Tag Archive for: Maggie Barbieri

Presidential Campaign Fatigue

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We are roughly 100 days out from Election Day, a day that
can’t come soon enough, in my opinion. 
Already, I have Presidential Campaign Fatigue—PCF in medical
parlance—which means that I break into a cold sweat when I see a black and
white photo of candidate X—be it the incumbent or his opponent—superimposed
over a red background with a sonorous voice telling us how the candidate once
approved the mass slaughter of a litter of kittens, all the while forcing us to
buy health insurance, making billions of dollars, or cutting jobs at a rate
consistent with the mating habits of common garden rodents. 
Every day, we are hounded by reports of “gaffes” by one or
the other Presidential candidates, anything that ranges from misidentifying the
state bird of North Dakota to telling it like it is—as it was reported in the
host country’s own tabs—when it comes to security at the Olympic Village.  The gaffes may be of a political nature but I
do know that most are inconsequential to the state of the Union.  The wives of the candidates are no exception;
one gets slammed for wearing a gorgeous—albeit expensive—jacket on an overseas
jaunt while the other makes the mistake of saying “you people” when referring
to, well, you people.  (Personally, I think “you people” is a legitimate catchall but that may because I spend 50 hours alone every week in an attic.)  It makes me wonder
why anyone in their right mind would want to run for office, never mind allow
their spouse to do so.
Are the days of true civility gone?  According to a recent poll, 95% of Americans
want civility in politics and 87% believe we can actually achieve that
goal!  Another 85% of Americans would
love—LOVE!—it if their leaders could form friendships across the aisle.  Seriously, how are we supposed to get along
in a global economy and world if we can’t even stomach the guy sitting across
from us, the guy we need to reach consensus with in order to legislate
effectively?  In doing research for this
post, I now know that there are entire sites devoted to civility in politics
but I guess the people who really need to look at these sites—our politicians—aren’t
reading them or heeding their measured words.
I wonder, though, if the mud slinging became a thing of the
past, would the idea of an informed decision take root?  In other words, if we really knew what
candidates stood for, without all of the noise and incivility, would we be able
to make a decision that reflected what we actually knew and cared about in
terms of each candidate?  Because right
now, here’s what I have been told about both candidates and their wives:
1.    
One is a socialist who wants to steal from the
rich and give to the poor.
2.    
The other stole billions of dollars while
working as a businessman and doesn’t think that rich people should pay taxes at
all. Oh, and he strapped his Irish setter to the top of his car and drove to
Canada.
3.    
If you don’t have anyone to blame in an argument,
you can go with either George W. Bush or Bill Clinton. 
4.    
One’s wife is a wealthy woman who likes to ride
horses and is against all working moms.
5.    
The other’s wife shops at Banana Republic
sometimes but most of the time spends American’s hard-earned dollars on
clothes.
I guess you could say that there is a scintilla of truth in
every statement listed above but do any of them really tell the entire story of
the person, their beliefs, their habits, or their ability to govern? 
I read a lot.  I watch
a lot of television.  And then I read
some more.  I happen to be working on a
book right now that deals with the American political landscape which is
fascinating because its “just the facts, ma’am” approach reminds me that the
bedrock of our political system is solid and based on sound principles of
philosophy specifically generated during the Age of Enlightenment.  Based on what we hear and see these days,
you’d think that the guy who wrote FIGHT CLUB had drafted the campaign
strategies of both candidates.
So I guess my question is this:  how do you tune out the “noise” of the
campaign and make an informed decision come voting time?  Or is your mind already made up?

