Im Going to Make it After All

I have adored The Mary Tyler Moore Show for years and years. It was and remains one of the best written and best acted situational comedies in the history of television. My young friend, Bryan, pictured below in another entry, is not at all familiar with it. Pity. I remember it well from my childhood but mostly from countless reruns on Nick-at-Nite and local channels. Now that I am older and I work in an office, the characters are even more real and funny to me as I see them portryated every day in the work-a-day psycho-drama that I think is office life in general. Here in the office we have wise cracking, hard working types (the Murrays), the cranky bosses with hearts of gold - well, here it's more gold plated hearts, but ... (the Lous), the bumbling morons (the Teds), the pure of heart (the Georgettes) the edgey nuerotics (the Phyllises), the office slut (the Sue Anns), etc. You get the picture.

As much as I love the show and as much as I find Mary the ideal human being - let's face it - she lives fabulously, dresses well, a serial dater, smart, funny, humble, etc - there is something about the program that has always gnawed at me. As noted, I find Mary, to use the vernacular of her time, far out and groovy. In many ways, I wish I was more like her. I can even psyche myself into thinking that I am indeed like her, but sadly, my blogging friends, this is not the case. I am, unfortunately, Rhoda Morgenstern. Not that being is Rhoda is all that bad, it's just that it isn't Mary. Rhoda was the plump, shlumpy neighbor - she was funny, hard working, but simply not in the category of Mary. She was almost there, but not quite. Rhoda wnated more out of life than it had given her - Mary couldn't figure out what to do with all th good stuff that was in her life - her loving family, her adoring boss, the men who lusted after her. Rhoda wanted to be an artist - instead she dressed windows in a department store. Rhoda wanted Mary's apartment - she got stuck with two rooms in the attic and a hot plate. Even when Rhoda got her own show, it thrived briefly and then bombed, changing formats and never really figuring out what it was supposed to be.

So, you see, Rhoda is me.

Im not an unhappy lad, not really. I have love, a decent job, a home, a family, etc. But it's a Rhoda's life I have.
Example: I am half Italian and half Croatian. By all accounts and with photos to back it up, my mother and fater were quite the good looking duo in their day. Reasonably, one could have expected lovely children from them. Me, I seemed to to have inherited all of their worst traits, both psychologically and physically (see various photos below). Im not hideous and I don't scare small children, but in no way do I resemble the best of either side of my family. I have an enormous head, I'm bald and when I see myself in a mirror I still see a skinny 17 year old instead of the chunky 37 year old I have become.

You see - not bad, but not quite the best. We're told all our lives to strive for the best and I do when I can. But there is just so much that one can do with the raw materials that one is given. I actually find the idea of plastic surgery for vanity's sake abhorrent. The world is made of Rhodas - the Marys are few and far between. I used to be far vainer than I am now. But time has taught me one thing and that's no matter what you do, someone in the world will think they are better than you are and will probably go out of their way to tell you that. I have this one friend who spends bushels and bushels of money on clothes and accessories that while beautiful, are really just pearls before swine. She's a lovely person and if that's what makes her happy, God love her - she hurts no one and is single handedly preventing a retail recession - but for me, well, I just can't fathom it.

I guess the real truth here is that unlike Rhoda, I don't actually hate myself and, moreover, I don't really care anymore that I am a Rhoda and not a Mary. I have all sorts of great qualities that live in tandem with all of my bad ones and that is the essence of being human. I wear what I like and look the way I want to look. I am most certainly the object of someone's derision and that's just fine. I live in a whirlwind of negativity that I feel and see in all aspects of my life - I just don't know how I have escaped letting it penetrate my soul. I think so much of the negative energy in this world comes from us longing for what we can't really have or what we really don't need. There is a simple beauty to life that I haven't mastered, but I think I get it. My capacity for living is boundless - the only time it's not is when I am too worried abut what you think fo me and when I can't get past my own self doubt, which, of course, is more often than not. Life is not easy, but it really isn't all that hard, actually. Be good to yourself, especially when you look in the mirror. Respect what you see there - like my enormous bald head. It's the only one I'v got so what can I do about it? I am no saint - far from it. I am as catty and as mean as the rest of the world, but I guess I maintain a guilt about it that keeps me from actually dipping too deep into that well.

