Hi there!

Thanks for stopping by Patricia’s Opinion Dot Com.  Due to time constraints and other considerations, there have been a few necessary changes around here. Beginning August 1, 2011, I’ll no longer be posting at this site. But if you’d like, you can find my articles, essays, podcast interviews and “Expert in Failed Relationships Advice Column at:

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jh@johngalvisagency.com

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patricia@patriciaVdavis.com

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..or heaven knows what else by the time you read this!

Thank you for your interest in my writing.  I look forward to hearing from you!

Arts Critic Jan Wahl from KRON 4 News with Patricia V. Davis at "Diva Doctrine" Launch

Oscar Wilde, 1882

So a number of people have written to ask me for tips for a successful writing life. (Yes, believe it or not, they have. Why they’re asking me and not JK Rowling is a puzzle, but there you go.) In response, I thought I’d post my rules for doing that here. In fact, on pretty much every point, the points below are most likely the way I’d lead my life even if I hadn’t chosen to be a writer:

1)    Work hard.

2)    Have a supportive spouse/partner and family. If he/she is not supportive consider that this person may not be the person for you. (I’m serious.)  If your family (parents and other relatives) are not supportive, ignore them completely. If your children are not supportive, unless they’re under age 18, ignore them, too. Don’t let other people’s discontent with their own lives taint your perspective, even if you happen to love those people. You giving up your dreams will not make them any happier.

3)    Work even harder.

4)    Remember every single person who helps you get a step up ─ the people who give you blurbs, the people who leave comments on your blog, the people who review your book, your agent, your fellow writers who show up at your book events, the book seller who hosts your events, the local newspaper columnist who does a story on you, the editors who critique your work (they’re your friends not your enemies) ─ and even if that person never does another thing for you, try to help them at least twice as much as they helped you whenever you can.

5)    Keep working hard.

6)    Take no notice of anyone who is jealous of you and/or seems to wish you harm. Don’t be offended by those who trash your work, who say “no” to any requests, who ask to be taken off your mailing list, who give you an *unrealistically negative review. If you expend energy worrying about these people, that is that much of your energy used up in a negative way and ─ believe me ─ you will need all your energy. (See points 1, 3, 5, 7, 9.) Also, don’t be jealous of other people’s success. Don’t compare yourself to others, ever. Because what you’re comparing are two very unalike things; what you’re comparing is your inside to what somebody else’s outside appears to look like to you. Again, a big fat waste of energy.

7)    Keep working. Now is not the time to get discouraged.

8)    In point six, I say ignore the “unrealistically” negative review. But if someone takes the time to critique your work and make a criticism or two that you keep hearing over and over again, it’s time to silently thank those detractors and look over your work with a more critical eye. They took time out of their busy lives to write about your book. Heck, they even spent money to buy your book, and if they’re telling you something, perhaps you ought to mull over. This is a positive, not a negative thing.

9)    The more successful you get, the harder you work. Yes, that part sucks, but that’s the way it is. If you have one book out, you should be marketing it, but at the same time, you should be at least thinking about your next writing project. Can you say, “10-hours-a-day workday, 6 days a week?” Better be able to do more than say it.

10)    On point #9, if you want to have a life outside of writing and still be successful at it, plan every moment of your day to get the most out of your time. 10 hours a day includes your marketing time as well as your writing time. The rest of the day includes your sleep, your dinner time, exercise, your hobbies, your chores, your time with your family and friends. So plan it out well. Savor it. Don’t waste it.

11)    Embrace your workday, don’t resent it. You will be extremely unhappy if you can’t do this one thing.

12)    Take time off when you need to and do not feel guilty about it, ever. Want to spend time with your young children, even several years of time? Do it. Want to go away with your partner or some friends? With few exceptions, don’t make it a working holiday. (Unless, of course, you’re in the middle of book tour. Ahem.) Embrace your time off as much as you embrace your work day. Because the definition of “success” is being able to look back on your life without too many regrets.

Anyone care to add their own ideas on the above? I’d love to hear them.

(P.S. Isn’t this a wonderful photo of Oscar?)

When I was eight, in the summertime my mother had to call me in from playing outdoors at least twice before I even acknowledged I’d heard her voice. Then I’d beg her to let me stay outside for a while longer, until she issued dire threats if I didn’t “come in right this minute.” It was only at that point that I would petulantly stomp back into the house.

Once inside, she’d grab onto me and try to hold me still as she “pre-cleaned” me before setting up my bath. She knew if she didn’t, my bathwater would turn muddy within minutes of my being placed in it. That was because when I was eight, I played in dirt ─  sat right down in it, made mud with it, dug up some very fine rocks and wiggling earthworms hiding beneath it. And so, my mother would put my hands and arms in the bathroom sink and attempt to shake off some of that dirt which had caked onto my arms, into the crevices and lines on the palms of my hands, around my cuticles and under my fingernails. After that, she’d lean down and attack the skin on my knees with a washcloth. My knees were literally black with grime, sweat, and tan. In fact, my skin was so dark from my playing out in the sun so long that she could never tell when she’d rubbed hard enough to get down past the dirt and just onto bare flesh, so I’d end up with raw skin from her efforts. I’d never even heard the word “sunscreen” back then, and when I was eight, I wouldn’t have cared if I had.

