It stands as one of my first real memories. Not one of the memories that you are never quite sure you really remember, or a family story placing it in your memory bank, but never being really sure if you recall it or just the story of it.

One of my very first memories is of walking with my Mother and my baby brother down to Beacon Street to watch the people run by. By carefully calculating my brother’s birthday and Patriots Day, I think I was not yet four. I should assure you that much like everything else now, the marathon was not what it is today. It was like a neighborhood parade, we would watch for about twenty minutes and that pretty much covered the race. No big crowds, just neighborhood people out for some fresh spring air after a long New England winter. I am sure I saw several years worth but the next clear memory would be in high school when as a teenager I watched it with my friends, and it was just one of the places we went as a gaggle of girls, hoping to flirt with the boys who all showed up in a group.

I am guessing that I took my own kids but by then it was beginning to turn into the media event it has now become. Still manageable, but the handwriting was on the wall that it would turn into the icon it has become. I am sure that it will go on as the première marathon in the US, but as we look back on it, it is no longer as we chose to remember.

Much as with the twin towers on September 11th someone has managed to remove a bit more of our collective soul, tarnish an innocent part of all our pasts and while it will still go on every year there will be a nagging reminder of the 2013 violence hanging over it. The coverage will always add the  footage to the TV package and some people will opt not to take their kids. So another tiny piece of the fabric of American life gets torn away. Another thing that united all of us no matter where our families came from, gone. I pray that doesn’t happen, now at a time when we need one another even more than in the past.

One of the pitfalls of aging, your heart can only stand being broken so many times, and then it just stops. I so don’t want that to happen to me or to those I love.

What, you might ask does Martha Stewart have to do with my move to the desert? It has nothing to do with her interior design empire. I am not planing  to decorate our new house in faux Connecticut style, if I can’t have a real house in Greenwich, I don’t want to pretend I am there. Oops, she lives in Katonah, NY, my apologies to Greenwich.

It has to do with serving your time with grace. I am not a big fan of Ms. Stewart, I think she is very talented and business savvy, but from all accounts a hard taskmaster to work for and who can possibly like anyone who is perfect at everything! Okay, so I am little jealous.

What I do admire about her is the way she handled her incarceration, no appeals. no delaying tactics. She just wanted to get through it and move on. She didn’t mope in her cell/room, she taught classes, worked in the library, probably baked cookies and crafted new seat covers for the dining hall. She pulled herself up by her boot straps and did her time.

So until I get over my homesickness and my lack of routine and my general lack of interest in my surroundings, I must press on. My sane, organized, ambitious self tells me this is the perfect chance to devote more time to this blog. Take a page from Martha’s book and turn lemons into lemonade. Actually observe a great many different stages of aging and what really separates the people who stay engaged in life, from the people who lose themselves as they age and accept that their world is going to shrink and make peace with that.

I should discipline myself to write every morning. Put together a motivational presentation on “remaining relevant in a youth obsessed culture”, using all my wonderful speaking training from Weight Watchers. Work on a website for related products and do everything that I was so enthusiastic about in Los Angeles, I am only a scant 120 miles from LA, not on the other side of the world. It just doesn’t feel the same here, I see why the average New Yorker, who moves to LA complains about the pace of life in California.

However, my other side just wants to go home or at least just get into my bed and pull the covers over my head and wait for our years lease to be up. My husband chose this place in the desert, thinking I could make new friends here and develop new interests, but what do you do if you liked your old place and your old interests. I hate change and I am not sure that I want to start all over again.

I hope I can find a way to adjust to a new lifestyle or turn all these new experiences into gist for my blogging mill.

We were living in a building on the Westside of Los Angeles being converted to Condos. We were aware of the conversion when we moved in five years ago, taking the apartment before buying a new house, making sure the market was not going to fall any further, it was a lovely, large unit and the neighbors all seemed quite nice We would speak at the mailboxes or in the elevator, but I was busy and never really got to know anyone well.

