The Last Hanukkah

Mother Love

My tagline reads: Jill Slaughter Always candid. Always truthful. Sometimes funny. Anita is the woman who imbued me with the courage it takes to live by that tenet. She is my mother, herself candid, truthful and genuinely funny. She has been my caregiver, my teacher, my disciplinarian, my advisor, my protector, my trusted confidant, and now my friend. She has wept alongside me at my catastrophic losses, but tethered her strength and conviction to me insisting that “this too shall pass”, as I dissolved into my grief. My mother would not let me go.

Peace Has Finally Come

During a serious illness that resulted in a prolonged hospital stay in Los Angeles my mom (who lives in Florida) came out to LA, and slept on a cot in my room for countless days, and then brought me home and slept on the couch in my small apartment. At the time she was probably 76 or 77. She put on my socks when I was cold, and took them off two minutes later when I was hot. She begged me to eat, and when I refused, she held a straw to my mouth so that I would at least drink something. She demanded that I get pain medication when the only sounds I could make were winching cries of agony. And her humor has caused my eyes to puddle with tears.

Sisters

As a child I jockeyed for position among my siblings to hold my mother’s hand, and she did.

And now sometimes I take my mother’s hand to steady her gait.

A Bare Season

The Leader

My father is Carl. Judiciously candid, unfailingly truthful, good-humored, but not as funny. As a kid I was blissfully unaware of how hard my dad worked to support all of us. He suited up, and showed up everyday to make sure we were well cared for and loved.

Throughout my life my father has funded my adventures and my failures, both emotionally and financially.

Twenty Something

My college year abroad was exciting, and thrilling, but ultimately exhausting. Back when people were allowed to come to the gate to meet a plane my dad was the first person I saw when I landed at La Guardia. My broad-shouldered very handsome dad was not given to public displays of affection, but after not seeing me for more than a year he lifted me into the air, hugged me tightly, and twirled me around. I was skin and bones. Anorexia was unheard of in the early 80’s, but it had grabbed hold of me and I had not eaten regularly for many months.

Work by unknown artist at Basel 2011

My dad didn’t know what happened, and maybe i didn’t really know why this happened either, but i was able to come home to Brooklyn. I stayed in a bedroom long since converted into a den and I kept the shades drawn, slept most of the time, didn’t eat or talk much.

Love Always

My dad would bring me a chocolate chip cookie everyday when he came home from work. He would sit on the edge of the bed. I didn’t have to talk, and neither did he. I didn’t eat the cookie most of the time, but he brought me one every day. That fall I was able to leave for school in San Francisco. Still today my father is my fierce protector, my advisor, my Raw Candor proof reader, and my dearest friend. His voice is softer, his hair is peppered with gray, but still my dad is our beloved leader.

Star of David

Cross section

My childhood neighborhood was home to middle class Jewish and Italian families. We knew who we were. We shopped at the kosher butcher, they bought meat at the A&P. The atmosphere was naive and carefree.

Sparkly Christmas

Eight Nights of Light

Sweet money

Believe, Belief

The aromas that filled our houses were different. Some front yards had pastel plaster hallowed statues of Mary, faded by the elements, while others had nondescript evergreen shrubs. Neighbors drove each others kids to school, and borrowed eggs and milk from one another, but when the holidays came our differences were pronounced. Wreaths on doors and blinking colored lights, in my neighborhood meant you were Catholic. Electric menorahs in windows, signified eight days of Hanukkah.

Why Not

Joy to the world, and good will toward men, but I was envious. I loved how Christmas lights looked, and wanted twinkling bouncing lights to adorn my house. I wanted to look like the families on TV that wore bathrobes with their initials monogrammed over the breast pocket. I wanted my family to be like the families that drank hot cocoa from cups with saucers while they gingerly opened elaborately wrapped gifts with ribbons to save for next year. I wanted that. I wanted to smell a tree and be able to unpack commemorative ornaments every year which would chronicle my childhood. But instead my sisters and/or brother and I , parted the heavy off-white drapes covering the picture window in the living room as we leaned over the radiator to turn another bulb on the menorah to indicate another night of the festival of lights.

Food, and more food

Family Hanukkah Dinner

We ate latkes and brisket. No hot chocolate, we were kosher, didn’t mix meat and milk, and we were a ribbon-less, bow-less clan.

Can I Have That

Seemed like the Christian kids got fashionable clothes, and records. Stereos and shiny things.

