“My bubbe used to keep these in a candy jar,” Esther says. “They’d melt and congeal together into one giant piece. No wonder I have issues.”
“I bet her couch was covered in plastic, too.”
“We owned dry cleaners,” Esther says with a chuckle. “No bare skin could touch fabric.”
I start to walk, but she grabs my arm. “Have you heard from Hot Jew?”
I laugh. “After what I said?”
“Why don’t you text him and recommend a dermatologist?” she asks. “I mean, can’t love blossom over a suspicious mole?”
“Stop it,” I say. “That ship has sailed.”
“You mean you drove that ship right into an iceberg.”
Esther takes my arm and escorts me to the library’s reading room. Every Wednesday at 10:00 a.m., I host Drag Queen Reading Hour, a program for children aged three to eight that is meant to raise awareness of diversity, promote self-acceptance, build empathy and foster an early love of reading.
When I enter, I am greeted by familiar faces.
“Grandma Golden!”
“Mr. Sid!”
“Mrs. P!”
I read to the children dressed as my character, Sophia Petrillo. They have no idea who she is, but their parents and grandparents do. To the kids—dressed in my floral print dress, brooch, dusty-rose sweater with a lace collar, reading glasses dangling from a chain, short silver-white curls and ever-present pocketbook in the crook of my arm—I am their grandmother, great-aunt, babysitter, neighbor, reading buddy, but most of all, friend.
The reading room is decorated like a living room. I take a seat in a rocking chair.
“Who’s ready for a story?” I ask.
The kids yell and, just as quickly, quiet.
I pick up one of my favorite books,The Very Hungry Caterpillarby Eric Carle. I read it to my own children when they were young. It is a book that has aged beautifully, and whose message seems even more necessary today in our society. The book, as Carle once said, is a “literary cocoon” for children as they approach kindergarten and for all little kids preparing to leave the warmth and safety of home for school.
I look out at the families gathered today. I nod at Esther, who has my phone, and she FaceTimes Rebecca and our great-grandchildren, Noah, Naomi and Aviva. Every Wednesday, they join us from Chicago.
I wave at them, and the four of them wave back.
Rebecca smiles. She is an old woman now, but in her eyes I still see the young girl I knew so long ago. The eyes of my great-grands are filled with nothing but innocence and love. When I look at them, I see what they see: hope and love.
That is why I am here, to build a connection to a future that will not physically include me but one I pray includes my history. Because it is in the eyes of our elders—me, Rebecca, my friends, the ones we rarely look deeply into because we are frightened by what we see reflected in the dim pupils—where the stories lie.
A few years after Rebecca and I divorced, she remarried a mutual friend named David who was also an attorney from my firm. I let that go, and am glad I did, because I was able to see her experience true love for the first time in her life, a love with no secrets. Slowly, her anger began to soften. In return, my children’s wrath diminished as well.
I sacrificed everything for years so my family would feel “normal.” I traveled back to Chicago for every big birthday, ball game, every moment of my children’s and grandchildren’s lives. For years, I was in Chicago nearly as much as I was in Palm Springs. I traveled so much and purchased so many gifts to buy my family’s love, I had to un-retire and handle estate planning for my and Esther’s friends.
When I finally looked up, I was well into my seventies, and my children were grown and married with growing children.
And me?
Still single.
Not only had I missed out on love and romance in my youth, I had missed my window of opportunity in the gay dating world, that sliver of time when widowers were looking to recouple, younger men sought stability with a successful, older man, and being gray was considered hot.
Now?
I look into the eyes of my great-grands.