Then last April, we all got notice of the owners intent to begin the conversion process. Everyone had six months to move, however being over sixty-five, entitled you to an extra six months. Since my husband and I were at odds about where to go, we took the extra time. As the time passed all the younger people jumped ship leaving the building to a very exclusive group of us, and we all grew closer, complaining about workmen, sharing packing stories and leads on available real estate in the neighborhood and presenting a united front to the building’s owner when necessary.

It soon became a mini version of Ten Little Indians, “and then there were none”. No one wanted to be the last to leave the building. By February there were six units still occupied. My husband and I of course. June, a very beautiful and regal lady of about ninety-five, who had probably been a model at one time, never married, and had enjoyed a career in the fashion industry. She had been in the building from day one, I believe for fifty years. Next in line were my neighbors across the pool, Louis and Judith, Lou, a New Yorker, had come to California in the early sixties as an up and coming young engineer and shortly there after moved into a one bedroom apartment where he lived quite happily as a bachelor until he met Judith who had recently arrived with her family from Morocco. They married and moved into a two bedroom unit when expecting their daughter.

Next came Carole, she was a widow living on the second floor, a fifteen years resident, whose husband had died, at fifty something, suddenly within the first six months of living there. They had moved in much like us for what was to be a few years until they found a house or condo to buy. The managers, another interesting duo, he a native of Holland, a retired cameraman for the movies and his “Very, VERY Nervous” wife Madelyn a former Miss Morocco. The remaining unit a single guy, early sixties. He hated the owner and was a collector of antiques, had brought way too much stuff with him from his home when moving in seven years ago following his divorce. He was using a little known loophole in the rental code to avoid having to move out before the year was up. I hope I have set the stage well, were I a better writer this cast of characters could carry a play.

So, for the last six months we all became a small, albeit dysfunctional, family. No one really wanted to leave, each for our own reasons. I loved the neighborhood and certainly did not want to leave Los Angeles and my husband was hell-bent on moving to the desert. I guess for various reasons all of us were expecting a reprieve and mass insanity took hold.

No one wanted to be the last person out, but no one wanted to miss the end of the story. First to go was our neighbor with far too much furniture, which turned out to be a common thread, he left over a series of days. Having to make many more trips than he or his movers anticipated, giving us all a glimpse of what was to come.

Next was the charming, elderly third floor June, who we’d been told was praying to die before she had to move. She was not granted her wish and was rushed to the hospital one night and then on to assisted living. Her housekeeper had to move her things out ASAP. I was beginning to develop a twinge of empathy at this point, projecting twenty-five years into the future, and imagining what my life would be like without my husband and children to ease the stress of moving.

Now we all began to speak about actually leaving and it was decided that all these moves would have to be coordinated so no two tenants were moving on the same day. Suddenly it all became real, and with thirty days to go we made decisions. I gave up and agreed to be banished to Palm Desert, more about this in later blogs. The managers went on to another building in Brentwood. Judith and Lou to an inherited  home they were renovating in The Valley, a move they were ambivalent about after fifty plus years on the Westside. Carole to a building a block away, she valued location above space and was attempting to place six rooms of possessions into four much smaller rooms, I still don’t know if she has succeeded, having cut her leg on a box in her new packed quarters, she was taken to the hospital with Cellulitis.

It wasn’t until the last few nights that I began to stop feeling sorry for myself and to put myself in the shoes of my fellow exiles. Have to be an elderly woman all alone, basically bed ridden and leaving my home of fifty plus years, where all my memories were housed.

To be widow where an adored husband had died suddenly one night after getting into bed. This would be the last place they had lived together, how badly would I feel if I had to leave the last place we had ever lived together, she must be heart broken.

And right across the pool, Judith had moved in as a bride, having never been able to convince her dyed in the wool New Yorker husband that California was a house “place” not an apartment “place” like New York, she had brought up her daughter in this building. Watched her go to college and law school and become a wife and a Mother all from this one apartment. How hard for she and Lou this last night in what has been their only home together for over thirty-five years.