Not Sparkly

God bless my parents, four kids, eight nights, that’s a lot of presents to give. We each got something we wanted. I knew by age seven that I was an artist.

My Gift

My parents would give my own crayons, drawing pads, and the like. I treated art supplies as if they were my tools, while my sisters,because they had no interest in art treated “supplies” like toys. My parents understood, and maybe just to avoid the bloodshed that came from sharing “toys”, gave me my own stuff. Finally I was able to put the colors back in their designated slots after each use. I didn’t like using crayons if the wrapper had come off, and I didn’t like using broken crayons. I liked order and specificity, even then. I loved being given something special. After that, it was all down hill, seven nights of socks and underwear, scarves and gloves.

Light it Up

So we were Jews. Unadorned, not decorated, simple, basic. The celebration was equally joyous I suppose in treeless homes, just not as pretty. I wanted to be like them, but I was one of us. I have usually wanted to be them, not knowing how to be a member of the “us.”

Love, Love and Love

But now I am just me. Simple, understated, chic, maybe. No desire to be like them, whoever “them” is.

Hanging Outside

Shiny Star

Affixed to the lamp-post on a busy east – west street I noticed sparkly Christmas decorations hanging from a lamppost. Not unusual. But hanging from the next pole was a sparkly Star of David. My holiday memories only include Jews sparkling if they’re wearing diamonds. In my world Jews don’t have decorations that hang in town squares. We don’t have Hanukkah bushes and we don’t get shiny gifts. We are practical. We are devoted. We don’t sparkle. But things are changing.

1+1 = 6

At fifty-five I continue to entrust the celebration of holidays to my parents. We aren’t religious, mostly sentimental. None the less, my parents are the keeper of the flame. My mom does the cooking, and sets out all of her exquisite china and serving pieces. My dad conducts all the ceremonies and blesses us all. But at Passover this year my mom declared that it was too much for her and that “this would be the last Passover.”

My Father's Father's Birth Cup

With two of my three daughters in town this year, along with other family members and friends, we gathered at my parent’s for our celebration, wherein my mom said it was too much for her and that “this would be the last Hanukkah.”

My Cup Runneth Over

J.Lucy - October 1989

Dixie - March 1992

Zazu - March 1994

When a child is born in my family they are given a silver cup with their name and birthday engraved on it. Our version of sparkly. My father has his fathers cup. As my children live in different parts of the country I am the keeper of the cups for my kids (to respect Zazu’s privacy her given name is not being shown on her cup). If this in fact was the last Passover and the last Hanukkah, next year we will all meet somewhere where my parents can be the guests, and my dad the leader, always.

Hero in My Mom's Car

1+1 = 6

Laughing with the leader

I will be speaking about Parental Alienation at the HEARTCAMP conference on February 4th in Fort Lauderdale. My parents will be in the audience.

Heartcamp Conference – http://heartcamp2011.sched.org/event/

Zach Balber photography – http://www.soflanights.com/?p=19911

Todd Norsten – http://www.highpointprintmaking.org/editions/norsten_todd/bio.html

Julie Friel – http://www.ihlet.com/artist/julie-friel

Photograph of me and my daughters – Don Parchment  http://www.photoreflect.com/store/store.aspx?p=31682

Photographs – Jill Slaughter

Photo of me and my Dad – Hannah Shechter Daugherty

5:42 a.m.

Early Morning

It is an uncertain time, unclear if nighttime lingers, or the morning has arrived. I am alone, and it is the moment of decision. Before I plan, or deconstruct something that has already happened I am motionless in my bed. This is another morning to do what has become habit.

Start here

Tribeca wasn’t called Tribeca when Peter asked me to stay at his loft while he and Jane went back to Liverpool to see family. Colorless buildings in the bowels of downtown Manhattan defined this neighborhood which only came alive with office workers and financial wizards during the day. Sandwiched between office buildings and cement monolithic parking garages residential pockets of hipsters, artists and the newly married that could dole out cash for enormous vacant spaces were moving in. Cavernous lofts smelling of shoe polish and bologna sandwiches from factories and workers that once occupied these spaces became the new de rigueur house and garden hot spot. The stage had not yet been set for what would become an amalgam of literary and artistic types to set this once nameless neck of the woods on fire.

