Story Problem

Posted on June 9, 2013 by Ellen Ross

I hate math.

It started at Avoca School in Miss Ostlund’s third grade class.  I was breezing along with addition and subtraction and multiplication.  But then we came to long division.

Uh oh.  Even today, those two words strike terror in my heart.

By the time I hit seventh grade and had the daunting Miss Milner as my math teacher, it was all over.  I got intimidated by places, and remainders, and decimal points, and “carry the one,” and I would shut down whenever I had to face my arithmetic workbook.

This fear of all things numerical carried over at New Trier.  Although I still had done well enough in junior high to be placed in the three level (regular) algebra class, I was continuously dazed and confused.  I couldn’t concentrate on a single thing my math teacher was saying.

So it came as no surprise when I flunked freshman algebra second semester and had to repeat it in summer school.

Actually summer school was fun.  The second time around I had no problems with the pesky x’s and y’s that had so thrown me during the regular school year.

And morning summer school got me out just in time to hit the primo sun-tanning hours at the Glencoe beach.  It gave a shape and structure to my days. (And it also kept me away from that dreary summer job at Schmidt’s Bakery my mother always threatened me with.)

I did just fine in remedial Algebra For Dummies.  My new A was balanced with the F  previously recorded, and now it was on to sophomore year- and geometry.

A rerun of freshman year.  I now flunked second semester geometry.  Although this time I had a shouting interest in failing and might have helped the process along a teensy bit.  Summer School = Glencoe Beach + Fun Social Life – Boring Bakery Job.  (It didn’t take a Pythagoras to figure out that theorem.)

And by that time, I was much more interested in other kinds of triangles.  Like the idea of two boys fighting over me at the Glencoe beach.  Now that was my fifteen year old idea of a triangle.

But college was starting to loom large, so before junior year rolled around, I took math precautions.  I placed myself in two level algebra II class.  Two level was, how do I put this tactfully, for the less-gifted academically.  Math-wise, I fit in perfectly.

And I loved it.

The class was so dumb and so badly behaved that it was like watching a real-time version of Fast Times at Ridgemont High every day.  I had never experienced anything academically like it.  And I stared in amazement as the kids came in tardy, never did the homework, sassed the teacher, chewed gum, blatantly passed notes throughout the class period and generally scorned the entire algebraic process.

I had a ball.  And with a minimum of effort I did not flunk this time around.  I think I finished the year with a respectable gentleman’s C.

And better yet, I was done with mathematics.  Forever.  No more threat of nerdy protractors or scary slide rules.

True, my colleges choices were severly limited by the fact that I refused to take another math course ever again.  When Bennington came prestigiously knocking- because of my writing ability- I took a good look at their course requirements and had to bid them a rueful adieu.  Anyone who went to Bennington at that time had to take at least one math course.

Not this wordsmith, brother.  Not on your Euclid.

So I went happily on to the math-requirement-free University of Wisconsin.  You could take a language instead. And since I loved Italian and planned on continuing it in any case, this a real no-brainer.

My year-older-than-me boyfriend was already in attendance and I had spent tons of quality fraternity party time up there on week-end visits during my high school senior year.  I knew the campus, had a built-in social life, my parents could afford it, and best of all, No More Math.

And other than balancing a checkbook, my life has remained happily numbers-free.  I have never had to consider their importance again.

Until now.  Yes, today numbers rule my life.

When I first started this blog, I had nothing more in mind than doing a 2.0 version of my column “Social Studies.”  (In case you’re new to the proceedings, I was the humor columnist for the Pioneer Press.  I appeared every Thursday in forty-six papers throughout the Chicago suburbs.)

I did this happily for ten years- until I finally crumbled under my then husband’s unrelenting insistence that I dump my beloved Winnetka house and move downtown.  (This was merely a preemptive financial strike because he was getting ready to dump me.)

And when he did, I went into a mental tailspin.  I was no longer able to tell you my own name- let alone amuse a big circulation base on a weekly basis.

I handed in my resignation to a very surprised Dorothy Andries.  (Who in turn was very surprised when she was unceremoniously handed her own walking papers after twenty loyal years on the job.  The company had been looted by Conrad Black and most of the employees were hastily terminated.)

My son, Nick, and I withdrew to Aspen, where a series of events landed me with my own talk show on public television.  It was cleverly entitled “The Ellen Ross Show,” and the fact that I was now the producer-host-writer-talent coordinator more than satisfied my desire to do anything along creative lines.

But the urge to write cropped up again, and because I wanted to be read in many venues, I took it to the Internet.  I started Letter From Elba in August 2012 and the response was gratifying.  Literary agents soon got involved, but they made it only too clear that if I wanted a book deal, I’d have to bring my audience with me.

So that became the $64,000 question:  How many people were reading Letter From Elba every week?

I’ll never tell and please don’t ask me.  It’s an unlisted number.

(BTW, I think it’s impolite to ask a lady blogger for that information.  It’s like asking her age or her weight.)  Let’s just say it’s very respectable for a brand-new blog.  And most importantly, my circulation is growing with every passing week.

But that’s all the agents and publishers ever want to know.  How many? How many?

So no matter how hard I type, my literary future all comes down to numbers now.

I hate math.

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The Longest Day

Posted on June 6, 2013 by Ellen Ross

In 1994 when my daughter Natasha was almost sixteen she wanted to study French in summer school- in France.  So her school made the arrangements.  For seven weeks she would live with a local family while she took classes en francais at l’ Universitè de Caen.

And when she was finished with academia she would have a chance to travel to beautiful places in the Loire valley and end up Paris.

It was going to be la vie en rose and I was very excited for her.  It all sounded so ooh la la and glamorous.  But there was something about the city of Caen that rang a bell.  The name nagged at my memory.

Caen? Caen?  Why did that name sound so familiar?  I knew about tripe a la mode de Caen.  (A delicacy I assiduously avoided all throughout my own Gallic travels.)  And I recalled the famous marble that came from that region.  But there was something else…

And then it hit me.

The city of Caen is in Normandy- only eight miles from the beach.

Fifty years to the day, Natasha was headed right into D-Day.

Caen was located right between Juno and Sword beaches.  During the invasion on June 6, 1944, these beaches were primarily stormed and ultimately taken by British and Canadian troops.

Under the command of British Field Marchall Sir Bernard Montgomery the Allied troops marched and fought their way the entire eight miles inland to seize the then German-occupied town.  And it took them almost six bloody weeks to go those eight miles.

By the time they got there, the town had been smashed to smithereens by Allied bombing raids.  Caen was a smoldering ruin.

And today, as I think about my daughter’s long-ago summer trip into that rebuilt city, I can’t help thinking about all those other kids who went to Normandy fifty summers before her.

There was a lot of blood spilled in that effort known as D-Day.  Thousands of Allied soldiers were killed, wounded or reported missing in action in what was the largest military invasion in history.

Boys not much older than Natasha fought on that same beach where she later suntanned. So many died so she could go to summer school in peace.

