Fairytales

When I logged onto Facebook yesterday morning, I felt a collective swoon from all my female Facebook friends (and even one male friend which was kind of cute!). The Royal Wedding. I think everyone worldwide who watched it today would agree that Kate Middleton is flawlessly beautiful and so poised. And she seemed genuinely giddy with happiness, as did her Prince. So I get why millions of people have fallen under the spell of Prince William and his bride. I'm just not one of them.

Don't get me wrong. I think she seems like a lovely girl. And I think Prince William may not be The Handsome Prince, but he is certainly The Charming one and if you can't have both then sometimes that's the better catch.

I remember watching his parents wedding with my mother when I was a little girl. My mother idolized Diana. Her style, her charisma, her obvious good nature....everything about Diana was fascinating to my mother. I thought Diana looked scared and sad on her wedding day. And I thought Charles looked serious and mean and not very cute. My mother was devastated when their royal marriage broke up. I, on the other hand, was not shocked. I'd known from across the pond via network television at the age of eleven that he didn't love her. I never bought the fairytale.

And that's why I have a hard time buying into this one. It's a different story, of course. William and Kate have been together for seven years. They know each other well. And they really seem to love each other. Unlike his father on his wedding day, William looked overjoyed to see his bride. So to paraphrase Carl the Groundskeeper, "I guess they've got that going for them - which is nice".

The thing is I think there is so much stacked against them - especially for her. This is William's destiny. He knows nothing else. But Kate was a regular girl. A girl who was bullied by mean girls in boarding school because she was shy and nice. A girl who loves fashion (and who wouldn't with her body, right?) but also loves privacy. The loss of privacy almost killed Diana. It turned her bulmic and anxiety ridden. It drove her years after her divorce from Charles to race from the still relentless papparazzi to her death. I hope the loss of a normal life is easier for Kate. Or better yet, I hope she and William find a way to have periods of normalcy in their very public life the way he did as a child with his mother.

I got married in front of 86 people. And having those 86 eyes on me was almost more than I could take. I can't open presents in front of people. And unless I'm giving a speech about someone or something else, I hate everyone looking at me. People find this strange because in the small circles where I am comfortable, I am quite the extrovert...especially after a few beers. But in reality, I am painfully shy which is why the idea of having to walk out on a balcony in front of the whole world and kiss my husband seems like the worst idea ever. But for Kate it must not have seemed so bad because she looked pretty smiley up there.

I watched Diana's funeral on TV with three of my best friends. We were at the beach for a girls' weekend during a time when my life was falling apart. As we watched it and I gave them the gory details of what was happening in my personal life, I dubbed myself "Queen of Disaster" and said "well, at least it can't get any worse". Don't ever say that because when you do, it gets much worse. A week later my mother was dead.

When I look at William, I can't help but think about our mothers. I was 27 when mine dies. He was only 15. I still struggle daily and, honestly, not always so gracefully with that loss. William seemed to get through it and honor his mother in such a loving and graceful way. I'm sure today she is so proud. But I'm also sure she worries. Even from heaven. Knowing the pressures of a royal marriage; how could she not?

The morning my mother was buried it rained. My brother told me before we left for the funeral that he had only spoken to me the last ten years because our mom made him and he would never speak to me again. My dad gave us mints in the limo and told us not to cry during the ceremony. I felt completely alone. And then we all stood around my mother's casket in the cemetery, I looked at the people standing there to honor her and towering above all our short, Irish friends was Bobby. Tall and strong and wearing sunglasses in the rain because even though he didn't know her, he knew what a loss she was to me. And I knew I would be okay because I had found my Prince. For me, that was the most romantic moment of my life. There was no crown, no coach, no throngs of crazed fans. Just a look, between me and the person who would be there for me forever. A look he gave me on the saddest day of my life that parted the clouds and gave me a glimpse into the future. And that, my friends, is no Fairytale. It's happily ever after.

A Case against Bambi

I saw a commercial today touting the upcoming re release of the “Walt Disney’s Beloved Coming of Age Story, Bambi” and I thought to myself what a perfect gift for a child you want to watch have a complete emotional meltdown.

Come here, honey, let’s make some popcorn and watch a movie about a cute baby deer who watches his mother get shot to death by a hunter and then gets separated from his dad in a raging forest fire. I think I’ll have to pass on the classic joy of traumatizing my sons.

Mac is already obsessed with death because he realized early that his dad has two parents and I only have one. At two years old, he asked me why I didn’t have a mommy and I had to explain to him as gently as possible that my mom is an angel. Then a year later our parish priest died and Mac burst into tears and said “I never want to be an angel – I want to live in our house with you forever!”.

We watch Spiderman cartoons in our car every day and a day doesn’t pass that Mac, now five, doesn’t ask me “why does Peter Parker live with Aunt May again?” because he is fixated on hearing me explain that Peter’s parents died.

