A Word From the Weiss

        My husband and I were on our way to NYC last Saturday afternoon when we received a surprising text from our son.
        “Want to grab some lunch with us?” it asked.
        Never mind that we were making the trek down there to celebrate Valentine’s Day. That we had left more than an hour late and were already hopelessly behind schedule. Nor that we wouldn’t arrive until after 2 and were having an extremely early dinner at 5.
        When you’re a nice Jewish mom, nothing trumps getting to spend time with your kids.
        No. Minor correction. The one thing that absolutely nothing else can trump is having your grown kids actually want to spend time with you.
        Sadly, our daughter was in no position to be with us whether she wanted to or not. Still 13 hours ahead of us in Hong Kong, Allegra had already finished celebrating Valentine’s Day with her boyfriend JP, complete with elaborately decorated homemade cupcakes, chocolate-dipped strawberries, some sort of undoubtedly potent punch… and a dish of what she had admitted was chocolate-covered bacon. (Halfway around the globe, nothing had been lost in translation – including the trayf.)
        But at least we had one child who was ready, willing, and able to share the love.
        “Sure!” we promptly texted back. “Be there in an hour.”
        Given our parental priorities, you might expect that we rescheduled dinner at that point. But it wasn’t quite that easy.
        As I mentioned last week, Valentine’s Day isn’t just a Hallmark-generated holiday for us. It’s the anniversary of the day we met, which happened on a blind date in 1982.
        So along with buying the usual card and candy, I wanted to do something special.
        That special thing included seeing a Broadway show that night – a revival of On the Twentieth Century, starring the incomparable Kristen Chenoweth and the eternally matinee-idol-handsome Peter Gallagher, who happens to have grown up two houses down from me.
        Although I’d had the foresight to snag discount tickets weeks earlier to this musical production, which had just begun previews, I foolishly had waited until almost the last minute to make dinner reservations. And this being Valentine's Day, when I'd finally gotten around to it, everything in the Theater District had already been booked.
        After wasting hours online, I finally had resigned myself to the fact that the best I could do was that 5:00 slot at Cara Mia, one of our favorite places to eat Italian.
        Alta cockers though we may be, we’re still way too young to opt for an early-bird special and would have far preferred to eat at 6, but that just wasn’t an option. Oh, well. We’d planned to stop at our son’s apartment on the way down anyway to drop off some empty boxes because he’s in the process of moving. Why not make it a real visit over lunch? We’d just have to make it snappy.
        That, at least, was the plan. But as I have learned too many times, the best-laid plans of mice and moms often go astray.
        Since Aidan, who is a grad student at Columbia, lives in Harlem, there wasn’t anywhere that nice to eat within walking distance. So we decided to pick him and his girlfriend Kaitlin up and drive to a Cuban restaurant that they like called Floridita.
        This was only a short distance away, but locating parking nearby was another matter. The only place we could manage to find was in the lot at Fairway, a popular giant supermarket. Yet signs there indicated in no uncertain terms that it was reserved for customers only. So in order to be ethical – and to avoid being confronted or possibly ticketed for taking advantage – I felt obliged to go inside there first and buy a few items.
        Why not? Being a nice Jewish mom, I figured my son could use some fresh fruit anyway.
        Afterwards, my husband and I made it a point to eat lightly at lunch, knowing that dinner was less than three hours away. But we were thrilled that we’d chosen to come. Aidan was feeling unusually affable and chatty, and in such good spirits that he opted to pick up the check (something that, as his parents, we normally insist on doing).
        The conversation was so lively that we lingered over the meal much longer than planned. Then, after walking back to the car, I realized that I’d left my cell phone sitting in the restaurant. I’m almost never that fedrayt. But what the heck. It happens. And by the time we’d retrieved it and driven the kids home, we were really running hopelessly late.
        It was already past 4, and before going to dinner we had to check into our hotel, which was at least half an hour away in a section of Queens called Long Island City.
        I know, I know. Why go to NYC for a romantic evening and then stay in… Queens? I’ll tell you why. Hotel prices fluctuate according to vacancy rates, and on Valentine’s Day there are virtually NO vacancies, so there are no affordable hotels. Nothing affordable in Manhattan, anyway. I had checked and seen prices ranging from $350 to over $1,000.