For one of the few times in my life I was able to feel exactly what others must feel and somehow it made me feel more at peace with my loss. I will go on to write more about this move, if you have been following my blog you may know that I have moved many, many times in my life. With my family of origin, five high schools in four years. My first husband a corporate executive, nine times in ten years and now with husband number two, a dentist who must have some long hidden gypsy gene. This has for some reason become the most difficult ever and I shall examine the reasons for that ad nauseam in the coming weeks and months, hopefully with insight and a lot of humor, but for now I hope this helps all of you with some of your issues and pending changes to see life from other perspectives.

coming soon: what my move and Martha Stewart have in common

I have to say if I am learning to tweet, it’s time on earth is coming to an end. I read somewhere last night that FACEBOOK became passé when people’s Grandmothers’ began to use it. I can only assume, the same will happen with TWITTER. I’ve been advised that I must begin to Tweet to drive traffic to this blog, so I am trying. However, this is yet another career, one I didn’t really want or need.

First of all, if I didn’t quite understand Facebook, TWITTER is like a foreign language to me, but if I must, I’ll give it a shot. There are thousands of people to follow and then they follow you back, but where are we all going? To Hell I think or maybe it just feels that way.

After I spend an hour coming up with a pithy tweet, where does it go? How can you possibly interest all the people who might be following you? I have lots of interests and friends (followers) of all ages. For example, I just tweeted, “Whenever I left my elderly parents in Miami, to return home to LA, I felt as though I was leaving two toddlers at a bus station, alone.” I now think, while most baby boomers with elderly parents probably know just how I feel, young people may take that seriously and have me arrested.

I had saved this draft and just my luck, I was watching 60 minutes, and who was the subject tonight, Jack Dorsey, the founder of this ridiculous tweeting thing. Think he is a genius, but I still don”t really know how it works or how to maximize its potential. And to make matters worse, I remembered my husband getting me that SQUARE thing he invented and went to find it and have no idea where I put it, which is a definite sign I will need to produce it tomorrow by some one. While Dorsey has moved on from TWITTER, invented Square, returned to Twitter and is now working on another great idea, SQUARE WALLET. While I am still here, completely confused by the internet thing and wondering whatever possessed me to start a blog in the first place. A project completely dependent on computer skills. SQUARE WALLET, by the way, not too ambitious, they just want to eliminate cash money from the world. How much would you care to bet he will be successful. If you thought Visa ruined your financial life wait until every cash register in America recognizes you by your picture and as you buy a product it automatically removes the money from your account. I have always reminded younger people who there was a time, before ATM machines and Visa Accounts and debit cards, when we actually had to have cash with us. That required showing up at the bank on Friday. Not open on weekends? How quaint. I will pursue my theory on how very much these innovations changed the finances of America and the world, but that is a whole topic in itself.

Back to business here, how can I “please all of the people, all of the time“. What would be interesting to everyone, and use only 250? characters. I need some advice before Twitter passes me by, it may already be too late! Keep those suggestions coming.

For today however, I’ll just take on this particular move. If you’ve packed up a household as often as I have, you can image I am pretty good at it and I also have not accumulated all kinds of superfluous stuff. No collections, no left over baby clothes from 1978, no souvenirs from trips taken years ago. With the advent of iPhoto, even most of the pictures of my family and my children are on the computer. I will say my one weakness is books and I have carted around the country, hundreds of books all read, but mostly kept because they make any place we live a real home.This picture, gives you an idea of what I am dealing with. I don’t need all these books, I have no wish to re-read them and now everyone reads on a Kindle or an iPad so I can not even loan them to friends. But these appear to be some type of symbol to me and I can’t seem to part with them.

All of the new houses on golf courses don’t have any walls and I am unwilling to compromise, so my husband and I just keep going around and around in circles.