Superheroes are pretty much always really tragic orphans which is super scary for little kids but I guess not as frightening for the grown up nerds that comic books were really created for. This is fine – as I’ve pointed out before there are plenty of adults who make the choice to torture themselves with movies like My Sister’s Keeper or Rabbit Hole. I’m just not one of them. There’s enough sadness in real life so I sort of think entertainment should be happy.

And there is no reason why children should have to experience loss or tragedy until it actually comes their way in real life. Watching Bambi is not going to prepare Mac for losing me. It’s just going to make him obsess about when he’ll lose me and doing that is a waste of the time he could be enjoying as an innocent. A beloved classic should be something that made your child smile, not something that made them question their own mortality. So, sorry Bambi, but you will never be welcome in my house.

Hit Me Baby One More Time

My USWeekly is swimming with pregnant celebrities. Kate Hudson, Jewel, Alicia Silverstone, Selma Blair, Pink, Victoria Beckham, Jane Krakowski, Natalie Portman ----the list goes on and on.

With it being award season these famous pregnant women are parading red carpets nonstop. And it makes me love them. Even the ones like Mrs. Beckham, who always seemed like a plastic to me, and Kate Hudson, who seemed too dumb and self involved for me to tolerate, now fascinate me.

I love pregnant women. And I love babies.

This is great because, whatever is in the water, isn’t just available to celebrities. I have pregnant friends coming out of the woodwork. And all of them are just as gorgeous and fabulous as the aforementioned celebs. Maybe more so. And I am so excited to meet every one of their babies because babies are so much better than shoes, drugs or cats.

Being surrounded by pregnancies makes me remember how sweet my babies smelled. It reminds me of the days when Mac would lie in my bed and nap on my arm while I watched 90210 repeats on Soapnet. It makes me look at Charlie who at 3 is still the baby in our family and never want his little voice to change even if it means he’ll be a really weird adult. No one in your life will ever love you the way your baby will. I hope those celebrity moms don’t miss out on the wonderful, exhausting experience of taking care of a new baby by farming out all the hard hours to nannies. And I hope my pregnant friends, some of whom have older children or high powered jobs or both, are able to get a break from all the craziness to savor that new baby because they don’t stay babies for nearly long enough.

My babies are now wild and willful little boys and they wear me down even on good days but I never ever wish for them to grow up faster. And I never ever doubt that the time I have with them now isn’t something I’ll treasure for the rest of my life.
Even at 41, so far removed from my tween and teen years, I have a memory like a steal trap which enables me to recall how one day I thought my mom was perfect and the next I was completely mortified to be seen with her in the mall.

That day when Mac no longer wants to be seen with me is closer than I want to admit, so today when I can’t get anything done because he wants to be near his one and only Valentine every minute, I’ll take it. And I’ll hold onto this day in ten years when his Valentine is Kate or Fia or Alex or some other much younger girl and not me.

Today I have three extremely handsome Valentines fighting over me. And it’s a very good day.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

41 Bottles of Beer on the Wall

It came again. Which I guess is a good thing because the alternative is that it doesn’t come and that’s never a good thing. No, I’m not talking about my period, although the appearance of that inconvenience is also a welcome thing to me these days.

It’s my birthday. 41 years of me. And I have to tell you, turning 41 sucks way more than turning 40 does. When you have an “event” birthday like 30 or 40, everyone makes such a big deal about it but really nothing changes. But when you have that less exciting 41st or 42nd or 43rd birthday there’s less to celebrate because you haven’t reached some milestone, you’re just continuing to be “in your 40’s” and that makes me sort of cringe.

The thing is that as a kid I thought 40 was so old. Actually, I thought it sounded pretty old until maybe five years ago when it started getting close! But now that I’m actually “in my 40’s”, I don’t feel any older and I certainly don’t feel any different.

I thought that in my 40’s I’d act “grown up”, but I still act like a giddy middle school girl when one of my friends calls or more than likely these days texts me.

I thought that in my 40’s I’d be sure of myself, but I still worry that people don’t like me. That I’m not cute enough. Or smart enough. Or good enough. Will it ever end?

I thought in my 40’s that I’d be strong enough to insulate myself with just the people I love and who I know love me, but I still obsess about the friends I’ve lost and I still cry when someone hurts my feelings or my friends’ feelings or my kids’ feelings. Damn, I cry a lot.

I thought in my 40’s my kids would be in their 20’s or at least their teens, but they’re not. They’re 5 and 3 and I don’t regret that at all.

I thought in my 40’s that I’d be done with beer and nachos and dance thumper, but I’m not and I hope I’m never done with those things because you know what, they’re fun, although I never realized this in my youth, old people deserve fun, too.

I thought in my 40’s that my kids would have cousins with my bloodline and that we’d all do stuff together. And the fact that it isn’t that way sucks.

I thought in my 40’s I’d be Jay McInerney or Kelly Ripa. I’m neither. Yet.

Being in my 40’s is not what I thought it would be, but nothing ever is, right?

