A Word From the Weiss

        I love my neck.
        No offense to Nora Ephron, who is among my literary idols and who managed to get a whole book out of hating hers, but I’m perfectly content with the state of the channel between my chin and my chest. After all, it isn't all that wrinkled, really (relative to some other women of my vintage, at least), it doesn’t hurt, and it pretty much does the job of making sure that I have a good head on my shoulders, not to mention, when appropriate, lets me hold my head up high.
        It’s also the one and only neck I’ll probably ever have, and I’d just as soon save it. So when two out of two doctors who examined me earlier this summer suggested that I might need surgery in that general vicinity, it bent my neck out of shape. Given my nature, I also felt anxious, angst-ridden, reluctant, unconvinced and eager to seek a third opinion.
        Their source of concern wasn’t actually my neck, per se, but something housed inside it. As I divulged in this space back in June, it all started during my annual physical exam in January, when my internist noticed a nodule in my thyroid. However long this knob may have been loitering there, it had never caused any discernible symptoms or otherwise made its presence known. And despite having discovered it now, my doctor evinced little concern. But from then on, just knowing it was there, it began to unnerve me.
        My fear only heightened when a friend mentioned that she’d read in a magazine that thyroid cancer was the fastest growing variety of newly diagnosed malignancies in the country. So when I began to feel strange tingling sensations in my neck soon after (possibly stimulated by my poking around in that region trying to feel the alleged nodule myself), I decided to have it checked out.
        An ultrasound revealed that I had not one, but two nodules in there, one of which was sizable enough to prompt my doctor to send me for a fine-needle biopsy. This barbaric procedure, which required several needles to be plunged into my neck, was about as pleasant as it may sound, if not less so. So when the results yielded some "atypical" cells, and my doctor suggested that I might as well just get my thyroid removed entirely – rather than continuing to undergo this torturous medical procedure every six months for the rest of my life, which he surmised would be necessary – I decided to consult a specialist.
        Doctor No. 2, the head of endocrinology at a local hospital, was a little less dire in his diagnosis. He didn’t believe that I had cancer, and assured me that even in the event that I did, most forms of it were about 99 percent curable. “You’ll lead a long, happy life,” he proclaimed.
        He then chose to put me on a low dose of Synthroid, a synthetic thyroid hormone, hoping it would prevent the nodules from growing and might even cause them to shrink.
        Even so, just to be sure, he wanted me to consult yet another doctor. He thought I should consider having a full-fledged biopsy performed on the nodules, or maybe even have them removed – both of which are procedures that would require making an incision somewhere on my neck. So he referred me to a respected local surgeon who specializes in the thyroid gland.
        This woman is in such demand that the earliest appointment I could secure was two months later. The endocrinologist had predicted that this might be the case and had offered to intervene on my behalf to have the appointment moved up earlier. Yet when I called his office to report the distant date I had secured, I never heard back… to my enormous personal relief.
        Of course, some people might not have wanted to go through the whole summer with uncertainty hanging over their heads. “Some people” is a group that distinctly includes my husband, who nagged me repeatedly over the ensuing weeks to contact one or both of these physicians and find out what was holding up the works. He wanted me to put some closure to our angst. But I far preferred uncertainty over certain doom. I had my own idea about this.
        My idea was that I would try get through the whole summer before anyone else got another gander at my (goiter-free) throat and had a chance to send me for surgery. After all, there were several important upcoming events – including my daughter’s many recent out-of-town singing engagements -- that I looked forward to eagerly and didn’t want to risk missing. I feared that the need to spend extensive time recovering after surgery might prevent me from traveling. I also worried that the incision might leave me so disfigured, at least initially, that I would hesitate to appear in public or be too self-conscious to truly enjoy myself doing so.
        Sorry to be so pathetically vain and insecure about it. I know I should be worrying much more about my health than something as relatively insignificant as my appearance. But I’m not just a nice Jewish mother, I’m also a woman, and in all honesty I’d rather not walk around having people openly staring at my neck or, just as bad, doing their best not to stare at it.
