Frank Orlando on Sex After Sixty, Sicily, The Mafia, Food and Self-Discovery

Frank Orlando guest blogs today. How might this have happened you? might ask. Okay so maybe you wouldn’t ask that. Frank found me when I was Internet dating, he “friended” me on Facebook and has been a loyal follower of this blog and then he joined the Facebook page for (Re)Making Love: a sex after sixtystory where supporters hit the “like” button to help get my memoir off the ground. Please do that for me, dear readers. But in the meantime …

Ah, sex after sixty—Frank will need to read the book to see if he’s in it. Ah, social media.

I give you Frank Orlando:

Frank Orlando was born in Cleveland, where he says, “I grew up anyway. My father moved from coast to coast, finally settling in San Clemente, California. I stayed in school until I was old enough to join the Army and spent three years followed by seven getting a college education finishing at San Diego State. With my Journalism degree, I took jobs on five newspapers in five different states before getting a job with the Coachella Valley Water District where I wrote press releases, publications and stared at the wall for 18 years. I left the desert for Vancouver, B.C., then took acting lessons in Hollywood and did extra work for two years. Bored, I left for the Monterey Peninsula where I watch waves and dream of foreign lands.”

Imagine

“Imagine,” John Lennon’s song of anarchy and freedom, got me to thinking about the belief we have in Hollywood romantic comedies and how that contrasted, as real life often does, with what happened before and after my trip to Sicily with Tamme. 

First, I have roots in Sicily. So, or Alora, as the Italians say, it was a bucket list topper. I don’t like to travel alone so I started asking ladies. Got turned down and then started asking, as a joke, every woman I talked to, emailed or was introduced to. Tamme, my nephew’s ex-wife, accepted eagerly and began sending me incentives to taking her.

She had just celebrated her 30th birthday and I would be seeing my 70th in Sicily.

Yes, yes, there were people to consult: my nephew, sister and close friends. Nephew, Sister—no apparent problem, not yet anyway. My friends, however, were universally shocked. Screw them, I thought. Eventually, most reluctantly said “Have a nice trip” whatever that means. More on this later.

Food, Sex and Rom-Coms

I have little illusions about my performance as a food critic or sexual participant. So, what follows will be a not sophisticated, but appreciator of both. The food was comfortable for me. I’m a city guy and my first taste of fresh sardines and anchovies, surprised. Moist, firm, less salty and delicious. This kept happening. The thing I discovered about the food I ate is that it was simple good and uncomplicated. Florence could be complicated, Rome as well, but here, it was just good.

There, overlooking a marina in Cinisi, 10 minutes from the airport and the site of our hotel, we got our first antipasto. I was intimidated by three different kinds of local fish, cheeses, olives. There was a fish entrée during which my jet-lagged memory fogged over, exhausted.

I had my first canola, something I had come to know as “Momma’s masterpiece.” Another Hollywood ending bites the dust. Nowhere in Sicily did I find that taste, and I came to understand that there may be treasured, ancient and secret recipes, but necessity of the moment, serendipity, availability of local resources, all change a recipe. Momma’s creations were unique to Italian influences in an early 20th century Cleveland, Ohio.

Then, I ate in Sicilian restaurants, not homes. The restaurants were neighborhood places inhabited by a few late season tourists starting at 8 p.m. and coffee bars for insomnia addled old men in mid-afternoon: my favorite time to take pictures, late afternoon as orange light warms jagged surfaces. 

Shadows, soft and a burst of light would drift through the branches ringing the church piazza and we kept coming back to this place to settle in our minds and talk about the new, old things we saw.

This, as most of this trip was, was fun. Tamme, seeming to drive like she was auditioning for a NASCAR slot, yelled in late afternoon Palermo traffic, “This is like a video game, I love it!”

My license had expired while I was in Italy and anyway, I just didn’t want to drive through the maniac traffic where believers in a better life after death steer their Vespas at you like demons bugs about to splatter on your windshield. Tamme was not intimidated having been a truck driver in recent years. Her father was a truck driver, her stepfather as well. Anyway, dying in a traffic collision is almost worth it for the misconceptions that would follow reports of mine and Tamme’s demise.

About those misconceptions. Tamme and I emailed outrageous things to each other in the weeks that preceded our trip. I have, all of my life done this. Let you shrinks figure out why. As a joke. After a while I wondered what might come of this. With an adventurous past, both well known to our friends and to unbelievers everywhere, it was natural to think something sexual was going to happen.

The package I booked included one, double bed.

Nothing happened. No, really. Nothing. Tamme announced, on the last leg of our trip that “I’d sleep more comfortably if we had two beds.” That answered all my questions and the tone was set for the trip. It wasn’t possible and we would have had to give up a wonderful view of the beach and marina—and pay 50 Euros more a night. We slept comfortably without contact for the time we were there.  So, another Hollywood ending bites the dust.

We tour Sicily

Shopping was great and interesting. Tamme, with her proud truck-driver taste, shopped low end. There were plenty of these shops in Palermo, shops not much bigger than closets selling items you’d find in a Los Angeles covered swapmeet. Bins of cheap, Chinese and Indian made bras, bangles and beads along with coffee bars, auto body shops, law offices and the occasional designer clothing store. It seemed chaotic as is much of the history of this island.

Occupying a geographic central spot in the Mediterranean Sea,

 it has been a country unto itself, then a colony of the Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Spanish, Swabian, Norman, Bourbon and whomever else had ambitions in the area. It wasn’t a part of Italy for most of this time. So many Sicilians immigrated to the U.S. that there was foolish talk of a 51st state.

We wound our way down from Cinisi to Palermo to Agrigento. a normally two-and-a half  hour drive. Tamme cut an hour off this doing “what I could never get away with in Canada.”

Did I forget to mention that? I picked Tamme up in Calgary, Canada where she lived in a house her husband left her as part of the divorce settlement. It was a chance to visit with my sister who lives in a nearby community.

