Summer Bummer

“It’s never too late to be who you want to be.” Lana Del Rey

Driving in my husband’s Ford Escape on a hot steamy morning with the dogs. It is heartening that this summer there are kids all across the world listening to Lana Del Rey’s new album. As for me, I am 44.

When I was young, I'm pretty sure Lana's music could have easily changed the trajectory of my life. I am romantic and the right song or scene in a movie could propel the making big decisions. That's changed now. Lana’s black beaches are ruined, and all I can do is lament on her behalf.

My husband and I bought a dilapidated mansion last fall. It is a little bit grand. I think it is wonderful. There are overgrown flower gardens and the trees that seemed inconsequential on the day we came to live here now drop heavy orange and pink blossoms onto the mossy cobblestones. There is a lot work here to be done.

So I'm listening to Lana, driving my dogs, heading for the reservation where we can walk and walk, and I am suffering: 

Last month, in the midst of a group show in Brooklyn, I surprised myself by quitting my job. For twenty years I have been an artist, but on a day in late June, sitting at my computer manning the gallery desk, with a clear view of the Atlantic Avenue McDonalds, I gave my two weeks notice. The decision felt impulsive, as all decisions do. But I knew what I was doing. My future, for that split second, was perfect and did not include an art career. Later I moved all of my stuff out of my big louche studio in Newark and drove it home in my busted minivan, hauling everything up to the attic of the mansion my husband and I are restoring. In so doing I walked down two flights of cement Newark stairs at least twelve times, and up three flights of wooden mansion stairs eight or nine times. All of this walking up and down staircases aggravated my left knee, where I have advanced arthritis under my kneecap. The knee swelled to the size of a volleyball, but the pain never came. Until I tore the hip flexor just above it a week later in what I fantasized was an unrelated accident, but of course was all part of the same problem. I joke that I need a total leg replacement. I am lying in bed now. I have ice on the front of my hip, the back of my hip, and the front of my quadriceps.

I took the dogs for a hike this morning, against any kind of good sense. They’ve been lolling around the summer yard for two weeks while I wait for the stabbing, burning pain in my groin to abate. They have taken to barking and shitting the rugs.

It was early enough that the fog hadn’t burned off yet. The woods were steamy and quiet. There were only a few cars in the parking lot. I walked in suspense, waiting for the knife-sharp pain. I listened to Lana Del Rey on my phone, through ear buds. The pain was substantial, though less than a week ago. I thought about Elizabeth Smart, hiking at knife point through the Utah woods. I thought of every woman left for dead, who had to figure out a way out to sunlight and the open road. I figured out that if I tightened my lower abdomen 100%, the pain in my hip was less. I figured out that my dogs behave better when they can smell significant injury.

When I listen to Lana, I can locate my earliest awarenesses of truth: my mom in her bright blood-violet cotton column dress, suntanned and freckled, tapping the beat of Judy Collins on my sternum as I sit on her lap, 1976. The crackle of the album on our big cabinet stereo. “My parents cannot stand him because he rides the rodeo. My father says that he will leave me crying. . . ” Tiny stars embossed in the dirty white ceiling upholstery of our VW square-back, driving home from the beach with sand in my swimsuit. Rosemary Woodhouse in her little felt hat and yellow shirt dress. Holly Golightly.

There’s a steep short hill just before the parking lot shows up through the trees on the left. As I hobbled up, tightening my gut, breathing deeply and thanking god I had made it back to the car without pain that would indicate re-injury, a really pretty song started with a Spanish guitar riff. To my unexpected delight, Lana crooned “God Bless America and all the Beautiful Women in it.” Though we have never met, we are simpatico. I lament her ruined beaches, and she blesses my beauty.

My daughter will be seven next week. Last week, when we were driving home from the pool, and I thought she had fallen asleep, I sneaked a look over my shoulder and she was leaning back in her swimsuit, gazing up and out of the window. Lana was singing about Love, and Nina was still awake.

"Tuna Melt on Rye with Swiss Cheese and Tomato"

I'm still a salad girl. I still consume a lot of salad. The one I love right now the most is from the pool club snack bar. House Salad. It consists of crispy wet iceberg lettuce, grated carrot, a lot of shredded cheddar cheese, sweet cucumber cubes, grape tomatoes, and the greasiest home made croutons you've ever seen. I take the croutons off the salad first thing, and pile them on the red plastic tray. My daughter and I eat them long after the salad is finished. The House Salad dressing is some Italian that is smoother and more puckery than anything I can come up with at home. Red wine vinegar, oil, herbs. It comes separated into two layers, gold and pink, in little plastic ramikens with tops on.

Sometimes I get a scoop of tuna salad on top of my house salad. Tuna salad has replaced leafy salad as my staple.

At home I make my own: solid white albacore in light vegetable oil, with a blob of mayonnaise, a scoop of sweet hot dog relish, and a sprinkling of dried cranberries. I figure out that the trick to delicious tuna salad is to stir it for a really long time. I pile my tuna salad on a slice of wheat bread, and bake it in the oven with a thick slice of jarlsberg on top.

Out in the world, I order it take-out  from a cafe in town. Exactly as described in the title. Sometimes the owner asks if I want my regular.

When I was a teenager my best friend and I marveled that my mom sustained herself on a diet of fish stick sandwiches and gin and tonic. She ate exactly one sandwich at lunch time every day, for what I recall being the entire decade of the 1980s. She didn't eat much else. The occasional block of Cadbury Fruit and Nut from the freezer door. So it was a kind of wild moment a few months ago when I realized what I had become. If I skip my tuna salad for a day, I crave it like a feral cat.