Then, the ecstatic carnival of scientific exploration halted. But why?
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A women I didn’t recognize came up to me after class in the gym last year. “Are you Betsy from Brandeis?” Guess so. Turns out we were classmates, sort of. She had transferred into my class our sophomore year, but graduated a year after me, so I really did not know her. But somehow, she knew me.

I recently Facebook “friended” an old high school chum, someone a year older who had grown up across the street. “Holy moly, you look just like that girl who grew up across the street”, said he, after seeing my profile and other photos. He had seen me once in the intervening 48 years.

It is nice to get that sort of positive reinforcement. But five years ago, standing naked in front of my bathroom mirrors, I didn’t recognize myself. I had always been slender and now could not make that claim. I resolved before turning 60 in 6 months to rectify the situation. On Martha’s Vineyard that summer, I sought out a trainer who worked with me on exercise and diet. I cleaned up my eating habits and worked hard in the gym. Over the course of two years, I took off 18 pounds, joined a gym when I returned to Newton and kept up with a rigorous training program.

I have enjoyed the results until this past year. Time gets the better of us all. My eating habits have slipped a bit and I’ve put on a few pounds, but that is also due to injury. A year ago, I sprained a ligament in my back and had to take it easy for six weeks while it healed. This winter, I did the same on the other side, but worse. Even as my back healed, I felt pain in my left hip. I mentioned this at my annual physical. The doctor manipulated the hip, thought either there was swelling or perhaps a torn labrum and sent me in for an x-ray, then an MRI. No tear, so he assumed it was bursitis and gave me a shot of cortisone to reduce the inflammation. I haven’t exercised in weeks and I see and feel the difference. Age is catching up to me. Someone in one of my classes complimented me just weeks earlier on how strong I was and how consistently I came to class. Ha! So much for that! Also at this physical, I was measured. The doctor claimed I’ve lost 3/4″. Can’t be! That would make me under 5′ tall! Perhaps I just wasn’t standing fully erect. Good grief, I just can’t be that little!

My eye sight is terrible, I can’t see in the dark, have little cataracts growing, but it is too early to operate, so I just have to live with it. My internist said, “Welcome to aging!” No thank you…I am still railing against it, as best I can.

Technology makes everything move faster. It is great that I can stay in touch with my kids, each of whom lives 3,000 miles away, but it also makes me feel inept because I can’t keep up. I haven’t worked “outside the home” in 28 years, so don’t know the latest editors and on-line ways to do things.

On the other hand, I have lived through a fair amount of history by this point and have some sense of perspective. I would like to say about the current administration that “this, too, will pass”. Unfortunately, too much of what is being done can’t be undone in the areas of climate science because the effects are irreversible. We don’t get a “mulligan” on the environment. Same with the Supreme Court appointments, which are life-time appointments, so hang in there Ruth Bader Ginsberg!

I have always tried to keep a positive outlook on life. It helps to keep those pesky wrinkles away. I’ll keep trying that. Below, by the way, is my college graduation photo (it was 1974, so informal shots only). How am I doing?

1974 yearbook photo

My mother had great style and a certain elegance, but no self-confidence. In fact, she actively disliked her looks. She used to say she had the map of Jerusalem on her face. As a grown-up, I tried to disabuse her of this notion, but to no avail. She was a self-hating Jew. Nevertheless, she always had big walk-in closets, full of great clothing and accessories. I was a dreamy “girlie-girl” who loved to play dress-up with play clothes and whatever adult clothes I could get my hands on.

I spent long periods in my mother’s closet. She had a pair of clear, plastic dressy shoes to die for. I was sure these were Cinderella’s glass slippers. They were open-toed, sling-backed, with a great crystal bauble on each and I wore them all the time. Because they were sling-back, they sort of fit me and I pranced around the house in my overalls and the glass slippers. My mother did a lot of charity work and had occasions to go to fancy balls, so had wonderful ball gowns, which I loved to look at (I never tried them on). She also had a beautiful alligator purse (this was in the mid-50’s…we didn’t know any better). I loved the clasp on it and played with it often. I recently saw someone with a similar one. It is back in fashion.

I have a miniature version of my mother’s figure in every way. She was two inches taller than I am, she had bigger breasts, larger everywhere, so I really never fit into her clothing, except the slinky, bias-cut satin gown she wore on her wedding night. That I wore twice: once when I played the glamourous actress Irene Livingston in Moss Hart’s “Light Up the Sky” at camp in 1969. And to the New Year’s Eve party at the Playboy Mansion in 1981. That party is always a pajama party because Hef always wears pajamas and he likes his women in lingerie. I don’t own fancy lingerie, so I wore my mother’s beautiful nightgown. Here it is: it used to be pale blue, but since she wore it in 1946, it has faded. It remains gorgeous; something Jean Harlow would wear.

Mother’s wedding nightgown, 1946

As she aged, she cared less and less about the way she dressed. When I moved her from her independent living apartment to the skilled nursing unit, where she spent the last two and half years of her life, I went through her large closet for the last time. She had become so paranoid and demented that she didn’t let the offered cleaning service come in once a year. The moths had eaten many of her lovely wool skirts to shreds. I saved some of her best suits, in wonderful jewel tones. Perhaps I thought a costume shop would like them, or maybe they’d fit me? They weren’t my style and just this past winter, more than six years after her death, I finally gave them all away. But I discovered beautiful purses and more gloves than any woman could ever wear. Those I kept and love to carry her still elegant purses, which I tell people are truly vintage. They are so well-made, they will never go out of fashion. Her timeless elegance stays with me. I try to forget the rest.

