“No, no, they can’t take that away from me….”
August 27, 2011
I don’t buy dresses that zip up the back anymore. I haven’t for a long time — exactly how long? I do know that — 17 years, 6 months, 26 days. It’s been that long since my then-husband moved out of the apartment we shared together and into his own place.
I was too wrapped up in a relationship with a man who was so unsuited to me that I often wonder if his sole purpose was to distract me from my crumbling marriage to a man I still loved so that, when my husband left, I wouldn’t notice. It worked for a while.
Fred, my former husband, was the steady hand holding my arm as I walked the tightrope of my life, the vigilant guide that turned down the heat on the pot-boiling-over that was my mind, the brave hero there to rescue this damsel in distress, whether it was my upset over being a catholic mother trying to train her Jewish son for his Bar Mitzvah, or the quiet reassurance on those days that being in the fashion business was not the glamorous career everyone thought it would be.
We had husband and wife moments like everyone else — and, none more annoying — and touching — as his checking on me as I would spend forever getting ready to go out.
“How much longer will you be?” he said, standing in the doorway of my bathroom as I applied my mascara, my head up close to the mirror, lips parted in concentration, right arm out to the side as I carefully colored one lash at a time. “Not too long,” I said between lashes, “Five more minutes.” I didn’t have my dress on yet, my shoes were strewn about the floor, my hair still had a couple of rollers on the top. “Just five more minutes, Fred!” He shook his head and walked away.
This would have happened once or twice or even three times more before I was ready to don my dress and shoes and we could walk out the door to our event.
Ah, my dress. I’d step into it and slither it up over my hips. I’d reach my hands behind me and start the zipper up as far as I could with my own hands. Then…
“Fred!” It was a call out. “Fred?” It was a question. He’d come into the room and I could always tell he liked what I had on – his fretful face would transform to a look of wide-eyed appreciation. I’d turn so my back was to him, sweep my hair to the side. “Honey, would you zip me up?” I could feel him come up behind me, almost too close to do the task at hand. He put his hands on the back of my dress, sliding down to find the zipper tab and slowly pull it up to the top. I’d always turn around and reward him with a kiss, “Thanks, Honey!”
After he moved out – I guess it was some months later – I was getting ready to go to a party. I put on my make-up with no sweet spectator at the door, no one to hurry me along, no one to shake his head in exasperation. I thought I would like having this time to myself. Instead, there was a twinge of lonliness – an anticipation of someone who loved me, albeit impatiently, nudging me on. I looked towards the door – there was no one there.
I slipped on my dress, a sexy, red beaded short dress with a zipper up the back. I reached behind and zipped up the dress as far as I could on my own – and then I turned in dismay – how was I going to get this dress zipped up by myself?
I tried wild contortions and yoga poses, but nothing worked – I never could get my hands to meet behind me.
I gave up and sat down on my bed. While it had already been weeks since he left, that was the moment I realized he was gone for good. I put my face in my hands and cried until my make-up was ruined and I was so late for my party that it would have been embarrassing to show up at all.
I slipped out of my dress and hung it on the hanger from which it had come, the curve of the top still sitting in the hook on my closet door. It was the last time I would ever wear that dress, a dress I had worn for Fred on several occasions, a dress that he had zipped up for me each time.
I washed my mascara-streaked face and didn’t call my friends to say I was not coming. It didn’t escape me that no one called to see where I was. Fred was the only one who ever waited on my presence – vigilantly, annoyingly, impatiently, lovingly.
I miss that about him.
17 years, 6 months, and 26 days later and I still miss that about him.
Yes, it’s the big, angry outbursts that signify a marriage has ended, but it the missing of those endearing and intimate ordinary moments between a man and a woman in which you know that something amazing is gone for good.
Deliciously yours in the Memory of it All, Linda
“The way you wear your hat;
The way you sip your tea;
The memory of all that.
No, no, they can’t take that away from me.
The way your smile just beams;
The way you sing off key;
The way you haunt my dreams.
No, no, they can’t take that away from me.
We may never, never meet again
On on the bumpy road to love.
Still I’ll always, always keep the memory of
The way you hold your knife;
The way we danced ’til three;
The way you’ve changed my life.
No, no, they can’t take that away from me” by Ira Gershwin
© Linda Ruocco and “Spiritual Chocolate”, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Linda Ruocco and ”Spiritual Chocolate” with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. Thank you.
