A

On the first of each month,
a guest writer
shares
how they spend the day.

xA

January 1, 2023: Alexandra Zapruder

X

Abraham Zapruder was a Ukrainian Jewish immigrant and the owner of Jennifer Juniors, a Dallas company that made inexpensive copies of designer dresses. On November 22nd, 1963, the presidential motorcade would pass in front of his store. He’d thought about taking his home movie camera to work that day to record the event, but in the end he decided not to. His assistant encouraged him to go back and get it, which of course he did.

Alexandra Zapruder never knew her grandfather Abe. He died when she was only ten months old. She writes, “it occurred to me that there was an access route to my grandfather through the Zapruder film and the assassination. I understood, if vaguely, that his experience held clues about Abe Zapruder, clues no one else would notice or look for…”

On November 22, 1963, I was only six years old, but on that day, I added a whole new cluster of phrases to my vocabulary–including the Texas School Book Depository, the grassy knoll, and the Zapruder film. I was excited to read Twenty-Six Seconds–the big, thick book Alexandra Zapruder wrote about her grandfather and his film with the subtitle A Personal History of the Zapruder Film.

As the title and subtitle suggest, the book is both fact-based and family-rich. It includes documentary details and reference notes on the possession and ownership of the film as well as the feelings of the Zapruder family members for Abe and about this film that changed all their lives, including the feelings of the author as she discovers information in connection with the writing of this book–a significant undertaking that required research into the Kennedy assassination as well as the collection and review of family documents.

On that Friday in November of 1963, when Abe got back to work with the camera, to fill up the remaining minutes on side A of the reel (which was full of home movies), he filmed his assistant. He wanted the motorcade to be the first thing on side B. The film was double 8mm color film, which was difficult to process. Later that day, someone had the presence of mind to contact Kodak, who opened a lab just blocks from Love Field at approximately the same time Lyndon Johnson was being sworn in on Air Force One as the thirty-sixth president of the United States.

Twenty-Six Seconds is a fascinating read for those who were alive at the time and for those interested in history. I didn’t know until reading the book that the film showed the president was dead before arrival at Parkland Memorial Hospital (also part of the vocabulary cluster of that day).

Alex started out as a member of the founding staff of the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., where she became interested in the ways that young people document their lives and how these records can be preserved. So it makes perfect sense that in 2020, in partnership with the Educators Institute for Human Rights, Alex launched a project called Dispatches from Quarantine, which gave teenagers a way to document their experiences during the Covid-19 Pandemic. You can visit an online gallery to see their contributions in prose, poetry, photography, art, and song.

Alex’s first book, Salvaged Pages: Young Writers’ Diaries of the Holocaust, published in 2002 and winner of the National Jewish Book Award in the Holocaust category, is a collection of diaries written by young people during the Holocaust. After its publication, she wrote and co-produced I’m Still Here, a documentary film for young audiences based on the book, which aired on MTV in May 2005 and was nominated for two Emmy awards. She has also been published in Parade, LitHub, Smithsonian, and The New York Times.

Come back on JANUARY 1st to read how ALEXANDRA ZAPRUDER spends her days.

Aging is an extraordinary process where you become the person you always should have been.
–David Bowie

This is sixty.

60 is more freedom than I’ve ever had. Really. It’s awesome.

60 is not just feeling the same but feeling better than I have in years.

60 is thinner skin–actually not metaphorically.

60 is loving my new MacBook Pro with touchbar a little too much.

60 is not yet having used age as a reason I can’t do something.

60 is wanting to do just as many things as I wanted to do at 15.

60 is wondering why, still, I’m preoccupied with freedom.

60 is starting to think hashtag before pound.

60 is having lived 21,900 days. Which doesn’t seem like so many. If anyone had asked me I would have guessed a person lived hundreds of thousands of days. But then math is not my strong suit.

60 is my own small house in Provincetown, Massachusetts, on the very tip of Cape Cod, as far as you can go without falling into the sea.

60 is wearing peace sign earrings and a nevertheless she resisted bracelet.

60 is having not as many days as I have lived still to live.

60 is googling life expectancy. Did you know the longer you live the more years they give you?

60 is 4 adult children—all off on their own—plus a son-in-law and a daughter-in-law, and girlfriends. And liking them ALL.