        Our room in Queens cost $89. I’m not just a nice Jewish mom. I’m a frugal one. Need I say more?
        OK, I will say a little more – not that you asked. Most of the places at which we stay in Queens are generic chain hotels, including the Best Western City View and the Country Inn and Suites. These tend to cost under $100 in winter, including breakfast. Plus, you can find free parking on the street and take a quick subway into Manhattan.
         But I wanted something at least a little special for Valentine’s Day, and with a little extra searching I’d found it: a relatively new place called The Paper Factory that looked anything but generic.  A recently renovated actual former paper factory, it boasted funky furnishings, spacious rooms, and a stylish restaurant, all still at bargain-basement rates.
        We arrived to find it just as trendy and attractive as it had looked online. Unfortunately, by the time we had checked in and my husband had managed to change for dinner – although I’d dressed up that morning and had urged him to do the same – it was already 5. I phoned the restaurant frantically to apologize and say that we’d be 15 minutes late.
        To my relief, they agreed to hold our table.
        OK, let’s be honest. Fifteen minutes would have been optimistic even if the trains had been running on schedule. But we arrived at the subway stop down the block to find that the trains weren’t running there at all. A guard on duty sent us to another stop a few blocks away, where we learned that there was no service to Manhattan that weekend.
        Having stayed in Queens quite often before, we were not exactly surprised.
        Our only recourse, short of paying for a costly and slow cab, was to take a train several stops in the wrong direction, then hop another subway back to Times Square.
        I was not ready to regret grabbing lunch with my son. Just to regret my frugality.
        Was this the fun, romantic Valentine’s Day night out on the town I had imagined? Not quite. Only a week earlier, I would have been undergoing a complete meltdown by now. We couldn’t risk being late for the theater and probably would find nowhere to eat.
        To be honest, I was now seething at my husband for insisting on changing his clothes. And he knew it. We already had been late and I blamed him for making us even later. Yet I tried to bear in mind the experience we’d had the previous weekend. Although all had seemed lost after he had made a major blunder, accidently buying tickets to another play for the wrong night, it had ultimately worked out in the end.
        Dare I even hope the same would happen this time?
        At the very least, I decided to hope for the best and not plotz until our worst fears had come to pass (although I openly sneered at my husband’s suggestion that we eat our romantic dinner at the ordinary diner where we’d run into comedian Jackie Mason the previous Saturday night).
        A trip that should have taken only 15 minutes ate up nearly an hour. By the time we had exited the subway at Times Square and regained cell phone service, it was 5:55. I barely had the chutzpah to phone the restaurant again at this point, but I figured we might as well try.
        “How soon do you think you can get here?” the hostess asked sweetly after I had briefly recounted our tale of woe, putting on my most apologetic tone.
        “Within five minutes,” I assured her.
        OK, with about seven blocks to walk, this too was optimistic. No matter. To my amazement, she said that we should come.
        I was so relieved and excited that we practically flew on Cupid's wings.
        All that we had really wanted was a table at this lively and cozy eatery for 6 p.m. And thanks to our bad luck, we had lucked out in the end and gotten it.
        It turned out that the hostess had come from Queens herself and knew just what we had endured.
        It also turned out that the restaurant was not just full, but fully decorated for the occasion with red helium balloons and Valentine’s Day hazzerei. And although we chose to forego the pricey special three-course Valentine’s meal, the pear salad we split and scrumptious homemade pasta we ordered off the usual menu suited us just fine.
        And even after arriving an hour late, we got to linger over our meal in a leisurely, maybe even romantic fashion and then amble back to the theater in plenty of time for the show.
        With book and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green and music by Cy Coleman, this 1978 madcap musical takes place in 1932 aboard the Twentieth Century, a luxury train traveling between Chicago and NYC, as bankrupt theater impresario Oscar Jaffee (played with panache by Gallagher) tries to trick his former flame, Hollywood screen star Lily Garland (played diva-liciously by Chenoweth), into agreeing to play the lead in his next as-yet-written production in order to get his derailed career back on track.