Tamme didn’t have a positive image of U.S. citizens, accepting the stereotypes of loud, rude, badly dressed and aggressive geographic idiots. “Not all of them,” she diplomatically qualified. I’m not badly dressed, quiet, courteous and non-loud.  A red flag went up. Her biggest complaint, however was:  “They don’t even know we’re up here.”

Yeah, I guess a lot of us are that way, the ones with a lot of money and little time for courtesy—but hell, we’re mostly just folks with as many assholes with money as anyone in Europe, South America or, Canada.

The Mafia?

Look, I’m a movie fan, a Pacino, Brando, DiNiro fan in particular. I couldn’t go without seeing Corleone, the name for the “Godfather” family. The city itself was mostly hilly, with narrow, one lane streets beneath buildings seeming to tilting toward each other. The time was that four hour break Italians take, putting in a few, halfhearted hours afterwards followed by wine and food. We were hungry, wanted a rest from Tamme’s spilling like a flash flood through back roads that frequently degenerated to gravel.

We saw the crumbling ruins of Torre Saracen, called Soprano Castle. Throughout Italy guides told me of a temple that could become a mosque that could become a church and on and on. One conqueror would raze and build over what it couldn’t convert. These ruins could have been a victim of Allied bombing or retreating Germans, Greeks, Romans, Spanish, French, destroying anything they saw as useful to the new guys. Garabaldi, the unifier of Italy pretended to be attacking Corleone and instead took Palermo. There wasn’t anyone awake to tell us, only the ghosts of hordes of bloodthirsty soldiers who ravaged this land.

The worst, however, were the homies called the Mafia. Corleone was the home of the capo di tutti I capi, the boss of bosses Salvatore “the beast” Riina, was captured in Palermo, his successor, Bernardo “the tractor” Provenzano was captured in Corleone four years ago.

I recently read that Sicilians were throwing off the shackles of Mafia control. I find it difficult to believe. This countryside has seen millennia of brutal reprisals for any move toward cultural independence. They have a fatalism that accepts that there will always be bosses, just shut up. We saw only one sheepherder and a single shopkeeper in this village. We stopped to foolishly, touristy, take pictures of the sheep. I got out of the car to taste the white grapes across the road.  But no Mafia. Yes, the proprietor eyed us suspiciously. Yes, there were some young men lounging around this wine, gelato bar with tables outside. They faded away as we sipped the wine. I, affected by all the media Mafia attention, got more uncomfortable and left after the first glass had been drained.

The wine bar offered ugly looking deli meat, so we left looking for more appetizing places to raise my blood sugar. In the midst of all this architectural rustica, was a large hotel, restaurant. Empty, but we were seated. A wedding party was going on below us and the kitchen was open!

Tortellini

Let me say a word about tortellini, Wonderful. I didn’t see any Mafia guys, (I think) but I did see tortellini when I handed the menu back to the hostess and said with gestures, “surprise me.” The tortellini (part of the wedding feast downstairs? It would have been impolite and take more gestures than I wanted to make to ask) was served on a plate where several kinds of cheeses teamed up brilliantly, filled me and a secondi piata seemed illogical—sleep seemed the next logical step.

Ain't life grand!

So, Tamme had only Italian rock stations for company back to Cinisi.

The trip back from Sicily involved four changes of planes, lengthy to barely adequate layovers, bad sandwiches, diet coke and finally, landing in Calgary and discovering lost luggage. I was too tired to be angry about anything, so I just hugged Tamme goodbye and went to my sister’s home.

I’ve been home for a couple of weeks now and I’m getting pissed off—everybody believes me when I tell them nothing happened with Tamme.

Self-discovery?

I might end the story there except something of importance happened that I didn’t mention.

And, I made Tamme cry. It was the next to last day in Sicily and all our presents for people back home had been bought except for the rosary for her Grandmother, her Nanna.  We asked all around the church square in Cinisi, but everyone said we had to go to Palermo.

What the hell, we thought, one more shot at that bar where we had so much fun and I got wasted on the German beer there. The bar was closed, it was Sunday and we had no way of knowing when it would reopen. So, we drove around looking for a church. We found one and after a while as she fiddled with the radio dial trying to find rock music in English and navigated traffic. Eventually, she found Madonna singing about being a virgin and I said: “Y’know, Madonna played Evita in a movie.”

“Ya,” she said, “that was so wrong, Evita was white.”

“Madonna is white,” I said.

“She’s Italian, isn’t she?”

“And Italians aren’t white?

What about Spanish? Portuguese?

There was silence from Tamme. I broke the silence saying “Wow,” over and over again. When she asked why, I couldn’t hold it in. I was shocked at the depth of her cultural ignorance. I was shocked at my own reactions. Was I insulted and if I were, doesn’t that make me a racist.

This made me angry. Angry that she considered me and all Italians, non white and by definition less than her, less than a racial Nordic person.  I questioned her intelligence, her racial arrogance.

“I didn’t mean to call you a n-n-nigger,” she said sobbing, now as we merged back onto the chaotic city street.

I recoiled at the word, I think maybe Tamme did too. I had given up using that word many years ago and became militant about my son using that word. It was not a word a white person should use, I said whenever the subject came up. The word today is used to hurt someone when a white person says it. I can’t make judgments on what a black person says.

Here, hurtling down a Sicilian highway, I wasn’t going to create more of a problem than had already happened. I don’t think Tamme, or me for that matter, is an intentional racist. Not intentional, but the instinct is there and isn’t always easy to repress. It’s ironic how one’s feelings about race, one’s own ethnicity and how it is viewed by others all are different.  This also made me question my own motives in making Tamme cry. Was I beating her over the head because nothing was happening in the bedroom?  Am I that kind of person?

There were many questions about me that I wasn’t prepared to answer. Maybe I still am not prepared.

Cathryn Wellner on the risks the storyteller takes

Cathyrn Wellner graces these pages today with her guest essay. 

Here’s some background: Cathryn is part of an international network of storytellers. These courageous folk operate in the oral tradition of Homer.