And, at the end of her summer sojourn, my child came home.  So many other mothers’ children didn’t.

Supreme Allied Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower led Operation Overlord- the invasion of Normandy.  Before it began, he spoke to his troops.

“You are about to embark upon the greatest crusade toward which we have striven these many months.  The eyes of the world are upon you…” he said.

Sixty-nine years later, those eyes have grown old and dim.  So many of our D-Day veterans are now gone to their rest.

So to all of those young boys who went so bravely to Caen before, on this anniversary let me add a mother’s heartfelt thanks.

Natasha’s D-Day summer was a thrilling adventure.  And she couldn’t have done it without all of you.

Let Freedom ring.

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Posted in History, Memoir, pop culture, Tributes | 8 Comments

The Commerce Comet

Posted on June 2, 2013 by Ellen Ross

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I love to ski.  Downhill.  (No cross-country for me.  Too much work.  I need gravity.)  I came to skiing late in life, aided and abetted by my handsome, easy-going Snowmass ski instructor.

The gods of Ullr were smiling down on me the morning that hook-up was made.  I had gone to the private lesson line at ski school to meet an instructor and when they asked me what I was looking for I answered, “Give me a guy with a great sense of humor.”

Enter Hays.

And though my first attempts at conquering Fanny Hill were less than stellar, I loved it- and him- from the outset.  Communing with glorious Mother Nature.  Spectacular eye-grabbing, snowcapped scenery.  There was just something about the feeling of gliding down the slope, unfettered by the world’s problems, freedom from every earthbound consideration, that I found highly addictive.

(I rather imagine sailors and pilots feel the same way.)

I came back the next day for a repeat lesson and the next and the next.  And over the years, Hays and I became good buddies.  Our families became friends, too.  My kids were crazy about his little boy, Hays III, AKA Buck.  Natasha even did some light baby-sitting duty and later, Nick gave Buck his first snowboard lesson.

We logged a lot of time on Snowmass Mountain.  And you get to know a person real well after the thousandth time you’ve taken the Wood Run chairlift together.

Hays was originally from Connecticut.  Ten years older than me and a major jock himself. Which put him right in the demographic that worshipped one man above all others.

The Mick.

Number Seven.  Mickey Mantle.

(You have to imagine Billy Crystal now saying his name. “Mickeeeeyyy Mantlllle.”  As one sportscaster rightly pointed out even his name was perfect.  It was synonymous with baseball.)

It wasn’t so much what Hays said when he spoke about him.  It was the way he looked, how his eyes lit up when he mentioned his hallowed name.  Instantly he became a kid again, awestruck with wonder and excitement.  This was hero-worship in its purest form.

And I got a real kick out of seeing my sports hero talk about his.

So it was kind of inevitable that Christmas 0f 1994 I decided to buy Hays an autographed Mickey Mantle baseball as a thank you gift from an extremely grateful client.

I clearly remember going to the Hammacher Schlemmer catalogue and looking at sports memorabilia.  There was plenty to be had- but nothing signed by the Comet from Commerce, Oklahoma.

Then I went to Upper Deck.  I struck out again. (This was the dark ages pre-Internet and Ebay.)  They were selling plenty of sports stuff that Christmas, but nothing signed by the Mick.

Hmm. Strange.  So I made a few calls and found out that, yes, old number seven, for reasons unknown, was not autographing this season.  There would be no more Mickey Mantle-signed anything to be had.  Anywhere.

That Christmas came and went.  But now I was on a mission.  Hays’ birthday is in March and I had my heart set on getting him something of the Mick’s.  (And if MM signed it to “Hays” then he could, in turn, hand it down to Buck, as well.  A real two-fer.)

So I called a connected friend in the sports radio business.  I figured he could give me a sure-fire knockdown to Mickey himself.

And I was so right.  My buddy hit it out of the park and gave me the phone number of Greer Johnson- Mickey’s then-agent (and sometime girlfriend) in Atlanta.

With my heart in my throat, I dialed. Talking faster than I ever did in my life, I explained my agenda.  That I was in dire need of an autographed Mickey Mantle baseball.  That there was a great guy and an adorable little boy who shared the same name out in Colorado, and it was ultimately for them that I was doing this.

Did she think that would be possible?

She thought it over and then she said that she could get him to do it- precisely because I wanted it personalized.  She went on to explain that the ball would thus have very little resale value because it had someone’s name on it.  Mickey didn’t want the ball to be resold at a profit.

I was thrilled.

“I’m so grateful- to both of you, ” I said.  “What can I do for him to show my appreciation?”

“His son runs a kids’ camp in Texas,” she told me.  “If you’d like, you can make a donation to it. That would be great.  Now go buy a regulation American League baseball and send it to me.”

Check.  I instantly drove over to Wilmette Sports Shop to comply with her request.

I couldn’t resist it.  As Al, the owner, was ringing up the ball, I had to tell him.

“Do you know who is going to sign this ball?” I asked.  “Mickey Mantle.”

He went nuts.

“Mickey Mantle!” he screamed.  “He’s a legend!  He’s the best!  Just last week I had dinner with Moose Skowron and we agreed that Willie Mays isn’t fit to carry his jockstrap!”

(Agree or disagree.  But isn’t that a great dis?)

I sent off the ball and waited.

March fifteenth, Hays’ big day, found us together once more on the slopes.  Ahh, spring skiing in Snowmass. Heavenly.  Sunny skies, warm weather, suntanning on the High Alpine deck at lunch.  But I digress…

I was excited because I knew what Fed Ex was bringing.  I had checked and the ball was on its way to my ski schloss that very moment.  Hays always drove me and to and from the mountain and I couldn’t wait until we pulled up and there was the box sitting at my front door.

Except when we got back home, it wasn’t.

No Fed Ex box anywhere to be found.

I ushered Hays inside on some flimsy pretext and hastily excused myself to make a surreptitious phone call to Fed Ex.

There had been an accident with the truck.  It was disabled somewhere down the road and all efforts were being made to transfer its contents and get them to their proper recipients soon.  I pictured the truck laying on its side and all its precious cargo strewn out over the mountain in a “yard sale.”

Gulp.  That ball was priceless.  All the effort I had expended in getting it.  What if it was stolen or hopelessly lost?  No amount of insurance would cover it.  And little did I know at the time…

But suddenly there was a ring on my doorbell. The package had arrived.

I handed it to my ski boss.  “Here you go, Hays.  Happy birthday, my friend.”

He opened the package and just stared.  In it was the ball and on it was inscribed “To Hays Jones.  Best wishes, your pal, Mickey Mantle.”

And that wasn’t all.  He had also enclosed autographed pictures for Buck and for me.  We were both overwhelmed.

Finally he spoke.

“How did you get this?” he asked.

“Oh, the Mick and I are good buddies.” I assured him.  “Didn’t you know that?”

(Shortly thereafter, I came clean and ‘fessed up the true story.)

Except there was the REST of the story.

When Mickey Mantle died on August thirteenth 1995- just five months later- the truth came out.  He had stopped signing because he had been mortally ill with the liver failure, and later, liver cancer that would kill him.