        Between the spectacular sets and costumes and spirited choreography – not to mention phenomenal singing, screwball high jinks, and explosive energy – it proved to be a star vehicle that easily earned a hearty standing O. If you’re looking for a rip-roaring musical comedy, this is one train racing in the right direction, and I would advise you to climb aboard.
        Of course, I couldn’t resist waiting with a small crowd outside the stage door to congratulate my former neighbor and high school classmate. I doubt he would have recognized me after all these years had I not identified myself, but he remains a true mensch (never mind that he’s not a Jew, although he played one on The OC). He readily posed for a quick snapshot, after giving me a warm hug and kiss on the cheek.
        Talk about heart-melting moments.
        Then, the night still being young, I proposed to my husband that we go to that déclassé diner for dessert after all and see if Jackie Mason was at his usual corner table.
        Alas, he wasn’t. But in his place was a group of very romantic-looking young people and a pair of furry friends there to bear witness to their love, and that was more suited to the occasion and just as entertaining in its own way.
            On the way back to the subway, we passed through Times Square again and had our pictures captured on the Jumbo-tron, along with the rest of the crowd.
        Can you find us?
        Perhaps it was this moment that prompted my husband to blurt out his own Valentine’s declaration, sweeter than any chocolate-covered marshmallow heart.
        Never mind that I’d bitched him out a bit on the subway earlier that evening.
        “I guess I still love you in spite of myself,” he confessed.
        “Really? My guess is that you still love me in spite of myself,” I corrected.
         He knew that I was right.
        With luck, the trains were running in the right direction and we got back to our hotel without incident. But upon entering, we heard loud music emanating from below. A waiter in the bar encouraged us to check out the dance party in the club downstairs.
        As late as it was, we went down to find a DJ in full swing and joined the small crowd gathered on the dance floor for several tunes. For free, of course.
        Can any hotel in Manhattan top that? 
        So in the end, it was indeed the special, romantic evening that I had hoped for… and more. I loved almost every moment in spite of myself. And I got to spend it with two of my true loves – my son, and that other guy... whom I guess I also seem to love in spite of himself too.

A Word From the Weiss

        My husband says I was overreacting.
        Overreacting? Seriously!?! Me?
        I’ll let you be the judge.
        The other night, he wanted a piece of pie. The pie in question was strawberry rhubarb, and I had bought it several days earlier, so it cried out to be warmed in the oven. I was busy writing, though, so I asked him to turn the oven on and let it preheat.
        Ten minutes later, I noticed ribbons of smoke wafting from that area of the kitchen and began to shriek.
        He went over to investigate and protested that the oven wasn’t even hot. The problem was that we have double ovens, one directly above the other, and he had turned on the bottom one – the one in which I store all of my baking pans, because honestly, other than on Thanksgiving or Passover, who the heck needs TWO OVENS?
        Believe me, the dials were clearly marked as UPPER OVEN and LOWER OVEN. He had simply overlooked this fact and opted for the wrong one.
        So it would be fair to say I got a little upset. Actually, a lot.
        I was upset that when I’d ask him to help for once, he had botched it completely.
        I was upset because, if you ask me, he nearly burned the house down.
        But mostly I was upset because we have lived in this house for nearly 16 years now, and apparently HE STILL DOESN’T KNOW HOW TO TURN THE OVEN ON!
        With Valentine’s Day so imminent, the last thing I probably should be doing in this rather public space is dishing about my husband (let alone bitching about my husband).
        Also, in his defense, a friend aptly pointed out that his wife may do most of the cooking, but she has NO CLUE how to use the snow-blower. (Hmmm… Neither do I.)
        Then again, there’s a whole lot more cooking that goes on in our household than snow-blowing. Even in New England. Plus, my husband doesn’t blow the snow either. Our plowing service does.
        Besides, it won’t be V-Day for nearly a week. Maybe he’ll do something wonderful between now and then in order to redeem himself. Or maybe I will think of something nice to say about him, the operative word about my identity as a nice Jewish mom being “nice.”