When I was eight, I wore my hair to my shoulders the same as I do now, except back then I was too busy being a kid to keep it neat. It stuck out and up in the way only coarse, thick hair can, and I was forever pushing my dirty hands through it to keep it out of my eyes. That’s why my mother also had the nightly task of pulling bits of branches out of my hair that I’d picked up from climbing trees or crawling through the woods in the “forts” we made. My hair was so wiry and tangled that once, a brush my mother was trying to force through it snapped right in half at the handle. In frustration, she had my hair cut pixie short. It did not look trendy, but it was convenient, and instead of being traumatized, I loved how my shadow now looked on the cement patio when I moved my head back and forth and wiggled my arms out to my sides ─ sort of like one of the dancing skeletons in my favorite cartoons. I looked like a shadow skeleton somewhat, because even though I ate three healthy meals a day and all the sugary candy I could buy with 25 cents a week, (which was a lot) I was downright skinny from moving so much, using my body so much for the things it was meant to do.

When I was eight, boys were just more people with whom to climb trees and have racing contests or rock-throwing contests. They were sometimes annoying because they were stronger and could beat me more often than not, and of course, I wanted to win. Some of them seemed to like bugs more than I did, too, and most certainly they often smelled bad. So, why would I care if creatures like that thought I was pretty or not? Why, with so much fun to be had, like running and climbing and sticking my hands in dirt, finding baby birds that had fallen out of trees and nursing them back to health, would I care myself, if I were pretty or not?

When I was eight and if for some reason we couldn’t play outside, my sister, cousins, and I made up games like “Spy” or sang songs out loud in the basement so we wouldn’t bother our parents who were upstairs, smoking, drinking coffee, and talking about stupid, boring stuff we had no interest in knowing about whatsoever. We held plays, and sometimes we could get our parents away from their stupid, boring stuff to come downstairs to watch them. My cousins, sister and I were all bossy, and we all argued about who was going to play what part. Our mothers would tell us to behave. We didn’t listen.

We didn’t meekly submit. Not to our mothers, not to our friends, not to anybody else’s idea of what we were worth. In that world it would have been unfathomable to know of another eight-year-old  girl who would hold in her tears while her mother put needles filled with poison in her face, just so she could “be beautiful.” In that world it would be unfathomable to want “boob jobs and nose jobs”, because we felt we were perfect the way we were.

We were real. Life was real.

You know those emails that start with “Remember When…?” I don’t like those emails at all. Not only are they B-movie, nostalgia-in-a-can ─ “Milk delivered right to your door by the milkman!”, “Coca-cola in a glass bottle!” ─ they’re out and out dishonest, albeit in a ingratiatingly syrupy way.  They mean to have us remember a reality that didn’t exist, that US life in the 50’s and 60’s was much better than it is today. From my perspective, that’s just not true. Yeah, the air was cleaner then, portions were smaller then and people were leaner then. Blah blah blah.

But am I the only one who remembers this:

Or, this:

Besides the racist and sexist actualities which permeated the 60’s and 70’s, my own reality was that it was just not as much fun to be a kid as it’s cracked up to be. Looking back I see that most people my parents’ age were more naïve than they should have been about many things. The world wasn’t any safer, our parents just perceived it to be.  Regardless of their level of education, they were also a lot more provincial than even the least educated American today. And as a whole, that generation certainly seemed to be a lot less educated on how to parent. Below is my list of all the stuff I hated about being a kid, and I know I couldn’t have been the only one who had experiences like these:

1. Being forced to eat ALL that was served to me of my mother’s soggy macaroni and broccoli (a dish that had no cheese, no seasoning at all, was over-boiled and dripping with corn oil) while under threat of the wooden spoon she kept next to her plate.

2. Having to go to bed earlier than all my friends, who got to watch all the fun shows. They’d talk about them the next day at school, and all I could do was listen and seethe.

3. Getting punished on the weekend and not being allowed to see my one favorite show that was on before my bedtime, which was ─ yippee ─ a whole hour later than on weeknights.

4. Having to watch younger sibs. Having them hate me for that. Having to referee their arguments. Having them report to our parents what a lousy job of referring I did. Getting punished for doing a lousy job. (Wooden spoon again and, just for good measure, see number three.)

5. Having to come in the house in the summertime before it got dark.

6. Being forced to sit out in the backyard in the summertime for “a nice outdoor meal”, while caterpillars from the overhanging oak tree branches dropped onto the table, sometimes into my plate, and crawled under the bench where we sat, onto the backs of my thighs. And I was wearing shorts.