For a decade, between careers as a school librarian and later as a community development consultant, Cathryn performed as a storyteller, spoke at conferences, and offered workshops in Canada, the U.S., and Europe. Initially her audiences were almost all school children.

One of Cathryn's first experiences in storytelling, for a book store audience in Rochester, New York

Gradually, she says, she began to understand the hunger we all share for stories and how deeply healing they can be and worked less with young audiences and more with adults. Cathryn tells us, “It is not an easy way to make a living, but it is profoundly satisfying, and there is no retirement age. I still perform occasionally and recently taught a session in narrative medicine to nursing students, via Webinar.”

With pleasure, with honor, with debt to her wisdom and generosity, I give you Cathryn Wellner.

Taking Risk

                                  by Cathryn Wellner

The places I am hurt most mark the places I am least tolerant, most vicious. Where I have been gravely injured and am most healed, these form the scant geography of my wisdom. Where I have never been hurt at all, where I have never lacked for resource or nurture, these are the stories I find it most difficult to perceive. ~ Joanne Arnott, “Storytelling: A Constellation” in By, For & About Women

 Writing truth

This quotation came back to me as I read Mary L. Tabor’s literate, eloquent, joyous and painful memoir, (Re)Making Love: a sex after sixty story. There were times, as I read, I realized I was holding my breath, anxious about the next revelation. I know why. Mary has worked through her pain, resolved her confusion, and risen like the Phoenix. But while she was writing the blog that became a book, she was still in the middle of it. She has told me—and you can see this for yourself in her book—that the writing process, not of catharsis, but of the creation of something ‘other’ gave her life a fullness that, she says, “only the attempt to create art can do.”

But on the page, you will still see the rawness of her journey. That journey made me look at the sore places in my own heart. In spite of the passage of years, I still have stories I am not ready to lift out of the journals and letters where they lie like ogres ready to eat my soul. Mary’s book inspires me to complete the work I need to do before I can have the courage to share them. Her book has set in motion some important healing in me. Time to take the coverings off some old wounds and let healing air onto them.

So it did not surprise me to learn that one of Mary’s readers reacted with alarm to something she read in (Re)Making Love: a sex after sixty story. No one can write that honestly and not rake fingernails over someone’s soul wounds or deepest fears. When a reader recoils because the door to her spiritual closet has been flung open, the monsters released, the writer can’t help but feel responsible. Yet if writers hold back from the searing stories, we are left alone on our perilous journeys.

Sometimes our words are daggers to another’s soul.

During my years as a traveling storyteller, I occasionally knew I’d hit the explosion button. Sometimes the story that triggered the response was so innocuous I was completely flummoxed. Other times, I knew the story was difficult but hoped my telling would lead listeners to safety.                         

Cathryn telling stories at the Belfast Yarnspinners gathering, well-known Northern Irish storyteller looking on

Early in my storytelling career, one story blew up in my face. It was the account of a child who was the butt of teasing. I thought I had dealt with my own complicated reaction to her plight. So I launched the new work with a group I figured would be receptive.

As the story unfolded, the temperature in the room changed from warm to frosty. Though the remaining stories were among my sure-fire audience pleasers, they might as well have been blocks of ice. They did nothing to thaw the room.

I’d never experienced that kind of sudden freeze. Fortunately, a friend was in the audience. We had coffee together the next day. As I shared my distress, she gently asked questions that helped me see I had not fully processed the difficult emotions the story triggered in me. I had told it too soon. The audience felt my discomfort, and it set off their alarms.

The experience taught me to do my own inner work on a story before sharing it with an audience. People are generally too polite to walk out, and they can’t put down the book and protect themselves in a performance setting. I learned to hold onto my stories until I no longer relived the pain each time I told them.

Going public with pain

With that lesson in mind I was horrified when, years later, one of my storytelling students invited me to a one-woman show. She was inviting everyone she knew to hear the story of the years of her father’s sexual abuse. She had rented a hall and baked cookies.

I was mortified but could think of no gentle way of refusing to come. She wanted me to see what she had done with what she had learned in the workshops. I wondered if she had been absent when I talked about the importance of not using the audience as a crying towel.

The hall was packed. She set the scene and then spun a story of survival and triumph so magical I still get shivers when I think about it. She was not a victim. She carried no guilt. She was a powerful woman who had experienced the horrors of degradation but emerged whole and healthy. When the last words of her performance died away, the audience rose spontaneously in a standing ovation.

We cannot control others’ responses.

                                                                                                        Cathryn sharing stories in Kalispell, Montana

Most of my own challenging storytelling experiences, and those of colleagues, have not had such straightforward causes and effects. One colleague was telling a story to a group of school children when the death of a parent in an old folktale sent a little girl into spasms of grief. The storyteller decided to retire that particular story from her repertoire.   

Some time after the incident, my friend learned the child’s mother had died only months before. The father had never talked with his daughter about their loss. Instead, he had walled off his emotions and tried to give her a normal childhood.                                                   

                                                                           

The child felt she had to protect her father from her own sorrow so never mentioned her mother—until the story ripped off her protective scarring. The girl’s teacher had spoken with the father and learned the story had been a key. Father and daughter used it to unlock and share their grief.

The truth is, beyond setting our own internal house in order and trying to act responsibly, we cannot control the impact our stories have, whether they are written or told. And we must tell hard stories, must allow our readers or listeners the catharsis of hearing how others have survived painful experiences.

When our best efforts are rejected

For the most part, storytellers and writers are not privy to whatever it is that unsettles our listeners or readers. We only occasionally learn we have caused pain, and that shatters us.

When Mary shared one reader’s troubling response to her eloquent book, I wrote back: “The woman may not be able to articulate what scared her so much that she had to run away screaming. Perhaps she’s not yet healed from some relationship or is involved in one that’s on shaky grounds. Maybe she’s held captive by religious teachings she is afraid to question, in case the answers might crumble her world.