        And before you start shaking your head or lecturing me about values and shameless vanity and what’s important in life, please try to be honest with yourself about this for a second. You shouldn’t expose a fresh scar to strong sunlight, and there’s something not quite as much fun about going to the beach all bundled up, or playing tennis in a turtleneck.
        As for vanity, as the afore-mentioned Ms. Ephron readily acknowledges, even the most noble and virtuous among us are likely to succumb to self-consciousness and self-loathing in the face of having an unsightly gash in such plain sight. As she notes in I Feel Bad About My Neck, “even if you are being operated on for something serious or potentially serious, even if you honestly believe that your health is more important than vanity, even if you wake up in the hospital room thrilled beyond imagining that it wasn’t cancer, even if you feel elated, grateful to be alive, full of blinding insight about what’s important and what’s not, even if you vow to be eternally joyful about being on the planet Earth and promise never to complain about anything again, I promise you that one day soon, sooner than you can imagine, you will look in the mirror and think, I hate this scar.”
        (It’s hefty mouthfuls of words like that which help me to fully understand how she got to be regarded as one of the funniest,  frankest and most brutally candid writers of our time… and how she managed to get a whole best-selling book out of complaining about her neck, when I’m pushing it to expand this into a single blog entry. Also, I mean no offense whatsoever to the many women who have come forward since I first wrote about this issue to tell me about their own surgery and assure me that the scar fades fast and they’re perfectly fine with half a thyroid, or none at all. But in my heart, I know that she’s right.)
        And so I hoped to delay having the procedure until cooler weather had arrived in the fall, and I could more comfortably conceal any telltale marks with high-necked clothing or a variety of attractive scarves.
        I had no delusions that I might manage to circumvent having the surgery entirely. I figured that when you go to consult a surgeon, he or she is likely to want to operate asap. For one thing, let’s face it – that’s what surgeons are here to do. For another, surgical procedures may sound pretty intrusive and cataclysmic to us, but to a surgeon, slicing someone open is totally routine and all in a day's work. Why not just go right in there and get a gander at what’s happening below the skin, they must think, rather than continuing to simply guess?
        So I was in no hurry to have that doctor's appointment. Instead, I stifled my trepidation as best as I could and continued to combat high temperatures with scoop necks, tank tops and other typical summer décolletage, only occasionally pausing to gaze in the mirror, touch my throat gingerly, and wonder how long my skin there would be allowed to remain intact.
        Until last Monday, that is, when my two months of waiting had passed at last and my day in court, as it were, had finally come.
        Having had plenty of time to research this condition in the months since it was first detected – and being an expert Web MD, like many a nice Jewish mother these days – I knew that the thyroid is a butterfly-shaped gland at the front of the neck, just below the Adam’s apple, which produces hormones vital to regulating the body’s metabolism.
        I also knew that there are more than 40,000 new cases of thyroid cancer reported in the U.S. each year. That women are about three times more likely than men to develop the disease. And that common symptoms include a lump in the neck, a cough, hoarseness, trouble swallowing, neck or throat pain, and swollen lymph nodes in that vicinity. (Try to keep in mind, though, how relatively rare thyroid cancer is. If you’re clutching your throat right about now and wondering if that mysterious cough you’ve developed lately might be something, let me assure you that it is something: a cough.)
        Plus, as Dr. No. 2 had pointed out, although certain untreatable, fatal forms of this cancer do exist, the vast majority of cases are roughly 99 percent curable.
        So the odds were in my favor, for sure.
        Then there was the one issue that had raised a red flag in this doctor's mind.
        As with many forms of cancer, a family history of the disease substantially elevates your risk of developing it. So in this case does having your neck exposed to radiation. The endocrinologist asked me repeatedly if I’d ever had radiation therapy, an acne treatment popular in the 50s that has long since been curtailed because it proved to cause thyroid cancer. He was heartened to hear that I had not. The thing that seemed to remain of paramount concern to him was that one of my uncles had been diagnosed with thyroid cancer at age 40 (although this man had been completely cured and recently turned 85).