7. Not getting to pick out my own clothes. (See “wearing shorts.”)

8. Having someone else brush my hair. (Ouch!)

Now let’s move on to the teen years:

9. Being too fat to get picked for sports.  (I guess fat is what happens when you’re forced to eat a half a pound of limp macaroni that’s been floating in oil.)

10. Being too fat to get invited to the prom, which was maybe for the best, because…

11. Not being allowed to go to the prom. Or to babysit. Or to attend sleepovers. Or go on school trips.

12. Having to wear those big ol’ round coke bottle glasses they made back in the day, until I was eighteen and old enough to buy a pair of contact lenses on my own.

And finally at Lucky 13─

13.    Meeting my first husband at age 19, and getting married looong before I should.

Need I go on?

So when people my age talk about how much better things were when they were young, I think, “Seriously?”  That just wasn’t my experience.

Sure, there are plenty of things I miss about being a little girl, but now that I’m old enough to eat what I want to eat, watch what I want to watch, and go to bed when I say I’m tired, now that the only things I have to live with are the decisions I make for myself, I, for one, am enjoying my life much more today than I did then.

That’s why for me these days are “the good old days.” Because I’m old, but I’m feelin’ good.

What about you?

As the TV ad says, "These things always tell the truth"

Those who read my blog regularly know that when it comes to love and Valentine’s Day, I can usually be pretty sappy. Like in this post here. But this Valentine’s Day, I decided to play devil’s advocate and ask people to please contribute  the worst break up or parting line they’ve ever had to hear from a lover. Those of you who read my first book already know what mine was. (“Have you got time to do one more load of laundry before you leave?”)  But the ones below top even that. If you’re feeling blue or lonely today, these lines will remind that there are far worse things than being alone on Valentine’s Day. Read ‘em, weep, and feel free to add your own:

___________________________________

Sharon: After becoming a platinum blonde in the 70′s….”Wow ─  you look gorgeous…I told you you’d look good as a blonde.  I want a divorce.”

Jessica: “I was thinking maybe you could be the stepmom.” (I’ll let you guess the situation that led him to say that!)

Jeanne: It was Valentine’s Day, and I drove out to Cornell to surprise my boyfriend. I got the surprise. I saw him walking down the street holding another girl’s hand. He saw me, said something to her, and she kept walking. He then crossed the street to me. When I asked him what was going on, he said, “Life’s a bitch” and walked away.

Eat My Heart Out

Mark: “Don’t worry about your money…I’ve already emptied all the accounts.”

Brenda: ‎”I could never marry YOU … do you know how big your daughter would be??” (Ha! Joke’s on him … had no daughters and my only son is 6’7″!)

Mike: I have two. “It’s not you, it’s me.” (Which it was.)  And,  “I’ll give you a call soon.”

Tiana:  ‎“I’ve been bad. I’ve been seeing Peggy.” (Oh, and he eventually married her, too. …On Valentine’s Day.)

Take another little piece, now, BAY-BEE

Karen: Not the final line, but the one that lead to the inevitable ending: when asked why he was being so mean to me after my mom had just died, my charmer’s response was,“She didn’t *just* die. It’s been nine days.”

Leigh Anne: He worked at a local ski shop. Picks me up on his motorcycle to spend the day riding up Independence Pass. Without hardly a hello plunges ahead with, “I just helped Stevie Nicks buy her ski boots. I think I’m in love…” Proceeds to rave on about her for the next 2 hours… Gahh! I was trapped. When we FINally got back to my place, it was all I could do not to dive off the bike and run screaming for the house! (Ok, so a bit more than a one liner.)

Alexander: All I can remember really is that two or three times they ended with, “But I was hoping we can still be friends”. I hate that line. Seriously, you tear out my heart and expect me to like you for it? If that line ended with “friends with benefits”, I would be very torn. I think I would have an aneurysm after five minutes of standing there thinking very, very hard.

I Have Your Heart. (Feel the pressure on your chest yet?)

Persia: Unfortunately I heard this same line twice ─ “She isn’t half the woman you are, but I love her.”

Dora:  ‎“You don’t deserve me, you deserve better.”

Christos: Okay, here goes— (And this beats George Costanza’s ‘It’s not you, it’s me’ line):

She: I met someone else. You guys are so alike. He has 95% of the great qualities that you have!”
Me: But I have 100% of the great qualities that I have!!!
She: Yeah, but…ummm…well, whatever. See ya!

Jerry: ‎

She: I’m pregnant!
Me: OMG! Really!?!
She: It’s not yours…

You've really caught me in your love trap

Carina: “I’m in love with two women at the same time…” (Gag)

Teresa: ‎”Sorry I didn’t call, but I met up with my ex-girlfriend and we had an erotic experience.”  (True story.)

George: …Break up line?  

And you…?

