Body Type

I watch as she moves closer to him. When her body meets his, she lifts her arms to wrap them around his neck. She raises her chin to smile. He looks down at her, circles her waist with his arms, then offers a happy grin.

My paper cup of iced decaf is cold in my hand, so I shift from staring at the young couple to finding a seat in the cafe. I lower my tote bag to the empty chair next to me, extract my cellphone, and check email messages. But soon enough, I return my gaze to the couple. They are chatting while still deep in the hug.

This is what I miss, from my marriage, from my husband. The toe-to-toe enveloping, the hug. I wonder, does she get to inhale the scent of a freshly-laundered shirt, as I did when I closed in on Tommy? Does her boyfriend’s shirt smell of Target’s lemon-scented detergent? Tommy’s did.

Although my husband was decades older than the lad in my vision, his frame and strong body were similar. When I met Tommy, on the street where we both lived, my first thought was, "not my body type." He was about 5'9", tall enough for a shrimp like me, but had no fat, no rolls plumping his belly. "Nothing to hang onto," I complained to my friend after a few early dates.

The short, tubby, white-haired, Santa Claus-type, sans the red suit, was what I was going for after a divorce from my first husband, who at 6’ and skinny towered over me. I didn’t need Dr. Freud to diagnose that my predilection for rotund was based on my father, the parent who called me his princess.

Before I met Tommy, I found a boyfriend during that Bermuda Triangle period of my life -- between divorce and remarriage -- that perfectly fit my body-type requirements. He was short and fat, had grey hair, and even smoked round the clock like dear, departed dad. While the cigarettes, fast and careless driving, unhealthy eating, and intense friendships with other women, should’ve sounded alarms, I was too smitten to think clearly.

Fortunately, my father's doppelganger settled on another gal that he fancied more than me. I lamented for a bit, but eventually realized I was fortunate in dodging a lifestyle that likely would’ve had me growing infirm and fat.

When nonsmoker, tip-top shaped Tommy came into my life, I quickly tossed out my previous preferred body type and came to love the one I married. Of course, my husband’s other prized features helped to dump doughy. Tommy was low maintenance, helpful around the house, had interests that matched mine, and most importantly, thought I walked on water.

Not long after my sighting of the hugging couple, I told my daughter, “I’m not ready to date, and I can’t imagine sharing my new life with anyone, but I miss spooning. It’s a bedtime perk I pine for.”

 “Try a pillow,” she said. “Get a king-sized one, place it vertical in Tommy’s spot, and cuddle up.”

In the bedding department of Macy’s, I had my choice: down-feather combinations, foam, polyester fiberfill, memory foam and latex.  Prices varied. When the salesperson was out of sight, I lifted each pillow and hugged it to my body. Like the children’s fable, one was too soft, another too hard, and one -- although not perfect -- would do.

Along with my pillow selection, I bought a set of king-sized pillow cases. I washed the pair in Target’s lemon-scented laundry detergent, then slipped one over my husband’s proxy.

At night, as I clasped the pillow to my body, I knew my arrangement would be a poor second to the real thing. The body type turned out to be flawed, too cushy where it should’ve been muscled, too short where it should’ve been a few heads taller. But the freshly laundered pillow case conjured a fragrance that improved my tableau.

With my imagination urging me on, I whispered to the pillow, “love you, Tommy.” This was my half of a duet we played out each night. In my head, the one now deep into my polyester fiberfill,  I could hear his response: “Love you, too!” 

 The pillow, which soon morphed into my perfect body type, and I, grew drowsy, then we both surrendered to sleep.

Head Trip

"Just put it on my credit card," I say to the American Airlines agent at the gate.

I'm pleased with myself. I have gotten to LaGuardia early enough to get a flight that will get me home several hours sooner than my original ticket.

As I move to the back of the line of passengers on the jetway, I look at my ticket and again pat myself on the back. "Aisle seat, row 11, extra legroom!" I say aloud. I’m not worried my fellow flyers will question my glee because they'd certainly empathize with this great spot.

But my outspoken declaration must've roused my husband who, since his own flight departure, has been residing in my head and engaging me in frequent conversations.

"I don't know why you're feeling so proud of yourself," I imagine him saying. "You just spent $75 to get this earlier flight, and that's on top of the $75 you spent to change airports."

I wasn't surprised to hear Tommy's view because my recent shifts and credit card action were two hotspots in our otherwise mellow marriage. As example of his steadfastness, my husband had lived in the same apartment for several decades. His bride though, counted 13 changes of residences before we met and two more post-Las Vegas nuptials.

