He called me into his office and asked me to have a seat. The slight, balding man’s face held deep concern. This was no surprise: he was known for his brusque demeanor.

This, of course, is a polite way of saying he had a crappy personality. The watery eyes and overlong beard just added to the whole “vermin affect.”

Ratboy (as I fondly referred to him in my head) was also known for his sweaty palms, his brown nosing of company VPs, and his penchant for synthetic fibers. Icky.

I was an Executive Secretary for an econometrics firm, and Ratboy was a Principal in my pool. This meant I was fortunate enough to print out, edit, file and otherwise shovel the drivel put forth by the tiny man. This also meant that when he called me into his office, I was expected to bring a notepad, and pretend to be interested in his idle chatter before any actual work commenced.

Today was different. No work would commence.

The sweaty little man had concerns—concerns not of the workplace. And since I was the only scarred soul in the firm (at least of lower station), he deigned me suitable and thus the topic appropriate for our relationship. After a few moments of staring out the window in apparent deep thought (during which time I doodled the word, “lame-o” on my notepad) he asked (while still gazing in “deep thought,” mind you), “How did you know it was time to divorce?”

Baruther.

It had come to this. There I was, single mom and secretary, sitting uncomfortably in my outlet-priced dress and cardigan, arms folded across my mid-section, already in my tennis shoes ready for the commute home, being asked a very personal, deeply important question.

“Don’t do it,” I said. I know I was supposed to be kind and thoughtful and ask him what was wrong and blah blah blah, but look: The guy irked me. I stood, ready to take my leave.

This just made Ratboy speak faster. “No, I mean it, I need to know.” He looked at me with his nervous, dewy eyes. “We just don’t agree on parenting. We argue. You’re supposed to let the baby cry it out, but she lets it go on too long…. How did you know your marriage had ended?”

And all I could think was: Econometrics.

This man had spent his entire life ruled by functions and algorithms. He could explain and predict economic events using a series of mathematic formulas. Craving logic, he saw that he and his wife had issues, big enough problems that he wanted to know from me—low income, single mother of two and apparent divorce expert—when it was time to cut bait and run.

How easy it would be to have a set of rules.

It was 1998 and the divorce from my sons’ father was maybe the most painful thing I had ever—until that time—ever, ever experienced. It was a devastating loss. Not of the man, no; we disliked each other vehemently and treated each other demonically for far longer than would ever in the history of marriages be necessary. People who complain that homosexuality would ruin the sanctity of marriage? Yeah, you’re wrong. I already destroyed any modicum of sanctity the sacrament had with my first marriage. (Let’s allow others’ ardent love the chance to restore it, shall we?)

We—my then-husband and I—were awful to each other. I can go on and on about the horrors I went through, but the truth is I was no sweet pea either. I was hurt. I was angry. I was right about everything. I became ugly on the inside and outside and all over.

The ending of that marriage was marked by a deep grief: for the loss of my hopes and dreams; for the loss of my dignity; and most desperately, for the loss of my children (I went from full-time mom to a 50-50 split). It was horrible. It was devastating. It was every awful word I could ever find, all stuffed together in a bucket of gooey hate, wrapped in a wet blanket of depression, and set ablaze with the fire of misery. So what I’m saying is: Not good.

Nobody wants to be an expert on “Not good.” But there I was, surrounded by this terrible, inescapable thing I was wallowing in and struggling to survive and I was being asked by Ratboy how he could get there, too. When would it be time for him to enjoy his own bucket of flaming goo?

I sighed. I sat back down. “Do you like your wife?” This caught him off guard.

“Well, I just… we always fight.” And he began to talk about their parenting problems. How they both thought each was right about everything. How they never saw each other. How she could be so tough on the kids.

When he paused, I asked again, “Do you like your wife?” He didn’t know how to answer. He stumbled around a bit and eventually answered, “I think so.”

“Get a marriage counselor. Go talk to someone. Your marriage sounds sick, you need to see someone about making it well again. And if you think you still like her, there is a glimmer of hope and you can work it out.” He tried to interrupt, but I continued. “Divorce isn’t an easy out or quick fix. And marriage is not a geometric proof, with all the rules that define when you’re doing it right.

“There is no ‘time’ or some definition that tells people when marriage is over.” He looked disappointed. Too bad, I thought. I wasn’t in the mood to sugarcoat it. “Divorce is awful. It’s ugly. It makes you look at all the crap you went through from the time you began dating and admit to all the crap you’re responsible for. And then you get to live with being the resident expert on divorce, for all the rest of your life.”

I stood and left the room. Ratboy was stunned. It wasn’t the answer he wanted, but it was all I had to give.

I was a vegetarian for about 5 years, vegan for 3 of those. I did such a terrible job making sure I got necessary amounts of iron and B12 and really any other vitamin besides nicotine and alcohol, that when I got pregnant, I reversed course: No nicotine, no alcohol, no caffeine, and I craved meat like a (enter crass meat-craving double entendre here). So ended my highly-political reasons for vegetarianism.

Fast forward 16 years.