This weekend, I had the pleasure of being in New York City, which despite the January onslaught of snow and wind, is always a wonderful place to visit. I was speaking at The Writer’s Digest Conference, and when I tell you it was an honor to be doing so, I don’t say that just so the organizers will read this and think I’m gracious. (But I hope they do.) I say it because the speakers were amazing, and I feel I learned more than I taught. But the two paramount things I learned, the two most fantastic things, were not taken away from any one particular talk or speaker. Here they are:  20-somethings and 30-somethings are marvelous, and the salvation of the human race will come from our advances in technology.

How did I get all this from a writers’ conference? I’m so glad you ask. There are those of you reading who would be well within your rights to assume that we writers are a stuffy, insular, snobbish and introverted lot. Well, okay…maybe some of us are. But those farty literati types seemed in short supply at this particular conference. At this conference, what I noticed was that the majority of the attendees were upbeat, democratic, and brimming with passion for their craft. Though the older people were no slouches in exhibiting these characteristics, naturally it was the younger set who displayed them most. But it wasn’t because of their naive optimism. Quite the contrary — their confidence in what the future holds for them in regards to the success of their writing careers, stems from something they have on their side to help them succeed that those of us who started on the writing and publishing track in the 1970’s did not ─ the internet and the technological leaps and bounds springing from that forthwith.

Last weekend, I listened as speakers talked about e-book sales, (Amazon sold more Kindle books this past year than paperback), making books into phone apps, publishing on Scribd and Smashwords and more.  It was a cross-generational meeting of the minds as the younger writers instructed the older writers on how all this stuff works (and work it does!) and older writers became excited at the realm of new possibilities to share their art. I saw one 70-year old get up and ask a 40-year-old speaker who’d written his book as a phone application how she could do that with her newspaper column.

But what I also loved was how the younger writers still crowded into rooms to hear older writers speak about what we knew, too, solely from our years and experience. Yeah, that’s right ─ the young’uns weren’t a bunch of little ‘know-it-alls’ — uninterested or unimpressed with what we older lot had to say. I heard from them many references to works by writers long dead, and you know, you can’t get any older than dead. There was respect there, coming from the young for the old; but equally important, from the old for the young. They wanted to speak to each other and learn from each other, in fact, were eager to do so.

I admit I was more than flattered to see some of the younger people ‘tweeting’ my remarks from my lecture room out into the world in real time. How ‘bout that? Hmmm... So, if there were fifty people in each room where that conference was held, how many more still who weren’t there physically still got to ‘hear’ what each speaker had to say?

So this is what I’m envisioning from all of this ─ a world where, if you can’t be at the place where the Dalai Lama is speaking, (or he’s been banned from your country) you can still just pick up your phone and get his words from your Twitter feed as he speaks them.  And if a politician spews out lies during a speech, you can fact check what he says on your iPad right there and then, and fire right back at him with a rebuttal via his email address or website. (It’ll be keeping high school teachers on their toes, for sure, when their students do this during their classes.)And when they tell us that we should be bombing this country or that, none of us anywhere in the world will buy into it, because one of our online poker buddies will be from said country, and we know what a good guy he is. We know his wife, his kids, and his worries, and guess what?─ Even though he’s wearing a rather odd-looking hat, we know he’s still just one of us. Is it any wonder the Chinese are trying to suppress Google?

The part I like best is what this means for any writer, in fact, anyone who has something to say – you can still say it with flowers, or you can try saying it in e-books, online websites, and blogs. You can get your word out without it being censored or spin-doctored by the mainstream media; you can gatecrash the publishing world without one nod of condescending consent from any literary agent or traditional house. You can browse the internet for hours looking for just the right book, because it will be out there and available to you immediately in some format. Same goes for films, art, and music. There will be no reason to try to put Julian Assange in jail, because Wikileaks will be obsolete. We will become a world of no secrets and therefore, no fear of the unknown or of each other. It will be just as ordinary via Skype to have a conversation face-to-face with a beloved friend in South Africa or Toowoomba as it is to have one with your next door neighbor.

We, the little people, will finally be able to have our say without dozens of blockades put up for our ‘protection’. There will be one god for everyone, and that will be the god of kindness, respect, and caring for all, because we will all know each other, and we will all learn from each other, whether a different nationality or a different generation.

On the day of the 25th anniversary of the space shuttle Challenger fall, oh, how I hope what I write here comes true. We mustn’t be leery of technology and scientific advance; we mustn’t hold it back, because despite any perceived and real risks involved in its development, it can save humankind.

Do I know what’s going to replace hardback books, or even if they will be replaced? No. But if they are replaced, will whatever replaces them be the “same”? Probably not. Just as printed books are not the same as scrolls, and when they updated Coca-Cola it no longer had cocaine in it. I’ll bet both those facts disappoint many. But I’m not one who looks in the rear view mirror while I’m trying to drive forward.

Did I tell you I’m learning to ‘tweet’?