        For now, though, I’m just gonna vent. To paraphrase Stephen Sondheim, tragedy tomorrow, kvetching tonight. So here’s a list of other stuff my husband doesn’t know.
        1.  The one thing you never ask your wife is, “Is that something new you’re wearing?”
        Are you kidding me? This is never an idle query made out of harmless curiosity. Rather, it broadcasts an accusatory subtext: “Have you been shopping… again?” If I haven’t, it’s pretty damn insulting that he doesn’t recognize the outfit from the many previous times I’ve worn it. And if I have, I’m not going to admit it. Ever.
        Instead, I give the traditional reply. “Oh, this old thing? I’ve worn it a million times. It’s just so old that you don’t remember it.”
        2. And if I am wearing something new – OK, it happens – my husband doesn’t know that he should never venture an opinion about how it looks. An honest opinion, I mean. Especially if that opinion is brutally honest. Honest to the point of brutality, that is.
        The other night, I was trying on a dress I happened to have ordered online when my husband walked into our room. I was studying it in the mirror, so the view he got was from behind. He dared to ask me what I was wearing (and yes, whether it was new), then went on to remark that from the back it made me look like Eleanor Roosevelt.
        At that point, he got a full gander of the front of the dress too, because I spun around and gave him a look that could kill. (Not just kill FDR, but someone who was in perfectly good health, which he was unlikely to remain for much longer.)
        I don’t know what provoked him to make that particular comparison. After all, this was a fairly modern black dress with an extremely generous slit up the side – inspired, no doubt, by one Angelina Jolie had once worn to the Oscars – and until that moment I’d imagined that it made me look svelte (although not necessarily as jolie as Angelina Jolie).
        I hastened to inform him that “Eleanor Roosevelt” was not the look to which I aspired, nor to which any woman ever aspired.
        “What’s wrong with Eleanor Roosevelt?” he retorted. “She was a great humanitarian.”
        Fortunately, the owner of the chic NYC boutique from which I had ordered this little black number – Madonna and Co., in Soho – proved to be a great humanitarian herself. I’d bought that dress and also another at a discount and, to my distress, I discovered on the store’s web site that their firm policy was that all sale merchandise was final sale.
        When I called to relate my tale of woe, though – explaining that this was my one proverbial phone call from jail after murdering my husband – she took pity on me and said that of course I could exchange the dress. Both dresses, in fact (since the other one was a little too snug, although it did not make me look like either Eleanor or FDR).
        Talk about good customer service!
        If only it were that easy to exchange my husband. Now, that would be customer service.
        3.  My husband doesn’t know how to find the butter in the refrigerator.
        Then again, whose does?
        4. My husband doesn’t cook.
        (Then again, whose does?)
        5.  My husband doesn’t clean up after dinner either.  He only thinks he does. (Dirty pots are invisible to him, although he will sometimes bathe the dog.) 
        6.    My husband has no sense.
        He often asks me to bring him something that he left in his pants pocket. And when I pick up the pants, I yell, “Pocket? Which pocket?” Because he has a lot of pockets, and every single one is full of stuff.
        He doesn’t just carry his wallet in his pockets. He also carts around his cell phone, his car keys, a tape recorder, a comb or two, countless pens, a small pocket knife, a large pocket knife, his hearing aids, extra batteries for his hearing aids, dental floss, nail clippers, a wad of paper towels with which to blow his nose, a notebook in which to jot down passing thoughts, a copious supply of cough drops, a container of pills, a big rubber coin purse, three maids a milking, seven swans a-swimming, and enough spare change to pay off the national debt.
        In other words, he carts around the equivalent of what you would find in almost any woman’s purse, minus the makeup (although back when he was TV reporter many years ago, he also carried around makeup). He just carries all this around in his pants.
        And every night, before he goes to bed, he carefully removes all of this hazzerei from today’s pants and transfers it into tomorrow’s pants.
        The problem is that, with all of these items stored in his pants, they weigh at least 30 pounds. Is it any wonder that he has already undergone two hip replacements?
        Also, with all this stuff to cart around, he feels compelled to wear cargo pants, even for the most formal occasions -- and not just any cargo pants, but special ones equipped with extra pockets, from a company that supplies the FBI. (Anyone know where he could find a suit that comes with cargo pants? Because along with some common sense, he could sure use one of those.)