        I later learned from his daughter, however, that he had undergone radiation treatment in his youth, and that his thyroid cancer unequivocally had been attributed to that. This, to me, was adequate reason to dismiss any concerns about my having a genetic predisposition.
        I’d been so relieved to hear this, in fact, that in the ensuing months I'd begun to formulate a proposition that I planned to pose to the thyroid surgeon when we met.
        How unreasonable would it be, I wondered, for me to delay having that full biopsy for awhile? Couldn't I undergo another ultrasound in six months to see if there’d been any changes before taking further action? Having read how prevalent thyroid nodules were, and that thyroid cancer tends to be extremely slow-growing, I was willing to take the risk if she was.
        This was a plan that I rehearsed in my mind as I sat anxiously in the thyroid surgeons’ waiting room last Monday. Of course, I’d wait to hear what she thought was my best course of action before saying anything . (I am only a Web MD -- Mom/Doctor. She’s the one with the medical degree.) But I didn’t have high hopes that she’d go along with it. I was expecting to hear the worst.
        I kept trying not to stare at the elderly woman who had just arrived in a wheelchair with a wide swath of gauze barely concealing a prominent lump protruding on her neck. Finally, after cooling my heels for nearly an hour, I was led into the examination room. Ten minutes later, there was a faint knock. Then the door swung open slowly.
        Dr. Fritts appeared to be around 50, her shoulder-length brown hair flecked with whispers of gray. No make-up. No nonsense. Just an earnest, soft-spoken demeanor.
        She asked how the nodules had first been detected and began to take copious notes on a lined white pad. Then she inquired about my family’s medical history. With some trepidation, I admitted that both of my parents had died of cancer, although of very different forms of the disease. Then, at the great risk of sabotaging my strategy, I confessed what had happened to my mother.
        Soon after her older sister, my Aunt Gloria, had died of breast cancer at age 64, my mother had undergone a mammogram. This had revealed something that her doctor deemed highly suspicious. My mother insisted that she knew better, however. She was convinced that this was merely scar tissue from a fibroid she’d had removed years earlier. To circumvent any further debate or the prospect of any follow-up procedures, she then refused to get another mammogram until 16 years later. That’s when her longtime gynecologist retired, only to be replaced by a younger woman who was assertive enough to out-argue my mother (no easy feat). By now, of course, what had once been only a pea-sized growth had burgeoned to the size of a grapefruit.
        Her cancer, athough slow-growing, had also had plenty of time to spread. Surgery and a variety of onerous treatments kept her alive for another five years. But she’d finally succumbed to it two years ago, at age 81.
        I didn’t want to follow in her footsteps, ignoring potentially serious symptoms by playing ostrich. On the other hand, neither did I want to have unnecessary procedures. In the end, I suppose, I am truly my mother’s daughter. I feel fine, therefore I am.
        Yet my reluctance wasn’t entirely a matter of wanting to have my own way or avoid an unsightly incision that would fade with time. I take great care to follow a healthy diet. I exercise regularly and keep my weight in check. Blood tests had indicated that my thyroid was functioning normally. I feared that removing it would throw my system out of whack. Without it, I’d have to rely on pills to regulate my metabolism for the rest of my life. And as impressed as I am with modern medicine, I happen to be rapidly medication-phobic. I'd rather let my body continue to function naturally, if possible.
        Yet I didn’t mention any of this. I held my tongue -- also no easy feat -- and waited to hear what the doctor would recommend.
        After I had supplied satisfying answers to all of her many follow-up questions, she asked me to sit on a low stool facing away from her while she probed my neck, far more gently than any male doctor who had laid hands on that region in recent times.
        Then she summoned me to sit opposite her once again on a chair. She made a few more notes, then folded her hands in her lap and looked earnestly into my eyes.
        “The only way to be certain that you don’t have thyroid cancer is to put some of your cells under a microscope,” she stated. “A fine-needle biopsy uses such a fine needle that it's difficult to collect an adequate sampling of cells. But to simply remove the nodules isn’t an option either. It just can't be done.”
        Both of the nodules I had were located in the right lobe of my thyroid, she noted. Were I to undergo surgery, the thing that would make the most sense would be for her to take the entire right lobe out. If she did, it was conceivable that the remaining lobe might continue to produce enough hormones to adequately regulate my metabolism.
