I call him Smirky Mc Smirkersons, or, How Could Something So Right Feel So Wrong?

After two years of gently telling me I was smart enough to work for the government, my sweetie's words finally penetrated the thick melon that serves as my skull. In other words, on a whim on Monday morning, I looked into taking the State Department Written Exam. And guess what? The Exam. Is. Next. Week.

Before the government allows you to warm a seat in their exam rooms though, you have to tell them all about your life- your last ten jobs, your greatest triumphs, what you think makes you good enough to represent the US Government abroad. That meant going through my entire work life, tracking down people who might have to vouch for me, and so on.

OK. On the surface I am a pretty cool customer. Public speaking doesn't distress me. I can boss around undergrads with the best of them. But we all have a secret shame, and mine was that, although my parents loved me, they had me pretty much convinced that I was invisible.

I have spent most of my life as a ghost. I'm the second best friend who holds the camera, the audience member, the girlfriend, the red shirt. I'm a Beta. I would have made a great spy, or a con artist, or a courtier. There are people who have known me for close to twenty years who have no idea what my hobbies are, what my favorite color is, what I like for lunch. And to a great extent I reveled in it, or at least accepted it. And then Smirky McSmirkersons came along and spoiled everything.

Smirky thinks he's very funny. He thinks it's amusing to taunt his girlfriend about how she's more brilliant than he is, and how he stands in awe of her. He giggles with glee when he tells me I'm compassionate beyond his capability, and have the patience of a saint. This is because Smirky apparently didn't realize that after spending a childhood learning to make myself invisible to people who don't like blacks, women and strange opinionated types, I somehow never learned how to become visible on command. In fact, pretty much the only times I have been visible of my own free will have been when someone else has been unfairly picked upon, or when I've in front of a class. Or, online, amusing the perhaps 5 people who read this.

I spent most of today fine-tuning the application. It was strange. I didn't realize how high my grad school average was- I've been carrying around the pain of college, where I was a bored and depressed underachiever, for most of my life. And then I called people to let them know they might get calls from the government- and they remembered me. The mother of two boys I tutored told me for the first time that I had made a real difference in her kids' lives- one is going to Harvard, and the other to one of the best prep schools in New York. She told me I should call again when her son gets home from college so we can hang out. The secretary of the high school where I worked in 1985 recognized my name and voice- back then I was teaching and then disappearing after work as quickly as possible. She gave me the number I needed, for an old friend who is still working at the school- and who told me she can't wait to tell people (what people? I'm a non-entity, remember?) I got the advanced degree I dreamed about getting back then. It took me so long to get it in part because I was so busy getting potential dropouts to graduate and not become drug dealers, I put my own dreams aside. I'm having lunch with her next week, and we'll talk about my coming in and trying to inspire a new set of kids. Another call was to the first college where I adjuncted- the chair was my boss back then, when the department was part of a mishmash of academic gerrymandering. He and I joked and we're having lunch in two weeks. He's going to see about any adjuncting positions- he says he'd love to have me. I left that place because of the memories surrounding 9/11 (the school is downtown), and had seen myself as a quitter ever since.

I know- like my sweetie, you all are probably laughing right now. You read my blog and say the writing's good. But you don't understand- my life has always been lived for other people. I was a happy go lucky loser. A genial failure whose name and face no one remembers. The person who gets cut out of the picture because I don't fit in the frame. This never felt like low self esteem, and I don't think it ever was- it was an acceptance of a reality that didn't just exist in my head. But now Smirky and a bunch of other people are telling me that I'm not a ghost to them, that I actually matter, and not just because I make good cookies or crochet a bit, or have boobs the size of my head. I matter because the very things that make me invisible to everyone else are the very things that make them treasure me; I thought I'd lost that ability to be seen clearly when I was widowed and was no longer a reflection in my husband's eyes.

