It was love at first sight when I saw the shoes in a catalog that came in the mail yesterday. They were my kind of shoes. Cute little flats in cool colors. And the store had my size, 11. I had to try them on as soon as possible. So after work, I took Rigby and walked 30 blocks to the shop. It was 7 pm and the shoe department was gloriously empty. When I tried on the flats, I was more in love than ever. They look a little like espadrilles, but they’re sexier and in satin. I wanted them in every color. “The minute the catalog hit, we were inundated with orders,” the cute, young salesman told me. “You’re lucky. The only reason we had them is because you wear a big size.” I went wild and bought the flats in three colors. I already know I’ll be wearing them all summer. I’m taking a pair on a business trip to Florida today.

After I married, my mother-in-law and I had the same name, although the spellings were slightly different. She: Gerry. Me: Geri. That’s where the similarity ended. She was slender, blonde, and elegant.  I was chunky, dark haired and decidedly inelegant.  She was cautious and dressed conservatively.  I took risks and dressed on this side of flamboyant.  She was a woman of few words. Not I. She didn’t like to spend money. I love to.

 

I wasn’t comfortable around Gerry for many years.  I felt fat and sloppy around her. I was neither fat nor sloppy, but I was terribly insecure. Which brings me to my point.  When we lack confidence, we often become exasperated at others.  We give them power over us they don’t really have—and don’t usually want.  Self-confidence makes us feel happy.  We don’t worry about what others think about us. We pay more attention to what they think. We hear them better.

As my confidence increased over the years, I enjoyed, and appreciated, Gerry more. Her style started rubbing off on me. After her son and I divorced, she traveled with me to visit my son, in camp, a trip I’ll never forget.  She and I had become friends. We could talk about our differences with humor and understanding.

Gerry died at 89, about six years ago. I miss her.  She wasn’t a wicked mother-in-law, competing with me for her son. She was a woman, just like I was.

I guess you’ve asked yourself what you would do if you lived in Japan. Would you stay indoors with the windows and doors sealed, as the Japanese government has recommended to people within 50 miles of the damaged nuclear power plant? (If you even had a house to stay in.) Would you pack up and leave the country?  Would you just pray? Would you believe the media and the government spokesmen?

Of course, it’s hard to know exactly what we’d do if we were in the awful predicament that millions of people are facing in Japan. I do know that I’m not good at sitting still and waiting, especially for the other shoe to drop. I prefer to be proactive, so I can achieve positive outcomes in situations that could impact my wellbeing. Even if an outcome doesn’t produce the results I’d like, at least I did all I could.

I’d rather be far away from Japan, waiting to see whether the radiation will spread, than up close and uncomfortable.  If I had young children, I would want to do everything I could to keep them from harm. This is not War of the Worlds, with imaginary alien machines.  This is a world where real wars, revolutions, protests, flailing economies and a violent Mother Nature are coming together to test our resolve. It is a scary place, but I am confident we will prevail.

 

I met Judge Jerry Marks at his 90^th birthday party, five years ago. David argued many cases before him in New York State Supreme Court and they developed a great friendship. He thought Jerry was one of the fairest judges in the system.  David and I enjoyed a few dinners over the years with “The Judge” (that’s what his pals called him) and his lovely wife, Julie. He was witty and charming and loved telling stories and writing poetry. He also loved a good martini. Since he retired at 70, he’s had a lot of stories to tell, because he devoted his life to changing New York’s draconian Rockefeller drug laws, which sent people to prison for years for their roles in minor drug crimes.

 

One of the cases that caught The Judge’s attention involved 17-year-old Angela Thompson, who was arrested in 1988 for selling two ounces of cocaine to an undercover cop and sentenced to 15 years to life in prison. Angela, in fact, was acting at the direction of her uncle and legal guardian, who was also a drug dealer. She had no previous record. Jerry launched a successful campaign to acquire executive clemency for Angela from former New York Governor George Pataki.

“The Judge” died last week at 95. David and I went to his funeral service yesterday, where we listened to comments from another woman he helped to free from prison.

“I was in prison with Angela, and was distraught when she received clemency and I didn’t,” explained the striking, dark-haired woman, who was beautifully dressed in a black two-piece suit and a single strand of pearls. “I had no family and had already been in prison for a few years. The Judge came to visit me and told me he would help. He’d call me every single day. The day I was released, thanks to his work, he brought me a suit and makeup. When we walked down the street in New York, someone stopped us and said to me, ‘Aren’t you in a soap opera?’  The Judge said, ‘Yes, America’s Most Wanted.’ That’s the kind of humor he had.  When I got married two years ago, he and Julie gave us a wedding party and The Judge performed the ceremony,” she recalled, as the tears started rolling down her cheeks.