—

You’ve dug out the ceramic platter you bought 40 years ago─ the one with the smiling turkey painted on it. You’ve polished the brass menorah, or fluffed the plastic branches of your pre-lighted Christmas tree. But, where are the kids? Once again, your grown children have nothing but excuses to give you for the holidays. Not to worry ─ the instructions below will get your babies back to the bosom of their origins for the annual festivities. All you have to do is modify the steps according to the number of children you have:

1. Stake Your Claim: Loudly inform every child, grandchild, in-law, and sibling at this year’s gathering, “It’s my turn next year.” Have everyone at the table sign an affidavit that they’ve heard and acknowledged this. Then when next year comes, if they renege, that signed paper should hold up in court.

2. Invite Your Single Son First: He’s an easy mark. A bachelor son is always willing to partake of  a meal he didn’t have to cook for himself, even if for him, Thanksgiving won’t actually be ‘Thanksgiving’, but his 25h Annual, ‘How-Come-You-Never-Got-Married-Are-You-Sure-You’re-Not-Gay’ Day.

3. Strike the Youngest Second: By ‘strike’ I mean, ‘wheedle’ ‘cajole’ and ‘plead’. One of these attempts will get a weary “yes” out the youngest, because they’re the most likely to still be suffering from unresolved mother issues. So, go ahead ─ tug on the remnants of that umbilical cord. Just be sure to give the youngest cash for his or her holiday gift. Therapy is expensive.

4. Hit the Married Daughter Next: Your married daughter wants to spend the holidays with her overbearing mother-in-law even less than she wants to spend them with you. Veiled criticisms of her weight gain and her mothering style which she has to swallow along with her green bean casserole don’t upset her stomach quite as much if they come from a more time-honored source. So, if she’s got school age children and a full time job, there’s a good chance you can lure her in with, “Come on─ with all the extra work you have to do for the holidays, do you really want to cook?”

5. Now You’re Ready to Attack the Married Son: The married son is the toughest ‘catch’ because that woman he married insists on spending the holiday with ‘her side’. You need to tell your son exactly this when you phone. Don’t think of this conversation as an invitation, but more as a demand for an audience.  Remind him of precisely how many times he’s gone to his wife’s family instead of his own; that all his siblings will be at your house except for him ─ again ─ and that the last time you had holiday dinner with him was when you were still coloring your hair. It’s unlikely he’ll agree to come, but he will tell his wife, and at least then she’ll know exactly how you feel.

6. Bask in the Spoils of War: This is an achievement of which you can be proud ─ most, if not all of your offspring are sitting around your holiday table, doing their yearly penance over dried out turkey, store-bought gravy, and canned cranberry sauce.

And after all, isn’t that what the holidays are all about?

Note: Dear Friends —This blog site is under construction. We are planning a blog roll and a number of other things to be added to it. One of the reasons I haven’t updated in a long while. Happy Holidays to all!

Fontana di Trevi

The spring I turned twenty-two, I was desperately trying to

recover from a ravaging love affair that had changed me from a

girl who was somewhat confident for her age and mostly happy,

to one who was completely demoralized. It was not only the

relationship itself, but the reactions to the demise of the

relationship by friends and family who I thought I knew that

made me lose all trust in my perceptions of people.

And so, I stopped caring about anything at all. I was walking,

eating, breathing, but I wasn’t really living. On I went like that

for a while, truly believing that was how I was going to exist

for the rest of my days. Until that one day, when I opened my

dresser drawer and noticed the engagement ring I’d taken off

blinking out at me. I looked at it for a moment, then picked it up,

put in it my handbag, left the house, took the subway to

Manhattan’s Seventh Avenue Diamond Exchange, and sold that

ring to a jeweler for two thousand dollars. Then I promptly

spent the entire two grand to buy a tour of continental Europe,

the “If-it’s-Tuesday-this-must-be Belgium” kind.

My first holiday abroad, and I was going alone.

It was in Rome, the third city on the tour, that it happened, just

as we’ve all seen it happen in the vintage black and white films

starring Audrey Hepburn. I was already recovering myself,

brave enough to book the trip, brave enough to travel by myself,

braver still to venture out of my hotel room sans tour guide and

group to see the sights. I’d only walked a block when a young

man drove by in a convertible and looked over at me. He had

everything ─ the good looks, the fancy car, and the sense of

romantic adventure that sanctioned his cutting off a taxi and

driving up onto the sidewalk next to me with the finesse and

casualness I now know is an inherent trait passed down only to

Italian motorists. But as this was my first visit to Italy, I watched

dumbfounded as he got out of his car, leaving the door wide

open, and strode over. Then he just stood in front of me and

stared.

After a few moments of that, he said, “Signorina, my name is

‘Paolo.’ You are so beautiful. Will you please, please, please

go out with me tonight?”