When I was feeling particularly upset at the prospect of downsizing the other day, I came to the conclusion that this problem was a universal one, no new house has the closets and storage of older places and no matter how big your house the word downsizing means just that. I have decided to compare myself to Candy Spelling and come to grips with the fact no change in size will ever be easy. Poor Candy is going from 57,000 square feet to a mere15,500 square feet, I am sure she is telling her friends, I just don’t know where to put all this “stuff”. And to make her problems worse, the contractors can’t seem to finish those 15,500 square feet in her new two story penthouse and she is reduced to renting an apartment for $27,000.00 per month.

I have read that her dog, Madison is depressed by the move. Perhaps the Wheaton and I can share our Prozac, or maybe I can just come back as Candy’s pet and move right in with she and Madison. I bet I could disappear in that big condo and go undetected for months, but can I bring my books?

Nothing can bring out my snippy side faster than an award show, having now been blown out of all proportion by our obsequious media, both conventional and social. So let’s talk Oscars. Where are the good old days of Bjork? Due to a growing number of stylists, we no longer have any really awful clothes at these functions! Thank God for Helena Bonham Carter or the Fashion Police would have to be furloughed.

Now we can only pray for degrees of perfection. I would be remiss however if I did not bring up Anne Hathaway. Aside from nipplegate, which was either due to the extreme cold in Hollywood on Sunday or just some poorly placed darts by Prada, my main complaint was with her stylist, who evidently had never spoken to my Mother on accessories. My Mom taught me early on, if you look in the mirror and something just doesn’t seem right, take something off. A bracelet, a scarf, your earings or perhaps your neckless! Of course, I would give my right arm for that diamond neckless she was wearing, it was gorgeous, just not with that dress. It needed a really simple LBD, backless, with just the right neckline in front, a real balancing act. So next year Anne honey run the outfit by me first, did you learn nothing from Meryl Streep/Anna Wintour.

I was not happy with Halle Berry’s dress either, it just seemed to stiff for her and I have grown to look forward to her choices, but I can live with it. In years gone by I could call my sister-in-law at every commercial break and have something to pick on, but this year no big faux paux. Sally Field looked age appropriate and I loved Helen Hunt in her H&M gown. That choice proves if you are wearing $700,000.00 worth of jewels you can pull off anything. She probably could have told the fashion gurus it was a vintage Dior and they would have been good with that.

I’ve been advised I should put more of myself into these blogs so I will tell one of my favorite family stories. Probably fifteen years ago I had occasion to go to a very, very posh wedding. A friend’s daughter was marrying the nephew of a very big Hollywood mogul. No names, but it was at the family’s apple farm in Vermont and no, the mouse wasn’t invited. Surely the most beautiful wedding I will ever attend, unless of course my husband dies and George and I marry at his Lake Como villa. Back to the big wedding, knowing there was no way I could compete with the clothes there I decided on something no one would ever gotten from their “stylist”. I found a little black slip dress on sale for $29.95 and since it was sort of transparent, I managed to find another very similar black crêpe dress, also on sale for $19.95 and I had my dressmaker line the chiffon dress with the crêpe dress. One set of straps a little tack here and there and it was perfect, matched with my very real jewelry, no one was any the wiser, until now. So Helen Hunt you are my kind of gal.

But hands down for us older gals, the most fun of the evening had to be Jack Nicholson hitting on Jennifer Lawrence during her Good Morning America interview, her facial expressions say it all.

For all of us Silver Foxes, this should make us throw in the towel on ever dating again. What hope is there for finding a MATURE man!!!!! Does one exist?

On this the first birthday of my one and only Granddaughter, I want to write a love letter to her Mother, my Daughter-in-Law!  Having been told by my wonderful blogging coach, that the first word of your title should be something attention-getting, I thought this would be the most universal, blockbuster choice!  But, for those of you who are hoping to get a Dr. Phil type list of complaints, STOP READING NOW!