There was much heated controversy at the time of his death about whether Mickey deserved a new liver.  His hard drinking, hard-partying ways had brought him plenty of heat, and he was now considered a bad role model for kids of all ages.  His hero status was tarnished and at the end, he knew it.  He made his apologies to the fans who had idolized him all their lives.

But I didn’t care one whit.  To me Mickey Mantle would always remain the great player with legendary baseball stats.  And I had gotten the “deathbed” baseball.  His manager told me herself that it was the last thing he ever signed.

The Mick was out of the memorabilia business for good.

But not the hero one.

Play ball.

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Posted in Memoir, Sports, Tributes | 14 Comments

The Voice

Posted on May 30, 2013 by Ellen Ross

I’ve always been susceptible to the charms of a soothing voice.  Certain accents, cadences, lilts, intonations are literally music to my ears.  And I especially love ones that hail from across the pond.  The United Kingdom to be exact.

This goes back as far as I can remember.  Robert Donat in Goodbye, Mr. Chips, and The Thirty-Nine Steps, James Mason in The Desert Fox, and Lolita. Cary Grant in everything except Mr. Lucky, (more about this is a moment) Ronald Colman, elegant, elegant Ronald Colman in Random Harvest, The Late George Apley, The Prisoner of Zenda and If I Were King.  The Talk of the Town was a real jackpot.  Mr. Colman and Mr. Grant.  Ditto the great North by Northwest with Mr. Mason and Mr. Grant.

These gentlemen’s voices were the lullabies of my childhood.  They soothed my young nerves. I could have listened to these guys read the proverbial phone book and been in heaven.  There was just something in their vocal cords that moved me inexpressibly.

But certain other dialects hit my ear like chalk on a blackboard.  I’m an angry Henry Higgins when it comes to the likes of them.

I find Cockney hard- or should I say ” ‘ard” to swallow.  (The one mighty exception being Maurice Micklewhite aka Sir Michael Caine.  I’m crazy about ‘im and I don’t give two pins how ‘e sounds.)

All them h-droppings and v’s for f’s and f’s for th’s drives me bloomin’ batty.  Hence my dislike of Cary Grant in the aforementioned Mr. Lucky.  (And Larraine Day was a drip.  I liked the rhyming slang well enough, though.)

I find Liverpudlian charming. I’m sure my enduring luv affair with the Beatles played a big role here.  But I can not bear to hear London-born David Beckham.

Thats right, old Becks himself.  Suffice it to say that I was a big fan of his left foot and his pecs and his handsome face and his briefs- until he opened his yap.  When I first heard his reedy tenor, my adoration was over.  Blimey!  Shut up, Screechy Knickers!  Retire to run the whole soccer world if you must.  Just do it quietly.

I can barely tolerate Australian tones, either.  Most of the time it all just sounds to me like bad Cockney that has been remanded to the Big Ouse, mite.

But on the very plus side of the vocal ledger: Rex Harrison, Jeremy Irons, Alan Rickman, Michael Kitchen, Robert Hardy, Wilfred Hyde-White, Alistair Cooke, C. Aubrey Smith. Peter Ustinov, David Niven, these guys can talk my head off any time they’d like.  (Although sadly, David Niven, known for his skill as a fabulous raconteur, died in complete silence from the scourges of ALS.)

I am a sucker for an Irish brogue, too.  Peter O’Toole, Richard Harris, Liam Neeson, Pierce Brosnan.  Dreamy-sounding- all of them.

But of all the accents from over there that I find so alluring, none can match the effect as that of a bonnie Scottish brogue.  I find that this accent has charms above all others.

Don’t ask me why.  But the burr of their r’s and the musicality of this laryngeal region just kills me.  I have had the honor and the privilege of owning three wonderful Scotties- Andy, Gillis and Murdoch.  I always imagined if they could speak, they would sound just like Sean Connery, Ewan McGregor and Gerard Butler.

And today I want to single out two other Scotsmen whose acting gifts and vocal tonalities have knocked my argyles off.

Sir Ian Richardson and Peter Capaldi.

Thanks to the magic of Netflix, I have been swallowed up as late in House of Cards (the Brit version, of course) and a wonderful, not-to-be-missed laugh riot of a movie called In The Loop.

True, these political satires both have incredibly clever scripts about the evil machinations of Big British Government to play with, but these two gentleman take their pages and have a Battle of Bannockburn field day with them.

Sir Ian’s fabulous voice is used to great advantage here.  It’s as seductive as cocaine, and when he looks straight into the camera and narrates precisely what mayhem his character, Francis Urquhart, is going to cause, one is immediately trapped in his web of sly intrigue.

Born in Edinburgh, you may best recall this classically-trained thespian for his famous “Pardon me, would you have any Grey Poupon?” ad pitch he tossed- as he whizzed by in a Roller.  But his lean, saturnine, knife blade looks and wonderful vocal instrument are used to mesmerize in this glorious modern take on the Scottish Play.

All the other actors here are wizard and brill, too.  And Michael Kitchen really knocked me for a loop with his sly take of now-King (formerly Prince) Charles.  (He did him with Ronald Colman’s inflections.  Talk about a two-fer!)

Deal yourself into House of Cards.  From word one you’ll be hooked.  If not, I’ll eat my bumbershoot.

And speaking of loops, when you’re done with the series, stay with Netflix and get In The Loop.  Peter Capaldi has an Italian surname, but don’t ye be fooled.  He is Glaswegian as they come, and he starts the movie off with a bang of hysterical, torrid invective that would make Billy Connolly blush.

He is absolutely hilarious as a do-anything, scream-at-anyone, threaten-anything, pragmatic politico who hates Americans- but hates being on the losing side of any issue more.  (I won’t spoil one of the movie’s best jokes.  Let’s just say it occurs in a verbal insult showdown with an American general played with the right amount of bluster, profanity and menace by James Gandolfini.)

He says the filthiest and funniest things in a voice that just melts my heart.  This movie is a must-see.  Just get ready to bring your listening ears.  It’s fast and furious and you’ll probably miss a few lines because you’re laughing.  But hey, you can always go back and hear them again.  That’s one of the great advantages of Netflix.

Well that’s it for today, chums.  My time is up and I’ve got a hot date with a box set of Foyle’s War waiting for me.

Oh, and Nick and Natasha, did I happen to mention that when my time comes to go to that great movie palace in the sky, I want my eulogy delivered by Richard Burton?

The Welsh have a way with a word, too, you know.

Cheery-bye.

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Posted in Memoir, Movies, pop culture, Tributes | 4 Comments

Been There. Done That.

Posted on May 26, 2013 by Ellen Ross

Do you know a know-it-all?  You know the type.  An insufferable boor- and bore- who leaches all the oxygen out of the room with his inane pronouncements.  A “Cliff” from Cheers.  You can’t even argue with this kind of guy.  He never really listens to your conversation.  He just waits for the moment when he can jump in.

And he is always too obtuse to know when he is hogging the spotlight.