I was excited to read Dayna Macy’s new book, “Ravenous: A Food Lover’s Journey from Obsession to Freedom”, because it is a memoir and not a “diet book.” After reading a few self-help books on weight loss, like Marianne Williamson’s, “A Course in Weight Loss” and Geneen Roth’s “Women, Food, and God,” (both of which I loved!), it intrigued me that someone would write a personal story of what she eats and why and what she did about it.
Dayna Macy titled her three sections with compelling names: Part 1 is “Seduction”, in which she writes about the foods that arouse her desires: “Sausage,” “Cheese,” “Chocolate,” “Olives,” and “Squash.” Squash? Yes, squash – this chapter seems to be more about the pleasure of food than the food itself. Or, perhaps, more about the man who is cooking the food than the food itself – charged with longing and eroticism, this chapter makes it is easy to see why we women confuse food with intimacy. Hunger is often not distinguished for us in terms of what we are hungry for. And so, we eat when we can’t or don’t love.
Part II is titled, “Communion,” with chapters called, “Farm,” “Forage,” “Feast,” “Patience,” “Slaughter,” and “Home” – the connections with food that create the insatiable – or almost insatiable — bond with those foods we love. The hardest chapter for me to read in this section (in fact, in the entire book) was the one on meat, entitled “Slaughter.” While I am not a vegetarian and I don’t have any desire to be one, Dayna’s telling of her visit to a humane “abattoir” – a slaughterhouse – took me up close and personal to what it is behind the scenes of being a meat-eater: an animal has to die for me to have my steak and eat it, too.
Indeed, this chapter is about the humane slaughter of cows, which, we all know (or, should know by now) is not the way most of the cattle that supplies our meat are killed. Although she does not take us on a visit to the farms that do not practice the humane slaughter of cattle, the background conversation is that method as a contrast to this visit to the more humane facility. She describes the process in detail: calves one at a time, hidden from the view of the animals behind it, stunned to brain-deadness and then killed. Behind her visceral description is what she doesn’t discuss — the even more disturbing vision of cows crowded together in a killing chute, fear racing through their bodies as they see the animal in front of them die. She doesn’t describe that directly, but the way she describes this killing is as a contrast to that killing. While the unspoken contrast is not on the page, it is left in your mind.
After that chapter, I had to take a break. Her descriptions are so detailed, I had to put the book down for awhile. It was time to think about my responsibility in how I choose my food. Can I live with even the humane description? I don’t know.
Part III is called, “Transformation.” The chapter titles are, “No Food,” “The Yoga of Food,” “The Practice of Food,” “The Offering of Food,” – all very spiritual chapters in the sense that eating and food require being honest with oneself and present to the actual act of eating — and the last chapter of the book is on “Oranges.” This is my favorite chapter, partly because of her luscious descriptions: “Oranges are among my favorite fruits. I love how the juice squirts out when you bite into a section and how they can be both sweet and sour and taste like the sun,” and partly because it is clear, in the end, that she has no answers for herself or for me – or for anyone, in fact.
There are no answers.
This is a book about the courage to be honest about one’s appetites – all of them – and the way we use those appetites to protect ourselves, to hide our pain – mostly from ourselves – and, finally, to find a way to use the very wounds that we seek to hide to take us on a journey that will lead to loving ourselves.
Deliciously yours in the Sweetness of it All, Linda
“Weight can be gained or lost. Our judgments about our bodies are much harder to lose. I see that my body is strong. It lets me do things both beautiful and practical. I am grateful to have found a practice that is helping me find balance and lose weight. But the scale is a witness to my journey, not the measure of my worth. It is with gratitude and humility that I am learning to take care of my body, because it is the embodiment of my spirit and the vehicle with which I make my way through this complicated, magnificent world.” Dayna Macy, “Ravenous: a food lover’s journey from obsession to freedom.”
Here is the link to Hay House Book Club Radio, a discussion of “Ravenous” which will air this Friday, August 19th:
http://www.hayhouseradio.com/show_details.php?show_id=235&episode_type=0
Here is the link to “Ravenous” at Barnes and Noble:
And, the link to Amazon.com:
Disclosure: I received Dayna Macy’s book, “Ravenous: a food lover’s journey from obsession to freedom” for free from Hay House Publishing.
© Linda Ruocco and “Spiritual Chocolate”, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Linda Ruocco and ”Spiritual Chocolate” with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. Thank you.
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