“Whatever the case, she’s taken her own anxieties and projected them onto you, in a way that triggers the deepest fear in any writer—that what we have to say is unworthy and that perhaps that means we are unworthy. That you’ve had so much positive response to your splendid book gets placed on one side of the balance. On the other side is the heavy stone of her reaction. No one’s immune from the bashing that does to the spirit, even someone as accomplished, talented, open, and intelligent as you.”

Wisdom from one who came before

In her 1938 book, If You Want to Write, Barbara Ueland wrote, “I think that when people condemn what we do, they are symbolically destroying us. Hence the excruciatingly painful feeling, though to our common sense it seems foolish and self-centered to feel so bad.”

When we release our story-children, the offspring of our creative imaginations, into the world, we become sensitive plants, recoiling from unkind touch. It is then we need the words of Barbara Ueland:

 “What comes truly from me is true, whether anybody believes it or not. It is my truth.”

Read Cathryn’s blogs Catching Courage  (links here to Story Route & Crossroads)

Follow Cathryn on Twitter 

Find Cathryn on Facebook 

The grace and beauty that is JAKI SCARCELLO

With great honor, I introduce you today to Jaki Scarcello. This extraordinary and beautiful woman has written the book Fifty & Fabulous! The Best Years of a Woman's Life.  

Jaki tells us how to age, how to live deeply and fully, how to find grace with age.

Early in the book Jaki quotes Joan Erickson, the wife of psychologist Eric Erickson. On her 94^th birthday Joan said,

Our bodies wear out, our thoughts come more slowly. But our life cycles are our most creative effort. We can’t ever not be in them, right? The struggle is to try and obtain a sense of participation in your life the whole way through.

Jaki is a living, breathing example of this spirit. She embodies these words in the way she interacts with the world, with everyone she meets and with the word, as you will see below in her guest essay. You will be lucky to meet her. And meet her you may:

Here are two opportunities, coming up September 26 in Los Angeles and October 7 in Toronto.

Jaki is present in her life and she has become present in mine. Here is what she has written, a gift to me beyond measure. With my thanks, I offer you Jaki Scarcello:

Ode to Honesty and Friendship

This week I read (Re)Making Love: a sex after sixty story by Mary L Tabor.


I say that as if it were an admission of a great event in my life. Read on and judge for yourself.


I committed myself to devouring (Re)Making Love in one seating, in the middle of the night locked in my home office tower after a particularly horrid fight with my husband. Well, all fights are horrid to me. I am a marital pacifist and that is either a deep psychological dysfunction or a very good reason to want to be married to me.

I had wept upon the floor of that office for hours until I was nauseous and my arms and hips ached with tension and the resistance of the fine bamboo beneath me. Then I thought, Enough, no sleep is coming here. So I turned on the light and opened Mary’s book. Such strange, cosmically directed timing to read about love found, bruised and stretched to its limit and then . . .oops I can’t tell you the ending . . . while I am weeping from the very real possibility that I  have lost again at love. In that dark night of my marital soul I entertained the thought that perhaps I must try to begin again. I prayed for help, preferably in the form of a divine messenger, and guess what? My God sent Mary L Tabor.

Mary is the angel of honesty and I am in awe of her ability to run nude across the pages of her writing. Mary calls on us, her readers, to participate in that honesty. If you don’t want to be part of the play, go read something “safer.” This book is not safe. It is a deeply moving adventure in which you hold Mary’s hand and she holds yours but all the while she is leading you to what I described in an e-mail to her as, “a land that I entered when I read your book because I am quite sure that the honesty and vulnerability which I am displaying in this communication is not the culture of the land that I have inhabited until now.”

I wept with Mary, I laughed with her, and I cooked with her and all of these I will do again and again as her words come back to me over time.

I have never read a book quite like this. I made a friend through those artfully crafted and shaped words. Mary quotes ee cummings, a fitting mentor, as she moves us about the pages of her book in the particular rhythm of her life. I am presumptuous enough to say that I really do feel that this person, Mary L Tabor, is my friend, for I have been privileged enough to see her revealed in her writing, revealed in ways, which quite frankly women I have known for years have never revealed themselves to me.

But there is nothing off-putting about this revelation. I am not shocked or thinking, “Well, Mary dear, that perhaps is something we do not share outside the home.”

I feel privileged, honored and inspired to find a new honesty in my own writing, indeed in my own life.

As the sun came up and I had finished reading (Re)Making Love, I sat at my desk and wrote to Mary. I cannot share all the words of that email here because that would give away the ending of Mary’s book, heaven forbid, but it would not be an exaggeration to say I exposed my broken heart to the screen before me and taking Mary’s lead I held little back in the story I told my new friend.

It seemed the least I could do to thank her for (Re)Making Love. 

What's your secret weapon?

When you think no one is there, someone answers and how! That someone turns out to be the incredible Jane Friedman.

Don’t know her? Let me introduce her to you and tell you what she did for me! If you are a blogger, writer and care about the creative process, you’ll want to follow her on Twitter.

Jane is currently the strategic director of Writer’s Digest, where in 2001 she took over as their managing editor. She is a force with her award winning blog There Are No Rules. She knows all there is to know about the publishing industry, about marketing, and she cares about each writer she meets or discovers. I found her through one of her bloggers, the wonderful Darrelyn Saloom. Here’s her latest blog entry on meeting the fab memoir writer Mary Karr along with this terrific photo she posted of a Window Dressing on Royal Street. Hope it’s okay to borrow that photo here, Darrelyn, from your home in The Big Easy.

Somehow I manage to get Jane to follow me on Twitter and somehow, the gifts that come in life continue to surprise, she decides to interview me about my memoir (Re)Making Love: a sex after sixty story. She wants to know about starting late, about the blog to book, about the new-to-the-game publisher, 3ones.

Read the interview with Jane.

What follows are more retweets on Twitter of the interview link than I can count and two bloggers who blog about me on their sites. Let me introduce you now to Belette who writes about me in the entry entitled “I am mad for older women with white hair.” No that’s not me in the photo: That gorgeous model, still working and beyond fabulous! Belette is a psychotherapist who blogs: thus, I guess, her choice of anonymity. She’s been named one of the top ten blogs for Francophiles and is rated as one of the top 15 memoir and psychology blogs.

