Mr. Adorable Takes on Kindergarten

Mr. Adorable headed off to kindergarten today!

Here's a sequence of classic photos posted by his mom Celia:

Walking to the building: Doesn't he look small?

Ready to go

A moment of doubt when Mom leaves

Mission accomplished!  He did very well.

Here's how I still think of him:

At 2 years old

Hey, Donald: You Have Really Bad Hair

So, The Donald.

Until the recent Republican debate,  he was pretty much off my radar.  A bombastic buffoon with truly terrible hair (my hairdresser is sure he cuts it himself), someone who would go away, thank God.  Implode, and the sooner the better.

But when I read that Megyn Kelly asked him about calling women "fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals,"  it really touched a nerve.  Apparently, he's also called women "ugly, grotesque, and "the unsexiest woman alive."  The last referred to Sarah Jessica Parker.



Now I really, truly despise him.


I remember the first time a boy said a really mean thing about me.  It was during a school dance class in the 7th grade.  He muttered to a friend, loud enough for me to hear, that I had big feet and hairy legs.

Thanks, Steve van Sickle.  Did I mention at the time that you had bad hair and nerd glasses?  No.  Would I have thought to within your earshot?  No.  I wanted you to like me.  Also, I was not mean.



When I was young and single, I heard similar remarks from some men.  Why was my hair so short?  Was I a lesbian?  My feet were big (again).  I had a moustache.  I looked like I'd gained weight.

A lot of these unkind comments were meant to get me to prove I was a woman by having sex with these these people.  I never did, but I was hurt and full of self-doubt. (Do guys use the lesbian line anymore?  Or is it so politically incorrect that they've given up?  I fervently hope so.)

Trump is one in a long line of males who try to intimidate women by making cruel remarks about their appearance.  At 65, I'm invisible to men like him, and I move in "liberal, coastal, sophisticated" circles, as a New York Times writer characterized us in last week's Sunday magazine.  I can't imagine a man I know making such comments.

But I'll bet that this kind of intimidation is going on at Berkeley High School, just across town.  I'll bet there are boys sniping away at girls about their appearance, trying to bully them into submission. There are still men who model this kind of behavior, and Trump is one of them.

So it's not so much Trump's implying that Megyn Kelly was having her period and therefore "mean" to him that I find most offensive. That's so absurd and irrelevant that it isn't worth addressing.  It's the point she brought up in the first place: that he makes derogatory remarks about women and whenever the hell he wants.

I began to wonder: We may make fun of Trump's hair, but has anyone ever said it to his face?  Has anyone ever told him that he looks bad, has a tight mouth, a sour expression, and--I don't know--big feet?  Or that he has an extra roll around his middle (I'm guessing here)?

I doubt it.  The press makes fun of him, and so do we Coastal Liberals, privately.  But he's rich, aggressive, and scary. Who wants to step up to The Donald and tell him what we're all thinking?  Is anyone that brave? (or mean?)
 
He's a bombastic buffoon, yes.  But he's also unkind, controlling, and a bully.  He verbally beats up men and women. Sorry if I offend anyone with this, but,  really, he's just an asshole.  When I get to be President, I'm going to build a tall fence to keep people like him out of  the country.

Can't Choose Your Neighbors

We've had an exceptionally close relationship with neighbors on one side of us, Laura and her daughters.  We've celebrated Thanksgiving with them, and for years the girls adopted my Christmas tree.  Jerry and I have flown to their college graduations on the East Coast.  I spoke at their bat mitzvahs.

 Celebrating Leah's graduation from Tufts in 2013

Neighbors on other side have been problematic. First, there was a single lawyer who turned the place into a boarding house.  We hardly ever spoke to him, because he was rarely home.

Ten years ago, he sold his house to a family of five with young children.

This has not been a happy relationship.  I won't go into the details, but the easiest route seemed to be not to speak.  It's been difficult and unsettling.

A couple of years ago, this family moved across the country and rented their house to another family of five, who were quiet and delightful.  My shoulders dropped.  I opened windows I'd kept shut, literally and metaphorically.  I left the shutters open all day.

This week, the renter-family moved out, and the owners returned.  Their presence felt HUGE, like this:

 Actually, their house is no bigger than anyone else's

There was unpleasantness over the state of the house and the renters' security deposit.   Neighbors have taken sides. Some aren't speaking to each other. 

The owner-family is loud, and I'm constantly opening and closing the windows in my studio, depending on their volume.

 Closed window and drawn shade in my studio

I think about my mom and the kind of friendships she made with neighbors in our San Jose housing tract in the fifties and sixties. Virtually all of the women were housewives with children in the same school that my sister and I went to.  They gossiped.  They borrowed from each other.  They lent each other maternity clothes.  They commiserated. 

My mom didn't like every single one of them, especially the "trollop" in short-shorts who petitioned against fair housing.  My mother slammed the door in her face.  But generally it was copacetic.  The trollop lived on another block.

Obviously, I'm not going to move because of this tension.  I tried drawing the neighbors' house more to scale to see if that would help:

 It did, a little.   But my house still feels like less of a refuge.