I should have said no. That would have been wisest, but he was

looking at me with such enchantment and hope that I heard

myself agree to spend an evening in an unfamiliar city with a

stranger who, depending on how you viewed it, was either a

very bad or a very good driver.

When he picked me up at my hotel later as promised, he’d

brought his car, and sitting in it was another young man who

introduced himself as “Giorgio, Paolo’s friend”. Apparently,

Paolo, who didn’t speak English, had noticed my poor Italian

and recognized that there would be a language impediment. So

he’d brought along a translator. Giorgio did speak English very

well, and seemed quite happy to serve as liaison for his friend

and his friend’s foreign date.

It never occurred to me for one moment that I was at risk.

Despite my recent disillusionments, I was still ridiculously

naïve, and they seemed like perfectly nice young men with

nothing more on their minds than spending an evening with a girl

who, for some reason I couldn’t fathom, they both found

intriguing.

Here’s the point: I was exactly correct. After we left the hotel,

the first thing we did was zig zag through narrow, stone-paved

streets to get to an out-of the way trattoria where we shared a

pizza that tasted as though it has been made for the gods. After

which, they took me to the Tivoli Gardens, where Paolo

bubbled explanations for what we were seeing, and Giorgio

translated whatever I couldn’t catch. Our last stop for the

evening was the Fontana di Trevi, the famous fountain in which

one throws a coin in wish and promise to return to Rome.

Typically tourist, I held up my camera and asked if I could take

a photo of them in front of it, but Giorgio insisted that the photo

be of Paolo and me. Just as the flash went off, Paolo leaned

over and kissed me, just one simple, boyish kiss on my cheek,

caught in that photo, for me to remember forever.

“So, nothing happened?” is what I was asked dubiously by my

seat mates the next morning, as our coach sped off to Venice,

the next city on our route.

‘Yes, something happened,’ is what I wanted to say, ‘my faith in

human nature and in men has been restored.’ All in one evening,

and at the glorious fountain I will always believe is as magic as

it’s purported to be.

I recount this factual but somewhat sappy ‘woman’s magazine

story’ if you will, for one reason only, and that reason is: Joran

van der Sloot

Joran van der Sloot, with the gleeful assistance of every major

newspaper and television station has horrified young women

and their mothers into believing that every stranger ─ indeed,

every foreigner ─ who has a penis can and will use it as a

weapon against females. As the mother of five sons, and as the

(formerly) young girl whose disillusioned spirit was cared for

so tenderly that time in Rome so long ago, I resent that

depiction so much I want to spit.

Just once, I’d like to see Larry King or Nancy Grace interview a

‘Paolo’ and ask him about his dealings with women, like this,

“Tell us, Paolo ─ you had a vulnerable girl who stupidly put

herself at your mercy ─ why didn’t you take advantage of that by

drugging her, raping her, beating her to death, and then throwing

her in the Tiber? No one would have known – you could have

gotten away with it – so why didn’t you do it? Why don’t you

share the foreign man’s purported image of American women as

‘sluts’? What were the ideals and morals you were raised with

by your parents that have made you like and respect females so

much? Tell us. And most significantly, tell us about your

relationship with your mother. She must be quite an

extraordinary woman.”

The mother. Yes. The mother in this sordid tale who’s being

most blogged about, most talked about, is Beth Holloway ─ in

vague, but insinuating enough terms that she was feckless in

allowing her daughter Natalee to go on a high school graduation

trip to Aruba.

Parents of teens, please help me out here ─ can you not just

picture how that conversation went?

Beth: Jug, honey, do you think we should let Natalee go on that

trip?

Twitty: Yes. No. I don’t know. Whatever you think, hon.

Beth: She’s such a good girl, graduated with honors, member of

the National Honor Society, and now going to attend the

University of Alabama on a full scholarship. I hate to be the

only parent to say ‘no.’ She’d never forgive me.

And she’d be right about that, wouldn’t she, parents who have

teens and young adult children? Our sons are all in their early to

late 20’s by now, yet they still gripe about stuff we didn’t allow

them to do in high school that other kids got to do. And you

know what? – They’ll keep right on griping…until they have

kids of their own.

So Beth Holloway bet on the very good odds that Natalee would

run into a Paolo and Giorgio instead of a Joran, Deepak, and

Satish. She lost that bet. And being blonde, white, rich,

attractive, intelligent, and ramrod persistent, television,

magazines, radio stations and newspapers will make her pay

for losing by subtly painting her as unsympathetically as

possible ─ her divorce from Natalee’s father, her plastic

surgeries, her rumored affair with John Ramsey ─ because,

let’s face it, television, magazines, radio stations and

newspapers only like to ‘buddy up’ to blondes when said

blondes are Anna Nicole Smith, or on the other end of that

spectrum, Ann Coulter.

Yet from my perspective, the mom who seems to have gotten a

‘free pass’ from the media regarding even a consideration of

maternal incompetence is Anita van der Sloot, who insisted in

an email to her son’s ex-girlfriend that he “was being set up.”