On the contrary, my Daughter-in-Law is possibly the most loving and wonderful Mother I have ever seen in action, and that would include me.  She and my son are one of those great couples, everyone loves, both very successful at their chosen careers, waiting for just the right time to have a baby. However, as we all know now, getting pregnant can then become a career.  There has been enough talked about in articles and on television that I don’t need to say anything else on that part of the story.

One year ago they became the parents of what is, of course, the most beautiful, most charming, smartest and most loving baby on the planet!!!  I can use these words because, A) I endured hearing them from at least 100,000 of my closest friends and B) as her Grand Mother my principal job in life, is to act as this wonderful child’s PR agent!

But, this post is really for my Daughter-in-Law, who again, is the most devoted parent ever.  She no longer works, and I know sometimes she must miss that terribly as she had a very creative and stimulating  job.  She gives that same devotion to the baby and has the patience of a saint, she is so calm and even-tempered.  I have never even seen her look slightly exasperated, not with the one piece of food for me and one for the floor routine we all remember all too well or the I can crawl WHERE EVER I want act!  She seems to have made this little girl feel so secure, that the baby is quite adventuresome for a one year old.

Most of all I want to thank her for this wonderful child and the pleasure it is for me to watch someone truly blessed with the gift of Motherhood.  To be able to watch a Mother in action, not as a child myself, because we really are unaware or can not recall our own early childhood.  Not as a parent because we really have neither the time nor the ability at that point to stand outside of ourselves and see how we are really doing. I doubt that I ever had or will have her patience and can only be glad that my three kids turned out as well as they did! Through watching D-i-L,  just can’t write it out again, *please note I am using no names here to protect the innocent, I am getting to have the feelings of a child experiencing unconditional love!

So on this very special day, thank you for letting me be part of your wonderful journey and now, I suppose I must throw my son in here somewhere, so thank you, for picking such a great mate!

I must mention, she still continues to be a great Mother, it is TBD how the terrible two’s effect this, stay tuned.

Can not believe my grand-daughter turns two tomorrow! She is such a delight, although she seems to have magically discovered the word, NO, right on schedule. But even her no’s are music to my ears.

I had decided simply to reprint my blog from last February in praise of my Daughter-in-Law, and I still shall. To this day it remains my most read piece, either a tribute to my writing or unlikelihood of  such high praise from a Mother-in-Law. I will never know which.

I think we all forget how much babies and toddlers actually can learn in the space of one or two years. It is mind-boggling. Not only can she walk and talk, but she actually makes sense, no baby talk and very definite in her likes and dislikes. Of course, she likes everything about her Nana, but why shouldn’t she, Nana never says NO, I never have to.

She has to continued to flourish, with time and attention from her parents. She is the poster child for starting a family when you have tasted success and you realize there is no commitment more important than this new life entrusted to you.

A few weeks ago, we spent two hours in my car, PLAYING, not moving just steering, using the windshield wipers, changing the radio stations, waving out the window at the mailman, adjusting the mirrors, climbing from the back to the front seat and back again. We had a twenty-minute discussion on why there was no ignition key place (okay, she’s smart but, no she did not use the word ignition). I am still finding buttons she pushed that have to be returned to their original positions, some of which I didn’t know I had. “The little children shall lead us.” 

 Why did I not have this much patience with my own children? How many great moments did I fail to notice because I was busy raising them? Would I ever have spent two hours just laughing, in a car going nowhere, with them? I guess the answer is no, and for that I am sorry but I will enjoy every minute with this little girl, so she can look back and remember that her Nana had nothing better to do then play with her.