Maggie Barbieri

What I Learned at Orientation

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What I Learned at Orientation
I just spent a
few days at child #1’s college orientation, desperately trying to fit in with
the cool kids (the other parents) so that I wouldn’t have to eat alone in the
dining hall.  But this whole post begs a
question:  for those of you who went away
to college, did you have an orientation? 
Was it three days in July or two hours before class started in late
August?  Did your parents attend?  Did they even want to?
I joke with my daughter that yes, my parents did drive me to
Orientation and upon our arrival on campus, slowed the car down just enough so
that I could grab my belongings out of the trunk—encased in black plastic
garbage bags—and head into the dorm to figure out where my room was, who my
roommate was and if this was even the right school.  Yes, they waved lovingly as they drove off in
search of the local steak house where they would have the last meal they would
ever eat in a restaurant, at least until they got the four of us through
college.
Orientation today is different, part summer camp, part boot
camp.  I think it’s great for kids who
have chosen a college based only on one formal tour and perhaps a drive through
at a different time; there really is no way to get a feel for what it will be
like to go to college and live away from home unless you do an intense dry run
in which you stay in the dorms and are thrown together with a diverse group of
people who you may never have met in your regular life but with whom you will
now be living and learning, and hopefully playing a little bit.  (But just a little bit.  College does not come cheap these days.)  Husband and I chose not to stay in the dorms
as some other parents did, as we are close enough—and far enough away—to have
commuted back and forth to Orientation. 
Did we learn anything we didn’t already know?  Maybe not. 
But we made some good friends in the other parents, one of whom I will
be having dinner with in a few weeks, and we had a chance to be voyeurs and see
our kids in their new environment with their new classmates and friends.
Although it is presumably for the students, there is a
strong parent component running through the program and while husband and I
chose not to participate in a lot of it (parent lip-synching anyone? Can you
think of a quicker way for your child to die an immediate social death?) we did
stay for the important stuff, like residence life and the financial talk.  We only caught glimpses of child #1 as she
processed from one activity to the other and in those few moments, we
ascertained that she had 1) made friends and 2) seemed to be enjoying
herself.  As far as I was concerned,
Orientation was a success.
When I posted about this on Facebook, I got a variety of
responses ranging from “My parents wouldn’t leave my dorm room for hours on
move-in day!” to “Your parents dropped you off? 
Mine sent me on the bus” which is a testament to the diversity in styles
that existed in the old days when I and my friends went to school.  These days, it would seem, parents want to be
involved from morning until night if some of the talks we heard were any
indication.  Many of them centered around
tips for dealing with separation—not child from parents but parent from child!
Times have certainly changed; rather than parents longing for the day when they
will be empty nesters—and we still have five years to achieve that goal—they now
long for the time when their kids were still small and living at home.  I don’t know; I guess I fall somewhere in
between.  I remember college being as one
of the most rewarding and enriching times of my life; every wonderful thing
that has happened to me can be traced back to my time there.  It was a time when the world really opened up
to me and I started to figure out my place in it.  I hope the same is true for my confident,
smart, and successful daughter, who clearly doesn’t have as far to go as I did
at her age but will more than likely do great things.
And that’s something I already knew before I went to
Orientation.
Maggie Barbieri

Dusty (or the dog that got away)

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From the
cat who literally swallowed the canary (and then threw it up on your aunt’s
antique Persian rug) to the dog who ran away, we at the Stiletto Gang put our
collective heads together and thought: what could be better than walking down
memory lane with thoughts of some of our favorite–and not-so-favorite–pets?
Join us for the next two weeks as we reminisce about the animals we loved and
those who loved us.
For most of my childhood, my mother didn’t work.  Then, one day, she went back to work at an office
in the Bronx, leaving just before I and my three siblings left for school in
the morning.  Fortunately, my grandmother
had just left her job at the local convent and was burdened with the task of
getting the four of us off to school. 
But if you’re a regular reader, you know that Mom and grandmother had a
great system for lunches (all made on Sunday; grab and go from the freezer on
each weekday) and the bus stop was only across the street.

