Episode 33: Memopause

Episode 33: Memopause

Mimi Schmir, one of the writers from "Grey's Anatomy"

Posted to Hot Flashes by Mimi Schmir on Sat, 01/02/2010 - 9:52am

I am not one to hold a grudge. Okay, I am one to hold a grudge (see Jeffrey, see Jeffrey fucks Super Fan in my very own living room) but in honor of the Jewish Holidays, I had made a plan to get over that. Not to get over the Super Fan fucking, necessarily, but the holding a grudge part. Holding a grudge is not good for the mind or the body or the spirit (I read this somewhere, or perhaps I heard it on Oprah) but with that in mind I set out to embrace the New Year.

Now, as I may have mentioned, I am half Jewish. The Jewish half is actually my father, which technically doesn’t make me Jewish I suppose, but I was raised a nominal Jew (going to temple twice a year, eating borscht) and that was enough for me to pass it on to my children. Jeffrey is Jewish too, and despite my misgivings we joined one of those temples that have too many agents and managers and lawyers who go there to do business (kind of like choosing the right pre-school, choosing the right temple in Los Angeles is serious work) and we would go there pretty much never except for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. I’m not saying I’m proud of how we did things, but I’m not un-proud of it either, it’s just the way it was.

So it’s Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year and in the honor of new beginnings I decide the boys and I are going to go. Now, it should be noted that Mr. Handsome and Roo love to go to temple. They love the music and the talking out loud in unison and even though they don’t understand anything that’s being said (my lack of Hebrew education means sadly, neither do I) but they love the community of the whole thing. This year, Mr. Handsome insisted on me buying him a suit with a tie (we settled on one with drawings of the Silver Surfer battling a foe) and because Roo worships his older brother he insisted on wearing a Batman tie too. “You have to dress up, Mommy,” they insisted and in the spirit of the Holiday and on the off chance that I might meet a cute guy there (you never know) I went whole hog. (Perhaps that is an inappropriate analogy for the Jewish holidays, but I was raised in a family who wouldn’t eat pork chops but worshiped bacon so there you go.)

So we get to temple and the first thing the boys want to know is, “Where’s the sugar?” Now, this is a fair question because one of the best things about Rosh Hashanah is that after the service there is cake and apples and honey to signify the beginning of a sweet new year. Unfortunately, instead of giving you the sucrose up front, it’s more like a reward for showing up and so you kind of have to go through the Rosh Hashanah liturgy first. This is perhaps a little more difficult for the boys than it is for me, mostly because I am used to delayed gratification in life in general, (some of the delays are ongoing) while they, lucky, over-privileged youth who go to private school at the insistence of their snobby father, are not used to delays at all.

Nevertheless, we hunker down, the boys slipping back and forth into the play room they have for the kids to run around like maniacs and burn off steam. I rather enjoy the service part, it’s a moment of calm in the storm of life and even though I may not be a religious person per se I like to sometimes sit with things for a while. Now, there is a part in the Rosh Hashanah service that goes like this: “May we never abandon our memories. May our memories inspire deeds which lead us to life and love, to blessings and peace.” I rather like the sentiment of the whole thing, and I’m sitting there thinking about how much I like it when I turn around and see her.

I’m not talking about who you’d expect, by the way. No, it’s not the Concubine or my Super Fan or any of the myriad hookers my soon-to-be-ex may or may not have slept with. I had the unfortunate experience of finding pictures of a few of them on his lap-top (aptly named) so there is a chance that someday I will meet one with her clothes on and know exactly who she is. No, it was none of these women. Rather, it was Wiley Coyote, my old boss. Now, I refer to her as Wiley because that’s what she was. Indeed, Wiley was very tricky and responsible in large part for the derailment (albeit temporarily, I hope) of my brief claim to fame, Willa the Tail Girl. (You may or may not remember that Willa is the protagonist of my comic book, the girl with the tail that empowers her to, among other things, balance a plate, smoke a ciggie and drink a cocktail all while carrying on a witty and erudite conversation with a breathtakingly handsome man. Or handsome men. I’m not picky on that one.)

Anyhoo, I turn around in my seat and there she is, praying away with the best of them. Now, in my experience, Wiley has plenty to pray for. She has fucked over many people besides me, in her years at the studio (did I mention she’s a highly placed executive) and in her world, I am just teency-weency potatoes. In fact, there are times when I’m not sure she’d even remember my name. Months and months ago, when I was working on Willa and still had a deal with her studio, she used to find multiple ways of ignoring me. At first I thought she was just too busy to pay attention to a small fry like me, but then I heard about a similar cartoon being written by another writer — a man who it turns out she was having an affair with — and suddenly the murky picture became perfectly clear. I felt sorry for her husband, actually — I mean I knew what it was like to be ignored by one’s spouse, but I stopped being sorry for him when I heard that she had abused her power to keep him happy and get him a really good job. (He is a producer like Jeffrey. Except he works even less than Jeffrey, which trust me is really hard to do.)