Jill and his shadow

The space was white, including the painted floor. There was a bed, a dresser, a table, no couch and all of Peter’s tools sitting idle in one half of the expansive room. I hadn’t gone out with Victor the night before as I had for weeks on end. He was a charming European photographer that I met through Peter and Jane. Seemingly, my house sitting gig included him. Continuous nights of touring Manhattan with my enthusiastic handsome guide and being introduced to so many people left me feeling ragged and wanting to be alone. I begged off, and spent the night listening to the fears inside my head. What was I doing with all these people? What as a twenty something could I bring to this party? No matter. I fell asleep and woke up when it could have been day, or it might have been night.

Negative/Positive

The streets of New York weren’t filled with properly attired runners then, and nobody was sauntering through the streets with yoga mats under their arms on their way to class. VCR’s were new and the ubiquity of cell phones was unheard of. Actual street sweepers kept the streets clean, and I might have passed him sweeping as I slowly jogged by, but for the most part the streets were empty. It was early on a Saturday morning.

Once or twice around the block was all that I was willing to do. In those days women were on the verge of sweating, still more inclined to simply perspire, as the ordinary athlete had not yet come of age. The rest of the day was unplanned. Probably see Victor. The pain began as the type that makes you wonder if you really felt anything. For close to an entire year I had been running a low-grade fever, but paid almost no attention to that symptom. Hardly around the block at all pain swathed my entire body and dropped me to my knees, a scene out of a movie. The street cleaner had come and gone, leaving me with no one to ask for help.

My protector

My parents were out-of-town, my older sister lived in California, my younger brother was fifteen, and left to his own devices in the basement while my parents were gone. With that I called my younger sister, at the time, one of New York’s finest and thoroughly experienced with keeping her cool and handling emergencies. The lights and sirens of her brethren transported me to her house in Queens, but I don’t remember how I got to a hospital in Brooklyn.

Bound to You

My fallopian tube had twisted around my uterus. The early 1980’s still had us referring to female body parts as “down there.” I didn’t come from a “let’s have that talk honey” type of household, and high school hygiene class didn’t cover that material either. Ergo, I didn’t really know what either of those things was, but it hurt like a m_____f_____ and the emergency surgery to remedy the problem forever altered the course of my life.

Not Laughing

My groovy Manhattan gallivanting came to a screeching halt, and I was back in Brooklyn. Feeling a little like John Travalta’s character in Saturday Night Fever, I knew there was something on the other side of the bridge, but for the foreseeable future I was back at my parents house, grateful for their love and round the clock care.

Seeing Red

Surgery wasn’t laparoscopic when my fallopian tube came fist to cuff with my uterus. I was cut right where they needed to cut, and wasn’t able to move for months afterward. Occasionally someone would call from “the city”, but for the most part I was completely disconnected from what just weeks earlier seemed so important.

Transparent

Once I began to walk I ventured only as far as my front stoop, (stairs in front of my house for the uninitiated) and sat quietly for hours, waiting to recover. After weeks of sitting outside I noticed the unshakable routine of my gorgeous, Mad Men type neighbor Delores. She stayed inside during the morning, then would slather up with her alchemist concoction of baby oil mixed with iodine to enhance tanning, and sit in her grassless backyard, bikini clad with a three sectioned foil reflector aimed at her face, moving it out-of-the-way just long enough to take a drag of her perpetually lit Newport.

She was a veritable bomb shell and the only woman within fifty miles of my house to wear a two piece bathing suit. She was about 5’10” tall, sometimes a redhead, sometimes a brunette. She had the swagger of Sophia Loren, and the bravado of “Anita” from West Side Story. Delores didn’t fraternize with the local ladies. She was polite in a stand-offish way, and for the most part kept to herself. In the late afternoon she would dress in skin-tight “peddle pushers” and Laura Petrie type flats to go marketing. I knew that, because she always returned with one or two bags of groceries. My six person household’s weekly marketing excursions needed a U-Haul to transport our groceries; I wasn’t sure how Delores managed to feed her family of four bringing home only the food she could carry.

Hang Tight

She must have noticed me too. After weeks of a throw away, “how’s it going?” she asked me why I was home again. Her achingly beautiful daughter had become absorbed into a sex, drugs and rock and roll life style, the pitfalls of which often landed her back home under the protective wing of her equally beautiful mother countless times. Having grown up around Delores my whole life she knew that once I left for college I never planned to come home again. She wanted to know why I was back in Brooklyn.