In the second area of major spousal differences, Tommy worked at jobs with modest salaries yet managed to enter our marriage with an admirable savings account. Me?  I supplemented my income with a Home Equity Line of Credit, and even when warned by my tax advisor that it was likely I'd outlive my money, I did little to change my practice.

"Is it the extra $150 that's bothering you, Honey?" I ask the curmudgeon accompanying me along the gangplank. "You of all people should understand that life is unpredictable, and hanging at the airport wasting precious time is crazy."

What I didn't point out is this: who could have forcasted that less than a year ago, Tommy was alive, on this earth, not in my head. We should've taken that trip to the Greek Islands we talked about. Or Japan. Oh, there were a number of places that were on our Someday list. And now, he is relegated to being my fanciful traveling partner.

My spouse was quiet as I found my aisle seat, and when I enlisted a sturdy male to hoist my carry-on to the overhead bin. This, of course, was my muscular husband's task on the trips we did take together. In his absence, I pull my little old lady act and stand helpless until someone conjures his granny and comes to my aide.

Once I'm seated, with seatbelt securely fastened, Tommy starts up again. "So why Kennedy instead of LaGuardia?" he asks. "If you would've chosen this airport in the first place, you could've saved $150 in change fees, plus the $20 difference in cab fares."

I was wondering when he was going to get around to that major gaffe. I had my answer at the ready; I'd blame someone else.

"Well, I put the query on my Facebook page and..."

Did I see my spouse shaking his head? I realized I had walked into a third breach in our harmonious life. While I own every Apple device Steve Jobs dreamed up, I couldn't get my husband to desire an email address. His only interest in technology came when he'd  haul a kitchen chair to my home office and glare over my shoulder as I opened website after website trying to find his perfect golf club.

"Okay, Honey," I said. "I know you don't like Facebook or understand my obsession with it, but normally my friends have submitted very good advice to my questions. For example.."

I stopped before I could list the successful recommendations that clearly outnumbered this last erroneous answer of Kennedy over LaGuardia. "Okay, maybe I should've done more research," I said. "It was a learning experience. Next trip in, I'll have the right answer.”

Tommy was silent. Had I wounded him? I shouldn't have mentioned visits to New York. I jumped in before his voice returned to my head. "This trip was great," I said, "but nothing like our jaunt to the Big Apple. I didn't do any of the memorable things we did together. No Central Park, no Ellis Island, no Tenement Museum."

As the airplane lifted from the runway, I closed my eyes to recall that wonderful weekend we shared. Did I slumber? It's possible because Tommy quieted down, too, likely satisfied I hadn't forgotten.

Empty Nest Syndrome, Part 2

I had narrowed my search to synagogues whose online descriptions contained code words that met my criteria: inclusion, equality of women, welcoming to gays and lesbians. As I scrutinized their monthly bulletins, I imagined myself sitting in a Torah class debating the text's contemporary relevance. Would that satisfy a current tug?

Maybe a Sabbath service at another house of worship? Could that  reignite a lapsed  faith?  Or, would a film or book group provide stimulation and challenge? A social justice program focused on immigration? How about that one?

The quest began to feel familiar, so I closed the cover of my laptop and moved to the couch for further investigation. It was there, sinking into the furniture’s comforting cushions, with my eyes shut, that my mind was free to flip the pages of the calendar backwards. Days, weeks, months, years reversed until I reached 1988. That's where my tour ended. I was likely, once again, suffering from Empty Nest Syndrome, albeit with very different losses.

I pin my first experience with the malady to the gloom I felt after my two daughters moved from living at home to their own apartments. But, that wasn't the excuse I used to cajole my husband. My addiction to my girls, and his feelings of being lower down my list of beloveds, were already causing frays in our 28-year marriage. So, I opted for a project I thought could bring us closer together, and perhaps fill the void left by my absent offspring.

“I want to join a synagogue,” I told my husband. We were living in our posh condominium off of Michigan Ave. and seated at the breakfast table with a view of the lake and other high rise buildings.

“Why now?” he asked as he divided the morning paper -- sports for him, local news for me.

“The High Holidays are coming up and I don’t want to feel left out,” I said. “I don’t want to feel dumb anymore.” This was believable, and it remained the excuse I gave to others who questioned my synagogue search and my timing.

“I’ll do the investigating and If I find one that feels comfortable, you can check it out,” I said.