The way I look at aging, it’s not being older that’s hard because, although I may make jokes about it, I really don’t care about my age. For me, it’s more about the fact that in order to reach 41, I’ve had to live through 40 years of all the crap life throws at us. And while there are certainly so many wonderful things I’ve been given, there are also countless days you couldn’t pay me to live through again.

In order to make it into our twilight years, we have to be resilient enough to push through the hard years and enjoy the good ones.

As Bette Davis, of the famous eyes, once said “Old age ain’t no place for sissies”.

I’ve been called a lot of things in my life but sissy has never been one of them.
So bring on the next the 40-some years. Hell, make it 50, 60 even. Put me on a jar of smuckers. I can take it.

Happy Birthday, Pat Noel

An old friend of mine turns 40 today. I met Pat Noel in 1979, which means I have know him during every decade that we’ve both been alive and that’s pretty important to me. Why?
Well, because for most people it’s their family who loves them through thick and thin, during all the unpleasant and embarrassing stages of their life and gives them the continuity that I think all of us need.

For me, the people who do that are not the people I’m related to. Those people mostly left. And the one who stayed likes to pretend there is no past which is fine because our past was hard. I’m not going to force anyone to relive it. But sometimes I think he forgets that there were some good parts. Some funny parts. Some parts that I love to remember. And for that I have Nancy and Anne, Bridget and Sylvia, and today’s birthday boy, Pat Noel.

Pat Noel came to my elementary school when I was in fourth grade. He started the year in my brother Kevin’s third grade class but after about two weeks his mom came in and told the principal that Pat needed more of a challenge so he skipped third grade and moved right up to fourth. When he entered our class everyone knew that last week he was in third grade and since he immediately kicked everyone’s asses in math, we assumed he must be some kind of genius. We were right.

He was also the best athlete anyone had ever seen. My dad constantly wanted to race him. My brother once made me call Pat in as a ringer for a soccer tournament that Kevin’s team was losing. Pat showed up and they won. It was sort of like the movie “Victory” only without Sylvester Stallone or the Nazis. In seventh grade Pat skipped playing on the 7th and 8th grade soccer team or the junior varsity team and went right to playing with juniors and seniors in high school and travelling to Norway with them for the summer. He was our hero.

But the thing about Pat that was most impressive was his superior social skills. Although a brain, he was never a nerd. Although a jock, he was never a snob. Pat took every cliché the media fed us about stereotypes and threw it out. Forget how brilliant, how athletically gifted he was – first and foremost Pat Noel was a friend. And he was a friend to everyone.

I’ve never met a person who at 40 years of age has never lost a single friend. And I don’t mean never lost a friend to a falling out, although Pat has never had one of those. I mean he’s never just lost touch with someone. He’s never considered someone “fringe” and sort of let them fall away. He has made more friends than anyone else and he has kept them all.

If you could look at a lineup of Pat’s friends you’d see the age range is mind boggling. Pat has friends who I still feel the need to call “Mr.” because they were the Dads of people I grew up with and he has friends so young that there is actually one guy who I believe still is underage…for drinking AND possibly voting.

My memories of Pat are filled with so many crazy hijinks that it would be impossible – and in some cases maybe even illegal – to list them all.

I will tell you that if you see Pat wearing a painter’s cap that says “I survived The Grizzly”, it’s a lie. At the top of the “biggest” hill of the little kid’s Scooby Doo roller coaster he yelled “We’re all going to die!” and that was the end of his thrill ride career.

I will also tell you that if you don’t know how to play the drinking game quarters and Pat offers to teach you as long as you have “two dimes and a nickel”, you better run the other way, or be prepared to end up face down in the bushes mumbling something about how your brother is “TKE at Frostburg”.

And I'll tell you that while Pat is married to a beautiful woman who he adores, his love for his guy friends borders on homosexual. Apparently they even have some sort of pact in place where they will all retire within 10 miles of one another and live out the sunset of their lives together. My friend Fissy is already working on developing a large plot of land on the Eastern Shore for this happening retirement community. Must be over 60, love soccer and be a friend of Pat Noel. I hear there is already a waiting list forming.

Patrick Noel has given me some of my best days. And he’s been there on my worst. I knew him in 1979 when he was the new kid who skipped third grade, goofed off in class and still seemed to be smarter than everyone else. I knew him in 1982 when he decided to be preppy and called himself Puffy (way before Sean Combs did). Because of him I met my most hilarious friend, Fissy, and my friend Nancy met her sexy dancer husband, Bill. I can’t even begin to imagine how much more fun the world would be if there were more Pat Noels in it. All I know is that it’s been a better place for everyone he’s touched the last 40 years.

At the end of one of my favorite movies, Stand By Me, the film’s protagonist, Gordie Lachance, now an adult and a writer, reads aloud as he types the line “I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?” I’ve always felt like that sort of nailed the way I feel about my childhood friends. And I’ve always known how lucky that makes me.

Happy Birthday, Old Pal.