What could possibly go wrong?
Enter Dusty, the recalcitrant golden retriever.  Lovable, yes. 
Obedient?  Hardly.
My grandmother opened the door of the house one lovely Fall
day in the mid-1970s and ushered the four of us, all clad in our plaid
Catholic-school uniforms, across the street to the bus stop, watching us from
the protective comfort of the storm door. 
As the door slam started to slam shut, Dusty emerged from whatever hidey
hole he had set up for himself and ran past her, taking all hundred pounds of
her with him, racing down the steps.  It
was bus stop time!  The best time of the
day for a two-year-old golden retriever. 
Nothing would stop him in his quest for a place at the bus stop with the
kids.
Maga, our grandmother, lay prone on the sidewalk in front of
the house.  This was a woman, however,
who had left the comfort of her Irish cottage in the early 1920s and sailed for
America, forging a new life and new family for herself, so this was not a woman
to be trifled with.  She made a valiant
grab for Dusty’s collar but he wasn’t wearing one and off he took, down the
street, our collective groan no match for the sound of the bus trundling down
the street. 
I looked at her in horror. 
She looked back at me.  The
mission was clear:  get Dusty back in the
house before the bus reached our stop.
Did I mention that Maga couldn’t drive?  Hence, the horror.  If I missed the bus, I would have to walk two
miles to school.  If I had to walk two
miles to school, I would be late.  And if
I was late, well, Sister Loyola would not be pleased.
I dropped my book bag and took off down the street toward
the lawn where Dusty frolicked; when he saw me, he was overjoyed at the thought
that I would skip school to play with him. He ran and jumped and chased his own
tail, all the while I stood in one spot in the middle of the street, my pleated
wool plaid skirt and weskit not suited to playing with a dog.
After a few minutes, Dusty wore himself out and came over to
me, throwing himself to the ground at my feet, his tongue lolling out of one
side of his mouth.  I looked up the street
and saw the bus pull to a stop, everyone else getting on, staring at me
wide-eyed from their seats as the bus pulled away.  My heart sank.
I grabbed the dog around the neck and pulled him the entire
length of the street, his back feet digging into the asphalt as I begged,
pleaded and cajoled that he help me get him to the house.  It took the better part of a half hour, my
hysteria mounting the whole way, my grandmother standing by the driveway,
helpless.  We finally reached the house
and I dragged him inside, my grandmother swatting his behind with a copy of the
Daily News and screaming at him that he had made me miss the bus. 
He didn’t care.
I ran outside, gathered up my book bag and looked around
frantically hoping to spy a neighbor on their way to work or the grocery
store.  The neighborhood was desolate and
I was at a loss.
Next door lived my favorite neighbors.  They had five sons and one daughter, and
their youngest son was my best friend in the whole world. His older brother,
second in line, was not.  To him, my best
friend and I were just snot-nosed kids (by this time, he was in his twenties
and we were tweens), something that he made crystal clear when we were admiring
his brand-new, all white Ford Mustang. 
“Don’t touch anything!” he hollered when we got close to the vehicle,
the one that would take him to his new job as a high-school teacher.  As I stood on the front lawn that day, I
heard the familiar rumble of the Mustang’s engine as he revved it, preparing to
peel out of the driveway and head to school.
I tore across the front lawn, throwing myself in the direction
of the car, screaming “please, please, please!” as I got closer, hoping that he
could hear my frantic cries over the roar of the engine.  He looked up and saw me and while I could see
a threat of indecision cross his face—should I or shouldn’t I—he decided to
stop and see what I needed.  “A ride,” I
gasped.  “I need a ride.”
Of course, he was late for school.  Weren’t we all that beautiful day?  I put my hands together and begged him for a
ride, something that took far longer than it should have, given the circumstances
(crying tween girl, non-driving grandmother). 
He finally relented and opened the door for me with one condition:  I couldn’t touch anything in the car.  So, we rode to school, me sitting on the edge
of the white leather bucket seat, my hands crossed on my lap, desperately
trying to hold on as he sped toward St. Catherine’s.
I made it to my classroom just before the first bell. (And
by the way, Bobby—I touched your dashboard. 
Three times.  When you weren’t
looking.)
Dusty only lived two years (he died of a congenital birth defect)
but he had two years filled with such capers. 
He was not a dog for the faint of heart, but he lived life to the
fullest, taking any opportunity to frolic and roam and wander.
We all need a little Dusty in our lives.
Maggie Barbieri