I’ve known one or two in my time.  Avoidance at all cost was usually the game plan.  But back in Colorado, Mike and I had one friend who was a variation on this theme.  And he was a neighbor and a nice fellow and we couldn’t avoid him- even when we wanted to.

Let’s call him Gus.  Older than us by about twenty years, Gus was a Sydney Blackmer/Jay. C. Flippen combo. Silver-haired, handsome, with the military bearing of the Air Force flying ace he once had been.

Gus had a big house not far from ours.  He was a fine cook and an enthusiastic art collector.  (Religious art, though.  Stuff like “Susannah and the Elders” or “Judith with the head of Holofernes.”  His whole collection kind of creeped me out.)  He was also a wine connoisseur, a car fancier, an avid mountain biker and a longtime skier.

Between marriages at the time, he was a doting father and proud grandfather to a clan of handsome, successful children who didn’t live in Colorado.  Well-off, charitable and gregarious, he had tons of free time on his hands.

And he liked to fill that free time with friends of all ages.  Somehow Mike and I got tapped.

Soon Gus included us in everything.  Dinners at his home, galas in Aspen, (he was on all the A lists) tamale parties mountainside, private soirées at the Hotel Jerome.  Both he and his then-girlfriend- let’s call her Ginger- partied with la crème de la crème and before we knew it, we were drafting in their tony social wake.

Ginger was a hoot.  A former Miss Miami, probably now in her late sixties.  If you looked hard enough you could see the blonde, blue-eyed bombshell of a beauty queen she once had been.  But pills, booze, facelifts, and a few husbands too many had all done their damage.

(She was sweet, though.  And she inadvertently gave me a good look at a certain kind of old school Aspen socialite when she said to me, “Here Ellen, please hold my Cosmo.  It’s time for my medication.”)

And because we weren’t schnorrers, we always reciprocated.  Intime dinners chez nous, or evenings out at good restaurants, Mike and I paid Gus and Ginger back hospitable gesture for hospitable gesture.

But this socializing had a snowball effect.  Soon other people in Gus and Ginger’s crowd took us up as the couple of the month, and we got invited around to many events where we partied with our original host and hostess.

Thus we saw Gus all the time.

This all sounds swell.  And it would have been- if not for one tiny little quirk of Gus’s.  He was wasn’t a know-it-all exactly.  But you couldn’t mention anything, any subject, about which he hadn’t an anecdote.

He always had some personal connection to any subject matter you could possibly dream up.  Name a place- he’d been there.  Name a person- he knew them.  Just name an activity- he had done it.  Name an event- he had founded it.

Name anything.  ANYTHING.  And Gus would have a long story about his connection to it.

If Mike mentioned something about Chuck Yeager, faster than you could achieve Mach One, Gus would be launched into orbit.  Some story about he and Glamorous Glennis’ s husband.  Old flying buddies or something.

Or if we had barbecued that night’s dinner.  All it took was one tiny compliment to Mike, the BBQ chef, and Gus would have to run home and get his diploma.  That’s right- a diploma in bbquing from some well-known cooking school.

Certain words had an intoxicating effect on him.  Like “flying,” or “vintage.”  We learned the hard way never to mention those buzz words because they unleashed in Gus a torrent of reminiscences.

In his frenzy to be liked or, perhaps because of his hyper-competitive nature, any word could set him off to out-top any story you were trying to tell.

And he didn’t take turns.  It was The Gus Show all the time.

Still he was kind of a sweet old coot, and Mike and I suffered in silence.  But finally, I had to take matters into my own hands.  I found this boasting and egomania unbearable and couldn’t face one more evening of it.

So one night, before yet another dinner party at our house, I went into our library and pulled out the Oxford English Dictionary.

“Watch this,” I said to Mike.  And I opened the tome at random.

“Here.  I am putting my finger on a word.  And I’m going to work that word into the conversation tonight.  You see if old Gus doesn’t have a story that doesn’t involve this word.”

And the secret word of the evening?  Armadillo.

That’s not an easy word to casually introduce into conversation but I was determined.  Mike was too nice to encourage me but he was human, and a human who had had his ears talked off by this braggart for years.  Right around the salad course, I said it.

And BAM!  Sure enough, Gus was off on a tale about armadillos he had tamed in Texas.

From then on, whenever we had to spend time in his company, I would go back to the O.E.D. and arm myself with a secret word.

Mean, I know.  But it was hilarious.  And as the words got more and more preposterous, Gus would always rise magnificently to the occasion.

When I left Colorado that was the end of Gus and his stories.  I’ve heard through the grapevine that he finally married Ginger.  I bet they are happy.

And some day, somewhere, I hope he is saying, “Ellen Ross?  Sure I know her.  Great gal.  Back in the seventies, we scaled Mt. Everest together.”

The old faker.

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Fashion Forward

Posted on May 23, 2013 by Ellen Ross

Every May Chicago gets a few glorious days that are simply perfect.  And they are a reminder that it’s swim suit season once again.  But they are fleeting- traditionally leaving Memorial Day weekend cold and rainy.  (I never remember an opening day at our club pool that wasn’t spent draped in towels, shivering, turning blue and finally heading for home before noon.)

So I wanted to take advantage of the sunny ones we were just gifted, and to that end, I donned a bathing suit, grabbed my Kindle and my sunblock and headed for the great outdoors.

The bathing suit:  A nifty Claude Montana number.  Navy blue and white striped maillot with clear plastic straps that are adjustable.  You slide them up and down lucite buckles as needed.  The straps hang down the back.  Very Barbarella.

The Kindle:  Now playing- Rupert Everett’s Vanished Years.  Remember the fey, wasp-tongued, snarky BFF of Julia Roberts in My Best Friend’s Wedding? Not the would-be groom.  The other guy who flew in from New York and charmed the wedding party with his rendition of “I Say a Little Prayer?”

That’s him.  And he has written a new memoir that takes up where his last, Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins, left off.  He is an entertaining summer companion- perfect around the pool or the cabana.  Indiscreet, nasty, sexy, eloquent and totally politically-incorrect.

His brilliant and outspoken takes on Hollywood icons- from Madonna to Harvey Weinstein- are worth the price of admission alone.  You have to be in the mood for his dish, but spending time with him is a like a visit from a punk Oscar Wilde.

The Sunblock:  Once upon a time it was considered very Non-U to have a suntan.  Strictly a peasants-only accessory.  Coco Chanel changed all that in the 1920’s.  She herself was très sportif, and she decided what was good for the duke was good for the duchess.  Hence she invented the jersey bathing suit and the idea that it was okay for wealthy women to get bronzed in the pursuit of la chasse and le golf and le jardin.

Especially if you did them all wearing pearls.

We Babyboomers were gung ho for this idea.  (Skin cancer and suntanning were not yet linked- as “dark ages” as that sounds now) and we went at the sun full blast.  Our 1960’s idea of sunblock was a white tee shirt- if you got too scorched the day before.