But, as the French Fry cutter salesman keeps saying in my book, “Wait, there’s more!” I discover through a friend that another blogger has posted an entry about me. Debbie Ridpath Ohi writes a fascinating blog of “Daily Diversions for Writers” and chooses, bless you, Debbie, to post about me.

And then in my e-mail I discover that DCguide.com wants to link with me.

I believe in the goodness of the world. I believe as Martin Buber so wisely tells us, “All real living is meeting.”

I must have done something good

Do you recall that line from the song in The Sound of Music? That’s how I feel because The Foodinista found me! Her website gives me fantastic recipes, the chicest of the chic ideas for home and fashion—even if I can’t afford that gorgeous vintage watch or fit into those skinny jeans. She cooks, she nests, she loves and she READS! Who knew?

Who knew also that she turns out to be a well-known contributing editor for Bon Appetít ? Read her candor and her story along with a great recipe for Buffalo Wings here. She writes a wine column for Bon Appetít among other things and she’s recently become the blogger for Herman Miller Lifework.

Herman Miller Lifework keeps the gorgeous design of this incredible artist alive. I sit in his office chair to write and, truly, it is the best chair I have ever written in—an Aeron Chair—after the foam in my old chair not only deteriorated but gave me a rash where no one wants one. But I digress.

And that’s what TheFoodinista does as well in the best sense of that word: She doesn’t follow the original plan. She invents, she creates, she discovers.

How else could I have ended up as one of her entries? She’s not exactly doing book reviews. But she read my memoir and said, “I loved loved loved the book. Your memoir is like a breath of fresh air, air that has been liberally peppered with Nietzsche.”

What a gift: She interviewed me with the coolest questions ever! If you’d like to know whether La Perla is the best revenge or what I think is the great seduction dish of all time, click interview and find out. Everything on TheFoodnista’s site is gorgeously illustrated. I think the book must be coming soon! Or should be!!

All I can say is, I must have done something good.

How the book came to be

My publisher has written a beautiful description of how the book came to be. Go here to read it. I sometimes wonder why I write, but I write. In the solitude of the metaphorical attic—yes, there was once a real attic—the writing is a solitary act and the joys come in the room of my own where I work—small but precious like flakes of snow on a midnight walk. When someone who believes in the book speaks from his heart about it, my heart comes to understand that the attempt to make art—flawed as that effort might be—gives meaning to the narrative of my life where no such narrative is really possible. Thus the impossible becomes possible. Ah, the paradox! Ah, the search for meaning!

And here I am being interviewed about the book:

(Re)Making Love: A Sex After Sixty Story from Mary Tabor on Vimeo.

I'll close today, in thanks to the many authors who are alive and well and appear in my book and who generously gave their permission, with brief quotes from their startling work:

From philosopher, film expert, and insightful reader Wendy Doniger's The Bedtrick:

You go to bed with someone you know, and when you wake up you discover that it was someone else—another man or another woman, or a woman instead of a man, or a god, or a snake or a foreigner or alien, or a complete stranger or your own wife or husband, or your mother or father. This is what Shakespearean scholars call ‘the bedtrick’—sex with a partner who pretends to be someone else.

From the poet for our time Dana Gioia's Interrogations at Noon:

. . . and watching her undress across the room.
oblivious of him, watching as her slip
falls soundlessly and disappears in the shadow.

But what he watches here is his own life.
He is the missing man, the loyal husband.
sitting in the room he craves to enter . . .

From the poet of love, life and life's questions Robert Hass's Human Wishes:

In “Privilege of Being,” Hass talks of the angels up above in the unshaken ether and crystal of human longing as they watch those making love in that awkward pose of ecstasy and he reminds that life has limits, that people die young, fail at love, /fail of their ambitions.

From the poet philosopher Hélène Cixous's Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing:

Crossing the frontiers to the other world without transition, at the stroke of the signifier, this is what dreams permit us to do and why, if we are dreamers, we love dreams so much. It’s the cancellation of opposition between inside and outside . . . .

The words of these wise souls grace my book and the permission given for the use of that work was given graciously and with deep thanks on being quoted. I learned from these authors how goodness operates in the world and that what one withholds gets lost, that what one gives enriches the world.

This flower for Doniger, Gioia, Hass and Cixous and for all who visit this page:


Mary

Here’s to the game of poetry and life!

I have learned that, sure, life throws unhittable curve balls—and that if you keep goin' to bat, sure, you’ll strike out. But if you watch and listen, your body and mind and soul will learn.

I have learned that it's never to late to find love—or oneself.

And so we partied not just for this book—though it was a book party!—but for the writing and the hope it offers all of us who sit alone in our attics: the writing is a solitary act and the joys come—small but precious like flakes of snow on a midnight walk.

The book can be found here (Kindle version still not ready: will let you know!): (Re)Making Love, the Book

Here are a few photos from the party!

Jessica DeSoria Dalton designed posters with the book cover in the background, cover design by Zaara The quote from the book: I had been married twenty-one years when D. announced, “I need to live alone.” Oh so Greta Garbo. There was absolutely no noise.




I'm ready and waiting:

The poster that sits behind me quotes from the book: I would have dreamt all this because kitchens and men and new men and old ones and getting old and needing repair, and Viking stoves, and big-chested refrigerators are all about love despite what your stomach tells you. I knew this the way I knew that my kitchen was going, going, gone because I think somewhere deep down I knew that D. didn’t love me anymore.



And this poster quotes: I have looked for my father in every man I’ve dated during the last three years—the years of separation. I sensed him one Saturday night in the expert on eastern European economics with big ears like my father’s, knew he might kiss me.