                                                    HAPPY 2ND BIRTHDAY CHARLIE  !!!!!!!!                                                            

No, now I notice the passage of time, when it is time to refill a prescription. I take very little medication, but it never fails to shock me when I open a bottle and discover only a one left. Invariably, I ask myself has a month gone by since I last filled this?  Alas, it always has! Can it really have been an entire month since I picked this up? Where did January go or December for that matter. Does time go so much faster as you get older. My rational mind knows that is not a possibility, but where are those guys from  The Big Bang Theory, when I need them.  I am quite sure they could explain the definite acceleration of time in direct relation to our chronological age. I can recall what seemed like forever between my tenth and eleventh birthday. I thought it was never going to be time for my day again. Now, I have barely digested my birthday cake, not to mention lost the five pounds I gained from it, when surprise it’s that day again. How can we make time work for us as we age. In reality we now have more time at our disposal. No kids to pick up and ferry to practices and games and scouts and orthodontic appointments. I always thought to myself, as I was going from one activity to another, I will miss this when it is over and I was right.

I would give anything now, to have to carpool my 46-year-old to work. Or drive my daughter to her Yoga class and wait around until she finishes and bring her home. And, no matter how many times I ask, my 34-year-old son, just doesn’t seem to need me to pick him up at a bar at two am. I do wish all that activity had been stretched out over a longer period. I guess I’ll just have to find some new way to mark time, please feel free to offer some suggestions in the comment section. For now I must call CVS and refill my prescription!

Here I sit, watching, with the rest of the country, the second inauguration of President Obama. I love all the pomp and circumstance of any state occasion, be it here or in any other country. I am actually one of those people who adhere to the famous quotation:

THOSE WHO DON’T KNOW HISTORY, ARE DESTINED TO REPEAT IT.”                                                                                                                                                                                                    Edmund Burke (British Philosopher, 1729-1797)

I can remain glued to my television for hours on end watching a royal wedding or a state funeral. I especially love any ceremony having to do with the peaceful transfer of power, something we have come to take for granted here in the United States of America. I don’t want to think about how many inauguration ceremonies I have been able to watch. I remember Dwight Eisenhower, and, of course ,John Kennedy, and all who have taken the oath since.

I cannot remember every speech or what every first lady wore, but the feeling of security engendered by the proceedings’ constancy, has always made me proud to be an American citizen. Today, so far, has been no exception to that feeling.

But, and there always is a but for me. I never cease to be amazed at how alike all people are in their reactions to common events. At the luncheon, as the President and the First Lady, Vice President and Mrs. Biden, and the Boehners et al, got up to inspect the Lennox Vases presented to them from the committee, they all just stood there trying to make small talk for the still cameras. I just knew they were doing what we all have to do when we are posing for a picture but attempting to look natural at the same time. A very uncomfortable look crosses everyone’s face in those moments. Try to remember back to the last time you tried to appear nonchalant. If you see this moment at the luncheon replayed on the news tonight, watch for that moment.

I bring this up only to stress my belief in the saying, “we all have more to unite us, then that which divides us”. We all, and I do mean all, from the President to the Congress and all our citizens,  need to keep this in mind as we move forward.We need to do the best for every citizen, and not just the group that we find ourselves in at this moment. I hope we can all respect our neighbors’ opinions and strive to compromise. This is the only way we can  move forward as a nation, and not as a band of special interests with a flag in common.

On this day when everyone in Washington pretends to be one big dysfunctional family, pulling together for the sake of the children, the constituents, lets all find a way to keep this feeling alive. Just as we must tolerate crazy Uncles, busybody Aunts, meddling In-laws and annoying Siblings, all those things we have all learned to do so well in our private lives. Can we take those talents and use them whether as citizens or politicians, stop arguing and start acting as one cohesive unit dedicated to serving the greater good.

Some words popped into my head as I was writing this and it took awhile to find the quote, not from JFK, as I originally thought but from Ted’s eulogy at  Robert’s funeral.

“My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life; to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.” 

I could not say that any clearer, this is what Washington needs to do starting tomorrow at 9:00 am.

PS. Enough with the heavy stuff. The dress is gorgeous, Jason Wu; and Jimmy Choo shoes. This is the really important part of the day! Right ladies!