I’m “That Woman” Now

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I’m “that woman” now. 
You know, the one who sees a baby in a stroller and looks at the person
pushing it—be it mother, father, or babysitter—and say, a stricken look on her
face, “Enjoy it now!  It goes so fast!”
I feel sure that I’ve written about this before but now it’s
a reality.
I’m old enough to have a daughter graduating from high
school.
It was just yesterday that I cried myself from one end of
the country to the other when I had to go on a business trip and leave her
home, six-months old, toothless and adorable. 
Or when I agonized over quitting my in-house day job to stay home with
her, only to have her tell me “I wish I got to go to Tiny Tots” (the day care
center around the corner from our house—trust me:  that didn’t go over well). Or when we
celebrated her “graduation” from elementary school to the middle school, the
middle school to the high school.  It was
all just yesterday. Wasn’t it?
This week, we have the senior prom (or “Prom” as it is
called now, no article), her graduation party (60 hungry family and
friends).  Next week is the big day:  graduation. 
Soon after, college orientation, shopping for supplies and then the biggest
day of all:  move-in day.  It’s about more than I can fathom because I’m
still thirty, she’s still a baby, and her brother doesn’t even exist yet.
I feel rather foolish talking like this because I used to be
the woman who laughed at people who told me to be present and to savor every
moment that was my daughter’s childhood. 
I was present, even though it’s hard to be in every moment when many of
those moments include only discipline, teaching good manners, listening to the
same song sung over and over again in the back seat of the car, saying “because
I said so” ten times a day.  As someone
else once wisely said to me, “the days are long but the years fly by.”  Boy, do they.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m excited for her.  We live in a little village and she’s seen
the same one hundred faces every single day since kindergarten.  It’s time for a change.  It’s time for her to move on and to
experience a new city, new friends, new challenges, new joys, and new
heartbreaks.  It’s time for her to
establish who she is outside of this family and this village and to explore the
world on her terms.  She is definitely
ready for everything this next chapter brings. 
I guess I’ll have to be ready, too.
Fellow Stiletto babe, northern-half Evelyn David, and I
often joke that’s it not all about us.  (Alternately,
I joke with my mother that everything is my fault.  She heartily concurs.  Mothers, apparently, are the eternal
scapegoats for all of life’s inconveniences. 
Glad I learned that early on.)  Intellectually,
we understand that and suppress a lot of what we know and what we feel in favor
of letting our children grow up and move on. 
I wish I were in a different place, emotionally, but I’m not and I’ll
only apologize if I can’t stop crying during the Pledge of Allegiance during
graduation or I make a complete fool of myself (moreso than usual). 
So, Stiletto friends, how do you cope when something sneaks
up on you, something that has been right ahead of you for a long time?  What are your coping strategies for dealing
with the monumental rites of passage?
Maggie Barbieri

I need a recommendation, please

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A friend of mine is moving into a co-op in New York City and
has been asked by the co-op board to provide four letters of recommendation to
prove that she is, in fact, a good neighbor. 
She has asked me to write one of the letters because beyond the fact that
we were “neighbors” all during high school—our maiden names both starting with
“Sc-“ made it so N, my friend, stared at the back of my head for four years—she
moved into our neighborhood ten years ago and stayed here until recently
deciding that she and her husband wanted to be back in New York City.  I’m biased—she was one of my best friends
until our respective paths separated us for many years—so what can I say beyond
the fact that she doesn’t drink, smoke, do drugs, or have crazy parties?  That she’s the smartest person I know?  That she and her husband speak so softly that
I can often not hear what they’re saying? 
That her leisure pursuits consist of running, reading books that require
a forklift to get off the bookshelf, and playing with her cats?  Or that if you ever find yourself in a real
pickle—say with a diagnosis of Stage IV melanoma—she’s the only person you want
at your side besides your spouse?  All of
those things seem irrelevant to what the co-op board may want to know about my
friend, but I’ll include most of it anyway. 
I don’t know how often she takes out her recycling or if she’ll be
needing a parking space or even if she cooks curry at weird hours, but I know
she’s a good person and someone you’d want living beside you to celebrate the
good and weathering the bad.
The requested letter of recommendation got me thinking about
recommendations in general.  What do we
really want to know when we ask for recommendations?  Generally, is the person a hard worker?  A suitable neighbor?  An upstanding citizen?  But more to the point, what should we want to
know? For instance, when I was looking for a new babysitter, what I should have
asked, besides the obvious (have any children died on this person’s watch?),
was “will this person clean up after themselves after making a thick ragu of
beef, veal, and pork with onions to spare?” 
Or, will this person say to me, a new mother, that she knows more about
childrearing than I do and to learn from her? 
(Trust me, that’s something you don’t want to hear after commuting two
hours and working a ten-hour day.)  What
about the new marketing manager that you’re hiring?  Ask that person, “will you make promises to
people that you cannot keep without me pulling every string and three straight
all-nighters?” rather than “How many copies of book x did you sell during your
tenure at your former company?”
These are the intangibles, the things that I wished I had
the foresight to ask.  As a closet
perfectionist (ok, maybe not so closet), I try to anticipate every last thing
in order to be prepared, but what I have found is that I can never anticipate everything,
and even if I come close, I’m usually off by a detail or two.  So, I’m now just trying to go with the flow,
something that doesn’t come naturally to me and that feels like I’m wearing an
ill-fitting dress when I try it on for size. 
I wish my friend’s co-op board was doing the same, but for obvious
reasons, I guess we’re glad that we’re not.
What are some of the things you wished you had foreseen,
Stiletto Faithful?  What is one question
you wished you would have asked?
Maggie Barbieri

