Yiddishe Momma Trouble

Instead of dragging out of bed before 7am, showering in a stupor, dressing "business casual", streaming out the door and onto the subway, working 8+ hours at something I don't enjoy and with people I can barely tolerate, and returning home to Superfly and a 9:00pm dinner of pizza and Cherry Coke, disinterested TV watching, and crashing into the dreamless sleep of the overworked; instead I've turned into my grandmother.

Such is the life of the fashionably disabled. I sleep until something wakes me up, have a leisurely breakfast, check emails and the blog roll, and then it happens: I plan dinner, clean, cook, and otherwise futz around. I'm in the grocery with the other bubbes, squeezing fruit and checking out expiration dates. I'm in the fish market with other bubbes, carefully choosing the fillets from the display. I actually clucked when I saw how much the price of milk went up.

Then there is the Laundry Room Scuffle. With only three washers and three dryers for the entire apartment building, you better move your ass or you'll find your wet clothes on the filthy floor of the basement. I don't know what it is with these people, but they guard their clothes (washed and unwashed) as if the zippers were made of solid gold. Your clothes, however, are worthless and vile, and don't belong in THEIR washing machine. I'm not above tipping that mean old man out of his chair if he manhandles my laundry one more time.

Also like my grandmother, I feel it necessary to be nice to everyone and polite to people in banks and stores and such. In Brooklyn, this is met with bewilderment and suspicion. Unlike my grandmother, I don't travel in pack of other bubbes, smoking and kvetching at warp-speed. I wander around by myself, evidently making strangers curious. I am asked impertinent questions, and not just by kids.

I go to Tai Chi/Yoga because I'm told to reduce stress in my life to barely-perceptible levels. Fat chance, I say. Anyway, the Dahn yoga class is surreal in an otherwordly sense: The instructors are so serene and perceptive, I feel a giant beam of energy is going to explode in the middle of the tasteful and thoroughly feng-shui'd room. At the end of class, we do a chant, the natural harmony of which makes your hair stand up. I leave class convinced I have superpowers, but I'm unable to convince Superfly of this when he returns home. My yoga uniform has a smiley face on it, so I'm psyched.

My grandmother does not do yoga or exercise of any kind. She smokes an alarming amount, eats whatever the Hell she wants, and is rail-thin. At 95, she still wears high heels and short skirts. She has younger boyfriends. She's French, ok?

Since she is fashionably unemployed, receiving benefits from the U.S. from my grandfather's pension, and France from her own, she needn't worry about cash. She travels all the time, around the world, visiting friends and relations. She is my role model, bet your ass.

But the last time I visited France, guess what she did all day? She bought bread and fresh ingredients for dinner, since my Tante Denise "cannot cook". She wears a pretty scarf over her silver mane, a chic suit and shoes, and the latest handbag to accomplish this. She tried to get me to smoke, and reacted in horror to my jeans and sweatshirt, and informed me she never wore underwear of any kind. She shopped, she cleaned the house becase my Tante Denise "cannot clean zee house properly", and she futzed around the rest of the day.

Or, I could be fashionably unemployed like my cousin Gilles, who travels around the world being a leftist guerilla. The family plays "Ou-est Gilles?" like "Where's Waldo?", only instead of a red-stripe hat, Gilles wears a ski mask and carries a semi-automatic, and instead of a densely-populated beach, the location is a jungle in Nicaragua. I stay in his room when I visit, and peruse his Marxist newspapers. I don't think I'm well-suited for Gilles' lifestyle. Oh, well.

A Yiddishe momma it is, then. Albeit a fashionable and sexy yiddishe momma, to be sure. I won't take up smoking, or hanging out with other bubbes, but the cat doesn't mind me swearing at him in French when he stomps across the keyboard, and I doubt Superfly minds having a home-made dinner for him every night, a clean apartment, and futzy things like laundry already done, right?

So here it is: Please Comment with Your Suggestion on How Trouble can be fashionably unemployed and disabled!