Here's a photo of Sarah Krouse with me and Colletta, manager of McCormick&Schmick's where the partying happened. Sarah has given her heart and soul to this book, worked as editor, as publicist, as manager, as teacher and shrink! She’s the smartest writer ever to walk into my classroom. And boy can she write. But she’ll also rent zipcars, drink when it’s too late, ride her bike home in the rain, come over when I need her. Drive me to readings. And she works 24-7 as a reporter at the Washington Business Journal. If you think a 64-year-old and a 22-year-old, former student cannot be soulful and true friends: Think again!

And then the partying began: The stylists at Salon Revive have been with me from the get-go. I’ve cried in their chairs while getting my hair done and told them more than I should have! But they don’t know the half of it. That other half is in the book. Thank you, ladies for the artistry of hair and the art of listening! And from the book: Hair and its length in women indicates sexual availability. Think about all the women you’ve known who cut their hair after they have a child. Oh sure, they say they cut it because they don’t have time anymore and there is truth to that assertion: They don’t! Or think about religious traditions including mine that require hair to be cut off or covered once a woman has married.


And folks from Ella's Pizza came!

The Alex's from Kalorama Road where the old lady of a house we sold still sits:

Mark and Sophia!

Howard from Baltimore; and there's Helen too.

Mark with the book:

The fabulous artist Maria Panas

Wendy, Lars, Austin and Tyler:

Sarah and the two Allisons sell books!

Goodnight moon!

What's it all about, Alfie?

Yes, you are invited to the book party: see below. But maybe you'd like to know what this book is about?


Here you go, the publisher's book description:

Fresh, quirky and delightful, (Re)Making Love: A Sex After Sixty Story, is brutally honest while giving hope that passion doesn’t need to end after a certain age. Tabor takes the reader from Washington, DC to Missouri to Australia and eventually to Paris, a visit that offers a stunning surprise—one that changed the author’s life.

Tabor had been married for twenty-one years when her husband announced to her, “I need to live alone.” Already grief stricken by the deaths of her mother, sister and then father, the news threw Tabor into a tailspin of impetuous acts, the good, the bad and the foolish.

In this deeply personal memoir, Tabor wholeheartedly shares her journey, all after age sixty, proving it’s never too late to find love—and oneself.

Readers will find hope in a story that gives new meaning to romantic comedy. (Photos included.)

And, the book is now available in paperback, for the iPad, the Sony Reader or as a pdf here: (RE)Making Love)

The Kindle version will be ready soon. Start-up problems with that version, though the photos look great: the publisher had to fix the indents for the text. I will let you know when it's ready for your Kindle.

To all my followers: You have been on one helluva journey with me. If you live in D.C. or nearby, come celebrate with me:

When: June 25, 5:30 p.m. to 9 p.m
Where: McCormick & Schmick's, 901 F Street, NW, Gallery Place and Metro Center Metro stops, Valet Parking
What: beer, wine and food (seafood and more!)
Why: Meet the writer, stay for a minute or hang!
Who: Invite your friends, children welcome!

The Book Is Out!

Heavens to Betsy, the book is out and ready for purchase. Go here (Re)Making Love: A Sex After Story to get the paperback, the eBook for iPad, Sony Reader, or if you don't have either of these and want to read the book on your computer: the pdf. Publisher is working on the Kindle version. That will be up on Amazon and in the publisher's link for the book soon: probably by Sunday or Monday.



And if you're in town on June 25, come to the book party:

When: June 25, 5:30 p.m. to 9 p.m
Where: McCormick & Schmick's, 901 F Street, NW, Gallery Place and Metro Center Metro stops, Valet Parking
What: beer, wine and food (seafood and more!)
Why: Meet the writer, stay for a minute or hang!
Who: Invite your friends, children welcome!

Click on the links to read a review and an interview. With thanks to Randall Brown and Anne Willkomm—she wrote the review and asked the q.'s—I am in the world of When wishing still did some good.

The first pre-publication review of (RE)Making Love: A Sex After Sixty Story is here: Review. An interview with me about the process of writing, family reaction and other personal stuff is here, too, Interview.

The Book Party

You are invited to the book party for (Re)Making Love: A Sex After Sixty Story : Walk-ins welcome: tell your friends: this is a drop-in party: feel free to come for drinks and a great bite or two or more of food-- it's a party!




When: June 25, 5:30 p.m. to 9 p.m
Where: McCormick & Schmick's, 901 F Street, NW, Gallery Place and Metro Center Metro stops, Valet Parking
What: beer, wine and food (seafood and more!)
Why: Meet the writer, stay for a minute or hang!
Who: Invite your friends, children welcome!

Click on the links to read a review and an interview. With thanks to Randall Brown and Anne Willkomm—she wrote the review and asked the q.'s—I am in the world of When wishing still did some good.

The first pre-publication review of (RE)Making Love: A Sex After Sixty Story is here: Review. An interview with me about the process of writing, family reaction and other personal stuff is here, too, Interview.

The book goes on sale: June 16. To be the first to get the book, sign up here: 3ones, Inc. is the publisher that chose it.

When wishing still did some good

I guess this falls in the category of “seeing is believing.” The first pre-publication review of (RE)Making Love: A Sex After Sixty Story is here: Flash Fiction. An interview with me about the process of writing, family reaction and other personal stuff is here, too, Flash Fiction.

Click on the links to read the review and the interview but also know that this is a great site: lots of stuff about writing and in particular Flash Fiction. With thanks to Randall Brown and Anne Willkomm—she wrote the review—I am in the world of When wishing still did some good.



Cover design by Zaara.

And we have a publication date: June 15. To be the first to get the book, sign up here: 3ones, Inc. is the publisher that chose it. I have rewritten the memoir; edited the galleys: so here we go . . .

Poet Ravi Shankar and the world in his words

In Ravi Shankar’s new slim book of poems Seamless Matter: Thirty Stills, published by OHM Editions and available through Rain Taxi, he begins with an epigraph from Wallace Stevens’ poem “Description Without Place”:

Description is not revelation. It is not
The thing described, nor false facsimile.

It is an artificial thing that exists,
In its own seeming , plainly visible.