60 is four grandchildren. But we are not your mothers’ grandmothers; we are grandmothers who facetime from airplanes.

60 is, as Cal says, one day older than I was yesterday.

60 is walking in the women’s march.

60 is finally liking yoga.

60 is liking socks.

60 is contributing to the ACLU on a monthly basis.

60 is taking 3 prescriptions–for blood pressure, for eyes, and  for hypothyroidism.

60 is still loving to travel–all the movement and that moment the wheels lift off the ground.

60 is strength training twice a week.

60 is feeling happy.

60 is resisting.

60 is still wanting adventure.

60 is almost never wearing makeup.

60 is finally, finally finding clothes that are comfortable, that look good on me, and that look like me–black leggings, a short little black skirt, a long top, and these kick-ass black ankle boots. That is, when I wear something other than black exercise pants.

60 is more adverbs.

60 is 32 years of marriage and still liking each other. He still makes me laugh. 

60 is being born in 1957, the same year as Caroline Kennedy and Princess Caroline of Monaco.

60 is remembering each of the years and understanding that they add up to 60, that they add up to me.

60 is listening to my body instead of telling my body what to do. It’s resting instead of pushing. It’s eating more vegetables, doing qigong energy movements, and having my body say finally. It’s being amazed as, after a year of trying, the weight just falls off.

60 is listening to Sarah Jaffe’s Clementine, The Killer’s Human, the Branches Darlin’, and Roo Panes’ I Was Here…

60 is preparing to do one last revision on novel #4.

60 is knowing the correct form is to put the names of songs in quotes but liking the way they look in italics better.

60 is adding coconut oil, cinnamon, and turmeric to my coffee.

60 is using the word still a lot.

60 is 6 decades on this planet.

60 is gratitude for each of those days in each of those years.

60 is not yet 70 or 80 or 90. It’s not yet 100.

60 is spending a month in my small house on the water.

60 is being excited about the year ahead and the rest of the journey.

~

She sees that she has before her an important task: to understand that all the things that happened in her life happened to her. That she is the same person who was born, was a child, a girl, a young woman, and now she is old. That there is some line running through her body like a wick.

–Mary Gordon, The Rest of Life

THIS IS 60

X

this was 58

this was 57

Continued appreciation to Lindsey Mead for the inspiration.

And it occurs to me, as I pause to consider this approaching birthday by writing something about it, that in singling out these 60 days prior to turning 60 as a time to reflect, to appreciate all that has come before, I’ve created a microcosm of my life–each day potentially standing in for a year. I could have taken each day and looked back on a year.

But here we are already, 14 days in. And yes, I started my year of posts not on the first but on the 13th. So that sounds about right…

In my day-to-day living, despite being a writer, I so rarely pause to consider my life. After all, these days I’m trying to be present; I’m trying to live this life. During my year of posts, however, I did consider. And now I’m going to again. I’m going to look back for a moment before I begin to look forward.

my first 14 years

On the first of April in 1957, during a blizzard, I’m born in Rapid City, South Dakota. My father is in the Air Force. Three weeks later, my first trip–cross-country in a car to Atlanta, where we will live. In the car are Mom, Dad, Lilli, and Lance. I get a large red wagon for Christmas. Each of my parents is an only child so I have all four grandparents to myself.

1958: By my first birthday, I’m walking—in a very short, petticoated, polka dot dress with smocking on the front and a bow in the back. I reach out to touch the flame on my birthday candle and wipe away a tear, my faith in the world taking a hit. Later in the year, I wear a pair of red Keds. And I climb out of my baby bed in the dark, dropping to the floor. I wear my father’s dungarees and love our dog Lance. My sister is born in December.

1959: I receive lots of things for Christmas but what I do first is sit down at my new table to read a book. For my second birthday, I wear a blue dress with a petticoat and black Mary Janes instead of white lace-ups. I have a party with friends who are equally dressed up. I love blowing out my candles and my mother lights them again. The second time is even more fun, and I clap for myself. I lean across the table, comfortably, as my friends have a turn blowing out the candles. At Christmas, it’s a tricycle that captures my attention.

