My, oh my how time changes things. About 10 years ago, when I was still in my roaring 20s, and long before that, I used to be totally indifferent about suburban towns. I couldn’t understand what was so attractive about them. Sure, the houses were big, beautiful and richly furnished, but why choose the prettiness of places like Cranford, Westfield or Ridgewood, when one could have all of life’s conveniences at their disposal while living in a major or second-tier metropolitan area? Not to mention all the fun people in their 20s can scare up in a big city! I have always loved city life, and I probably always will. But after an errand out to Mamaroneck in Westchester County last week, I put a few more points in the pro-suburb column.
We drove out to Mamaroneck to look at a station wagon. Hubby’s friend was selling the car because he and his family are moving out of the country for a few years. We need a bigger car, because between Baby’s car seat and my little sister, we’ve sort of outgrown my trusty Corolla. This car is older, but has been gently used and meticulously maintained, so we saw this as a quick solution to our problem. (We eventually did buy the car, and I’m pretty happy with it. Little Sister, too. You should see her strutting over to the car in her wedges and sunglasses, popping her gum and reclining on its plush leather seats. Too much.) Anyway, Hubby’s friend directed us to the highways and major county roads to test drive it. As we made our way through historic and upscale towns like Rye and Larchmont, respectively, it was a revelation. Not once did I hear any sirens, spousal arguments or gunshots. No neighborhood drunks ambled their way past our house, no snoops watched my front door (although I’m sure these cosmopolitan suburbs have their share of uppity nuisance neighbors) and I didn’t see one prostitute. I felt like I had just gotten over a headache.

I asked myself several questions. Is this how other educated professionals live?  Why aren’t we doing this? We could live in a town where the quality of the schools, hospitals and other public services are not always in question. I’m sure people in Westchester County have to deal with their share of nonsense, but coming from a community that the rest of the world sees as dysfunctional, I felt like it couldn’t be all bad. I happened to marry a left-leaning guy who has no use for places like Larchmont and Rye. He calls these places “crusty”, knowing that I’ll get annoyed and chide him,  “Just say upper crust! G-d!” Then I realized the property taxes on these pretty little, well-kept farm houses probably equal my annual net salary. Yes, my company is that cheap, and life in New York is that pricey. When I was growing up in Paterson, Mommy would always listen to news radio in the morning. During the traffic report, the announcer usually gave an update on roads passing through ‘Sleepy Hollow’ and other places that sounded weird to me. It sounded surreal. How could any place in the world, which I assumed to be as ethnically diverse and restless as inner cities, ever be so tame and sleep inducing?

For a few moments, I wondered what it would be like to raise Baby in a place like that. But the thought of paying nearly the equivalent of the U.S. median income in property taxes quickly brought me back to my senses. It could never happen. Hubby and I would have to have the sort of intense, demanding jobs that would drive him to chain smoke and push me to knock a few back several times a week, just to unwind. We probably wouldn’t be very nice people to be around on a typical day. And then what sort of parents would we be to this precious little girl? Newark definitely makes me want to roll my eyes and cover my face in shame on occasion. But at least we are able to make a reasonable life here. We can take time out to read interesting books (the excellent book in this shot, near Hubby’s foot is titled: ‘Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?’) I can blog and share my insights with you gentle readers. I spend so much of my free time with Baby that Hubby remarked today: “Sometimes I think you two are siamese twins.” I haven’t exactly completed the assimilation process—ditching the inner city for suburban life in any one of America’s upscale towns. Still ‘dealing’ with the inner city. We are OK, though, me the child of Jamaican immigrants and Hubby, with his left-of-center, off-color remarks about “prissy”, sorry “pretty” places like Westchester County.

The preacher known as Rev. Ike died on Tuesday. He was part of the backdrop of my childhood, one of the more prominent black preachers whose voice rang out from our radio during weekly or nightly broadcasts.I don’t remember ever seeing him on TV. My mother listened to Rev. Ike, but not because she subscribed to his philosophy of the ‘God in you’ or the gospel of prosperity. Being an old-school Christian and conservative to the core, she listened only to gather fodder to scoff at and criticize him. It didn’t matter to me back then, and aside from the fact that his surviving children and wife deserve comfort and pity at this time, his passing doesn’t really move me today. I’m not conservative enough to be offended by what he preached and I’m not part f the ‘name it, claim it’ crowd either.

What piqued my interest, though, was his full name: Frederick J. Eikerenkoetter II, which is a Dutch surname if I’ve ever heard one. Here is a photo of him that ran in The New York Times. So I did some Googling about this fallen American icon. There is also an NPR obit on the late preacher. 

Sure enough, it turns out that his father was Dutch Indonesian and his mother was an African-American. His parentage, or late parentage is the main reason I’m talking about this guy. His parents divorced when he was 5 years old. Normally, I’d say it is a pity that he came from a broken home, but clearly he found a way to bounce back nicely, wouldn’t you say?