Now, as I’m sure you know, temple on Rosh Hashanah is no place to hold a grudge. In fact, what better way to start the New Year off on the right foot (I am left handed, but who’s counting) than to build a bridge of forgiveness and start anew. No matter that Wiley had effectively ignored me for months. No matter that my husband had left me for the Concubine who happened to be a really good friend of hers too. No matter that she had taken my pet project, lied to me repeatedly and then essentially passed a similar idea on to a man who had absolutely no fucking idea of how valuable a tail could be because he was a man and didn’t have to multi-task like menopausal women do. (I’d like to see any man drop two kids at school, buy the groceries, schedule a play date and supervise a remodel all while having hot flashes and night sweats that resemble nothing less than a really horrific flu.)

So the service comes to an end and before you can say, “L’shana Tovah,” my kids are racing out to look for the dessert. I see Wiley see me and then look away, like she’s regretting even coming here when she could have probably gone to another temple in the Pacific Palisades across town. I should mention that we have been in the same place at least four or five other times in the last few months and she has managed to beat a hasty retreat from each one in order to avoid me at any cost. But today is different. Today is the day of memories and so, in the spirit of renewal and love, of blessings and peace, in the spirit of all things alien to my history with Wiley (or to my history in general) I, Esme, am building a bridge.

I intercept her. “Hey, Wiley,” I say, brightly. She looks at me, a deer in headlights. “Happy New Year,” I say...happily. “L’Shana Tovah.” (This is Happy New Year in Hebrew.) “Right back at ya,” she says, warily, and I can see her scanning the room, looking for those exit signs the fire marshal insists be lit at all times, holiday or no. “How are you, anyway?” I say, like I really, really care. “Oh, I’m fine, you know...busy,” she says, and I can see she instantly regrets saying that because it implies she’s busy at work which is a subject she clearly wants to avoid. “How are you, Esme?” she asks, a little warily. “How’s everything?” “Oh, you mean with Jeffrey?” I say. “We’re getting divorced.” “Yes, I heard, I’m so sorry,” she shrugs, a little helplessly. “I know how that goes.” (She’s been married and divorced four times, in case I forgot to mention.)

“Well, I really have to go,” she continues, doing her best to get off my bridge as fast as she possibly can. “I’m so glad you came over, though.” I look at her, curiously. “Are you, Wiley?” I ask her. “Are you really?” “What do you mean?” she says and I can see that she is getting nervous. “Well, look,” I say. “I really just wanted to let you know that I forgive you.” “Forgive me?” she says, a little perturbed. “Yep,” I say. “For stealing my idea and giving it to that dude you’re sleeping with. For ignoring me the past six months. For fucking me over. You know.”

Now, admittedly, my tactics may not always be as graceful as they could be, but truly, the intention behind them was good. She trains her eyes on me. They are blue, but narrow like slits, like she can’t really open them that wide and maybe that is why she can’t see the way she should. She has curly hair and little cat eye glasses and she pushes them up the bridge of her nose as she continues. “Don’t displace the mess of your life on me, Esme,” she says, a little haughtily. “No one cares that your life is a mess but you.” (Wow, I think to myself. She’s pretty harsh even for an executive.) “I’m trying to make amends here,” I hear myself saying, although I can see that my bridge is on a road to nowhere. “I’m trying to forgive you.” “Forgive yourself,” she says and even as I’m thinking, “For what?” she says, “Happy New Year. Forgetfulness is an aphrodisiac,” and then she goes.

You know how they say your memory starts to erode once you hit forty? That and your eyes are the first to go. I call it, “memopause,” that strange place where memory and menopause first meet. Memopause makes you think about things you are positive happened one way and make you wonder if they happened another. (Did Wiley really steal Willa? Do I have a faithful husband after all? Is this my “Dallas” moment where all will be revealed as a wacky dream?) Before I can even try and make sense of what Wiley has said to me, the boys are running around in sugar-fueled circles. There is honey dripping off their mouths and their sticky hands are all over my face and clothes. “Mom, mom!!” they’re yelling. “Happy New Year!” “Happy New Year,” I say back to them. “May our memories inspire deeds which lead us to life and love, to blessings and peace.” My kids look at me like I’m a little loopy. “What?” says Mr. Handsome. “Is that Shakespeare?” (He did Midsummer’s Night dream at camp just a few weeks before.) “Nope,” I tell him. “It’s just something good to know.”