Shankar illuminates the stunning quality of the work to follow with that quote. As the world in his eye shines in the detail of the word, he reminds us that the word is metaphor and the word creates a world of its own, plainly visible. I choose here my favorite poem of the collection to show you how in this collection he brings together the keen eye that provides a world unto itself with the ruminations of the mind, how he reveals with restraint the feeling that can pulse from the world he observes, and, yes, creates. All the poems are held in the tight frame of twelve lines (four stanzas, each three lines):

The Well

Granite-willed, a wall encloses the well
where a rusty bucket teeters on a hook,
its bottom blooming with algae patches.

Years since anyone lowered the bucket
or there was drinkable water, yet as mute
testament to another time, a marker

of those who once tread the field among
cattle and square bales of hay, no shrine
would better suffice than this old tool

burrowed though topsoil, loam and sand
to tap an underground stream: whatever
we were and are now, such water knows.

With the turn in the last lines: “…whatever/ we were and are now, such water knows,” Shankar takes the observed detail and places it into the framework of a human world with limits and a seamless world of matter where all we are or wish to be is known, taken in, submerged. Here thought and detail come together to create the plainly visible detail in the humility of existence and its limits.

Aptly, Shankar asks us to take our lead from Stevens who in 1943 describes the role of the poet in the essay “The Figure of the Youth as Virile Poet”: “In philosophy we attempt to approach truth through reason. Obviously this is a statement of convenience. If we say that in poetry we attempt to approach truth through the imagination, this too, is a statement of convenience. We must conceive of poetry as at least the equal of philosophy.”(1) He then confirms that he is, in fact, creating his own world: “Summed up our position at the moment is that the poet must get rid of the hieratic in everything that concerns him and must move constantly in the direction of the credible. . . . He creates his unreal out of what is real.”(2)

As to whether Shankar and I would agree on my use of Stevens here, I’ll await his comment.

In the meantime, I urge you, dear readers, to find and read this collection of stunning images that will make you think and think again. And what more can we ask of the poet?



1. Wallace Stevens, The Necessary Angel (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1951), pp. 41-42.
2. Ibid., p. 58.

The Book Cover!

Here is the book cover, designed by Kittenchops.com. Book is coming soon: I've proofed the galleys, am ever so close. Take a look:

Best Way to Choose

As those of you who follow me here know, I have a book coming out entitled (Re)Making Love: A Sex After Sixty Story. New Cover soon by the fabulous Zaara who is now doing heart-opening work for a children's hospital! You will see the new cover here and at my publisher's site: 3ones, Inc.. I am a writer interested in the bemusing eBook marketplace and will talk more about that soon on a blog that is not live yet but that the imaginative, innovative Kelly Abbott, CEO of 3ones, Inc., will make live soon. And I'll review eBooks on that site and discuss the state of publishing from a writer's point of view.

I have written an intro for that part of my writing life and want to let my followers know about that among other things that will unfold both there and here.

I care about the willed word. What is the best way to choose? Here’s my answer:

Choose implies alternative. Think about it and we’re right there with Adam and Eve choosing to eat or not to eat that apple. There we are right into the questions of everything we do. We know they shouldn’t have: Every time we choose we’re stuck with them in shoulda, woulda, coulda.

And it all begins with a word.

Shakespeare never lets us forget how powerful the word is. His fool in Twelfth Night, Feste the jester when accused by Maria, Olivia’s lady-in-waiting: My lady will hang thee for thy absence, answers, Let her hang me. He that is well-hanged … . The fool, who is anything but, shows us what a word can do: end your life or flaunt your power.

Emerson says the “word, if traced to its root, is found to be borrowed from some material appearance. Right means straight, wrong means twisted … The whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind.”

Should we choose to speak, to love, to eat or not to eat, to be or not to be—the words we choose define us.

I argue that that every word is a metaphor—and all we mean or wish to mean.

So choose carefully.

I will too.

Update on the book and the publisher!

I am breathless at the moment as Kelly Abbott of 3ones, Inc. is now in the iPad bookstore and has sent me early galleys of what the book Sex After Sixty (New title for the paperback and e-book to be announced here soon!) will look like when bought from Steve Jobs' new and glorious gizmo. Kelly has already done an amazing job: the art work by Kittenchops looks gorgeous and the book turns its pages as if you are holding a hard copy in your hand. The full color e-book is a sight to behold.

Can't wait, here, dear readers. And will keep you posted on progress. Feel like a chip of spring about to flower.

Full of hope here,

Mary

How writing brought me through

Wanna know? Again, I lift the curtain on the writing process: go here and read www.Sharewik.com

Update on Blog-to-Be-Book

Dear Readers,

I have completed the final edit of Sex After Sixty and sent the manuscript to Kelly Abbott of 3ones, Inc. on Valentine’s Day—Yes, I am an incurable romantic. I want to let you, my readers, who have been a sea of belief for me, know what I have done to my memoir.

I re-read and edited from the beginning, what has been a journey of discovery, to ensure that the memoir reads as one organic whole. In essence, I rewrote the memoir and revised and added a brief new ending that closes with one last sentence—not here on the blog—that for me “says it all.” More photos will appear in the e-book, including two by the professional photographer Andy Duback and that appear with his permission. These changes will be in the book.

If you have been reading all along, I guess you could say I lifted the curtain of creation by writing a memoir “live.” You watched me live this story, uncover it in pieces and often in fear. But the story has come to a place where it has a narrative arc. The blog itself was not and at this moment even with much re-ordering, does not operate with that kind of narrative control that a writer eventually imposes on any story she tells. That has been my task since the last post, “Lost and Found.”

I am not going to go back and change the blog. It stands for now in its imperfection as the history of how this book came to be.

Once the book is ready, I will let you know. And I will update you here on related events, including interviews that are in the works.

In debt to all who have come here and may come, if I am lucky, as time goes by,

Mary

Update and News! Sex After Sixty will be a book!