It was all about the Bain de Soleil.  An orange gel that positively reeked of the Riviera- thanks to a savvy group of Madmen.  We teenaged beach bunnies were wild about it.  We slathered it on and paid obeisance to the solar gods.

(I wasn’t as into tanning as some girls, though.  They would use reflectors made out of tin foil and baby oil laced with mercurochrome to amp up the process.  And I couldn’t bear to turn over.  I always hated laying on my front, and so while one side of summer me would be toasty chestnut, the b-side would be a whiter shade of pale.  I looked just like a Bel Air Chevy.)

Nowadays, I rely on lipcote and the SPF 100 black paint to prevent harmful UV rays- and the aging process. And I throw in a Cubs floppy hat for good measure.  (We’ve all seen the cautionary tales that some unfortunate women who unreservedly loved the sun have become.  They’re tan.  As in tanned leather by Hermes.)

But back to current day- where I started this post.

I had just settled comfortably frontside up into a chaise.  But my bathing suit wasn’t behaving.  Somehow my poitrine was peeking out a little and my derrière ditto.  I kept squirming around to make the fabric hide more areas of untanned flesh, and I kept adjusting the straps, pulling them down off my shoulders and making them longer in the hopes that the suit would cover more ground.

But it was no dice.

Okay, I had to admit it.  I hadn’t worn this little number in quite some time and things must have shifted a bit.  I just had to accept the sad fact that I couldn’t rock this particular suit in public any more.

But this day I was alone with Rupert and he didn’t mind that my bathing costume no longer fit like a sexy glove.  (I’m not quite his cuppa, darling.)  So I slathered on the industrial strength suntan lotion and enjoyed two blissful hours of seventy degrees, blue skies, a slight breeze and Maître Everett’s racy reminiscences.

I didn’t want to overdo and all too soon, I forced myself into a standing position, returned inside, bathed, rinsed out the suit and went about the rest of my day.

Somewhere around midnight it hit me.  Didn’t I say that I hadn’t worn this suit in a long time?  The straps were the key.  Their overhang didn’t go down the back.  It went in the front!  I had put the bathing suit on backwards.

I leaped out of bed, snapped on the lights, put it back on- this time with the straps hanging frontside- and voilà!  It looked great.  Just like it was supposed to.  I had worn it bass-ackwards all day.

My mind immediately raced back to Korshak’s, a stylish dress shop- sadly no longer with us- on Michigan Avenue.  Martha, my adorable salesgirl, had brought me a very unprepossessing-looking Giorgio St. Angelo little black dress.  Some kind of stretch panné velvet material with long, gauzy illusion sleeves and the same illusion gauzy chiffon in the front.  It hung limply on the hanger.  It had no pizaazz at all.

“Martha, this looks kind of sad,” I protested.  “You know me.  I want fashion genuflection when I buy a dress. I want people to fall down when they see me.”

“It’s just got no hanger appeal, Ellen.  But trust me.  Try it on.  I’ll be back in a minute.”  And she left me to it.

The dress was a pull-over.  It had no zippers or buttons.  Just a quick swish and a little shimmy and I was in.

I stepped out of the dressing room to see how I went over.  And then I looked down.

The translucent chiffon made me totally nude down the front.  All of me was of display on Michigan Avenue.

Martha arrived just in time to take me in hand.

“Ellen,” she tsked tsked sternly.  And then she made a twirling motion with her fingers.

“I can’t wear this!  I’m naked!  I don’t care how cool it is!” I protested as I turned around 360 to give her the full effect.

Again Martha and the twirling motion.

“Huh?”

“You’ve got it on backwards, Ellen,” she corrected me with a sigh.  “The illusion veiling goes in the back.”

I turned the dress around.  Killer!  I bought it.

(And I always wore it with my pearls running down my back, too.)

Coco would have been so proud.

But Rupert would have probably much preferred it the other way around.

Naughty boy.

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Match.Com

Posted on May 19, 2013 by Ellen Ross

Ever since my last divorce all of my dating activity has been on hold.  And I really haven’t minded.  For years I was content keeping a low love life profile.  I wasn’t up for meeting anyone new of the opposite sex. (Or the same sex, for that matter.)  I was just burned out socially.  I needed a long relationship-free vacation.

But lately something has shifted.  I’m feeling the need for companionship again.  And Sundays have a lot to do with it.

Sunday used to be a great day of the week.  One of my personal favorites.  Sunday meant long, lazy reads of the New York Times, followed by a bout of solving the puzzles.

Sidebar: Let me debunk a myth.  I always hear about how hard the Sunday NYT crossword puzzle is.  To prove how adept they are, people brag about doing it in ink.  True puzzle people know that the NYT Sunday crossword isn’t difficult at all.  It’s about a “Thursday” speed.  It’s just bigger, that’s all.  And you get a title and a theme to help you out, too.  What I LOVE is the variety puzzle.  The patternless is my favorite, but I’m crazy about the acrostic one and the anagrams and puns one, too.  I do my puzzles in pencil.  And I’ve worn out plenty of eraser ends over the years, believe me.

Then- depending on who I was married to- there would always be some sort of family activity.  It could mean a day at the country club pool with the kids while their father was finishing yet another round of golf, or it could mean homemade waffles, (I have a killer recipe) a day on the ski slopes, a hike in the woods with the dogs, a bluesy jam session or a movie.

What Sunday never signalled was a day alone.  And I mean all alone.  This is an awful consequence one among many) of “gray” divorce.

Because Sunday has always been the traditional family day, I never want to intrude on my married friends.  Even if their kids have flown the nest, Sunday is their sacred private time.  And I don’t want to be the houseguest who came to dinner.

So… I’ve decided it’s time to go looking for someone to spend my Sundays with.  (I do love sharing my Sundays with all of you- and your pithy comments- but I want some face time with people in 3D.)

But no sooner had I started whining about my need to interact with actual human beings  when everyone leaped into the fray with the same suggestion.

“Go on-line, Ellen!” they all cried.  “With your mad writing skills and a retouched photograph, think of the men you could attract!”

Well, ok, they didn’t put it exactly like that, but that was the gist, trust me.

I’ve always demurred.  I’m just not an on-line dating kind of gal.  I’ve got nothing against it mind, but I am strictly from the Frank Buck “Bring ‘Em Back Alive” School when it comes to meeting fellas.

I like to look my quarry dead in the eye and size him up.  And I like him to get a gander at me, too.  That way we can both tell right away if there is chemistry.

Or not.

I may be old school when it comes to meeting men, but this system has always worked for me in the past and I see no reason to change it now.  And although I may not always been the best judge of horse flesh – I have been fooled big time by a couple of them- for the most part, this one-on-one zone offense method has been my best bet.

Hence no Jdating or E.(llen)Harmony for me.

And no sooner had I vowed to give my real world “meet and greet” method another try, I got handed an opportunity.

I had to take the Metra train to the Ravenswood station recently.  But when I boarded, all the seats were taken.  I would have to share with someone, and because I was wearing a delicate, fawn-colored suede coat with a fragile baby-pink lining, I needed to pick my seat mate very carefully.