Black Birds

A few days after she heard my story she came to my house. That had never happened, ever, not before, and not ever again. Jesus was more likely to resurrect than it was for Delores to come to your house for a chat. I’m not even sure if she knew my mother’s name, but there she was standing at the door. She spoke with the subtle purr of Grace Kelly in an Alfred Hitchcock movie. She handed my mother a book but didn’t say much. The paperback was bright pink and pictured a woman wearing a leotard on the cover. The exact title has long since been forgotten, but the content advised how not to get cellulite.

Not Sports

My family did not play football on Thanksgiving. We didn’t set up volleyball nets at the beach, and my people are basically tailors not sailors. I had never seen anyone I knew personally exercise. In fact, I don’t think that word was in use. I can remember calisthenics being said, but not exercise. This was back in the day when pasta was called macaroni, and Jack LaLanne wore a jumpsuit on TV.

Hold On

Delores might have been spending the mornings inside exercising. I just assumed that she was inside cleaning, because that’s what the women I knew in my neighborhood did. I had no idea that it was possible to affect the shape of one’s body by moving and being discriminating about what you ate. The term working out might have been said in gyms meant only for men, but those words had not yet been coupled for use in everyday language.

Pop

That book became my bible. It had very little text. Mostly it was a guide, a step by step visual manual with instructions on how to recreate the movements of the sleek and beautiful woman pictured on the cover. It admonished the reader (participant) to never drink anything carbonated. “Little bubbles in the bottle, little bubbles on the body.” The only thing I drink with bubbles is champagne, and I am cellulite free.

Words to Live By

My parents offered me the room they had been using as a den for my recovery. I cleared a space on the floor, opened that book and used it everyday for months in an effort to reverse the unwelcome effects of my fallopian tube-ectomy. That book made way for Jane Fonda’s exercise book, which led me to daily use of her video tape when that became available.

Basic Black

For more than thirty years I have worked out, almost every day. Only put on hold after the birth of each of my daughters, and after the more than ten operations I have had for different reasons, on different body parts.

Once Around

What began with rudimentary calisthenics expanded to include lifting weights, practicing Power Yoga with Bryan Kest, Pilates, boot camps by celebrity trainers , using kettle balls, balance balls, bars, bands, ropes, hula hoops and more, swimming laps, taking classes, Tae Bo, Zumba, Kundalini, and aggressively riding a bike. Words like crunching, blasting, training, and sculpt are all woven into my vocabulary.

Every day

My gym membership has been renewed annually for more than a decade, during which time I dated one of my infrequently hired trainers, made lasting friendships, had my beautiful Tag Heuer watch stolen from my locker, and been noticed by fellow gym rats. I have also done my fair share of glancing over at a handsome guys working out next to me. On occasion I will go to the gym when I want to stare at sweaty guys working out. Perched far enough away on my own elliptical trainer so as not to have to interact with them. But most of my workouts are still done by clearing a space on the floor of wherever I am living.

One at a time

Delores didn’t know when she gave me that book that it would set a course for the way I live my life, and neither did I. It began as a way to undo something that had been done to me, but became something I do for myself. Each morning workout begins by me making the decision to start, and to finish. I don’t always have that same follow through in other areas of my life. But without exception and with no excuses I do this. Everyday. While the physical rewards are obvious, what began as a way to have a more flexible body has led me to have a more flexible mind. I’m not always able to meet the physical challenge I set for myself, but I don’t judge myself on the outcome of my individual workouts, more so it is a process, and that is what I have come to love.

I am a 2nd child, this was my second child

One, Three, Five and me

I am not one of those women who walk out of the hospital fitting back into her skinny jeans after giving birth. It took at least a year each time for me to become petite again. Nothing but doing the work made it happen, nothing made it happen in less time than it took, and nobody did it for me. Not after the birth of my kids or after the many times I spent months not being able to workout because of an injury or a surgery. In my day-to-day life I make every effort to achieve obtainable results without forcing a solution, however I don’t negate what I’m feeling anymore. Metaphors from the gym put into practice, sometimes, not always, but I try.

Hold On I'm Coming

It is that same philosophy of enjoying the process which I attempt to be the trellis upon which all my efforts rest, but that doesn’t always happen. Noted author Louise Hay says “the inner creates the outer.” And while I’m hopeful that from the back my “outer” will always look like a twenty something, I am more determined to have my “inner” strength be the support upon which I rest.