I am rambling, and that's not nice. So, in short, Rhoda or Mary, it doesn't matter. We are all, hopefully, going to make it after all.

Roma Cappocia

I may have mentioned yesterday that my birthday is coming up - in seventeen days, actually. I used to celebrate my birthday with a vengeance. I was making up for what I considered to be years of neglect on the behalf of my mother and father. I got lost in the shuffle of all the brothers and sisters and birthdays were no big deal in our home. So, as I got older and was able to craft my own celebration, I certainly did. Oddly, this year my birthday approaches and I have no real desire to do anything outrageous or special. I look forward to a quiet evening at home or out with friends - something truly celebratory but in a quiet and lovely way.

However, this isn't to say that I don't want presents. Everybody loves to get presents. I refuse to believe those people who say that you aren't supposed to bring a gift to a birthday party. It's usually those people (myself included) who really mean that if you actually show up empty handed you will be talked about and ridiculed for days and days. So, I was thinking today about what I want for my birthday. My wishlist includes a million dollars, a home in San Francisco, a brand new car, another million dollars, etc. But that's all fantasy and fantasy is a good thing - or at least I think so. But one can dream at birthdays and at Christmas and since this is my birthday I will fantasize all I like.

So, here's what I would ask if I could really have anything at all for my birthday. For those of you who don't deal with cheese, move onto another website. Consider this a cheese alert - orange level.

The picture up and over to the right is a photo of my grandmother and grandfather that was taken in the late 1920s in Rome. I have asked my mother and aunts if they can determine where the photo was taken but it just isn't clear enough - I like to think it is near the walls near the Villa Borghese, just on the side of the Via Veneto. I like to think of them having been out on a summer night and having had a gelato or a coffee together, stealing a few moments away from the house that was full of young girls. I imagine them being approached by the photographer - there used to be photographers on the streets of Rome who would just stop you and take your photo and you would pay him and in a few days you would receive a photo in the mail - isn't that lovely - and laughing a little between themselves and then agreeing to take the photo. I am so grateful that they did.

I never had the pleasure of knowing either of my grandparents. My nonna died in 1960 and my nonno died in 1972 - one before I was born and one I was too little to have known. They died far away from Cleveland, from me and from my mother. All I have ever had is this photo, along with others, to fill the void where their presence should have been. I have dreamt of them many times in my life. I have heard stories about them and tried to imagine them as they must have been to have produced not only my mother but my crazy aunts as well. This sounds a little biased, but I don't think a finer bunch of dames has ever existed than my aunts in Rome. They had to have come from only the best of partents. I wonder, too, what my life would have been like if I had the chance to run from my mother and father into the all loving and forgiving arms of my grandparents. What it would have been like to have all of that love and affection - all those hugs and kisses that were never mine. I don't really lament it, truthfully. I think I feel it more for my mother thand I do for myself. One day I will chronicle the story of my mom and dad - it's pretty wild and totally compelling. But for this moment, this melancholy moment on the edge of a night of a very hot but beautifully happy day, I wish that for one day I could be seated across from these two kids and just have a nice, long chat. I'd tell them all the tings I would want them to know about me and for me, I would love to be kissed just once by each of them - I think I could live on that the rest of my life.

Is it odd to miss people whom you have never known? Is it normal to long for something that you never had - I mean, really, what do I know about it. I guess the image I have in my mind of them is stronger than any reality could ever have been. They, for me, have escaped the ravages of age and time and remain this charming couple on a charming street in the most charming city in the world. I feel, too, that by loving them and wishing for them as I do, I keep them alive - and in some small way, I think they are indeed with me even though that sounds crazy.

So, for my birthday, I think I will allow myself a solitary hour or two where I fill my head with pretty images of Italian grandmas and grandpas fussing over me, pinching my cheeks and buying me gelato behind my mother's back. It's a simple gift - and what the hell, it's free.