1960:A new decade for the world and another new sister for me. In the photos I seem to do what people tell me to, but there’s a series this year where it looks as if I refuse to smile. My first memory comes somewhere around here–grown-ups drinking green drinks and the brick ledge around the fireplace. As if I own the world, I hook my arm around the back of a chair at my sister’s second birthday party.

1961: Long legs and short shorts, I turn 4 this year, amazed by my newly discovered older second cousins. I stand up on my seat in the back row of the Fox Theater to watch my father walk across the stage to receive his PhD from Georgia Tech.

1962: We move to the house where I will grow up. I start kindergarten and hear French for the first time when Henry Gambrell’s mother performs a French puppet show for the class. I am mesmerized. I walk into my mother’s darkened bedroom and stand by her bed. She tells me to turn around and look at the TV.You’ll want to remember this, she says.John Glenn is about to orbit the earth.

1963: My 6th birthday is my first one at school, and no one believes me. But I want the birthday carton of milk. I’m worried I wasn’t going to get it. I answer the phone on November 22, 1963, and listen to my great-aunt say that the president has been shot. I look down the hall for a grown-up but see no one.

1964: I play with dolls even though I have no recollection of this. What I remember is playing school with animals around a table, dancing to Jesse James at my grandparents’ house, playing ship on the gray steps out our kitchen door, playing something (explorer?) for hours in the small bushes that surround our back yard. Another sister is born.

1965: My grandfather dies. I go to the funeral, and right before my grandmother gets in the car, I say, “Pop never got to meet Beth (my new sister), did he?” My mother shushes me. I learn there are certain things you don’t say. I turn 8. My mother takes us out of school for the six weeks before Christmas, which we spend in Florida. My next oldest sister and I are allowed to walk downtown by ourselves to eat lunch at the drugstore.  It rains. I call my mother to come get us, and she says, “It’s Florida. Wait five minutes and it will be over.” I feel stupid for not knowing this already.

1966: My father drives us to see the hippies on Tenth Street. There are protests against the war, and Walter Cronkite every night with footage of Vietnam. Hanoi, Cambodia, Laos, Ho Chi Minh are household words. I wear sleeveless shells, skirts, and loafers. I like to perform for the camera—dances and cartwheels. I am still smiling. I sit with my housekeeper in the kitchen waiting for news from the hospital–it has happened. I have a brother.

1967: Everything happens the year I’m 10. I read Gone With the Wind and take friends to the Fox Theater to see the movie on my birthday. (I LOVE to read.) My grandmother takes me to Europe–10 countries in 14 days. My grandfather takes me to my first concert–the Monkees. I write my first novel with my best friend Dee.

1968: In the spring is the My Lai Massacre. The total of American combat deaths reaches 22,951. Then, a few days after my I turn eleven, Martin Luther King is shot. I’m watching TV in the basement, and I take off up the steps to tell everyone. Marty Jr is in my grade at Spring Street. Two months later, I wake up to my father sitting on my bed to tell me Robert Kennedy has died. Nixon is elected.

1969: I listen to the Age of Aquarius… This is the year of Woodstock and Joni Mitchell. There’s busing and integration. We wear POW and MIA bracelets. I’m 12, tall and thin on my last day at my public grammar school, but during the summer, I stay at my grandparents’ house in Mobile and do nothing but eat and watch TV. I have no sense of my body and gain 25 pounds without noticing. My grandfather boards up windows in preparation for Hurricane Camille. Before we go to sleep on cots in the den, my grandmother opens the back door. The wind howls in the darkness. Back inside, it’s hot and stuffy without power. I start 7th grade at a private school.

1970: Another new decade. I turn 13. Four dead in Ohio… At my new school we have spend-the-night parties. I invite my best friend Ellen to go with me to Mobile for spring break. From the bed in the blue bedroom we make crank calls. One evening—my grandfather has just walked in the door—he answers the phone. Oh no, he says, over and over. A boy we just met at a church supper the night before is dead. A lumber truck misjudged a turn and dumped its load on top of him in his new car. That summer, for the first time, I head to New England–to a French camp in Vermont for 7 weeks. No one meets me in New York to help me change planes, and I do it by myself. In Vermont, the air feels right in a way I won’t understand until much later. I listen to James Taylor and Carol King. Camp is as magical as those first French words I heard at the age of 5.