Finally Peace

Julie Friel – http://www.centralelements.com/Julie_Friel/artwork.html

Detail of clown from Cats Don’t Want Friends – Jill Slaughter

Photography – Jill Slaughter

Sometimes I Dress Like a Petite Asian Woman

Mom in mink

Lester’s was the fancy children’s clothing store in my neighborhood. My mother, two sisters and I would shop there twice a year. Once at the beginning of the school term, and again just before Passover. The sales ladies were fashionable, authoritative, decisive and friendly. They each deftly applied their makeup and looked as if they had their hair styled weekly by Mr. Vincent, or Mr. Anthony…a mister somebody. They may now be the women that reach for the same shade of lipstick they wore in ‘64, and they may be those same ladies that search the aisles of dusty flea markets hoping to find the last box of the same Miss Clairol shade that erased their few gray hairs back then.

gray solution

They may be those ladies now, but back then they were my neighborhoods Jackie Kennedy’s, Elizabeth Taylor’s and Audrey Hepburn’s. And my mom was one of those neighborhood fashion icons. She could dress up better than anyone for a Bar Mitzvah at Leonard’s of Greatneck, and was always the mom that turned heads on open school night.

Ordinary neighborhood in Brooklyn

Our neighborhood shops included Thom McCann shoes, John’s Bargain store, a deli named Marty and Lloyd’s and a candy store owned by partners Sy and Moe. No one knew which one was which. Ubiquitous Italian bakeries dotted the streets I grew up on. There was a fish store, a butcher shop, a homey kind of bakery catering to Jews, and many other shops to fulfill the practical needs of the solidly middle class residents. But somehow there was Lester’s which sold European and American designer clothes. My mom was so proud that we could afford to shop there, but for my sisters and I the semi-annual shopping spree was an ordeal.

My older sister couldn’t care less about fashion, and my younger sister was relegated to the husky section, which back then was called just that. The politically correct age had not yet arrived and I can remember my poor sister Laura being made to feel as if they would make a solid and valiant attempt to find her something to wear. She was not the type to cry. Without emotion she tried on whatever they brought her and never said much. She chose law enforcement as a career and spent twenty years wearing a uniform, which was perfect for her.

Wearing velvet cap in childhood living room. Pattern behind me on wallpaper

One year my mother was determined to have us all wear “Spring Coats.” I was determined not to. The particular coat that caught my mother’s eye was off white with a navy plaid. It was a dangerous synthetic blend. I would have rather resorted to self-immolation than to be seen wearing that thing. My mother and I went ten rounds. I planted myself on the dressing room floor in staunch refusal, trying desperately to make her see my sartorial point of view. We left with the coat.

Yellow skirt

I was developing my sense of style separate and apart from my mother’s at a pivotal time in fashion history. Categories like “tween” and “pre-teen” were about to meet their demise as I was coming of age. Girls were just starting to not have to wear dresses to school. It was the incubation of girl’s fashion changing. Once radically different in both scale and design now children’s and young girls fashion seems nothing more than scaled down versions of adult silhouettes. Current style trends have blurred the lines between adult, teen and children’s fashion. Similar garments can be purchased for any one of those customers, age notwithstanding. My friend and next door neighbor Michelle was a pretty blond girl with no interest in fashion. Her mom rarely wore actual clothes; rather her wardrobe consisted mostly of cotton pique housecoats imprinted with tiny patterns of strawberries or birds. Not visually discernible until and unless you were standing inches away from Tessie.

Red Sweater-yellow pants

Michelle mixed patterns with seemingly no rhyme or reason. It wasn’t unusual to see her rocket out of her house to play wearing striped pants with a polka dot shirt. I am certain that Michelle never intended to be fashion pioneer. Rather I think she put on whatever article of clothing she happened to grab on any particular morning, and wore whatever was in her reach.

M is for master

Missoni, the masters of mixing pattern were as yet unknown in the United States, and certainly not known to anyone in Sheepshead Bay Brooklyn. The visionary style of young Asian women that so elegantly and effortlessly combine patterns hadn’t been seen in the mid sixties. While my sisters and I loved Michelle we thought her style was odd, and admittedly we made fun of her. I would have never imagined that as an adult I would seek to abandon the safety of wearing only solids together or that I would abandon the confines of wearing a print top with a solid bottom. I grew up to embrace a style which would more closely resemble Michelle’s creativity than I would have ever thought.