“Judge Marks used his power to save rather than destroy lives and was the embodiment of the word justice,” said the political comedian and friend, Randy Credico. “Unlike the men and women who wear robes who hypocritically pass judgment on the poor, the disaffected and the hopeless in the current base, corrupt and Kafkaesque world of criminal justice, Judge Marks served God’s natural law, rather than man’s artificial law.”

Rest in peace, Jerry.

 

 

 

 

 

I went to see a FOF woman yesterday, Alexandra Holmes, who read my palm (the right one), as well as my tarot cards and my numbers. I’ve thought about doing this for years, but was fearful that I’d learn something disturbing. I’ve long believed that some people do, indeed, have the ability to look into our souls. I decided to go on the spur of the moment while I was having a facial by Nathalie, who told me about her experience with Alexandra.

Alexandra is “over 50,” isn’t spooky, doesn’t look like a kook, use a crystal ball or mumble incoherently. She calls herself a “intuitive life/business strategist,” and although she claims to have psychic insight, she does not think of herself purely as a psychic. “I connect my psychic ability  with applicable knowledge, practicality and wisdom,” she explains. When she looks into my future, she uncovers the probabilities, but emphasizes that we each play a role in turning probability into reality. “I think it’s important that people start to see psychic ability as part of their own ability, and that they are doing a great disservice to themselves by not exploring and accepting it. If one does not believe, it probably will not happen! We need to support what we want by our thoughts,” Alexandra says.

She’s elegant and slender, well-dressed and works with her corporate, established and personally referred clients at her Manhattan office, which is decorated with fascinating native art she’s acquired from her world travels. She also works with clients over the phone and through email. She keeps the space on the warm side and infuses it with pleasant incense.

Alexandra invites me to sit on a dark brown  chair at a small round table; she sits across from me. She asks me a few questions  (What I do, my birthday, am I married, what I want to find out), writes down numbers on a small piece of paper and then instructs me to extend my right palm. Her manner is direct yet low key. She has simply coiffed blond hair and beautiful green eyes, which are enhanced by her tailored blue shirt.

 

Alexandra tells me what my palm and numbers reveal. “They are tools to help me focus my energy,” she says. I am captivated. She speaks articulately and authoritatively. I feel as if I’ve known her for years. She tells me things about myself that are unequivocally correct and she puts them into a meaningful context. She brings up my children, my childhood, my past male relationships, my abilities, my limitations, and my health. She tells me things that excite me. Nothing is scary or has hidden meaning. She knows I have vivid dreams that I remember.

I ask Alexandra questions about how she became interested in what she’s doing. She’s from the Midwest and had a career in business and marketing. She considers herself an idealist. Alexandra bought her first deck of tarot cards in when she saw them in a shop window in Manhattan. Her perceptiveness astounded her friends when she’d read their cards.

When she starts shuffling the tarot cards, I get slightly nervous.  The illustrations on the cards always spook me out. She then asks me to shuffle the deck five times, to divide it into piles, to pick one of the piles and then a number of cards. She repeats this process for each question I ask.

I want to know about FOF, about my kids and whether the cards reveal the same thing about my longevity that my palm and numerology showed.

When I tell my daughter what I did, she says it’s all baloney, but she wants to know every single thing I learned. I think she secretly believes it could all come true.

Call me crazy. I’m glad I went.

 

I love people who don’t take advantage of me, even if I’m inviting them to do it.

Here’s my story:

I went to the beauty salon for a cut and color this afternoon. When I was seated in Yuseff’s chair, he said: “I thought you were letting your hair grow.”

“I am,” I answered, “but I thought I needed to have it shaped.”

“My haircuts last eight weeks” he said. “You were here five weeks ago.”

When Sharie looked at the color, she also said, “you can wait two or three more weeks to do it. I don’t like to overlap new and old color. We love you, but we don’t have to take your money.”

I still asked Yuseff to trim my hair a bit, which he did. “Now you don’t need to come back until May,” he emphasized.

“Perfect, I said.”My nephew is getting married on May 22, so I’ll do have the cut and color right before that.”

Would your hair stylist and colorist do this, too?