        I braced myself to hear the time frame in which this odious task would be done. All the while, I tried to continue meeting her gaze, stifling my urge to argue. Or cry.
        “But I don’t believe that’s warranted in this case,” she continued.
        I caught my breath.
        “I think we should take more of a conservative approach,” she said. “I’d like you to have three more ultrasounds, one every six months for the next year and a half.”
        Just to be safe, it would also be prudent to have a second fine-needle biopsy a year after that first one, she added. But she was willing to perform this herself, rather than subjecting me to the brutal, less skilled hospital technician who’d caused me such anguish the last time.
       “We really need to stay on top of this,” she asserted. But that didn't mean constant invasive procedures for the rest of my life, as my G.P. had surmised. If there were no significant changes during the next 18 months, then I could wait a whole year before having another ultrasound, then two years, and then maybe five. Toward that end, she was going to consider doubling my medication in hopes that it would keep the nodules from growing. There was even some chance, albeit a small one, that this might cause them to shrink.
        By the same token, if any of those tests showed that the nodules were growing substantially, then she reserved the right to throw her wait-and-see plan out the window. Without hesitation, I agreed. But she remained hopeful that this wouldn’t be necessary.
        Very hopeful.
        “I don’t think you have cancer,” she said.
                       
        I’d gone to the doctor’s office all alone, hoping I’d be composed enough afterwards to drive myself home. I hadn’t anticipated that I might end up leaving in such a state of euphoria that I could barely walk a straight line. That’s how drunk with joy I was.
        OK, maybe it’s premature to break out the Champagne just yet. As she noted, there are no guarantees. There’s also no telling what the next six, 12, or 18 months might bring.
        But I know what the next six months probably won’t bring: a scar to cover up. Or disheartening news to break to my family, my friends and, yes, you, my faithful readers.
        If only there were a way to turn back time, I wish now that for once I had listened to my husband. I could have noodged those doctors and gotten the surgeon to fit me in without delay. For as exhilarating as it was to get that miraculous reprieve, I’d gladly trade it in to avoid having had an entire summer of dread steadily seeping into my soul, like a cut-up chicken marinating slowly in a thick, messy sauce in the fridge.
        Which brings up an important point. If we’re going to continue to wait and see, and I’m destined to lead that long, happy life that Doctor No. 2 predicted, then I’m going to have to put an immediate cap on that wondering, worrying and wallowing in dread thing. Never mind how many sunny afternoons I’ve sullied since June fretting that I might have to undergo a minor surgical procedure. Just think of all the time I’ve wasted in my entire life agonizing in advance about potential calamities that were never going to happen.
        Starting here, starting now, I’m going to stop planning for the worst all the time and concentrate on enjoying life a little more. Maybe I’ll even dare to hope for the best. And now that I’m out of the woods, until January, at least, I’m going to stop dwelling on petty concerns like having to cope with an incision -- a small incision that I’m told would be concealed by the folds in my skin. To which I say, “Are you kidding? What folds?”
        I love my new doctor. I love having the luxury of uncertainty instead of certain doom. But mostly, I love my neck.

A Word From the Weiss

        We’ve got the debt ceiling near-debacle, the S&P credit rating downgrade, and Wall Street on a hair-raising rollercoaster ride, and yet I still heard the president referred to on the news the other day as “No Drama Obama.”

        Or just grin and bear it... or, better yet, bare it in my blog?Just consider all the drama that has passed for everyday life in the past week alone for this Nice Jewish Mom.

        It all started last weekend, after we returned from the Jewish fundraiser that my daughter sang at in Vermont. Allegra planned to return to New York early the next day. And so she would have, had it not been for the terrible toothache she’d been nursing for the past month. Along with being in abject pain, she didn’t want to risk any complications. If you aspire to make your living as a singer, as she does, you can’t afford to mess around with your mouth.