Mom, mom and girls

My first daughter was born in 1989. Fashion was once again at a critical juncture. For the first time layette wear showcased black. The gifts I unwrapped at my baby shower were various shades of black and gray. Subtle stripes and small dots imprinted the onesies my baby would be wearing. Hooray, black was the new pink. No frills, no ruffles, no bunnies, no flowers. My baby was going to be cool. No pastels for this expectant mama and her about to be born offspring. I dressed my baby to reflect the way I wanted her to look, as I did the two more daughters I gave birth to. I did what my mother did. Except I thought I was all that. No “Spring Coats” for my girls. My kids wore pattern on pattern from the get go.

Girls photographed in Santa Monica backyard

I am a knit wear designer and before my kids were even born I was thinking about the sweaters I would make for them. Knitted combinations of patters harmonized because of the color palette I selected. My kids were the envy of all the other mothers. I formed a small company to produce the sweaters so that other kids could wear them.

Zazu- age 3

J.Lucy and a stuffed bear

Dixie wearing bobbie pins

And then one day my kids told me they didn’t want to wear that stuff anymore. What do you know; it was the “Spring Coat” rebellion after all. My girls, ages 17, 19 and 21 each have beautiful individual clothing styles. We sometimes shop together, but I am there not to yeah or nay, more so to tell them how beautiful they look, regardless of what they are wearing. Lester’s now has six stores throughout the tri-state area. They continue to pride themselves on personalized service and a pleasurable shopping experience.

White dress with bow

Baby Jill and Mom

The Master, Where Jews Went for Celebrations, Shopping with My Mom – Knitwear by Jill Slaughter for Bendable Family Photos of Jill as a teenager – Julio Mitchel

Proof of Life

Going grocery shopping

Sheepshead Bay Brooklyn was segregated when I was growing up there. Jews shopped for groceries at Waldbaums, non Jews shopped at the A&P. Colorless vehicles faded by the sun and worn thin by the cold encroached upon each others spaces in the crowded parking lot. Jam packed cars off loaded one kid after another, as if they were all clown cars from the circus. Finally with the last passenger out the mom would assemble her brood and re-position everyone in the shopping wagon. That’s what we called them then.

The smallest child readied the helm in the front basket portion of the cart. Someone else usually climbed in, and still another kid hung off the rear. Anyone that couldn’t find a spot just kind of tagged along. Once stabilized, it was hope against hope that this chariot wouldn’t be thrown off-balance by an itinerant wheel, which would make the wagon wobble just enough to make it difficult to steer. The beehived stretch pant wearing mom would then make her way through the aisles, tossing in milk, bread, and several types of sugary cereal with corn flakes thrown in for the man of the house. Red meat, mayonnaise, American cheese and bananas partially covered whichever kid was in there. Eggs usually rested on the lap of the baby in the front perch. Canned vegetables, spaghetti, ketchup (used as tomato sauce) and an occasional box of cookies would begin to bury the kid riding inside. Overtaken by the mounting staples they would beckon to be taken out and walk along side.

The check out lines were always long. Some mothers let their kids buy gum or candy at the checkout stand. Mine didn’t. We waited for the cashier to manually inspect each item and ring it up. Once she had given it the once-over she would slide it to the end of the counter and a kid (usually a boy) would strategically put the groceries into a paper bag with the precision engineering of interlocking gears found inside a Swiss watch.

We didn’t know her name, nor she ours. She didn’t ask us how we were, or how we were doing in school. She did her job and the next family made its way through the line. Her smile at the end of each transaction was forced and close-lipped. Screaming kids, standing on her feet for hours at a time, she wasn’t paid to be nice. She was paid to be there.

Coffee Talk

The A&P didn’t have a parking lot. It was populated by old ladies with varying shades of either blue or pink tinged hair color who either didn’t or couldn’t drive. They walked to the store wheeling their personal vertical shopping carts lined with protective plastic, just in case it rained on the way home. Once in a blue moon my mom would send us to the A&P for something she ran out of and I would look at what filled the carts of the old women. They were buying small glass jars of coffee, biscuits wrapped in foil, Oscar Meyer bacon, containers of cream and things I didn’t recognize. Our household was Kosher. We didn’t eat bacon, and I never saw cream put into coffee until I went away to college. My dad drank it black, and my mom only drank tea. My mom filled a crystal “creamer” with milk for our guests, but the “company” that sat around our dining room table several nights a week drinking coffee and eating Entenmanns cake were never served cream. The A&P was quiet. Almost still. The difference between the two markets was as pronounced as the battle lines drawn between the Protestants and Catholics of Northern Ireland.