Shop Local…If You Can

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In the little village in which I live, we have two
“business” districts.  I use that term
loosely because for one area, there is no business to speak of, and any
business that does exist in either zone is struggling mightily for its
life.  There are a few brave souls who
continue to try to make a go of it:  a
guy who opened a shop for birders, a friend who opened a microbrew place, an
intrepid hair stylist who has to stay open seven days a week to make ends meet.  This is not a town with a “big-box” store, or
even a fast-food chain. It’s small, and by extension, so are the
businesses.  But they are having a tough
time surviving in this economy.
Enter a group who sought to “rezone” the first business
district, the one closest to the highway and most accessible to our train
station, a major hub on a major railroad. 
Backed by the then-mayor, their idea was to take existing storefronts
and modernize them with a unified façade while creating mixed-use space—that
is, space for retail on the bottom and apartments on the top—thereby adding to
the village’s tax base.
To say that they were meant with vociferous derision and
negativity is a gross understatement. 
Even the mayor who approved the whole shebang is now against the plan
for reasons that are still unknown to me.
We are a village of about 7,500 people and if our local
political landscape is any indication of what is writ large on the national
stage, we are in serious trouble. 
Reports of last night’s village board meeting seem to indicate
incivility, rudeness, and a general indecorousness abounding, things shouldn’t
exist in a town where your mayor is also your next-door neighbor, and your
trustee’s kids play Little League with your own.  Where you ride the train with another of the
trustees and inquire about his or her elderly parent.  Where, adjacent to the majestic Hudson River,
we should all give thanks for the beautiful vistas that surround us as we nod a
greeting to those we pass on our daily walk instead of seeing the person
passing us as either someone “for” or “against” whatever development the
majority sees as responsible and fair for our little burg.
This debate has resulted in a lot of shouting and a lot of
hard feelings.  People who love the
village and want to see the best for it scream about progress but also about
blighting the landscape.  It’s hard to
know what’s best because there is just too much noise.  Letters to our local paper abound and in
about ninety percent of them, politeness has taken a flyer.
Have the days of dialogue and reaching consensus gone the
way of the landline and dial-up internet? 
Is it impossible in today’s world to have a conversation with someone
and see their side, even if you agree to disagree?  As someone once famously said, “can’t we all
just get along?”
In books, conflict is good; without it, your story is flat,
your characters not compelling at all. 
Conflict is what led me to make Alison Bergeron a divorcee with a dead
body in her car.  If not for that
conflict, no other story could have flowed freely about her life.  Sure, she could have been happily married,
but what’s the fun in that?  Having an
ex-husband to act as her annoying foil made the writing, and her journey, more
fun.
In real life, however, conflict is an annoyance, a
nuisance.  Constantly battling with
people over issues large and small results in indigestion, and ultimately, a
stalemate.  Agreeing to disagree means,
in the case of our little village, stagnation. 
No new business for the citizens to “shop local.”  No new apartments for people to enjoy what we
long-time residents have enjoyed for many years.  No new taxes to help the rest of us stave off
bankruptcy in the face of rising fees.
My advice to my neighbors? 
Go to the local microbrew with someone with whom you disagree and get a
pint.  Discuss “progress” and
“change.”  See where you stand after
ingesting a sudsy brew, one that was made special for you by a homegrown girl
who came back to give back to her beloved village.  Then see if you can’t reach consensus.
Tell me, Stiletto readers, what are things like where you
live?  Is it hard to get one decision
made in your town or city?  Is
stagnation—and noise—the order of the day?
Maggie Barbieri