       

Allegra needed to get that tooth extracted pronto, along with her other wisdom teeth. My husband managed to get her a last-minute appointment with his dentist, who then booked her with the oral surgeons downstairs for early the next morning. We arrived before 8 a.m., only to be kept waiting for over an hour and then told after a lengthy examination that they were out-of-network for her insurance and the procedure would cost us thousands.

        Her boyfriend Stevo accompanied us on round two, and while we were waiting he received a phone call. A close friend had learned of a job opening and convinced the man who was hiring that Stevo was the perfect candidate for the job. This opportunity was, unfortunately, located in Los Angeles, and he needed to fly out for an interview asap. And suddenly, the trauma of Allegra’s raging toothache paled in comparison to her potential heartbreak. I implored her not to go into full-fledged emotional throttle until he’d flown to California, had the interview, and actually landed the job. This, of course, was about as useful as telling the Colorado River to stop rushing over the Hoover dam.
        Moments after putting them on a train bound for New York, I received a phone call from my son. Aidan had just gotten a job opportunity himself about which he was extremely conflicted. Although he’s been working in the TV and film industry for a few years, he also writes about music on a freelance basis. His editor at one of the publications for which he writes had quit to work elsewhere and had recommended him to replace her. As gratifying as this might seem, he had a major decision to make. DId he really want to do something as lame and non-lucrative as following in both his parents’ footsteps by becoming a journalist? Would this job mean giving up his celluloid dreams? At the very least, getting hired would require foregoing the graduate school program he was scheduled to begin next month.
        I suggested that he not go into the full-fledged agony of deliberation until he had actually been interviewed and offered the job. But this was like telling Hamlet to chill out.
        That night, I remembered that it was an old friend’s birthday, so we gave him a call. Only after we’d finished singing a rousing “Happy Birthday” in two-part harmony did he note to us that his birthday was, in fact, a whole week away. Awkward! We told him we had simply called to practice singing for him. Then we offered to go out with him on Saturday night to celebrate.
        His wife called me a few days later to plan our night out. These people are not just great people and great friends; they’re also regular readers of this blog. So far be it from me to cast any aspersions. Let’s just say that when four people get together, it’s always hard to find a movie and a restaurant that will appeal to everyone. But in this case, it was more like trying to figure out how to establish peace in the Middle East.
        The biggest problem of all was the schedule. As night owls who rarely hit the sack before 1 a.m., we like to eat dinner at around 7 or 8, then catch a late movie afterwards. They wanted to see the 4:20 matinee, then eat at around 6.
        I knew there was no way my husband was going to agree to go inside a darkened movie theater in the middle of the afternoon on a nice summer day. That would be like telling Jay Leno to let Conan have The Tonight Show and go on the air at 4 in place of Oprah. But after strategizing enough to have planned a war, the latest start time we could agree upon was to meet for dinner at 5:30, followed by a movie at 7:45.
        My husband had the exact reaction I had anticipated when he got home. So it didn’t help when I received a call on Friday night from some other old friends. These people had moved away years ago, and we hadn’t seen them in ages. They were in town and wanted to come over for a visit late Saturday afternoon.
        These are great people and great friends, and I was genuinely eager to see them. However, I knew that my husband, as thrilled as he’d be to see them too, would not be thrilled to know that we now had to leave our swim club early in the afternoon so we could sit inside at home. Unfortunately, I also informed him when he wanted to go to the club at noon the next day that we needed to clean up for our company first, as well as prepare some hors d’oeuvres. By the time we got there, it was almost time to go home.
        We managed to fit in a bit of tennis, followed by a quick swim. Then I dashed into the locker room to change. Unfortunately, just as I was about to go into the shower, I thought I spied another woman I haven’t seen in a long time entering the restroom.
        This is a lovely woman, a very nice Jewish woman, one who used to be a friend. But we’d lost contact over the years, and I knew that if she saw me we’d end up chatting for at least 10 minutes, and those were 10 minutes I didn’t have. So the second I saw her disappear into a stall, I dashed across the room and into the shower, not bothering to take off my bathing suit first or to turn on the water so I could adjust the temperature.
