feels eerily familiar. That’s because, if you’re like me, we’ve done a full, life-retrospective every damn year around this time.

And some years look better than others. They just do. But for those jinky ones, the ones that make you cringe with regret, oh, how I’ve relitigated the past. I’ve played the roles of judge, jury, and executioner.

Then I move straight to the special effects department and I whitewash the mutherf*cker with some heavy duty gauzy filter.

In my heavily CGI’d version, I’m so much smarter, prettier, and wittier, I have the most epic ideas, rebuttals and combacks, and my hair looks impossibly, hatefully perfect—even after a nap.

In one version, nothing is my fault. In another everything is. It depends on which chapter you come in on.

In my dreamy, rom-com version,  I get chased by a horrible dragon, captured by a giant cyclops, and saved by a naked, brave and handsome knight (we know he’s a knight by the chainmail codpiece he’s wearing). That scenario is the only way I can introduce all of the magic that permeates my life—otherwise, nothing would make sense and nobody would believe me.

But I can’t justify how I got to where I am any more than you can. Sometimes shit just happens.

Often, when I look back I feel bad for her, for me. She simultaneously appears to be the heroine and the villain of her own story and that is a hard pill to swallow. Sometimes I want to warn her, “Hey, idiot! Watch out for that guy, he’s a …oh, there goes the bra…nevermind.” At other times I try to congratulate her. “You, yeah, you. Ya did…okay. Next time try to suck less.”

Most of the time I want to duck tape her mouth shut and put her in the corner with baby.

All of these years later I realize nothing good comes from looking backward. It’s all water under a rickety bridge guarded by angry trolls. It’s all ancient history, filled with faded Polaroids and lots of bad clothing choices and the worst part of it (besides a stint with eggplant purple hair) is that focusing on my past, however riveting, keeps me distracted from where I’m headed.

Someone once said, “Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.” Well, I think quite the opposite is true. Selective amnesia is our friend AND those who look in the rear view mirror MUST be driving in reverse. I know I was. Also, and of this, I’m quite sure—my best times are not back there, behind me. They are ahead of me!

A few things that may be included while I create my future are (In no particular order): chocolate, naked knights, dog kisses, and predominately minding my own business and looking dead ahead because the future I envision for myself doesn’t resemble my past IN. THE. LEAST. (except for maybe the good hair).

What about you?

Carry on,
xox

“Sooner or later, everyone’s story has an unfortunate event or two…The solution, of course, is to stay as far away from the world as possible and lead a safe, simple life.”
― Lemony Snicket, The End

I was driving to the hair salon to see my beloved Reny and get my grey amped up.

Yes, you heard me, I’m embracing my inner crone, who is making her debut in my life one strand of coarse grey hair at a time.

On my drive through the canyon that morning, the traffic was light, so I was tooling along at a pretty good clip; lost in my thoughts, thinking about some drama from my past, when a motorcycle startled me – zipping past me on the left.

As you know, we ride a lot and there is a practice, splitting lanes, which is riding between lanes of traffic, and is legal here in California.

Before I rode, I used to think those riders were jerks who just wanted to get where they were headed faster than the rest of us fools, who were stuck in our cars.

Au contraire.

I got schooled by the hubby in the beginning of our relationship when we, to my horror, split lanes in traffic on the 101 freeway, and I yelled for him to stop acting like a criminal. “Let’s not be that guy, shall we?”

“Motorcycles are air cooled” he informed the very naive, backseat driver behind him on his bike, “so they have to stay moving, otherwise you’ll have a bunch of overheated bikes tying up traffic even more.”

Mea culpa Big guy, I stand informed and corrected.

Still, it hasn’t lifted the jerk stigma that I KNOW the other, not as clued in drivers, level on us as we wind our way between their cars during rush hour.
I’ve seen the stink eye they give us as we go by, so I close my eyes now.

If you can’t see people, they can’t see you – right?

As we weave in and out of the lanes of slow moving vehicles, we cut it thisclose to their rear view mirrors so I’ve asked him on several occasions: what happens if we hit someone’s mirror?
“We keep going.”

Jerk factor just ramped up several notches. Did you feel it?

We never have, thank God. I would have had to hear it, since I’m blind with my eyes closed, and I wear my invisibility cloak.

But low and behold, after I had this lane splitting flashback, I came out to my car, (with a lovely, new, fabulous silver wash over my hair) to a mangled rear view mirror on my drivers side, that I suspect was the unfortunate recipient of motorcycle karma.
As I looked for a note or flowers or some kind of clue as to the identity of the culprit, my husband’s voice echoed in my ears “we don’t stop, we keep going.”

Still Jerky.

And karma…. you have the wrong car! I’m just a passenger; a blind, invisible, unwilling participant.

When I was meditating later, and asking about the whole mirror, Karma debacle, you know what the Universe said? You’re gonna laugh, I did.

“You were thinking about some past drama too much, it wasn’t motorcycle Karma at all (besides, Karma doesn’t make mistakes) it was to get your attention and to remind you to move forward, stop looking behind you – stop living in the past.
Rear view mirror – get it?”

Ha. Got it.

What signal, signs, metaphors does the Universe send you? Do you always recognize them, or are you dense, like me?
Tell me about it. Help a girl out.

Sending love and good Karma,
Xox

https://soundcloud.com/jbertolus/audio-recording-on-wednesday