1971: When the new year begins, I’m in 8th grade, which is when I get caught sneaking out a window to meet a boy–at a Latin convention. I learn I don’t like how it feels to be in trouble, to be forced to say, “I’m sorry.” For too many years, not-getting-in-trouble will be the way I make decisions. In April, I turn 14 and the Apollo 13 astronauts arrive home safely, which I don’t remember. During the summer I spend another 7 weeks in Vermont. I am less angry than I was at 13.

~

a series of posts during the 60 days leading to my 60th birthday

~

Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

—Mary Oliver

Hey there. Hope you’re all well. Tell me what you’ve been up to!

Hard to believe it’s been almost a year since I wrote anything in this space other than the introduction to the next writer in the series. But I just double checked. I finished my year of posts, came back on February 20, 2016 to check in, and then faded into the background. I regret that. And I miss you all.

What has caused me to come here tonight is something I marked on my calendar at the first of the year. 60 days from today, if my luck holds out, I turn 60.

That is also hard to believe.

Really hard to believe.

I started the year sick and stressed, with extra pounds from a thyroid issue and the holidays. I needed an intervention, and I gave myself one–3 days at Canyon Ranch. Days that were not just about exercise and massage–I also went to lectures on nutrition and memory. I had acupuncture. I did Qigong. And as part of a thank you to my body for carrying me this far, I’ve been eating for health for almost a month. And I haven’t let not being perfect stop me.

Even as recently as my 40’s, I looked at people in their 60’s and thought OLD. But scouting ahead for those behind me, some encouraging news. With 60 days to go, I don’t feel any different than I did when I turned 40 or 50.

Despite all that’s going on in the world, I’ve been breathing. And not writing but refilling the well. And I feel better than I have in two years.

~

the first in a series of posts during the 60 days leading to my 60th birthday

~

Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

—Mary Oliver

my desk

~

 365 true things about me
why this daily practice

Continued appreciation to Lindsey Mead for the inspiration.

This is fifty-eight.

58 is more freedom still than I had last year at 57, probably because I’m becoming more comfortable with exercising it and the people around me are becoming more comfortable with my exercise of it. These days, each month I still spend a week where I want to live—in Provincetown, Massachusetts, on the very tip of Cape Cod, as far as you can go without falling into the sea.

58 is old—the number that is—but I don’t feel old. I feel just the same.

58 is not old—I’m not yet in my 60’s or 70’s or 80’s or 90’s. I’m not yet 100.

58 is 11 little bundles of sticks with 1 across the middle. It’s 3 sticks already in the next bundle.

58 is having lived 21,184 days. Which doesn’t seem like so many.

58 is having not as many days as I have lived still to live.

~

58 is, as my husband says, one day older than I was yesterday.

58 is wondering why the preoccupation with freedom.

58 is wondering if the resistance to being old (I mean older) will ever give way to something else.

58 is taking a risk on a new haircut!

58 is not yet having used age as a reason I can’t do something.

58 is having had a moment on New Year’s Eve when I didn’t want the ball to drop and doing something about it.

58 is being 90 days into a practice of articulating one truth a day about myself and posting it here—acknowledging all the different strands that swirl together into me.

58 is running when I want to.

58 is driving a black Prius instead of the convertible I always thought I wanted.

58 is 4 adult children—all off on their own—plus a son-in-law and a daughter-in-law. And liking them ALL. I was 23 when my first child was born. I was 55 when the last one left for college. You do the math.

58 is being a grandmother to three little ones with another one on the way! BUT we are not your mothers’ grandmothers. We do not stay home in house dresses. We are Joni Mitchell.

58 is doing THIS:

58 is not holding so tightly to one dream.

58 is taking blood pressure medicine, damn it.

58 is being a Platinum Medallion Flyer.

58 is feeling happier.

58 is winter having displaced fall as my favorite season.

58 is wearing a Fitbit and often getting 10,000 steps or more.

58 is 30 years of marriage and still liking each other.

58 is being the same age as the very cool Frances McDormand.

58 is going through the family photos, one by one, and remembering the small moments, the fun it was.

58 is hearing my own voice.

58 is being confident about my writing.

58 is listening to The Head and the Heart, Sam Smith, Lady Antebellum, as well as Joni Mitchell and Simon & Garfunkel.