I’d rarely eat beef, replacing it with poultry when cooking for the family— when suddenly I developed a severe aversion to poultry. My ardent love of chicken had been replaced with an inborn need to turn my head, hand over my mouth. What was happening to me?

I tried eating a turkey burger and ended up gagging and running to the trash can.

Where did this come from?? I love eating turkey! My dad was the BEST barbecuer of that bird in the history of barbecuers. Thanksgiving was all about noshing on turkey skin. Crispy, crunchy fat-ladened-turkey skin AND NOTHING ELSE! (Well, yeah. Except the whole “thankful” thing.)

I just can’t stomach poultry anymore, no matter how it’s prepared. There is something in the smell, I think. I just…I can’t.

The only meat I didn’t– and still don’t– eat for non-food-aversion reasons was/is pork. I think the mass-factory farming of pork is just vile. (It was the fecal swamps that pushed me past my edge.) Thing is… I love pork. I love bacon and ham and chops and sausage… I really do– my gawd! Linguica! Chorizo! It’s a heavenly mish-mash of meat and fat and whatever else… but my sense of empathy for the people that live in communities surrounding pork factory farms is too large to allow me to consume it. (And clearly the pork industry has been devastated by my abstention.)

So what is a meat-loving-can-no-longer-stomach-meat girl supposed to do?

I am not your typical vegetarian. While I do feel desperately sorry for slaughterhouse animals, it wasn’t always that way. I was fine with staring into their cute little faces and imagining scarfing them down with some kind of savory sauce. I’d been eating animals for a long, long time—almost my entire life—but as soon as the aversions started, well… so increased my empathy for those widdle faces, and my resolve to avoid eating them.

Have I told you how much I love the taste of a fillet? Or a rib eye? OhmyGAWD I love beef. Even the fat around the edge of a good steak. With garlic. With ketchup. With A1. With lime. Whatever—I LOVE IT. Beef is the only meat I can stomach.
But I don’t eat it anymore.

What’s my problem?

In part, beef is called “cows” when alive. And cows have cute faces, and apparently, personalities. And when I really examined my beef intake (minimal to begin with) and protein needs (pretty low), I realized wow— HOW MANY resources are going into creating that occasional rib eye I so enjoy? According to the Sierra Club, “16 pounds of wheat and up to 2,500 gallons of water are necessary to produce one pound of grain-fed beef.” Gulp. Add the amount of hormones and antibiotics found in beef, and well… I soon couldn’t eat beef, either.

So here I am, an overly-empathetic meat-lover with food aversions who is now a born-again vegetarian (much to the surprise of my family). Am I an advocate? An activist? An ardent believer in flowy clothes, comfortable shoes and all-things soy?

Meh. I do like comfortable shoes. Else, I believe that, like all things in life, what one chooses for oneself is one’s own business. What one puts down one’s gullet is no business of mine. I have to follow my own convictions (or lack thereof), and currently, my gut tells me that eating meat has again gone the way of nicotine use and the over-consumption of alcohol of long ago.

It’s something I just can’t stomach.

…of the bed is empty. He is up on a mountain, having carried 58 pounds of necessities on his back. That’s heavier than our 6-year-old.

It snowed there yesterday. Chances of overnight snow tonight. And another storm is blowing in on Tuesday— summit day.

He is no doubt shivering in 20-something degree weather, hunkered down in his down bag, wearing many layers and a beanie or two.

I bet his toes are froze. I bet his nose is froze. sigh how I love his nose…

I’m warm here in this house filled with kids, sad I’m not on this trip with him, and selfishly glad my fat ass had beer and pizza for dinner. I’m supposed to be there. I’m not. I’m glad and sad all at the same time.

I hope he will be safe. I hope he will take all precautions and not get summit hungry if the weather is foul.

One thing is for certain: neither one of us will sleep well tonight.

Half-dressed and soaking wet, I’d pedal with bare feet from one end of the neighborhood to the other. My eyes would burn from the pool’s chlorine, but I’d manage to see by the light of the oncoming dusk.

Once I hit the main road I was careful to stay on the sidewalks. Tiny, fly-away strands of hair always managed to somehow free themselves from the clump that lay thick and wet against my back, and rise up to tickle my face. It was summer and sunset and I pedaled my Schwinn Stingray with maniacal speed and intensity in order to make it back to the house by curfew.

Sunset was always curfew.

Our days began early, right after breakfast, and we played hard until sundown. If I wasn’t in the pool, I was on my way somewhere on my bike. We built ramps out of old plywood and rode our bikes like Evil Knievel, seeing how far we could jump or skid or ride with no hands. I never did master the wheelie.

Bike helmets didn’t exist

My days were otherwise spent navigating a series of events: Swimming in our backyard; playing in my best friend’s tree fort; playing HORSE or four square or two square or catch; jumping rope; building go carts, tearing them apart and starting afresh; more swimming; then back to my friends house for Barbies; and eventually I’d find my way back home again by sunset.

Watching TV only happened at night.

Food consisted of crabapples from the neighbor’s yard and water from the garden hose, and with luck, something from the ice cream truck. We were never too fussed about food. It was just fuel. I’d show up in my standard outfit –a pair of Dolphin shorts, flip flops and some kind of tank or swim top—just in time for a tuna sandwich on white bread then head back out toward the grand adventure. And I was always dirt-stained by day’s end.