        Only then did I turn on the water, which was absolutely scalding. I rotated the dial in what I thought was the right direction, hoping to cool it off. Instead, it only grew hotter. Steam was filling the shower stall, and I felt like I was about to get boiled like a chicken. Or maybe steamed like a dumpling. But which was worse, getting my goose a little cooked, or jumping out, colliding with this woman, and getting home 10 minutes after our guests?
        I envisioned myself as a female version of Larry David on Curb Your Enthusiasm, diving out and landing soaking wet at the feet of the one person I was ineptly trying to avoid. Instead, I gritted my teeth, turned the dial way in the opposite direction, and shuddered as the water went directly from burning hot to bitterly cold without passing warm. Ayyyyee!
        Once I’d turned it off after a quick rinse, I realized that my troubles weren't over. What if she’d taken a long time in the restroom, as people sometimes do, and she now walked out just at the same time I did? How could I tell if the coast was clear? I stood in the shower with the door cracked open half an inch, peering out for at least five minutes as people wandered in and out. By now, I realized that it probably would have taken less time to have just talked to her in the first place. But if I saw her now it would take another 10 minutes. So I waited some more, without seeing her pass. Finally I wrapped myself in my towel and made a mad dash for the nearest curtained cubby to dress.
        I still wonder if it was really her at all, and, if so, if she'd seen me. Is it purely a coincidence that the next day, out of the blue, she tried to “friend” me on Facebook?
        When I emerged from the locker room fully dressed for our night out, I realized that my husband was nowhere to be found. I hoped he was in the men’s room getting ready, too. But five minutes later, he emerged from the snack bar still in his bathing suit. And I realized that while I’d been showering, dressing and, yes, hiding out, he had taken advantage of having the coast clear himself by grabbing a hot dog, something that I rarely if ever let him have at home.
        Face it, there’s nothing better than a kosher hot dog, at least as far as my husband is concerned. As far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing unhealthier. All that fat! All that sodium! That’s why I rarely serve them at home, and why, I now realized, my husband had been so eager to go to the club. It wasn’t for the tennis. It wasn’t for the exercise or relaxation. It was all about the hot dog that he’d sneak while I was dressing afterwards.
        “Now we’re going to be late!” I barked at him (speaking of dogs). Now I was Susie Essman’s character on Curb, cursing out her long-suffering and always hungry hubby. “And you haven’t even showered yet. Did you actually eat a hot dog while I was getting dressed?”
        “What makes you think that?” he asked, his voice rising at least an octave as he wiped a small trace of mustard from his lips. “I went to the bathroom, and when I came out I didn’t know where you were, so I just went in and had… you know… a side salad.”
        The reason they call it a “side salad” is that it comes on the side of something else. And given options like potato salad and fries, I’m sure he was lying about the salad, too. But I was more upset that now he’d have to shower and dress after our guests left.
        Face it. It’s always a mistake scheduling social engagements back-to-back, especially for us. We’re invariably late for everything, and when there’s more than one activity involved, we’re destined to get a domino effect. But this time we’d had no choice.
        By the time we pulled into our driveway, we saw the people we were expecting, Julie and Stan, walking up to our front door. My husband’s first impulse was to try pulling into the garage quietly, hoping to avoid detection, then go answer the front door as though we’d been home all along. Face it, it looked a little tacky that he'd been so eager to fit in tennis and a quick dip (or dog) that we’d risked being late to see them after all these years. But just as we pulled up to the house, they turned around and saw us. So we had to settle for looking tacky. They declined to eat any hors d’oeuvres, after all. But I think my putting some out made them feel welcome. At least the house was clean.
        I’d warned them in advance that we had to leave for our dinner out by 5. But we had an awful lot of catching up to do after all those years, and once they’d left, my husband still had to shower and dress, so the dominoes began to fall. Of course we showed up for dinner 15 minutes late. But  – other than the husbands changing our carefully laid plans at the last minute by choosing to see the latest “Planet of the Apes” installment while we women still opted for our chick flick of choice, Crazy Stupid Love -- there wasn’t too much more drama until the next day.