~

58 is 5 decades, almost 6.

58 is gratitude for each of those days in each of those years.

58 is being excited about the year ahead and the rest of the journey…which belongs to me.

~

She sees that she has before her an important task: to understand that all the things that happened in her life happened to her. That she is the same person who was born, was a child, a girl, a young woman, and now she is old. That there is some line running through her body like a wick.

–Mary Gordon, The Rest of Life

THIS IS 58

this was 57

I imagine what the minimum would look like–seven of everything clothes-wise, ten books, one set of dishes, two sets of towels, two sets of sheets, one blanket, no coffee table books, one purse.

I wonder if the minimum is even a realistic goal if a person lives in a house that used to hold six people and that now at peak times hold thirteen. So thirteen sets of towels?

I would kind of like to give away all the books I have no intention of ever reading again. But does that make any sense when I have the space for them, enjoy them, have already bought them, and may actually need them for future writing or teaching projects? The same goes for shoes, coats, purses, pens, and pads.

I’d love to know what you think.

~

 365 true things about me
why this daily practice

The last couple of years, I’ve been spending more time writing fiction and less time doing everything else–including showing up here and including taking time for myself. And I don’t mean manicures and massages. I’m a very private person. So private that I don’t even know what I think sometimes. So private that I have a hard time saying things that are true about myself. So private that I can’t even come up with a bio that includes anything other than facts and figures. Aaugh! On the plus side, the writing is improving, editors are interested, I’m receiving the loveliest of rejections, I’m getting closer to publishing a novel. But I seem to be getting further/farther away from me. The real me. The true me. What I really think about something. The way I really feel.

I was heading in the right direction with this is 57 last April, but that was one post on one day. After my birthday, I continued to spiral away from myself. I think what it’s going to take is a daily process, a daily practice. I want to catch hold of something true about myself every day, and I want to say it out loud.

Katherine James, an internet friend who is a commenter here, just completed a year-long project of her own—365 feminist selfies—which entailed posting a selfie on Facebook every day for a year. She wrote that the project started out being about her physical appearance and completing the project, but it became about “letting go of fear and inhibition, opening up to trust other people to like you or not for how you look and what you say, and no matter what they do, good or bad, knowing your heart will go on beating until it does not.”

I think of Facebook and Twitter as places to visit. I learn a lot of things while I’m there. Sometimes I feel worse after a visit; sometimes, better. I thought about hosting my project on Facebook as Katherine did. But then I remembered this place that I had created.

But although I’ve been thinking about this project for a while, I wasn’t sure about it. And then I got into Christmas and kids arriving home… If I were going to do it, I wanted to start on January 1st… but on January 1st, I had a house full. Last Friday, my husband and I accompanied the last child back from whence he’d come. We returned home Saturday. I came to Provincetown on Sunday where I finally had the time and the space to think. I began writing this post yesterday.

Which brings us to today, January 13th. And my project for the new year (which I will not abandon just because today is the 13th and not the 1st).

365 true things about me, 1 true thing at a time.

And even now, I’m not sure if this is a good idea. In fact, I reserve the right to abandon ship as long as I do it publicly, which would be as good for me as anything.

But if I can do it, I’ll be posting every day this year. Short posts, sometimes only a sentence. Still lots about reading and writing and life–just more me. If you are subscribed and don’t want to receive a post every day, please feel free to unsubscribe. My feelings will not be hurt. And to my faithful commenters (you two know who you are), you are not allowed to comment on every post!

So off we go. I’m looking forward to catching me and catching days.

~

 365 true things about me

Besides, I was born in 1957 and now I’m 57. This is my year.

This is fifty-seven.

57 is way more freedom than I had at 17 or 27 or 37 or 47. These days, each month I spend a week where I want to live—in Provincetown, Massachusetts, on the very tip of Cape Cod, as far as you can go without falling into the sea. I had thought my place would be Nantucket—an island. But it turns out I would like to stay connected. In Provincetown, I feel at home in my skin. I let the bridge down rather than pull it up. I spread out rather than gather in.

57 is old—the number that is—but, like my grandmother before me, I don’t feel old. I feel just the same.

57 is not old—I’m not yet in my 60’s or 70’s or 80’s or 90’s. I’m not yet 100.