Then again, also from my perspective, the only way she could

not be deemed incompetent at this point is if she took a gun and

shot the creature that sprang from her womb. And while she’s at

it, I’d love to see her blow away every single sensationalist

news outlet that has paid and keeps paying her monster of a son

for interviews; interviews in which he lies over and over again,

interviews that have been so lucrative for him that he has lived

off of them for the past five years since Natalee Holloway’s

murder, enough to go gambling in Peru where he was able to

murder yet again.

I am sickened by all of this, but most of all I am sickened by a

media that we have allowed to morph into our ‘dysfunctional

parent’ ─ a xenophobic, ethnocentric, small-minded parent with

a self-serving agenda, to whom we have given our full consent

to emotionally blackmail us into believing that all foreigners

are terrorists, all American women are despised by said

foreigners and therefore in danger whenever they travel abroad,

(so best to stay home, provincial and pregnant); psychopaths

‘deserve’ to be heard, and a bright, promising 18-year-old girl,

with the assistance of a mother who loves her, somehow

colluded in her own brutalization by accepting a date with a

handsome stranger.

Natalie Holloway

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Gwen Conliffe and Lon Chaney Jr.

“What are you thinking?”

Men say they cringe when women ask that question, because very often they’re thinking “nothing.”

What they probably don’t understand is that most women can’t imagine what it’s like to be thinking ‘nothing’. Much to our chagrin, we’re always thinking ‘something’, and more often than not, that ‘something’ has a worry attached to it.

I thought I’d grow out of my penchant for worry, but I finally have to come to terms with the fact that that will just never happen. My knack for worrying hasn’t diminished one whit; it’s only adjusted itself for my age bracket. Instead of staring in the mirror at my outfit, worrying whether or not it’s ‘trendy’, which if it weren’t, would invite social ostracism, I now stare in the mirror at my back, to see whether or not its ‘curvy’, which if it were, would indicate osteoporosis. Instead of worrying about whether or not I’m ‘making a good impression’, I now worry about whether or not I’m making a good enough living. And instead of worrying about whether or not I’m going to survive a group of idiot politicians putting us through a nuclear war, I now worry about whether or not my children will survive a group of idiot politicians putting us through a nuclear war.

At least, I can contain my worry a little bit better than I used to when I was younger, but it’s sort of like restraining myself from eating too much. As with that hard-earned discipline, every once in a while, I succumb to my old habit of worry; just like every once in a while, I succumb to that nachos-with- guacamole-and-two-margaritas urge. And then, I’m in big trouble. Because if I lapse back into worry, it can, if I let it, obliterate all else that is wonderful in my life, just like that extra weight that seems to show up on the scale immediately after the nachos.

For example, I don’t know what triggered it ─ maybe it was a hormone imbalance, maybe it was those margaritas ─ but Thursday of last week was my “Worry Day.” I woke up absolutely ballooned with worry, a bloat which lasted for no more than 24 hours, until it just as inexplicably dissipated. But over the course of those hours, my worries ranged from the tiny to the colossal:

I worried about the fact that I still hadn’t replied to my sister-in-law’s email. Would she think I was snubbing her? When did she send that email, anyway? Actually, now I was thinking of it, there were a lot of personal emails to which I still hadn’t responded. How could I be so selfish, so self-absorbed, so busy with work, that I hadn’t responded to my friends and my family in a timely fashion?

In fact, I’d been neglecting my husband, too. Hadn’t I? I’d had such a busy week, and I’d been so exhausted at night, that I just fell straight to sleep. Oh migosh ─ when was the last time we’d made love? Had it been three days already? He must feel so unwanted, so dismissed and lonely. The poor man. What a lousy wife. What if he gets fed up and leaves me? I’d miss him so much if that were to happen. How could I be so inattentive, when he is so important to me?

I must be the only wife who’s woken her husband out of sound sleep to make love. Clearly he didn’t mind, but look at the motivation – it wasn’t that I was overcome by lust or love, but worry.

Certainly not the best aphrodisiac. (Not that he seemed to notice.)

And, after we were done, and my husband fell back to sleep, I couldn’t. I lay there, and continue to worry.

I worried about the fact that we hadn’t heard anything recently from our son about his upcoming wedding. Was something wrong? Was the bride getting cold feet? He’d be devastated if she called things off. Was everything okay? Why hadn’t he phoned?

While I was on ‘sons’, I started thinking about the other three. One was just laid off and not happy about it at all. One was in a job he liked, but living in an area he wasn’t keen on; one was still in school, but conflicted about his course of study. Were they depressed about these things? Would they be alright? What could I do to help? Should I ring them and ask, or would they resent that, as they’re all grown men? Maybe it was better if I didn’t phone, and let them sort it out themselves. On the other hand, if I didn’t phone, maybe they’d think I no longer cared about them. What should I do?