        My financial advisor had emailed on Friday to remind me that he’d sent me some documents that needed to be signed by both my children and mailed back right away. Both my kids live in New York now, though, and I rarely see my son. So I emailed back explaining this and asked if, with their permission, I could simply sign their signatures for them.
        “You think I can or should respond to that one directly?” he wrote back. “How about sending me an email in an hour telling me you just remembered that both kids told you they are coming in for church and dinner on Sunday?”
        This was more of a joke than you might realize. My advisor is not just my advisor. He’s one of our best friends. He’s also not up for church on Sunday, or any other day. We met when our kids were in Jewish Day School together. He’s a member of the Tribe.
        A little abashed, I thought about what he’d said. Then I suddenly remembered that we actually were seeing our daughter on Sunday. We planned to meet her at the Litchfield Jazz Festival in Kent, Connecticut, an annual event that we always attend because it’s always pleasant and she used to work there. I emailed my son telling him his sister was joining us there and asked if he would come too.
        “Sure,” he wrote right back, to my delight and slight surprise. Wow. That was easy.
         So after about an hour, I wrote back to my advisor, Jake, informing him of this.
        He was extremely pleased. “Great note you sent!” he added.
        "Thanks!" I wrote back. "But the really great part is that it's the TRUTH!"
        "Really??"he replied on his Blackberry.
        “Yes!” I assured him.
        “Deus ex machina,” he wrote, a Latin phrase (which translates as “G-d out of the machine”), referring to a plot device in which a seemingly hopeless dilemma is suddenly resolved with the unexpected intervention of some new character, contrived situation or unexpected event.
        "Exactly," I agreed.
        Then he reverted to a far more familiar language. “Well, mah nish-ta-na!” he wrote.
        “Ha-lai-la ha-zeh!” I responded, adding, “I kid you not.” And realizing that he clearly remained skeptical, I promised to send a photo of all four of us in front of the bandstand.
        
        The kids were planning to take an early train to the nearest station, located in a remote town called Amenia, New York, which wasn’t really all that near. But Allegra assured me that there’d be a shuttle bus waiting to transport them to the festival. My husband and I would make the roughly 90-minute drive to Kent and meet them at noon. Yet the night before, there were already complications. Allegra would be proceeding from Kent to Boston, where she’s performing this week, then returning home to have those pesky wisdom teeth extracted. But she hadn’t packed yet, it was already midnight, and she was much too tired to do it now. So they decided to take a later train and arrive at 2 instead.
        Morning rain cleared up to be replaced by one of the most oppressively humid days ever. We arrived in time to hear the first act, a sensational jazz pianist/singer, Dena DeRose, but soon began to worry that Allegra was wrong about there being a shuttle bus. We started asking people who worked there. Most of the workers were volunteers, though, and had no clue. Finally, we got the definitive word: No shuttle. There'd only been one to meet the first train that morning. Now I’d have to take a shuttle bus myself back to the distant off-site lot in which we’d parked, then go pick them up.
        The problem was that no one knew where the train station was, either. By now, the kids’ arrival was imminent. So, as crazy as it may seem, I just started driving in the right direction, assuming that I’d call Allegra en route and she’d get directions on her iPhone. (No, I don't have one myself, nor, I must confess, a GPS.)
        Allegra located directions quickly. Unfortunately, she told me to turn right when I was supposed to turn left. Or maybe it was left when I was supposed to turn right. Soon after, being in the middle of the boonies, I lost cell phone service completely.
        So I drove for miles in one direction, then turned and drove in the other. At last I saw a country church in front of which two ladies were standing around chatting. (So I guess I was the one who ended up going to church on Sunday, after all.) These people gave me directions, and within 40 minutes of my initial departure, I was there.
        My relief, however, was short-lived.
        After a lovely day of music and a nice meal out, I returned Aidan to that distant station that night, this time wending my way without travail. Then the rest of us set off for home, along with Stevo and Allegra's friend Aubrey, who had joined us for the day. As we drove, though, I discovered two unfortunate things. One was that the afternoon's extreme humidity had given way to a dense fog that condensed so quickly on my windshield I could barely see five feet ahead of me.