57 is 11 little bundles of sticks with 1 across the middle. It’s 2 sticks already in the next bundle. 

57 is having lived 20,818 days. Which doesn’t seem like so many.

57 is having not as many days as I have lived still to live.

57 is beginning to run again. I want to see if I can learn to enjoy running. And to see if I can run 3 miles 3 times a week by the end of this year.

57 is walking at least 30 minutes every day.

57 is dry eyes and eye drops and reading glasses and distance glasses when I used to have twenty-twenty vision.

57 is 4 adult children—all off on their own. It’s realizing that for 31 of those 57 years, I had children at home. I had 23 years to myself before I had children. I’ve had 2 years to myself since they left.

57 is liking each of my children.

57 is 2 grandchildren. But I’m way way way too young to be a grandmother. I don’t think I look like a grandmother. My grandmother had gray hair and baked. I try to stay as far from the kitchen as I can. I get color on my hair every four weeks so that it will look the same as it’s always looked. The first thing Mack says to me when he gets to our house is, “CC, you want to go in your study and play?” Lily, in some karmic connection, waited to be born until after I finished my week in Provincetown.

57 is 29 years of marriage. It’s finding out we still like each other after the kids have gone. Actually, we like each other more.

57 is choosing an iPhone case that is not black.

57 is figuring out that shoes will never be my thing and to stop trying—after recently being talked into buying a pair of Valentino shoes one day and taking them back the next because I will never wear them. Purses and suitcases, yes. Shoes, no.

57 is adding the year to my birthday on my Facebook page.

57 is remembering seeing John Glenn orbit the earth on February 20, 1962, on a black and white plastic-shelled TV with rabbit ears. It’s remembering where I was a year and a half later when John Kennedy was shot—home from 1st grade, answering the phone in the room off the kitchen to hear my great aunt give me the news, then looking down the empty hallway for a grown-up.

57 is being a baby boomer and turning 57 this year along with Princess Caroline of Monaco, Caroline Kennedy (I had a Caroline Kennedy doll with a pink flowered playsuit), Martin Luther King, III (in my class at Spring Street Elementary School), B.K. Loren, Ray Romano, Katie Couric (with whom my husband once had a date), Vanna White, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Ethan Coen. Random.

57 is going back and forth between using, in this piece, the numeral 57 or the word fifty-seven and choosing 57 because it was more in my face, and if I kept repeating it, maybe I could make friends with it.

57 is going from black exercise pants to black pajama pants and back again—happily.

57 is spending my days doing what I want to.

57 is writing.

57 is never giving up.

57 is realizing I was never as smart as I thought I was.

57 is still trying to be the good girl and not understanding why. Really, why?

57 is having missed The Talking Heads the first time around. It’s loving music almost more than ever. Music can take me back so fast. Letting the days go by…

• “Daydream Believer” to Mobile, Alabama, the summer after 6th grade
• “Colour My World” to Atlanta, Georgia, the 8th grade Christmas dance
• “I Feel the Earth Move” to Ferrisburg, Vermont, the summer after 8th grade
• “I Believe When I Fall in Love It Will Be Forever” to Davidson, North Carolina, freshman year

57 is 5 decades, almost 6.

57 is gratitude for each of those days in each of those years.

57 is taking baby steps, and next year maybe big steps or more little steps, toward acknowledging all the different strands that swirl together into me–like for example I’m so judgmental that on a silent meditation walk at a spa I found myself judging the way the other people walked. OMG.

57 is judging myself just as harshly.

57 is wanting to know who I was all those other years. It’s inviting all my different selves to show themselves—lining them up and trying to figure out what ties us together.

57 is being excited about the year ahead and the rest of the journey…which belongs to me.

~

She sees that she has before her an important task: to understand that all the things that happened in her life happened to her. That she is the same person who was born, was a child, a girl, a young woman, and now she is old. That there is some line running through her body like a wick.

–Mary Gordon, The Rest of Life

THIS IS 57

Every month, I was there. Usually for a week–one month for more, two months for less. Writing, reading, walking, cycling, eating, drinking, visiting…living. I stayed in five different places. I made friends. I had visitors. In March, my writing group was there.

2013 was a wonderful year.

2013: 80 days

Happy New Year!