Peri (not her real name) has just spent the last two weeks leaving a man she’s been with for two and a half years.  They shared a house together in the county and an apartment in the city. His pre-teen children spent every weekend with them. Their lives were intertwined, but she could no longer stand his verbal abuse, although she still loves him.  Even the man’s own mother told Peri to head for the hills.  “His mom told me he won’t change until he gets ‘serious help’,” Peri said.

A beautiful and successful woman, Peri left the man twice before, but believes this will be the last time. “I’m a happy, content person,” she told me, “but he would try to bring me down whenever he felt insecure.” His first wife took their kids and left him in the middle of the night when she had enough, Peri explained. “That destroyed him and he’s never gotten over it.” Peri is divorced and has no children.

Almost FOF, Peri didn’t want to wake up in her fifties and realize she wasted so many good years with a man like this. “So smart of you,” I said. “You deserve to have a man who adores you.”

Although Peri feels uneasy being single (“it’s not easy being alone after being with someone seven days a week”), she knows she has to start meeting someone new and took my suggestion to call a mutual friend, who could probably introduce her to lots of available men. In the meantime, she’s thinking of getting away to somewhere warm for a few days.

I think Peri will meet someone in 15 minutes, once she’s in the mood. Someone who deserves her.

 

 

 

 

When I was 23 in 1970, I met with Al S, the head of personnel at Fairchild Publications (employees were called “Personnel” before we became “Human Resources”) for a job interview. The position open was for an assistant on the copy desk, which meant I would sit with a group of people who wrote headlines and edited copy for one of Fairchild’s business newspapers and keep a log of all the articles and their headlines. It was a glorified clerical job.

I automatically–and incorrectly–assumed the job with with Women’s Wear Daily, the “bible” of the fashion industry. When Al told me it was with Home Furnishings Daily, I was crest-fallen. “Yick, I thought.” Al must have sensed my dismay, because he said: “It’s just like WWD, but in the home furnishings industry.” Oh, okay, I thought. I had no interest whatsoever in home furnishings, but I wanted to get my proverbial foot in the door since Fairchild was supposedly a great place to work for budding journalists.

It was, and there I stayed for a total of 23 years, rising through the ranks to become VP of Publishing. Although I worked at WWD at one point, I didn’t like the fashion industry nearly as much as the home furnishings business.

Many twenty and thirty somethings today hem and haw if they’re not offered the exact job they think they want. They also don’t want to pay their dues by starting on the ground floor.

One young woman I know wants to be a financial analyst.  When she was offered a different kind of job at a financial company, she considered turning it down. “You’ve got to take it.” I told her. “The salary and benefits are excellent. You will have the chance to learn about all aspects of the company once you’re there. Do you realize how many people are out of work?” She accepted the job, thank goodness. If she’s sensible, she’ll go in there with a completely open mind and absorb as much as she can, meet as many people as possible, and do her job enthusiastically.

Have we spoiled our children? I, for one, would answer: “Without a doubt.“

 

When I was in eighth grade at Campbell Junior High School in Queens, NY, I had a crush on Neil Maltz. He was about three inches shorter than I at the time, but he was cute, so I didn’t care about his height. When our class took an overnight trip to Washington, DC, I remember getting off the bus behind Neil. He turned around and said: “Gerilynn (my real name), you are a nice girl.”  I was joyous.  I stared at one of the trip photos for months because I could see a little bit of his face in one of them.  I don’t remember one other thing about Neil. He was my first crush.

I recently decided to look Neil up on FB, and there he was, or at least I thought so.  It was hard to tell from the photo because it’s been 51 years since I saw him. I emailed to ask if he went to Campbell, but then immediately forgot about him. I checked my messages today and there was a response: Yes, he’s the Neil from yesteryear. I wrote back and told him about my crush on him.

 

Here’s a photo of Neil. I assume he’s with his wife and grandchildren. He didn’t write back yet, but I don’t care if he does. I’m over my crush.

 

 

 

 

Speaking of crushes, a man who I last saw when I was 27 (that’s 34 years ago) STILL calls me a couple of times a year to connect.  He does it the old-fashioned way because he doesn’t own a computer. He called today to wish me a happy birthday.  I once asked him why he still calls after so many years and he said: “I had more fun with you than with any one else in my life.” That was a great compliment, but I’m not THAT MUCH FUN, so his life must have been rather fun-less for the last three plus decades.

Relationships can be ridiculous.