A Town Called Malice

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This past weekend, I had the pleasure of traveling down the
New Jersey Turnpike into Maryland with the lovely and talented Laura Bradford
to the annual Malice Domestic convention. 
(And for any of you ‘80s-music devotees out there, does anyone else
think of The Jam song, “A Town Called Malice”? 
I do.)  As always, it was a
wonderful time, filled with the nicest mystery writers and the most wonderful
readers, people who are so devoted to the genre as to have encyclopedic
knowledge of every book every written, it would seem.
Laura and I couldn’t be more compatible as roommates:  she likes the room cold like I do, goes to
bed early like I do, and is always willing to listen to my latest hare-brained
idea concerning a new book or plot twist. 
Oh, and she loves pretzels, just like I do!  I couldn’t have asked for a better person to
share the experience with, right down to our delightful Burger King meal at a
rest stop on the Turnpike, which she managed to make enjoyable.
Sara J. Henry, a debut novelist who won the Mary Higgins
Clark Award—an award for which I was a judge—at the Edgars prior to the
convention for her novel LEARNING TO SWIM, also won the Agatha for Best First
Novel.  If you haven’t read this book,
get it.  It’s fantastic.  It begins with a woman on a ferry who sees a
little boy being thrown overboard and it takes off from there.  A fantastic read.
I was on a panel that was geared toward sports-related
mysteries, a result of my last book—PHYSICAL EDUCATION—being set in the world
of women’s college basketball.  Alan
Orloff made a fine moderator—or shall we say “referee”—for the panel which
included Beth Groundwater, Sasscer Hill, and Laura DiSilverio.  Although I didn’t have much to say about my
less-than-illustrious CYO basketball career, I was able to relive the moment
that I hit a walk-off grand slam in our town’s softball playoffs.  Good times.
Laura crafted a panel moderated by Aimee Hix that exposed
the “dirty little secrets” that writers have including who they model their murder
victims on, what the eat when they are on deadline, and how they come up with
their ideas.  For the record, my
answers:  1) no one you know (not that I
would ever tell); 2) pretzels; 3) while driving.
If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it a thousand
times:  writing is a solitary, sometimes
lonely profession.  To be around five
hundred people who all love the same thing—mystery—is exhilarating and
fulfilling.  I leave Malice every year
energized to finish that first draft or start something new and to everyone who
attended and contributed to that feeling, I say “thank you.”
Maggie Barbieri

If I don’t need it, why do I have it?

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If I don’t need it, why do I have it?
If you checked this blog two weeks ago and I wasn’t there, I have a very good excuse. 
I forgot.
Because I was having my gall bladder out the next day.
See?  A reasonable excuse, but an excuse nonetheless.
Back in December, I started noticing that certain foods were becoming problematic for me:  short ribs, butter, peanut butter, dairy in general, to name a few.  (The gall bladder is responsible for digesting fats, so from that list, you would guess that I needed to stay away from those particular foods.)  I would have what are termed “gall bladder attacks” which amounted to a very dull, but very persistent back pain that I couldn’t get rid of by walking, laying down, marching up stairs, or anything else that you would think might move whatever it was to wherever it needed to go.  I knew, from frequent CT scans that I endure as part of my long-ago cancer diagnosis, that my gall bladder was “sludgy,” a term that means “nice and ripe to house numerous gall stones”.  Although I knew at some point my gall bladder would erupt in furious objection to the housing of the gall stones, I figured I would wait until that happened until I actually did something about it.
It happened on December 20, 2011.
I came back from a lovely walk, this being the most mild winter we had seen in the Northeast in memory, and decided that what sounded good was a big glass of water followed by two pieces of toast slathered with peanut butter.  (I know.  Stupid.)  Within minutes, I was prone on the bed, crying, screaming for hubby to take me to the Emergency Room.  I had two kids without drugs, had a major cancer surgery seven years ago that left me held together by one hundred staples, and now I was screaming for him to take me to the ER?  He knew that this had to be bad.
I called my oncologist, the lovely Dr. P., and cried to her that I was dying.
“It’s your gall bladder!” she screamed into the phone, trying desperately to talk me off the proverbial ledge. 
“It’s much worse!” I cried.  “It’s like I’m dying! Or having a heart attack!”
She got a nurse walking by to join in the chorus.  “It’s your gall bladder! Get to the ER!”
So off I went. 
You know how you hear a noise in your car and take it to the mechanic, only for the mechanic to say, “I don’t hear it”?  Well, that’s what happened.  By the time I got to the ER, all was well, I was not in pain, and I was starving.  The gall stone had passed, although I had never seen it come out.  But you go to the ER, you don’t get to eat and you get tests—a lot of tests.  And the tests came back with a positive diagnosis. I was having my gall bladder out.  When was the sixty-four thousand dollar question.
I guess this is the point in the story where I tell you how much I hate surgery.  (Does anyone like it outside of the women in the Real Housewives’ franchises on Bravo?)  I told the doctor that I needed to wrap my brain around this—which in Maggie-speak means “I’m going to put this off as long as I can”—and left the ER.  I started polling people who had had their gall bladders out, who knew someone who had their gall bladder out, who knew surgeons who performed gall bladder surgery.  All returned with the same conclusion:  gall bladder surgery was a “piece of cake.” They all actually used the exact same cliché to describe a procedure in which four holes are punched in your stomach, with a camera and a long pair of scissors being inserted into two of the holes, and the gall bladder being pulled out the third.  (I’m still not sure what the fourth hole is for.  All I know is the belly button I went in with doesn’t look like the belly button I came out with.)  Everyone assured me that you don’t really need your gall bladder; it’s vestigial.  I went into the surgery thinking “piece of cake,” “vestigial,” “don’t need it…”
And woke up to excruciating pain.  This was the “piece of cake” that everyone referred to?  Liars, one and all.  I awoke to a recovery room nurse screaming in my ear so loudly that I thought maybe she had mistaken me for a patient who had just received cochlear ear implants.
“MRS. BARBIERI!!!  WHERE ARE YOU???”
Where am I, I wanted to ask?  Where are you?  Because that’s where I am.  I wisely bit my sore tongue (the one that had just minutes earlier had an endoscope atop it) and said, “NYU.”
“AND WHAT YEAR IS IT???”
“Why are you yelling at me?” was the reasonable question, but I responded with “2012.” Satisfied, she went back to writing notes in my chart, probably to the tune of “patient doesn’t do a good job shaving her legs” or something like that.  It was ten o’clock in the morning.  I was sent home at three.  This is what is called “ambulatory” or “outpatient surgery.”  I was neither ambulatory nor well enough to be an outpatient but home I went where I spent the next several days in a painkiller haze, watching episode after episode of “Curb Appeal: The Block” and dreaming about what Chez Barbieri might look like if I actually had the inclination to go outside and plant anything.
So, I’m rambling.  Those are the aftereffects of general anesthesia.  (Just ask my extended family.  They showed up for Easter dinner—the one I invited them to— only to have me ask them why they were there.) But let’s put it this way:  any thoughts of having my tummy tucked, my chin fat sucked out, or my eyes lifted are now gone the way of the wonky gall bladder, never to be seen or thought of again.  Because the piece of cake that is supposedly laparoscopic surgery is anything but.  As a friend who once had it said to me, “Mags, they poke holes in your stomach.  Trust me. That’s not pain free.”  I guess I’m glad I was lied to, though, as it saved me months of agitation over something that is now safely in the rearview mirror.
I’ll just have to remember this next time I think about having a facelift.
Maggie Barbieri