        7.  My husband has no sense about scents. That is, he doesn’t understand how much to use. I’m not talking about the old adage that less is more. I’m just saying that less is… less annoying.
        Take last Sunday morning. I woke up to a powerful smell. No, that isn’t accurate. I’m saying there was a smell in my bedroom so overpowering that it actually woke me up. I opened my eyes in horror to investigate and sensed in a flash that my husband was presumably feeling amorous because he had applied a healthy dose of cologne. Make that an unhealthy dose. He had splashed it on so liberally that it had the opposite of its intended effect. I was tempted to flee from the room.
        And if you think I was overwhelmed, just imagine how our poor dog Latke felt. According to a website called wiseGEEK.com, dogs have a sense of smell 10,000 to 100,000 times keener than ours. I’m surprised that she even survived.
        I probably have no right to complain because the offending fragrance had come from a big bottle of Nautica that I had bought my husband for Chanukah. At least he was using my gift… rather than resorting to the cheap bottle of Brut he had picked up at Walgreen’s, the one that I’d bought him the Nautica to replace.
        He obviously appreciated my choice. Unfortunately, just a little too much.
        “How much of that did you put on, exactly?” I demanded after I had opened a window, turned on the ceiling fan, and stopped gagging long enough to speak.
        “Not that much,” he protested defensively, pantomiming the offending act, which involved applying two generous spritzes to either side of his neck.
        Seriously? If that’s what four squirts smelled like, then half a squirt would have more than sufficed, thanks.
        I will not go on to specify how this particular incident ended. Suffice it to say that even the most generous application of aftershave eventually wears off.
        And so, eventually, will the memory. More or less.
        8.  My husband doesn’t always know that much about what our kids are up to.
        I know what they're up to because I go on Facebook.
        9.  My husband doesn’t always know what our kids are up to because he doesn’t know how to deal with Facebook.
        This may just be a generational thing. He’s only 10 years older than I am, but when it comes to technology, those are 10 crucial years.
        I’m not saying he’s a geezer or square, mind you. Sure, he’s squarely within the realm of being an alta cocker (Yiddish for “old guy”), but he has his own Facebook page and even goes on it now and then.
        He doesn’t go on it every day, though (let alone every hour or so), like young people do… and I do too (alta cocker though I may be). So when I mentioned to him last week that our daughter’s new CD had gotten a nice new review, he asked how I knew. And I said I had seen it on Facebook.
        “I saw it on her wall and put it on my page,” I explained.
        “Is it on my page?” he asked.
        “No, it’s on my page,” I explained.
        “How do I put it on my page?” he asked.
        “Go to my wall and share it,” I explained.
        I tried to teach him how to go on my wall and share the review I had posted. Then he asked why he didn’t see it on his wall. Even though it was on his page.
        Face it. Facebook may be the epicenter of social media. But if you ask me, in some ways it’s anti-social. It has served to put a wall between my husband and me. Although you won’t see that on my wall.
        10. My husband struggles with technology in general.
        We spent this past weekend in NYC, and while we were driving down on Friday I mentioned that I had received an email offering discount tickets to a play I wanted to see. This play, called The Lion, happened to be at a theater in the West Village only a block away from where we were eating with our son and his girlfriend on Saturday night.
        He readily agreed to go. I can’t complain about that. The problem was that he wanted to buy the tickets right away before the play might sell out.
        I usually buy all of our tickets. I was the one driving at that point, though, so I said I would purchase them as soon as we arrived. But no. He insisted on buying them right away himself. He just couldn’t figure out how.
        Granted, it was complicated to do online using a phone. You had to enter a discount code, choose your seats from a tiny color-coded seating chart, then add them to your shopping cart one at a time. Then the website demanded that you answer a series of personal questions.
        We drove for over 30 miles while he struggled and repeatedly cursed at his phone. But at last the deed was done.
        It was only late that night, when I opened the emailed confirmation, that I realized he’d purchased tickets for Friday's performance instead of Saturday's, and we had already missed it.