Dear Readers,

I have news and you to thank for it! Sex After Sixty has been discovered by the e-book publisher 3ones. Kelly Abbott, 3ones CEO, says (honestly, I hope I’m not dreaming and as all of you know, I am prone to dreaming while awake.):

“Mary has written a memoir of the highest quality. Her experiences and the way she brings them to us remind us why we bother to read in the first place: empathy is better than callousness, trust more rewarding than cynicism, adventure food for the soul. We are proud to publish Mary’s book and can only hope to find other adventurous, trusting and empathetic souls to bring into the 3ones family.”

I am still editing the memoir that I am living but "Lost and Found" is the end of the book. That won’t stop me from blogging: I am so attached to you who have been on this difficult journey of discovery with me. It is you, dear readers, who made the book happen. It is you, dear readers, whom I hold in my heart.

I will write a formal acknowledgment page and do that soon, but for now, I want you to know that this blog—soon-to-be-book! Thank you, Kelly Abbott—would never have happened if, oddly enough, D. had not left me and sent me on my journey.

Sex After Sixty would never have happened if Sarah Hammerschlag, my daughter, the philosopher and professor at Williams College, whose book The Figural Jew will be published by University of Chicago Press in May 2010 (hurray! And it is brilliant.) and her husband, the philosopher and professor at University of Chicago, Ryan Coyne, had not suggested that I write about my journey while I lived it. They said, “Blog,” while I wept, and I did. They wrote the first line of the blog: The title! I am in their debt forevermore for this, but more, indeed, for their incomparable love.

I thank my son Ben Hammerschlag, who is the owner and CEO of Epicurean Wines (Here’s one rec: if you haven’t tried his personally designed wine Woop Woop, do so—a fabulous bottle of fine red wine for an unbelievably low price) and who spent many hours on the phone with me—as did my daughter and son-in-law—when the separation from D. happened, and who, as I write about in “Oz” in these pages, flew me to Australia where he owns a vineyard so that I could rest and recover and think about the state of my life. He is an incomparable man. I am blessed to know him.

From my heart, this thank you to my children, Sarah, Ben and Ryan comes.

A special thank you to my grandson Jericho. Jericho at age 15 gave me advice that I will talk about more at a later time. Jericho is wise beyond his years. He is the son of Chris who held my hand when his father left me—what an unbelievable man Chris is. His wife Jessica and her daughter Madisson have stood by me, have been steadfast and true. And, believe it or not, the whole clan in Iowa stood by me, with a special salute here to Retha and Macel, who wrote me when the going was so rough and I didn’t ever think I would recover.

I could never have written this memoir if I’d not gone to University of Missouri-Columbia as a visiting writer where I met the incredible writer and deeply empathic soul Marly Swick. Marly has been in my corner from the get-go. I made a friend for life and that alone is worth everything.

Sarah Krouse, whom I once taught fiction writing to at George Washington University, taught me everything I know about blogging. She is a brilliant mind, a soulful friend. She ought to be a literary agent—her advice has been invaluable, her friendship, a gift.

Jessica DeSoria Dalton, OpenSpaceDesign.com, designed my website, got the blog up and running for me, taught me how to post, but more important, how to live fully. We are now friends for life. Jessica and her husband Mark Dalton have been cheerleaders for my writing—I have leaned on their belief.

Zaara of kittenchops.com illustrated both my website and the blog and she did both with her heart after reading both my book The Woman Who Never Cooked and early writings of this memoir—she illustrated from understanding who I am and what I write. OpenSpaceDesign and Kittenchops.com are folks you need to know.

Amy Souza, whom I once taught—never underestimate what your students will teach you—asked me to participate in her project Spark while I was living and discovering this memoir by blogging. I did and told her and the painters, writers and photographers this: “I’m a softy recovering from a broken heart. Long story. But let’s just say that Amy’s project offers me some hope for fixin’ that heart through the work.” Thank you, Amy.

To Cynthia Stevens and Martha Dupêcher: Much more ought to be said. For now, know that the journey of discovery continues. Cynthia Stevens, you were my first teacher on this path and together we walked. Martha Dupêcher, you have walked with me in the intimacy and safety of your wisdom and your heart.

What I’ve learned while writing this has come from the discovery that taking the risk of writing gifts—and I use that word gifts literally. As Elizabeth Bishop so wisely advises,

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

But, dear readers, your comments, and keep them coming please, have informed these pages more than you know. I have read your comments and you have become part and parcel of this book. You have commented. I have rethought, been encouraged, forged ahead like a little boat on the sea of your belief.

Did I just say “book”? I did, and I can’t believe it, but it’s true.

My self-imposed deadline for delivery of the manuscript Sex After Sixty to Kelly Abbott and 3ones is Valentine’s Day. The e-book will be out soon after that in the spring.

This message comes from my heart to yours,

Mary

Hang in there: Interruptus (sort of) UPDATE

Dear Readers,

I think I have the story in the right order now. I am reading to nit-pick edit/cut more if needed (I did a lot of this over the weekend while I re-ordered). Golly, worked non-stop this weekend on #1 below, barely slept because I see now how the pieces fit. So here are the tasks I have set for myself:

1. Rewrite this blog as a narrative that makes chronological sense. The story I have written "live" I am putting in a chronological order I could not have achieved while both living it and writing it. But now, after Paris, I have the psychic distance to do that. You may see the result if you go to the sidebar: Read from the beginning...". Do let me know what you think in comments or e-mail (address is a link on my website that you may link to from here; scroll down and click on "Mary's Website" to find that address/link). I do listen. So, write me!

I have added more links and photos to many of the posts, particularly in the beginning.

2. And I will continue to post the final entries.

Please note: While I am doing this some earlier posts that you might click on in the side bar: "Read from the beginning..." will not appear because I am working on them: nothing is wrong with the blog or your browser. Hang in there with me: I am rewriting!

And thanks for being with me on this journey of despair and hope and perhaps (I am hopeful) reparation: seems like a miracle, but perhaps it is happening.

With my gratitude to every reader who has been on this difficult journey with me,

Mary