Your “Signature” Look

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I was fortunate enough to be visiting my family this weekend and one sibling was bemoaning the fact that her daughter, my adorable niece, was exhibiting some very strong opinions about fashion, particularly with regard to what she’d like to wear.  Apparently, there are stores that cater to the under-ten set yet the items that they offer are really not acceptable to a lot of parents, their tendency to sell more mature-looking items the bane of many mother or father’s existence.  Of course, at seven, like my niece, you want to wear what everyone else is wearing and if everyone is wearing sweatshirts that hint at a Flashdance flashback, all the better.  But some of us feel that our children exposing too much skin may not be the best idea, so we argue and cajole and yes, sometimes all out fight to get them to wear what we feel is age appropriate.
It is times like these that I look back fondly at the twelve years I wore a uniform.  No muss, no fuss.  Everyone looked the same, save for some personalization that manifested itself in shorter skirts or sweaters tied around necks, but really, when all was said and done, there was not a lot you could do to “mix it up” with the school uniform.
I tried talking some sense into my niece but she wasn’t having any of it.  My advice to her, which may have been about ten years too soon was “develop your signature look and stick with it.”  She responded by staring blankly at me and asking if there were any more cupcakes, an entirely suitable response for someone who is a long way away from seeing the value in adopting her aunt’s style, which is comprised of the following:
Winter:  Black turtleneck/Jeans
Summer:  Colorful tunic/Jeans
It’s foolproof.
I cannot follow the fashions.  First, I’m almost fifty.  (Almost.)  Second, I’m tall.  And third, I am what one might call “zaftig” but which I call “athletically built”—that is, if athletes had slight paunches, flabby arms, and big busts.  So, skinny jeans, tight tee shirts, and anything midriff-bearing is out.  So are mini skirts, sleeveless shirts, and anything with a v-neck.  (Remember, when you stare down into the depths of your cleavage, it looks much worse than in reality.  But who among us can’t resist looking down into our cleavage?)  I have found that sticking to my adult version of a uniform works much better and helps me avoid fashion mistakes that are almost certainly, inevitably caught on film, posted on Facebook and there for all eternity.
Subjecting my niece to my thoughts about fashion got me thinking, though:  do you follow the trends, getting new items of clothing or new pairs of shoes based on what is going on in the world of fashion, or like me, stick to a “signature” look? 
Maggie Barbieri