I need to brag about my hair dresser, because she did a superb job on my hair today. Look at the curls, the tapered cut at my nape and my favorite part, the flips. Everything is in place and works well together, framing my face where necessary and appearing to fly away from the top. This kind of thing makes maintaining a salon routine worth considering. LOL Still, I cannot guarantee that a teenager’s issues, a baby’s fussiness, mountains of laundry, blogging or plain laziness on a winter morning wouldn’t persuade me to skip it. 

Only since the end of my maternity leave have I even attempted to keep monthly appointments at the salon. Previously, I made it to Lash Out every three months or so at best, after my hair had already begun to revert to its thick, coarse texture. You might think that by the time my hair had reached that state, I would take the sessions seriously. No, I did not. I would sit in her plush red leather chair at Lash Out and stick my nose in a glossy magazine or book while she turned my neglected mane into neat glossy curls, like the ones in these pictures. And I’ve taken to asking her to be done with my hair in three hours, tops. I think that part is unnecessary, because she juggles clients efficiently, moving the ladies from the chair to the sink to the dryers and back again with fluid precision. Plus, I don’t want to come across as rude, like I don’t want to be there. I’m just not the type of person who wants to spend a lot of time on her hair. 

Aside from outcomes like this, there are other reasons to keep going back to Lash Out. It’s like a two-hour (three, at the most) break from the daily Mommy grind. The interior is beautifully decorated, with its red and yellow walls hung with giant prints of Diana Ross and Audrey Hepburn, and Tiffany-style light fixtures. The owner and main stylist are both businesslike yet friendly, somewhere in their late 20s and always stylishly dressed and coiffed. Some R&B or soul artist like Jill Scott is always being piped through the sound system and a black film is often running on the flat-screen TV in the back parlor.  Lash Out installs edgy, stylish eyelashes for more daring clients, and one stylist also threads eyebrows. The place just has a cutting-edge urban vibe to it. I might feel urban during my weekday commutes in and out of New York, but otherwise, I don’t feel edgy. Just when I start to miss Baby, like when I really need to give her plump little self a squeeze, my stylist is done and I can get back home to pick up my life where I left off.

When my deputy editor read the headlines aloud, the ones reporting that Michael Jackson had been rushed to a hospital after a cardiac arrest, unconscious and not breathing, I earnestly hoped  that he would recover. But the next day, as we talked about his death, I tensed as the conversation unfolded. Who would be the first to call him a freak or a molester? Would people shrug of the news, indifferently calling it another tragic end to the life of a tormented artist, not wholly unexpected, but still sad? Of all the comments about his death that went around the office that day, this one upset me the most:

Paula: Well, I think his kids are better off without him.

I don’t know exactly what was wrong with Michael Jackson. But I do think it was too soon for him to die. For someone so obviously talented and accomplished, who was a creative inspiration to millions, whose life was and will always be a cultural reference point to leave unfinished business behind just seems plain wrong to me. I didn’t like the Michael Jackson whose life was tabloid fodder for decades. He needed to retire from the music business with dignity and to outlive the version of himself that had become a carnival exhibit. He needed to live, so that he would have a chance to be a better father to his children. But now, he leaves this world generating as much unflattering and mysterious press as he did when he lived. 

Following celebrity news closely has never been important to me. I just don’t like vicious gossip, and I find that all forms of reporting on famous entertainers and athletes inevitably take a nasty turn. Actors, musicians and ball players usually end up being put on display, their actions given the smoke-and-mirror treatment and teased like carnival animals, all so “Us Weekly” and “OK!” can rack up bigger circulation numbers and haul in more ad revenue. Professional journalists attempt to justify this deplorable behavior by saying that celebrities agree to be put on display in unflattering and sometimes depraved ways in exchange for the fame and fortune that comes with doing their jobs. No rational human beings strike such bargains. 

The general public is not entitled to full disclosure from anyone who has not been elected to public office and whose livelihoods are not supported by tax dollars. We all need to find better things to do with our time than to obsess about the private lives of celebrities. Constantly reading up on these people for no other reason than to gossip about it creates unhealthy habits, and we need to tone it down. 

Let me acknowledge that some serious allegations of molestation had been brought against this man repeatedly. Even I, as much as I loved to watch Michael dance and sing, would never put my adolescent son in the circumstances described in those cases. You could zig-zag an 18-wheeler on the margin of error present in those situations. When grown men behave in suspect ways toward children, then the public—especially this person’s near neighbors—must be given essential information so that they can protect their children. Parents whose children are likely to be in contact with that man have to be vigilant. Beyond that, we don’t need to know. 

The only thing I really wanted to know about Michael were the details of his creative process. That’s it. And just in case you’re wondering, “Thriller” is my all-time favorite Michael Jackson song, and all-time favorite music video.

The folks at YouTube disabled embedding of “Thriller” (and probably all of Michael Jackson’s videos) by request, but you can get it play if you double-click the video image. It will take you to the YouTube site, where it will run. If you want an even crisper looking version of the video, then go to Yahoo! Music.