In 1987, the neighbor’s cat roamed around and got knocked up. They gave us the last of the litter, a sweet little female. David was two at the time and had a few children’s books about kittens; in each the protagonist was named Kate so bestowed the name on her. I’d had a dog growing up, so this was a new experience. She was friendly, interested in everything, was quite personable and loud. We had to shut her in the basement at night so we didn’t hear the crying and yowling. She and David fought over his toys. I asked the vet about that. “You have to understand, you have two at the same age developmentally”. Oh dear! At one point she got up on a kitchen chair and took a swipe at his head. I grabbed her by the scruff. “You are now an outside cat!”

She took to the outdoors. I called her in by shaking her treat box. I knew if I didn’t get her in by sunset, I wouldn’t get her that night and I’d hear her crying under our bedroom window at 5am. I once asked a close friend who is a world-reknown vet why she liked being out at night. Debbie answered, “That’s when the critters come out”.

I told her frequently that she was there for the amusement of my children. Jeffrey was the one who really loved her. He sat in his high chair as an infant and went rigid went she walked by. He squealed with delight at everything she did. His first word was, “kitty cat”. No “mom” for my kid. He just adored her. She allowed him to stroke or torment her. He cuddled with her. When he went to bed, she cried outside the closed door, so again, I had to move her away, as he was an incredibly light sleeper. Jeffrey told us that calicos could only be females, due to genetic markers. He knew everything about her and loved her with all his being.

She still spent much of the day outside, hunting. She was good at it, often bringing home trophies for Mom (me), including birds and chipmunks, dead or alive. After having left her in the care of my men, while away for a few days, I found a striped tail on the foyer rug (a fancy beige, Frank Loyd Wright-designed number). “What’s this”, I inquired, mystified and horrified. My husband conceded that Kate had eaten a chipmunk and regurgitated it once inside the house…on the lovely foyer rug. He had tried to clean up, but had left the tell-tale tail!

On a lovely autumn day, I left the door from the porch to the house open to let in fresh air. The outside door was always open so Kate could come and go, and still come onto the porch for shelter and howl at the inside door when she wished to gain entry; sometimes often, as if toying with me. This day, I got laundry out of the dryer in the basement when I heard a thud on the stairs above me. I rushed up and saw our pet had brought a LIVE chipmunk into the house as a special treat for me! Good lord, what would I do. I had planned to go pick up the suit I was to wear to David’s bar mitzvah, only a few weeks away. I knew I couldn’t leave these two creatures alone together. It would not end well. Mine is a large, basically one story house; a few steps down to the living room, a few steps up to some bedrooms, but no doors on most of the rooms, just large open spaces and all beige carpets. I did not want critter blood anywhere. Kate seemed quite pleased with her offering and made no attempt to do anything more. She left it up to me to figure things out. The chipmunk was stunned but not hurt. Once it regained its composure, it ran. I got my oven mitts and decided to try to pick it up and get it out of the house. For a moment, I had it cornered in a bathroom. I picked it up. It screamed (who knew chipmunks could scream) and so did I, dropping it in the process. I hadn’t thought to close the door and it ran out of the bathroom, into the living room, which is down two little steps. The fireplace has a black marble surround. Evidently, chipmunks can’t see that well. It took a flying leap at the black marble, hit it and slid back down. It tired that a few more times. I am screaming obscenities at it…things like, “I am trying to save your f***ing life, you stupid creature.” I also wondered where “America’s Funniest Home Video” was when you really needed them. I finally had the brilliant idea to herd it. I used the potholders to swat at it, first one way, then another, getting it to move in the direction I wanted until I had it out on the porch. Kate followed all this with a certain fascination…”I never knew what a goof my human was”. She had already divined was I was up to and awaited us on the porch. What happened after that, I cannot say. I shut the door and went off to run my errand, regaling my children with the story at school pick-up. I suspect the chipmunk took a flying leap out the door and made its escape.

Kate remained an increasingly fat, happy fixture in our lives for almost 17 years. David went off to Stanford, Jeffrey relied on her companionship. In February, 2004, I noticed she wasn’t well and took her to her vet, who felt a tumor and immediately sent me to our wonderful large, local animal hospital. She had lymphoma. They assured me she could have surgery and still be with us for as much as another year. Jeffrey was in a very bad place in his life. He had just started a special education school, 18 miles from our house, was in emotional shut-down. He needed his cat. We went ahead with the surgery. And a blood transfusion. At every step, the news was bad and expensive. Jeffrey was home with a bad cold when I got the next call from the hospital. They wanted to start chemo. From the next room, I heard the plaintive cry, “Don’t let her die, Mom”. We did all we could. We were told that she would never have proper bowel function and I set up plastic sheeting in her room in the basement. We brought her, battered and bedraggled, home the same day David came home for Spring Break from Stanford. She had been his cat originally and it seemed, waited for him. She passed away at home that night. Jeffrey wanted her ashes, which are still in the little urn in our basement.

He was desolate. “She was the only one in our house who was never angry with me. When I was sad or crying, I buried my face in her fur. What am I going to do?” My heart broke for my special child. We started looking for a new cat the next day, but none could ever replace the special bond Jeffrey had with Kate.

Jeffrey with his cat