        The other was that between using the a/c and all my driving to and from that train station, I had used up a lot of gas. An awful lot. I'd started out that morning with enough to get there and back, but now I’d have to fill up soon.
        I felt confident we’d make it to the next service station. But after a little while, a strange thing happened. The digital gauge on my dashboard, which displays exactly how many miles the contents of my tank will take me, indicated that I had 11 to go. Only seconds later, that 11 turned into a 10. Then 9. Then 8, 7, 6…
        Within a minute, it showed a big round number, and not a very nice one.
        0.
        There were five of us in the car. We were in the middle of nowhere. It was late, dark, and foggy. And no one had the foggiest idea where the next gas station might be.
        Oh, one more thing. Being deep in the boonies, we had no cell service once again.
        So I did the only thing any nice Jewish mom could do in this hopeless situation.
        Not pray. Nor cry.
        Coast.
        I turned off the a/c and the defroster, opened the windows wide, then took my foot off the gas pedal and let the car fly.
        And we were flying. I soon discovered something I hadn’t noticed on the way up. This was that the way up had indeed been entirely up. And now we were going down.
        Down, down, and then down some more. The hard part was not stepping on the brake at all whenever we really picked up speed. And sometimes we picked up lots of it. A little too much for my liking. But I couldn’t risk braking and running out of momentum.
        According to my daughter, who’d often driven this route while working at the festival, the nearest gas was in a town called Torrington. This was at least 7 miles away, or maybe more. And we’d now been on empty for awhile.
        Then again, we were still coasting.
        And still headed down, down, down.
        After awhile, at last, we saw some lights around the bend in the distance.
        They turned out to be from a skanky-looking, middle-of-nowhere, boonies-type bar. I guess we could’ve gone in there to ask for help, but I was still afraid to stop.
        The roads, all steep and surrounded by dense forest, were almost empty of traffic.
        To lighten the mood, my husband began singing. “Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall, 99 bottles of beer…” To lighten the load, I thought of pushing him out the door. Without stopping, of course.
       We’d been headed downhill for so long that the road would have to level out soon. It’s not like we’d started at the top of Mt. Everest. But I hadn’t touched the gas for miles, and we were still angled precipitously forward.
        At last, we saw dim lights again just around a bend in the distance. A pizza place? Another watering hole? A church?
        No. A convenience store. Next to a Shell station. The shop looked like it had just closed up for the night. But the gas pumps still took credit cards. We were in Torrington. Strip mall heaven. Back to civilization. Well, maybe not civilization, exactly. But we were saved!
        Allegra, relieved but irate, reminded me of the countless other road trips on which I’ve cut it way too close on the gas supply, then accused me of doing it deliberately because I enjoy the adrenaline rush. (I don’t! I don’t! I’m just often too busy to fill up first.)
        And so as not to ruin this happy ending, I will not even begin to tell you about the next night, when we discovered that my husband had lost his hearing aid and we turned the house upside down for hours and finally drove back to his office at 11 p.m. to search every inch of every room he’d been in that day, along with the parking lot by flashlight.
        Or how we were still looking for it when my daughter phoned us from Boston a little before 1 a.m. that night, sobbing and screaming so hysterically that it took a while to understand what had happened -- that she was fine herself, but was in shock because she had just driven by a fresh car accident and seen two dead bodies lying face down in the road.
        This was not at all funny. But it was the truth.
        So, tell me. Hasn’t this mama had more than enough drama for only one week?
        And what if all these perils continue to come my way or even pick up the pace? Can I just keep coasting? Can any one of us afford to simply coast through life? What about all of the inevitable uphill climbs, occasional detours and roadblocks? Sure, I found a station in the nick of time this time, but, as we all know, life is never downhill all the way.
        At least my husband’s missing hearing aid finally showed up at work the next day. (A coworker found it and turned it in.) My car still has a full tank of gas (and it’s going to stay that way). And I managed to get my kids’ signatures on all those documents and send them, along with a photograph proving their authenticity, to my advisor friend Jake.
        Mah nish-ta-na ha-lai-la ha-zeh… mi-kol ha-lei-lot. Really!