We landed at the Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation (JRC) in Evanston. With its charismatic rabbi’s encouragement, I joined the Board of Directors, and embarked on a year-long study to have an adult Bat Mitzvah.

My plan worked. My husband joined the synagogue’s choir, accompanied me to Saturday morning services, and lifted his tenor voice in ritual song during the celebration of my late-to-the-game, coming-of-age ceremony.

Then, he left me for another woman.

Feeling like a third wheel, and possibly the object of pity by those who knew my story, I dropped my JRC membership. Occasionally, I’d return, and when I married Tommy, I brought him to a special service. But, my second husband had his own Lutheran lapses and while he encouraged my bond to my roots, had no interest to join me. So, I slowly let Judaism seep away until this current search.

While my first attack of Empty Nest Syndrome was brought on by my daughters’ departure, I realize now this second episode is due to a combination of losses. Consider: within a period of six months, Tommy and I had soothed our golden retriever as the dog took his last breath. Three months later, it was my husband who died after being diagnosed with throat cancer.

Then, I added to these losses by -- in what  seemed like a flash -- selling our house and moving from a neighborhood where both the dog and spouse and I lived happily for 13 years with model neighbors.

While my swift action was intended to lift depression and establish myself in a new, urban lifestyle -- and in many ways the relocation has accomplished this -- that blue feeling that accompanied my daughters’ leave-taking has begun to creep in.

How to fill the void? Will a particular synagogue help me find new faith and relieve the sadness? But, then I remember those old “third wheel” feelings that arose as a solo amid families and couples. Would I be at ease in pews of long-time members up-to-speed with one another and liturgy?

Perhaps I should instead postpone the search, slow down, and sit with the inevitable sorrow that has been my recent visitor.  Staying put; a new challenge for me. 

Flights of Fancy

I knew it had to be Tommy playing tricks. It happened as I was preparing for a visit to Los Angeles -- the first travel from my new rental apartment. On the day before my trip, I opened my wallet to take out my drivers license. My plan was to clip the license to my boarding pass, which, in my obsessively-organized mind, would ease my passage through security.

Gadzooks, the license was gone!  With my heart racing, I dropped to the couch and retraced my steps. Where was the last place I had used the license? Was there an establishment that required this extra identification in order to make a credit card purchase?

Then I remembered: one day, feeling nostalgic about all of the changes in my life, and pining for my deceased husband, I had switched the driver’s license, which was under the clear plastic slot,  to another spot in my wallet. Now, instead of my government-issued face greeting me, it was a color photo of our wedding portrait.

But the driver’s license edge wasn’t peeking out from any other slot like those of my credit cards. Where had I put it? Then, I jabbed my fingers behind the photo and voila. I was certain I had put it in its own niche where it could be easily noticed and extracted, but somehow, someone -- and I am now pointing fingers -- had hidden it tightly behind the 2-x-3.

In my flight of fancy, prior to the actual airplane I was to board the next day, I decided Tommy was having a bit of fun with me. When he was alive, he often scoffed at my habit of hyper-preparation. As example, two weeks before any takeoff, I’d lay everything out in stacks next to my open suitcase. This way, I could add or delete as departure day neared. 

When he’d walk past the room and spot the gaping luggage, he’d say, “We’re not going for two weeks. What’s the rush?”

“This makes it easier,” I’d say, which made sense to me, but to my casual husband, who refused to pack until the night before, or morning of, my regime deserved ridicule. 

After further daydreaming, though, I decided Tommy was also trying to remind me of the trips we had taken together. He wanted to be certain I wouldn’t allow those memories to fade.

With my departed husband prodding my subconscious, I paused preparations to conjure up those long ago vacations. As if I were assembling a jigsaw puzzle, I positioned images, expressions, and other mementos side-by-side until I could see a fuller picture.

First it was words that came to mind, likely because I was grateful for the years Tommy still had speech. “Mind the gap,” I could hear him saying. We were standing on a London platform awaiting public transit. On that trip, we visited Buckingham Palace, Harrods, and other typical tourist spots. And in my revery, I also remembered,  “punting on the Cam,” held over from a visit with friends in Cambridge that he enjoyed repeating for weeks after we returned home.

We toured Italy -- the Spanish Steps in Rome, the destroyed city of Pompeii, the hillside villages of the Amalfi Coast -- and dined in restaurants the guides promised were frequented by locals. I was able to capture bits and pieces, but so much of those travel memories had been slipping away with each passing year.