My anxious thoughts suddenly switched tracks from the personal to the professional. Which offers to speak should I accept? Or should I accept them all? I probably should. But… realistically, I couldn’t accept them all…could I? Alright then ─ which ones, and what would I say to those I had to turn down? And then, there was my new book – was that first chapter the ‘grabber’ I thought it was? I should look at it again. Should I look at it again, or wait until the entire draft was completed? Maybe I should wait. But, maybe I’d miss something important if I waited. Then there was the magazine. Some of my writers were over deadline. Should I send them an email, or leave them be? They all had their own lives, too, after all. But…wouldn’t they feel left out if their work wasn’t in the upcoming issue? I know ─ I could send a friendly, light-hearted email, so as not to make them feel pressured. Then again, it’s hard to read tone in an email, isn’t it?

Professional segued to political. Congress was making me sick. I hate Congress. Congress was keeping me awake. Do those emails we all sign have any effect at all? Was Obama going to restore habeus corpus, and do all the other things he’d promised, or had he duped us? I wouldn’t be surprised if he duped us. He’s a politician, after all. I sure hope he didn’t dupe us.

On from political to global. How terrible for those people in Haiti. Just terrible. What if I lived in Haiti? Do those donations we make ever really get to those poor people? It’s just terrible. I shouldn’t ever complain about my life, really. I have it so much better than the people in Haiti right now, I really do. And those in Chile. I mustn’t forget about them.

Eventually I switched back to personal again. I needed a haircut. But Maria, the girl who did my hair, was away, and she’d be very hurt if I made an appointment with someone else. But I really needed a haircut. Should I go to another salon, and just not say anything next time I saw her? She’d notice…wouldn’t she? Don’t hairstylists recognize their own work? Yes, she’d know. What if I just told her the truth? Then again, I could just not say anything, and wait to see if she brought it up.

All this worry, all in one day.

Elizabeth Berg has a great collection of short stories, titled, The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted: And Other Small Acts of Liberation. My collection could be titled, “The Day I Worried over Whatever I Wanted: And Other Giant Acts of Self- Flagellation.” For the reason that worrying like this, as we all know, does nothing for the worrier or those around her, other than to cause sleeplessness. And possibly pimples.

My husband, who’s been through interludes like this with me before, knew I was having a particularly bad one, when in the middle of that night, the lurching and pitching from my side of the bed woke him up.

He: What’s wrong, hon?

Me: I can’t sleep.

He: That’s obvious. Why not?

Me: I’m worried about Maria.

He thought about that for a minute or two.

Finally, he said, “Hon – you come from a big Italian family, and a lot of your friends are Greek. Not to mention that we live in California, where there’s a large Mexican community. That means we know a lot of ‘Marias’. And it’s two o’clock in the morning, so you’ll have to help me out ─ was there a specific Maria you were worried about, or is it all of them, in general?”

And so, for the men who are reading this, I hope this has helped decode what’s going on in a woman’s head when she asks, “What are you thinking?”

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February 14 must only be celebrated by couples who plan to buy dinner at restaurants that usually cost 20 bucks per person, but just for today, cost 100 per person. (Not including tip.)  Then, one member of the couple gives Tiffany diamonds to the other member of the couple, the one wearing red panties she (or he) bought just for the occasion, at a cost of more than my best business suit. And, after dinner is eaten and diamonds bestowed, the couple go off to their rose petal-covered bed, where said lingerie is strewn across satin sheets, and they have wild, passionate, monkey sex.

That is, if you believe the media hype. And those who do usually end up being quite disappointed on this day, perhaps even dread it, because if they get or give anything less than the above, they feel they’re either unloved or unloving.

I say hooey to that. I think Valentine’s Day should be the day people set aside to notice how much we all can and do love, and in a multitude of ways:

If your neighbor drove you to pick up your car at the repair shop, you are loved.

If you thought the child sitting in the shopping cart ahead of you in the check-out queue at the supermarket was adorable, you are loving.

If someone leaves a warm message on your answerphone, your email, or anywhere else technology permits, you are loved.

If you go visit your widowed aunt, the one who has yellowed doilies on the backs of her dusty living room chairs, and you sit in one for an hour while she talks non-stop, you are loving.

If that aunt remembers what your favorite cake was as a child, and bakes it for you despite the arthritis in her fingers, you are loved.

If you find your old high school teacher on Facebook and tell her that you remember what a great teacher she was, you are loving.

If she also remembers you and little things about you from back then, (good or bad) you are loved.

If you recycle and try your best to use paper instead of plastic, you are loving.

If you don’t blast your horn and swear at the man who cuts you off because he’s late for an important meeting, or the woman who was distracted by three children in her car, you are loving.

If you worried about the strangers in Haiti who are suffering today, you are loving.

If you’re reading this and smiling, you are loving.

If you’re reading this, you’re one of the people for whom I’ve written it. And so, you are loved.