In the mid nineties my mom would visit my young family in Los Angeles. She integrated easily into our lifestyle and would sometimes accompany me and my girls to the market. “You would be able to buy a house in Florida for what it cost to buy a red pepper in this fancy supermarket of yours here”, she would tell me, astounded by the high prices. I was jaded and didn’t really notice, and I didn’t really care. Our business manager paid the bills. I didn’t think about money at all.

Got MilK?

Grocery shopping in Pacific Palisades was worlds away from the supermarkets of my childhood. The average annual income in this affluent enclave of luminaries, celebrities, film executives and women who went grocery shopping with members of their household staff was more than $250,000. The battle lines in this neighborhood were not drawn by religion or political conviction, but rather were you Neiman Marcus or Barneys. Were you wearing Donald J. Pliner or Prada?

Beautiful food

The market I shopped at looked like a museum. Not a thing was ever out-of-place. Colors coordinated, and displays never seemed to dissipate. The instant something was removed it was replaced. Nothing ever spilled, or smelled, or spoiled at Gelsons, and most assuredly, nothing ever publicly went wrong. Shoppers were ostensibly protected and greeted by name. Likes and preferences were known, and dislikes were respected. The shopping experience at this market was curated. At Waldbaums in Sheepshead Bay people waited in line to get a pound of good belly lox. At Gelsons smoked salmon was sold. I shopped there.

My Girls

My husband had just announced that he would be leaving. But none the less I still needed to take care of my children. Two of my three daughters were young enough to be using diapers and that supply needed to be replaced. My very deep sense of betrayal and grief had slowed my pace but I strapped my baby into that same perch where I had seen babies safely placed so many years ago when my mother had me in tow. It took about an hour to load the cart with the essentials of our now fractured household.

“I’m so sorry Mrs. ________ your card has been declined.” Not sure that I heard her correctly I momentarily took my focus off my children and asked the neatly attired cashier to repeat herself. “The card you are trying to use is not actually in your name. You are a Mrs. You don’t actually exist. But please don’t worry Mrs. ________ we will put everything away for you.” She was paid to be nice. The store manager was summoned to soften the blow, and they both gracefully managed to smile as my children and I left empty-handed.

It's Love

I drove my daughters home without the food and without the diapers. We drove back down our long driveway. I undid the seatbelt of my oldest child and took the younger two out of their car seats. Once inside I handed my girls off to the live in nanny and went into my bedroom alone. In the instant before I burst into tears I heard her ask in her lilting Spanish accent “are you okay Mrs.? As far as she was concerned that was my name.

Love J.Lucy

Two of my daughters are in college now and my youngest is about to start her last year of high school. So many years later and just recounting that moment stills my heart and makes me cry. Whose life did I need to prove that I had? Mine only seemed to matter if the prefix to my own name was bestowed upon me by someone else. I am not currently married, and as happy as that would make me, I will never use Mrs. before my name again.

Photograph of Jill as a teenager: Julio Mitchel

Just to Make You Look

Jill standing on street corner near subway station.

Riding the train from Brooklyn to Manhattan took about an hour, and seemed to be the means to an end for the ridership at large. But I couldn’t get enough, for me the subway was theater. I didn’t carry a book to read, I was more that kid who mercilessly poked my mother’s side asking “do you see that?” After awhile she stopped paying attention and dosed off until we got to our destination.

I saw everything, and looked at anything. Sitting quietly I studied women’s outfits, men’s shoes, babies in hats and people who had fallen asleep. We took the train in to shop, or on rare occasions, to meet my dad, but we never took the train at rush hour. Because of that the cars were mostly unfilled. It didn’t take long for me to visually calculate every color, every style, every shape and every amorphous blob of whatever substance had stuck to the colorless vinyl floor. I was drenched in the eccentricity of every person in my immediate vicinity.

After evaluating everyone’s wardrobe, I made mental notes on how I would change their makeup, or restyle their hair, and began to look at the mostly uninspired advertisements. Ads for cigarettes, beer, local services for things like accountants and dentists plastered every inch of available space between the low ceiling and the windows. Positioned just at the height where the average straphangers would have no choice but to come face to face with a can of Rheingold, I studied the graphics and the images just because I liked the way they looked.