I scanned the riders from behind.  Avoiding all the crying babies and sticky-fingered toddlers and sketchy-looking gang members and guys with Starbucks coffeee cups and women with greasy Burger King bags, I spotted a graying older guy with a New York Times folded neatly at his side.

Perfect.  He looked harmless.  (I hate to be a profiler but with that coat you can’t take any chances.)  I sat down next to him apologizing for making him move over.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “But I’m only riding a few stops.  I’m getting off at Ravenswood and then you can have the seat all to yourself again.”

“Oh, you don’t have to be sorry.”  His eyes lit up appreciatively.  “You’re not putting me out at all.  And why are you getting off at Ravenswood- if I may ask?”

“Okay, you asked for it,” I told him.  “I am going to meet with a photographer to discuss the shoot he’s doing of me for some publicity pictures.”

“That doesn’t surprise me at all,” he said appreciatively once again. “You’re very attractive.”

This might have been a cheesy pick-up line but my next one was worse, actually.

“I hate to say this but don’t I know you from somewhere?  You look so familiar to me.”

(He did.)

“You look familiar to me too,” he conceded.

Hmm.  A dating prospect perhaps?  He sure seemed intrigued.  Maybe I should pursue this a little further?  He did read the NYT after all.

We exchanged names.  His didn’t ring any bells so I asked him where he lived.  Nice suburb.  And then it was time for me to get off.  Ravenswood was fast approaching.

“Are you married?” I asked. “I wouldn’t want to anger your wife but I want to email you something.” (A post from Letter From Elba.  It pays to advertise, doncha know.)

“I’m not married,” he said.  So I hastily told him my email address.  (The train was pulling into my stop and there was no time to write down his.)  I figured if he was interested enough he’d remember it.

When I got home after the confab with the photographer, I googled the guy.  Just in case he did get in touch. It’s good to know the players, after all.

Yikes!  My iPad lit up like a pinball machine.

Did I say this yutz was harmless?  He was some kind of white collar criminal.  Had been in the slammer and everything.  In big trouble with the IRS and the Feds.

Whatever happened to my guy-dar?  Had it gone flooey after all these years of inactivity?

Maybe I should rethink the on-line dating bit.

Nah.

I’m just going to have to ride a better class of train.

And find some really tough, really time-consuming puzzles to solve on Sundays from now on.

(And a great guy to do them with.)

BTW, if you want to know if I ever heard from my Romeo of the railroad…

What’s a seven letter word for “I plead the fifth?”

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MTM

Posted on May 16, 2013 by Ellen Ross

When I was growing up in the fifties in Wilmette, Illinois, there were three Ellens who lived on my block.  And we were all the same age.  (To prevent total confusion at Avoca School, our teachers came up with “Ellen W.” “Ellen D.” and “Ellen R.” to tell our homework apart.)  Ellen D. lived down the street but Ellen W. lived right next door.

She was the bane of my childhood existence.  She was perfect.

I was scrawny- with straight black hair and brown eyes.  Ellen W. had long blonde ringlets, big baby blue eyes and she actually had a shape.  And she was a couple of months older than me and she was taller than me, too.  No matter how much I grew, she always grew just a little bit more.

She was smarter than me, could run faster than me, jumped rope better than I did, played jacks better than me, was a better Girl Scout, had better handwriting- her cursive was lovely- and she was nicer to her mother.

This last thing was the worst part.

My mother was a comparer.  As in “Why can’t you be like the girl next door?  The girl next door is never fresh.  The girl next door would never say that to her mother.  The girl next door would never slam her bedroom door in her mother’s face.  The girl next door wouldn’t be flunking algebra…”

This one pronouncement was true for sure.  Ellen W.’s superior academic prowess was much in evidence as far back as the first grade.  Take the workbook debacle of Mrs. Dale’s class.

We first graders were given a fun project to do.  We had to cut out little letters and paste them in the proper squares under the corresponding barnyard animal pictured in our workbooks.  Then we were supposed to Crayola the animals in.

Okay, this was going to be a snap.  I painstakingly cut out my alphabet and started gluing.  P-I-G.  Got it. C-O-W.  Ditto.  H-O-R-S-E.  One more to go.  G-O-O… uh oh.  I didn’t have any more O’s or an S or another E. And there were only four empty squares under the gosling, too.  Try as I could, I had no success with this last Old MacDonald task.  And soon we were going to have to hand in our workbooks.

I was in a panic.  I only had one option open and I took it.

I left class.  I was on my way to Mrs. Murphy’s office- the principal- to inform her that I was quitting school when Mrs. Dale cornered me outside by the water fountains.  (I can still see the week’s mimeographed lunch menu taped up on the wall between the two of them.)

“Now what’s the problem, Ellen?  You know you just can’t walk out of the classroom like that,” she asked kindly.

“I can’t get the word “goose” to fit under the picture,” I frantically explained.

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Mrs. Dale said breezily. “Ellen W. will help you right after Visual Aids.”

And she did.  And it was a duck, not a goose, and all the letters I had left over fit in perfectly.

Just like she did.

If I needed any more evidence of her perfection, all I had to do was wait until we both entered high school.  At New Trier in the sixties it was a tradition that on your birthday your best girlfriends were expected to shower you with corsages- which you immediately pinned on to your Villager sweater.

Come November fourteenth and I’d get a few ratty-looking carnations or droopy-looking mums or something.  I’d proudly pin ’em on anyway and dare anyone to say that I didn’t have any gal pals.  (These tributes had to come from the girls, remember?  If the boys had been allowed to make these public declarations of affection that would have been a different floral story.  But the rules were “Ladies Only.”)

But every September I’d see Ellen W. on her birthday.  She looked like Seabiscuit, weighed down by a chain of tributes that went across her shoulders and down to her knees.  She had a million BFF’s and each one of them tried to outdo the other with their tokens of teenage respect.  She was always president of GAA or some other important school service group.  This was the high school equivalent of being Hilary Clinton.

Or our version of Mary Tyler Moore.  When she lived in Minneapolis, and worked for the television station and adorably said “Oh. Mr. Grant,” and threw her hat up in the air.

Ellen W. was exactly like her.  Perfect hair, perfect manners, perfect grades, loved by all.

Except by me.

Left to my own devices, I would have liked her.  But it was that “Why can’t you be like the girl next door?” thing of my mother’s that drove me absolutely CRAZY.  To fight back, I started making up stories about “the girl next door’s” unseemly behavior.

“Did you hear the girl next door was arrested for shoplifting?” I’d innocently ask my mother. ”  Or “I heard the girl next door was suspended for dope peddling.”  Or setting the school on fire.  Or joined the Black Panthers.  Or is having a baby.  Or got picked up for prostitution.”

No matter that my brother always gave the game away by laughing as my lies got more and more outrageous.  My mother would pull a shocked face and be furious that I had dared to besmirch the reputation of her perfect “girl next door.”