Save the Snark, Please the Writer

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I much prefer watching the Red Carpet coverage to watching the Oscars, which to me, are comprised of a bunch of self-congratulatory, long-winded speeches about “craft” and “the work” intermingled with some songs, some dancing, and a few movie clips. All of the talk about how hard acting is makes it seem like going to a far-off land and pretending to be someone else is really taxing. (In case I didn’t make it clear, I don’t think it is.) But I do love the red carpet and watching bone-thin actresses step from giant, gas-guzzling limousines and try to navigate their way down a carpet in shoes that are too high for any human to walk successfully in. Watching this year, however, I was struck by how much parading the red carpet is like writing.

I can imagine a young actress spending months before the show meeting with stylists, thinking about how her hair should look, dealing with the age-old debate of smoky eye versus dewy glow, and finally arriving at the big day where dress, hair, and make-up come together in a flawless combination of sophistication and age appropriateness. Then, she walks the red carpet, not knowing that behind the scenes, away from the place where someone asks her “who are you wearing?” there are a gaggle of D-listers sitting high atop the venue watching her every move and critiquing every decision she and her stylist have made. “Really, Vera Wang? She’s far too young for that!” or “I would have gone with the smoky eye” or “Her hair is flawless but much more appropriate for someone like Helen Mirren or Cate Blanchett.” It is something that happens to all of us at some point: we think we look great, but come to find out that maybe…not so much.

Fortunately for those of us outside of the business of show, we don’t have perennial harpy Joan Rivers (love her comedy, hate her fashion commentary) or cotton-candy-haired Kelly Osbourne dedicating an entire hour to our fashion missteps on a cable television show. Many times, they love an actress’ dress, proclaiming it a “red carpet favorite” but other times, they hate it, pointing out where she zigged when she should have zagged. I find myself either nodding along, agreeing with what they have to say, or disagreeing vociferously. After all, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It is subjective. My “red carpet favorite” is someone else’s giant dud.

We don’t have Joan Rivers and Kelly Osbourne. What we do have as writers, however, are online reviews and the like, the ones that make us feel like an ingénue walking our first red carpet every time a book comes out, pointing out our flaws, writing missteps, and plot holes that we didn’t know even existed.

It got me thinking about the writing process–getting ready for the “read carpet” perhaps?–something not dissimilar to getting ready for the red carpet. Writers spend months, sometimes years, perfecting their novel, putting a stopper in plot holes that they see, developing characters with an eye to detail and verisimilitude. Our books are read by agents, then editors, then a production person, a copyeditor, and probably a proofreader just to make sure no one missed anything along the way, confirming that our prose hemline is the right length and that our double-stick tape is holding us in where we are supposed to be held in, and let out where we need to add more depth and volume. Yet there are still a niggling problem or two that might show up, despite everyone’s best efforts. Reviewers, like Joan Rivers, will point to those problems and expose them for all the world to see. Sometimes, someone just don’t like your book, the one you spent months working on and thinking about, losing sleep when you couldn’t resolve something in your head. Other times, someone will love it. It all depends.

Thinking about this made me reflect on my own thin-skinned nature and how reading one bad review can ruin my whole day. My venue is much smaller—no red carpet here when a book comes out—but I relate to the young woman getting out of a limo, putting herself and her fashion choices on display and getting a verbal knock out from someone high up in the stands, someone who has a little familiarity with the process but who is not subjected to the same kind of scrutiny. Thinking about it reminded me that I need to remember that the whole “subjectivity” rule in that one person’s favorite dress is another’s fashion mishap. We can’t all like the same things or share the same opinion. What fun would that be? But we all must remember that most of us take to a task wholeheartedly and with all good intentions so that if you don’t like something, save the snark. Who knows? Maybe it will be you up there on the red carpet one day—literally or figuratively—and wondering if the smoky eye (or the dead body in chapter 2) was really the right choice.

Maggie Barbieri