Miss Subway poster from the 1960's

Kids didn’t really buy anything when I was growing up, so it didn’t matter much to me what the ads were hawking, I just liked them. From 1941 – 1977 each New York subway line reserved prime space for Miss Subway posters. There were at least two or three of these black and white dreary cardboard representations of ordinary girls hung throughout every car. After one month Miss Subway’s reign would come to an end, and the current Miss would be replaced by the next young woman who had entered and won the contest. The titled miss may have been as young as fourteen, but she could also have been as old as thirty. The photograph was always a headshot of an innocent, yet somehow alluring young woman. The lacquered placement of a perfect page-boy or an elegant bouffant hairdo made each girl look older than she probably was. A solid colored tight-fitting sweater often worn with a simple piece of jewelry was the personification of and glamour and sophistication amid the five boroughs.

Essentially the only requirement to become a Miss Subway was that you had to ride the subway, and send in a biography of yourself. To the train-riding public this title may have seemed frivolous, or unimportant, maybe not even important enough to matter, but to the girl who got to see her picture in the cars of the IRT, BMT and other subway lines, it must have been thrilling.

The advertising executive who conceived the Miss Subway contest did it to entice ridership to look at adjoining advertising. A poster of a pretty girl would surely catch the attention of weary passengers. If you got them to look up at her, it was a shoe in that they wouldn’t be able to avoid seeing the can of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer adjacent to her smiling face. The Miss Subway campaign was simply a ploy to “make you look”. Miss Subway couldn’t have cared that this was an engineered ploy to ramp up consumerism; she would forever remember her reign and keep a copy of her poster always.

I had already shut the lights and turned off my computer at work and was about to leave the building when my phone rang and an official sounding voice asked for me. The soft-spoken voice had the sort of intonation which makes you think you left your wallet at the DMV and someone was calling to tell you the good news that it had been found. Instead it was a woman representing the Faces of the Arts Broward County selection committee. She told me that I had been chosen as a one of the nine Faces of the Arts in Broward because of a piece I had written about how the arts affected my life.

I immediately flashed to the scene of Ann Margret in the movie Bye Bye Birdie when she gets a call from the Ed Sullivan Show, telling her she has been chosen to be the only girl in America to be kissed on live television by the teenage heart-throb Conrad Birdie. She politely thanks the caller and calmly calls for her mother. By the end of the call she is jumping up and down in her furry slippers, having lost all composure and screaming out Mommy.

There was no one left in the building when I got the call about being selected. I was sure I was alone and when the call ended I threw up my hands and let out a scream. I knew there wouldn’t be any poster, but I felt like a combination of Miss Subway and a teenage Ann Margret. I have been chosen for other awards. I am a Whitney Museum Scholarship recipient, and I have been awarded a painting scholarship at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, but those seemed much more academic. The prompt from the committee for the contest about art in Broward was personal.  Being an artist is laden with uncertainty, often affirmation and reward is infrequent. Being chosen as one of the Faces of the Arts is an honor. Like the faded posters squirreled away in the attics of the Miss Subways; I will cherish and remember this always.

I wrote about me, but really it was an effort to make you look. To see all of the wonderful opportunities Broward County offers the arts community. Museums, ArtServe, Artist as Entrepreneur and studio spaces like Studio 18 and Sailboat Bend, together with dedicated people like Jim Shermer and Adriane Clarke of the Cultural Division, together with countless others who tirelessly support the arts in Broward make being an artist in this part of South Florida just that much easier. At a time when municipalities struggle to maintain basic services Broward County whole heartedly supports the arts and artists. They made us look at what we each have to offer for the greater good of making art thrive.

Jill and her mother

On Wednesday July 20th, I and eight other winners will be given an award at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts during an intermission of a performance by Symphony of the Americas. There will be a party after the concert. Tickets are available through the box office at the Broward Center for the 8:00pm performance. I won’t be wearing a tight-fitting sweater, or a simple piece of jewelry, but I will be smiling, and my mom will be in the audience. While I won’t be screaming Mommy she knows that she has been, and continues to be my greatest supporter regarding my interest, and my career in the arts.

Photograph of Jill as teenager taken by Julio Mitchell

Miss Subway www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/15548