“Yes, those were wonderful,” I told Tommy aloud. “I’m so happy we were able to take them together. I noted that my husband, in this celestial cameo, hadn’t brought up our last mutual trip to Boston. I assumed he didn’t want to remind me of the difficulties after he had lost speech and his brain suggested to him a false bravado.

“You can’t go alone,” I remember pleading when he insisted on taking a walk from our bed-and-breakfast to nearby Jamaica Pond. I couldn’t join him for one reason or another, but he just smiled at my warning and pushed past me.

I started to cry. “Please, honey,” I said. “I’ll worry about you crossing that busy street and being late for our date. Please stay here with me.” And gratefully, he did.

Had Tommy held onto some resentment from that episode? Would that explain his current trick? No, I prefer to think my first notion was on target: my dear husband was just sending me a message, “Have a safe trip,” he was saying, “and don’t forget me.” As if...

Green Nails and Other Acts of Rebellion

“I know you hate them,” I say to Tommy during one of our frequent celestial conversations. "But when you died, you forfeited your vote on my nails.”

If my husband were still alive, I would never have handed over a bottle of Estée Lauder’s Absinthe to the manicurist. He had made it clear that he found shades other than natural, beige, or a subtle pink garish.

It was easy to go along with his preferences when his wishes were earthbound because my spouse of 14 years was a dear. “He makes me feel as if I walk on water,” I’ve often told people who were curious about the differences in our religion, bank accounts, family relationships, and levels of education. And let me tell you, that’s a sentiment not easy to come by.

There were other habits that Tommy brought with into this second marriage that I tolerated, even when towards the end of his life, were magnified by an illness that included brain degeneration.

At first I tried, “Honey,” I’d say putting a hand on his arm. “Sit, you can clear up the counter after we finish eating.” But, he’d touch my cheek -- a gesture I took as “you’re cute, but not going to happen.”

So, while I started in on the meal I prepared (that was our division of labor, I was the cook, he was the bottle washer), watching a rerun of “The Andy Griffith Show,” Tommy would rise, leaving his food to turn cold, as he put various utensils in the dishwasher, replaced the menu’s ingredients in the refrigerator or cupboard, and wiped down the countertops. By the time he returned to his chair, I was usually on my last mouthful.

Now, you guessed it, in my new life sans spouse, everything -- dishes, ingredients, serving spoons, and more -- remain out until I feel like cleaning up. I imagine Tommy and these waiting kitchen objects engaged in conversation: “Can you believe it,” the tossed dishtowel says to my husband. “The woman you thought walked on water has become a slob.”

“How long do you think she’s going to leave us sit here?” I could swear the frying pan adds. “Doesn’t she realize the grease is going to harden and make my clean up that much tougher?”

While those bossy things are jabbering about me, my resurrected husband is smiling. If I place him in the conjured scene while he still had voice, he’d say, “I had a feeling that would happen. She’s a sweetheart, but without me around, I can see how she’d get sloppy.”

Now, if it was later in his life, when his aphasia erased speech, Tommy would just shake his head and turn the thumbs of each hand down. A sign of displeasure that is now bouncing off my sloven shoulders.

I ignore my pretend cast of characters who are casting dispersion and finish my meal. With my viewing partner gone, I have switched television programs. Sheriff Andy has given way to Mr. White, of the current hit, “Breaking Bad.” Also, instead of kitchen-table viewing, in my new apartment, I’ve transitioned to couch with dinner tray on lap.  

I’m not certain if this counts as a genuine act of rebellion because Tommy and I weren’t watchers of the drama back then. But, the violence and drug themes might have put him off. Remember, this is a man who prefers nails in neutral shades rather than tropical colors.

This part though, is definitely treasonous. I stack the dinner dishes in the sink, intending to place them in the dishwasher maybe this night, maybe tomorrow morning, maybe even tomorrow evening.

With an evil smile, likely inspired by the TV show, I turn to the figments of my imagination and say, “I don’t care what you think. The dishes can wait.”

Everybody but Tommy receives this declaration aghast. “Has she fallen this low?” I believe the empty wine glass says to the salad plate. Then, the crabbing crew turn to my husband expecting equal derision and disbelief.

But, he is laughing. A subtle, sweet laugh as if he is in on the joke. “Relax,” he says. “Give her time. She’s like a kid let out of school, testing her independence. Just watch, in a few weeks, her kitchen will look more like ours did when I was in charge.”

Tommy may be right, for unwittingly, I just returned the salad dressing to the fridge pre-tuck in. Oh well, the rebellion was fun while it lasted, but, the green nails definitely stay!