        He phoned immediately, but both the ticket agency and theater were already closed.
        Even with the discount, those tickets had cost just over $100, an amount that we had functionally just flushed down the toilet. Now I was the one who was cursing.
        I was so miffed that, although it was late and we hadn’t had any dinner yet, I told my husband in the middle of a city street that I was leaving, then stormed away fuming.
        Then I thought better of it. I realized that as bad as I felt about it, he had to feel even worse. It’s no fun to lose a lot of money, but it’s less fun to be the fool who lost it.
        To compensate, we decided to eat at the least posh place we could find, a diner. And soon after we entered, who should stop in for an egg cream and walk right past our table but Jackie Mason!?!
        My husband had chosen this particular restaurant, the Westway Diner on Ninth Avenue, and I was so elated to see the 83-year-old Jewish comedian that I almost forgave him.
        At my husband’s insistence, I reluctantly accompanied him when he went over to the legend’s table to tell him what longtime fans of his we were. My husband noted that his favorite joke was one that Mason tells, about a Jewish couple who consult a doctor because they can’t seem to conceive, with a punchline about having "a fish in the passage.”
        Hearing this, Mason insisted that my husband tell the joke – which he did very badly – then said, “That’s not my joke. I don’t tell that joke. You must not know who I am!”
        This was so embarrassing that I was fuming mad at my husband all over again.
        The next morning, as I expected, the ticket agency said that they couldn’t help. The tickets had been nonrefundable, and we were basically out of luck. Our only possible recourse was to go to the theater in person when it opened late that afternoon and beg.
        At best, I hoped, perhaps the box office might allow us to sit way in the back if the performance were not already sold out, even though we had purchased third-row seats.
        By coincidence, the theater happened to be near the Soho boutique from which I had ordered those two, er, unflattering dresses. While I went there to exchange them, my husband insisted on going to the theater box office himself.
       Fine by me. I was happy to have the time alone to shop without an entourage... or a critic. While he was gone, I tried on quite a few garments and fell in love with a funky jacket.
        It was black, ultra-modern, and chic, with stretchy fabric and lots of zippers. Best of all, it did not make me look like any of the Roosevelts. If you ask me.
        When my husband eventually joined me at the store, he dared once again to venture a forthright opinion about my purchase, but this one was an admiring one. At last!
        He said nothing about the tickets, though. So I figured it was a lost cause.
        Finally, I could stand it no longer, and dared to ask what had transpired.
        “Can you think of anything that might happen to turn this weekend into a positive learning experience instead of just the disaster it has been?” he asked.
        What was this, 20 questions?
        “Just tell me,” I said dejectedly.
        He had related his tale of woe to an attractive young woman at the box office, concluding with his grave error.
        “It happens,” she had said, nodding sympathetically.
        Then she had given him two tickets for that night. Not just any tickets, though. Third-row tickets, for the exact same seats we had purchased, only for the correct night.
        We met our son Aidan and his girlfriend Kaitlin for a wonderful dinner at a little Italian place called Bianca, then hurried over to the Lynn Redgrave Theater for the show.
       “After going through all that, I hope you like it,” I said as we waited for it to begin.
        “After going through all that, I’ll like it whether I like it or not,” my husband replied.
        We needn’t have worried. The play, in which a gifted young musician named Ben Scheuer sings and strums a series of guitars as he conveys a gripping autobiographical coming-of-age tale, was so stirring, moving, and mesmerizing that by the end I could hardly speak.
        I was glad not to have missed it, no matter how unnerving the events leading up to it had been.
        I was also, I must confess, no longer the least bit annoyed with my husband.
      
        OK, I’ll admit it. All of my above complaints, however valid, are pretty small potatoes.
        Of course, I easily could come up with a much longer list of much bigger gripes. But I fear that I have already shared (or maybe even over-shared) more than enough. Besides, I suppose he did manage to redeem himself in the end.
        Valentine’s Day is the anniversary of our first date, and we’re going back to NYC. But I have already bought some tickets myself and will insist that he leave the Nautica behind. Cargo pants too. Unless you think I’m overreacting.
        I’ll let you be the judge.