![]() They couldnt imagine growing up anything but Christian. My teachers didnt know how I felt and I wasnt about to tell them and draw attention to myself, an outsider, especially since my school was a couple miles from The Shrine of the Little Flower, where Father Coughlin, a notorious anti-Semite, broadcast his vitriolic radio messages. The three shepherds, the star, the theme of hope, the little baby Jesus in the manger, all those years I mouthed the words Jesus Christ when I was singing carols in my pre-politically correct, predominately gentile elementary school because though no one told me so, I didnt think it was right for a little Jewish girl to say those things. And a dim memory of what happens when the endorphins kick in, the energy that produces. The activity was all so much more public than I remembered. I had forgotten about all the groaning and grunting that goes on in a gym, the utter grimness and near sexuality of the exertion, the sweating and then the stooping to mop the floor. All those legions of thin women with the minimum of flesh (women who probably smoke to suppress their appetites and maintain their svelte figures). ![]() ![]() All those machines and accompanying levers and pulleys looked more like a factory floor than a place of exercise. Since Ive fallen off the wagon lately with a swimming routine I thought I would follow forever (hah! so much for forever), I recently popped my head into the gym where I used to work out to see if that might be the route to take, something a little different, come 2006.īut I think not. My personal favorite: When its not your baby. (Huh?).Īll that early New Year proselytizing about going to the gym since in our weight-obsessed society its OK to smoke as much as you want but the notion of putting on a few pounds is tantamount to a major moral failure not unlike a slow self-imposed death, a suicide, since not to exercise is not to take responsibility. The Jewish holidays are based on a lunar calendar so its always different, but I never remember the first day of the eight-day holiday starting the night of Christmas Day.) All those church sermon topics. ∼hanukahs late this year, isnt it? (Yes. But I do have a recycling, regifting pile ready for wrapping and distributing). What are your plans for Christmas, er, Chanukah, or whatever? (Taking a quiet walk in the middle of the street on Christmas Day, happy for the solitude, just me and the golden leaves of the gingko trees and the remaining blueness of the plumbago plant, just me and the rest of the population that has no nostalgia with Christmas morning, no family history with the gestalt of Christmas). What are you doing for the holidays? (Eating gumbo, Brunswick stew and vegetarian chili, in between whole batches of kale, swiss chard and lentils for breakfast, trying to keep the diet balanced, you know drinking $8 cosmopolitans, pretending to be a grown-up, fine wine from Spain or hot tea in the afternoons, perfect for sitting around with a friend cracking pecans and/or finding a good lamp for these dimly lit days and plowing through Saul Bellows The Adventures of Augie March). Theres no mistaking this month, is there? All that red.
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