Days would slide together, and I’d lose sense of the passage of time. Any day in the past was “the other day,” even if that other day happened a month prior. Ridiculously, by mid-August, I’d be looking forward to the start of school.

I would grow bored and before long would begin to grouse. My mother’s solution was always along the lines of, “If you’re bored, go clean your room” or “pull some weeds,” or any other number of horrible, terrible chores. I very quickly learned to be careful about my grousing.

Still, at these times my mother would be sure to say, “Enjoy it now, because you won’t always have summers like this.” It was a stab to the heart to me, even way back then, mired though I was in boredom. Because every child harbors a secret truth– and that is knowing that “Mom is always right.”

I may not have appreciated them fully back then, but now? I really miss those easy summer days.

As anybody with ocular ability has noticed, the current issue of Newsweek is running a huge cover story about Oprah. The article begins by detailing Suzanne Sommer’s visit on the show. And while I have neither an opinion of Oprah nor the presentation of the author’s views, I was struck by one thing: Suzanne Sommers ingests a lot of vitamin supplements.

Like 60 a day. No joke.

She takes these supplements in the hopes of staving off the natural aging process, and has become a rather vocal supporter of various remedies that she feels are successful.

Her desire/need to stave off the aging process doesn’t end with the 60-or-so supplements. The thing that really got me thinking was the casual mention that Sommers injects herself with estrogen, daily, RIGHT IN HER VAGINA.

Women, I ask: How did the eventual turn of the wheel from maiden to mother to crone come to be so horrendous, so frightening, so utterly egregious that it is somehow *reasonable* to take dozens upon dozens of vitamin supplements, culminating with stabbing oneself in the female sex organ with a sharp implement in order to stave off that process?

I was stunned. I was more than stunned: I was horrified. I know that looking young and sexy and attractive is paramount in our culture. We women go to ridiculous lengths—applying chemicals to our faces, hair and bodies to tighten or color our skin and hair—but to what end?

I am not being a hypocrite here. At least I don’t think I am—I used to bleach and color my hair and I have no problem finding solutions to temporarily eliminate my wrinkles. I’ve done the fake-tan thing, the hair-removal thing, the destroy my fingernails-with-acrylics thing. Enhanced faces, enhanced bustlines, sucking out the fat, injecting lipids in—the list of beauty enhancements in our society is seemingly endless and frankly, I have no issue with any of it. If you really want to go through all of that clip, snip, tuck, pain, whatever—it’s your body.

So why did I take such issue with the taking of vitamin supplements? And vaginal injection?

I pause.

My mind is sad and confused, and a little bit quiet. I look at all I’ve done in the past and all I still do now, and I wonder: why does it matter so much? To her? To me? To anyone? And where does it end?

And finally, the biggest question of all: What is wrong with getting old?

I’ve been a little bit down lately, since reading that article. I always thought that all of that gussying up was a mode of female expression. But I’m facing 40 now. Can’t it stop? Can’t I just feel good about who I am, how I am, at my beginning to gray and wrinkle, getting saggy-baggy-age, without feeling like I am supposed to keep up with the Sommerses?

There is an expectation in your 20s that you look cute and mature-ish and sexy, while at the same time, appear intelligent and independent. Of course inside you are dying to have what everyone else has, which is whatever everyone else has at any given moment. Stability. Relationships. Success. The goal: To look like everyone else, but better, but different, but be smart, but not tooo smart. While wearing heels.

When your 30s arrive you give up that pretending-not-to-be-too-smart thing. You realize it’s moronic and far too much work hiding your intelligence under a bushel so forget it, you declare, LET IT SHINE. Instead, you’re out to prove you really are smarter than people give you credit for. In fact, given the opportunity, maybe you’ll prove smarter than EVERYONE ELSE. Too bad you’re still close enough to your 20s to continue to be lured by the stupidity of advertising that is casually aimed at you. So you’re still lured by foolish things, like trying to look or maintain your youthful, good looks because you’re still young-ish, right? And what is the time limit on saying you just graduated from college, again? Seven, ten years? And you still look good in heels.

Now here comes 40.

I look around, and the landscape is different.

Television ads aren’t aimed at me so much anymore. Those women who I stretched to believe were in my peer set? Clearly closer to my daughters’ peer sets. And who are these celebrities caught in scandals on the cover of Star and People? And slowly it dawns on me: I am no longer at the center of the advertising universe.

And I feel… peace. Almost elated. I feel as though I’ve graduated from an era of excessiveness and moved toward what can be termed, “classic styles.” Simple styles. (A toga is a style, right?) Accepting myself as I am… for the most part.

No. Suzanne, you keep your vaginal injection. And your 60 supplements a day. Yes, you look great at 62, but that’s a lot of work and frankly, with my luck, I’d end up mutton dressed as lamb anyway.

Rather, I think I’m going to attempt, in some manner or fashion, to slide gracefully into old age. Or in my case, stumble poetically. But in flat shoes.