My torment finally ended when my folks moved to California.  They bought a house there that came equipped with a pool but no girl next door.  My mother was seriously non plussed.  My behavior hadn’t improved but she had lost her golden role model to hold over my rebellious head.

After the move, we kind of  lost touch.  I haven’t seen Ellen W. in many, many years but I have heard about the “girl next door” occasionally during this time.  I heard that she got married, and had children. (Three, I think, to my measly two, of course.)

I hope she’s happy and that all is well with her and her family.  I remember her with fondness.  Even if she was a tough act to grow up next door to.

So if someone reading this happens to bump into Ellen W. would you be sure and tell her that “Rhoda” says hi?

********

Author’s Postscript:  This post has been scheduled to run today for weeks.  And on May fifth, I actually ran into Ellen W.- now Ellen K.- myself.  I couldn’t have been more amazed.  I bet it has been twenty years since we last saw each other.  But with only eleven days to go, Fate intervened and there she was right in front of me.

We laughed.  She cried a little.  It was wonderful seeing her again.

And I can honestly report that, yep, she’s still perfect.

Darn it.

(Please don’t tell my mother.)

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(Step) Mother’s Day

Posted on May 12, 2013 by Ellen Ross

Author’s note:  This post is dedicated to Julie, Patti and Amy- my three step daughters of twenty years. Terrific women all.

We’ve all read the depressing statistics.  The divorce rate in the United States hovers around 50% these days. And that’s only for first marriages.  It is much higher when it comes to second and third ones.  Mongolia has the lowest.  (It’s official, folks.  My next wedding will be held in the Gobi desert.  Friends, start practicing your camel-riding.)

But with half the marriages down the tubes, it’s a cinch that some of you readers are step parents- or step children.  Or both.  A tricky path to tread- one filled with land mines of every emotionally-devastating description.  But today I want to explore the lighter side of the topic.

I became a step mom when I was twenty-five and the girls were fifteen, eleven and nine.  I’ll never forget the night we took them out to dinner and their dad broke the impending wedding news.

Julie, the oldest, frowned and asked, “Why can’t you just live together?”

Patti, the middle sister, asked, “Does this mean you’re not buying that RV and we’re not going camping?”

And the baby, Amy, too dismayed to speak, looked like someone had just run over her puppy.

I wasn’t offended by their adverse reaction.  Ours had been a whirlwind romance and they had only seen me twice before.  It was quite a shock, I’m sure.

But they were very nice girls- and so was I- and we all got along.  It’s funny, looking back on it now, but I didn’t feel daunted, intimidated or jealous about this sudden expansion in my new nuclear family. Maybe I was too dumb to know any better.  I just wasn’t worried.

Patti needn’t have worried about that aborted RV, trip, either.  True, her father did not buy the giant, tricked-out camper that they had all been drooling over, but we all did go on a road trip to Aspen for our honeymoon.

That Colorado-bound car trip:  I had painstakingly made a great picnic of fried chicken, devilled eggs, and chocolate chip cookies that was specifically earmarked for somewhere in Iowa. After we left our Chicago apartment and picked up the girls at their mother’s house, my husband pulled up their block and they unpacked it and ate it right there.

It was ten a.m.  We had not even left the suburbs yet.  So much for planning.  And a valuable object lesson in parenting of any kind.  You plan.  The kids laugh.

Aspen was cool and the girls had a swell time.  (I taught Patti how to play poker, as I recall.)  Many years later, when Patti herself got married, I asked if I could come along on her nifty European honeymoon. She was surprised.

“Why would you want to come on my honeymoon?” she asked.

“Because you came on mine,” was my logical rejoinder.

But it was still no dice.

When they entered high school, both Patti and Amy moved in with us.  We lived in the great New Trier school district and their mother, though completely devoted, was working and couldn’t keep the eagle eye on them that all teenagers require.

Nick was just born in April, and Patti touched down that same August and thus I had a full house with two infants nineteen months apart and a teenager.  Lots to oversee, but it was fun.  And all the kids really liked each other, thank goodness.

Although that didn’t stop baby Natasha from ratting out her beloved big sister “Paki,” as she called her.  One day, Natasha- who really never spoke until she was almost three- wandered into my bedroom, picked up a pen, and held it back and forth from her mouth, exhaling with artful sophistication.

“Paki,” she announced.

I jumped.

“Patti smokes?” I cried.

The little narc nodded sweetly.

And can we talk about sixteen?  That critical age.  The age of boys, hormones, and drivers’ licenses.  Which brings me to one of my most vivid memories of all my step motherhood.

The Driver’s Ed course at New Trier was full up when she needed to take it, so I enrolled Patti in a private driving school course.  Adams.

Established in 1946, they had taught more North Shore teenagers to drive than Steve Gersten.  (Newbies, see my November 1, 2012 post “There He Was Just A-walkin’ Down The Street” if you don’t get this reference.)

Patti was an enthusiastic student and a very good driver, and she passed the course handily.  Then she sat back and waited for the white slip or pink slip or some kind of permit to come so she could take her driving test and get that most prized of all teenaged possessions- her very own license.

Day after day, she eagerly went through the mail searching for that permit.  Day after day, nothing.  Weeks went by, and thoroughly frustrated by now, she called some of her fellow Adams-ites and asked if they had gotten that precious slip of paper.

They had.  They all had.

“I don’t understand it,” she wailed to me.  “Why haven’t they sent me my permit?  Adams sent them out weeks ago to everyone else in the class but me.  Can you call them, Ellen?”

“Wait a minute,” I was starting to break out in a cold sweat.  “Are you telling me the school sends out the permit?  Not the Secretary of State’s office?”

“Yeah, Adams send it out. Why?”

OH MY GOD.  (No OMG will do here.)  From the time Patti had enrolled in that place, we had been bombarded with mail from them.  Circulars and flyers all touting special discount deals for anyone who wanted to learn how to drive.  My mailbox had been crammed for weeks with their junk mail.  Over the course of her course, I had simply thrown it all out.  Unopened.

Looking into her pitiful, adorable, shining, expectant sixteen year old face and confessing my crime, (tossing out unopened mail.  The last time I ever did that in my life, believe me.) was the hardest thing I had to do as a step parent to date.  Maybe ever.

“I was expecting it to come from the state of Illinois.  Or the Secretary of State’s office.  Not the school.  I don’t know how to tell you this, Patti.  I must have thrown it out.  I am so sorry.”

I have to give her credit.  She didn’t waste time berating me.  Once the magnitude of my crime sunk in, she took immediate action.

She jumped on her bike, hightailed it over to the Willow Road landfill, and combed the dump looking for our garbage.

To no avail of course.  But that’s how much that piece of paper meant to her.

I was busy, too.  I got on the horn and found out that she could not take the drivers test without that actual piece of paper.  A new one could be re-issued only after six months had elapsed.  An eternity to a broken-hearted driver-to-be and her very guilty step mom.

I then made another call to a very “connected” friend of mine.  (He’s dead now, so don’t bother me with requests to fix tickets or anything.)  Luckily for all of us, corruption in the driver’s license bureau was rife. He gave me a name of someone who could “take care of it.”

Patti and I went down to Elston Avenue in Chicago to find the fixer in the DMV.  He had been brought up to speed on the “no actual physical permit” situation and had agreed to turn a blind eye.

If you think your kid was nervous taking his/her driver’s test, you should have seen Patti.  Any minute, she fully expected us both to be arrested and dragged to jail.  But shaking all the way, she still passed with flying colors.  Despite all the catcalls both she, (terribly pretty) and my Jaguar XJ6L (ditto) got from the motley crew on hand at that driver’s facility.

But for years, Patti was always terrified that somehow “they” would find out, and the driver’s police would take back her license.  She’s grown-up now, with teenaged drivers of her own, so I think the statute of limitations has safely elapsed here.

But there’s no time limit on warm memories about our kids.

No matter how we got them.

Happy Mother’s Day to you all.

May today be joyous.

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Anchors Aweigh

Posted on May 9, 2013 by Ellen Ross

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Ahoy maties!  Boating season runs from May first until October first around here so it’s time to put them back into the water.  Lake Michigan has many fine harbors and it’s a very pretty sight to see them come alive with the fleet after a long, gray winter.

I date my enthusiasm for all things nautical to my childhood.  My father was a sailor and the sea fascinated me.  He had been in the Navy in W.W.II.  (“The big one, son,”as Herbert T. Gillis used to constantly remind Dobie.)

My dad had spent his war on the USS Shangri–La, an Essex-class aircraft carrier.  (Ordinarily ships were named after battles or for former ships, but his had gotten her unusual name from FDR himself.)  As a radarman, he saw plenty of action in the South Pacific.

He survived kamikazes, typhoons, and lots of hot fighting.  On one stint, he didn’t even touch dry land for five months.  He was so out of touch- unlike today’s armed forces- that he didn’t know that the Cubs had won the ’45 pennant.

But as much as I longed to follow in my father’s path on the bounding main, I didn’t inherit his sea legs.  From the moment I was pushed in the perambulator, I sent up an unearthly howl.  This happened so often that my bewildered mother finally called the pediatrician who rightly diagnosed “motion sickness.”

And I’ve been a victim of this cruel malady ever since.  And I don’t have to be out on the open water, either.

Once, at beautiful Ondine’s Restaturant in Sausalito, our host graciously bestowed upon me the seat with the incredible ocean view.  As I admired the waves from inside, my head started slumping over until I finally slid out of my chair onto the floor.  I had gotten mal de mer merely by looking through the window.

I have been seasick on Mediterranean cruises, on my friend Ricky’s boat, the Lili Pad, and at the America’s Cup yacht races.  (OMG. The pitch that day was so awful that after an hour of unbelievable agony, I tried to climb over the rail and throw myself overboard.  I remember thinking “It’s cold and dark and it will kill me fast.”  My then husband pulled me back and said, “It’s not your time to go yet.”)

My son Nick inherited the landlubber gene from me.  When he was about five, I remember frantically cramming Dramamine down his throat- and then mine- right before we both passed out on a Carribbean cruise.

Christmas 1998 I took Natasha, Nick,-then eighteen- my nephew Greg, (also eighteen) and a friend of Greg’s on another cruise around some tropical islands.  Nick was gung ho for this sea voyage, and as we celebrated at the party at the pier, he went on and on about all the cool things he was going to do on the cruise. He was stoked.

Until the ship pulled out of port.

Literally one minute after we had left the dock, Nick turned Nile green, excused himself and went to his cabin.  Where he remained for two days until we hit San Juan.  I had  made arrangements by then to have him leave the ship permanently there.  And as we stood, anxiously waiting to disembark before the rest of the other merely day-tripping passengers, I commiserated with him- and held his guitar.

As we stood at the disembarcation point, a ship’s officer came up and asked Nick, “Are you with the crew?”

I couldn’t help laughing.  Nick hadn’t shaved for three days- his usual look for that era- and there I was holding his gear.

“Would any crew member dare look this disreputable?” I countered his query.  “And would a crewman be standing here with his mother?”

The officer was a gentleman and he laughed too as he conceeded that any crew member that looked as grungy as Nick would probably be hanging from the yardarm instead of granted shore leave.  We spent the day in San Juan, and before I left to make it back to the ship, Nick looked me dead in the eye and swore, “Never again, Dude. No matter what.”

Aye aye, sir.  I knew whose those genes were.  Nick was permanently in dry dock.

On the other hand, my daughter, Natasha, took after her grandpa and was an old salt from the get-go.  At three months old, she, too, was wailing nonstop.  Finally, out of sheer desperation- as I was wintering in Palm Springs at the time- I threw on a bathing suit and with her in my arms, waded into the shallow end of our rented vacation house’s swimming pool.

Instantly her tense little body relaxed.  She stopped screaming, looked me dead in the eye and said, “Ahhh.”

I had found a cure for her malaise.  It was called hydro-therapy and she’s been a waterbaby ever since.

Great swimmer and enthusiastic sailor, she was immediately put on her boarding school’s sailing team.  Teams of two raced 420 sail boats against other schools.  (A 420 is a double-handed monohull dinghy with a centerboard, a bermuda rig and center sheeting.  The name describes the length.  It’s exactly 4.2 meters long and it’s considered safe and easy to maneuver for young sailors.)

Natasha, a little girl, was paired with Dawson, a great big boy, and their combined weights and skills made them a killer combo on the race circuit.

Her racing season started in March.  In Newport, Rhode Island.  The coldest, wettest, windiest spot on the Atlantic. (And that’s why it is the sailing mecca of the East coast.)  And although she wore a dry suit, she had a permanent hacking cough by which I could locate her immediately anywhere on campus for the next four years.

As much as she loved racing, she loved cruising, too.  She took advantage of the school’s unique program, when she was selected- along with five other kids- to cruise for two months from Newport to the Bahamas.  There was a captain (poor guy) and they all took off for two months on the S.S. Geronimo to tag turtles for the Wildlife Department.

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Natasha Hornblower had many thrilling nautical adventures during her two months before the mast.  (All schoolwork was done by correspondence- and stellar grades were still expected.)  The boom broke during a wild storm off of Cape Hatteras and they had to be lashed to their bunks before they could put in. She also got a very privileged tour of Cumberland Island- the one that JFK Junior got married on.  And she got to take her PSAT’s at the Palm Beach Yacht Club.

But she had to do her laundry on the rocks.  And she complained later that she couldn’t wait to get back to civilization to condition her hair.

“Didn’t you have conditioner with you?” I asked my little intrepid Dennis Connor.

“Nope, I had it with me alright, Mom.  But it’s leave-in conditioner and I couldn’t tread water that long.”

So to all my like-minded friends who love the sea, may you have sunny skies and gentle winds and smooth sailing this and every season.  (And to all of you who have power on your boat, I wish you whatever you guys like as well.)

Just don’t ever ask me to go out with you.

I feel a slight headache coming on.

Bon Voyage.

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