I'm crying right now, because I've been given a chance to rewrite my mental life story, and see myself as a success. I'm not just the friend's strange daughter who is smart and unnerving but never talks to anyone, or the weird girl who reads Milton for fun, or the wife and then widow of a political activist, or the next door neighbor who isn't seen for months. Part of me always knew this, but I've avoided making moves that would put me in the spotlight- backup singers don't dare take the spotlight, except in the 30's musicals I love so much.

Love.

Valentine's Day wasn't a big whoop around here. My sweetie lives out of state, and between ice, snow, and fog we haven't seen each other in a bit.way right now, driving up to be with me. Yay!

I played hookey on the big day and stayed home, baked a cake from a box (unusual for me- I felt lazy) and did some crochet (what a surprise). I should have slept, but no. I spoke to my mother the night before (she called me in the middle of my sleep cycle, effectively waking me at what for me was 3 in the morning and wanting to have a conversation), went to work, came home, and decided my ankle was sprained. It was fun not going to School.

The best part of the day, however, was saying smoochy stuff to my sweetie. For thise of you underthe age of thirty, it might be a shock that old people such as myself still get romantic. Even more shcoking is that I can get romantic after having been widowed. Yes, widowed. As in, Having The Love Of Your Life Drop Dead.

The truth is, people obsess over the wrong thing, like the divorce rate. Yes, people get divorced, and that's rough. Horrible, even. But falling in love, being happy and then having that person die- that's the fate which faces exactly 50% of those who marched down the ailse and worked it out. Loving someone- really, truly loving someone- means that you may very well have to bury the one you love, and not always when you are 93, either. The good news is that widows and widowers not only have a high rate of remarriage, but a lower rate of divorce in in the new marriage than do those whose first marriage ended in divorce. So in case you thought there are no second chances- there are. Frequently. You just have to want them.

My sweetie is wonderful in very different ways than was my husband, but both were and are very funny guys with skewed sense of humor. They both work(ed) hard and sometimes forget that I need attention- but I'm a workaholic and more than a bit of a misanthrope, so it all works out. Both were/are romantic souls who try to hide it. I love them both in very different ways, but I'm honored to have had not one, but two very special men want to be in my life. It's all good.

Red Hair Day, or Having Age Both Ways

I dyed my hair this morning. It's red again. My hair is usually a deep brown, with increasing flecks of silver that look like tiny curlicues. I've been dying my hair on and off for years now, which is kind of funny, since when I was a teenager I was completely anti-cosmetics. Part of it was having to do with being a feminist in the seventies, when many of us showed our allegiance to the cause by acting like even lipgloss was the Tool of Satan. When I got older I started experimenting, because I was teaching high school and looked so young that on my first day I was ordered to get a hall pass from the office by a fellow teacher. By my thirties I would doll upon the weekends, and it was fun because it wasn't every day.

My mother dyes her hair red, also. Her natural hair color is lighter than mine- she claims it's mouse-brown. I have no idea what my mother's natural hair texture is like anymore. I can only imagine that it's slightly less woolly than my own. While I've seen my mother's scalp go ever so slightly natural, I've haven't seen her hair in full bloom since I was maybe 7, when she had a fashionable afro for a while. Ad even then, her hair was red.

When I started dying my hair, I did so by worshiping at the High Church of Manic Panic. I wanted a hair color not found in nature, except on flowers. I realized that I was simultaneously mocking and paying homage to my mother's Nice and Easy fetish. For me, hair color was about wanting to look unnatural in a totally different way. But I've never been obsessed, and as I actually like my normal hair I've often left the Manic Panic (or henna, or clairol, or whatever I was using at the moment) alone.

But every now and then the face that looks back at me seems tired and wants a change. Lipstick will cheer me up; I'm a creature of habit and buy similar shades every time. But coloring my hair makes me feel as bright as a new penny, and I treat color like wearing a hat- I'm not loyal to any particular shade of red.

Today's shade actually looks normal, maybe because today I want to cover the silver, which is beginning to annoy me. It's annoying my because I feel about 20 today, and my hair says maybe 30. My birth certificate says something else entirely, and if I weren't so vain I'd be happy to be mistaken for 30. However, I want to be a young flirty matron, not a grave one, so on went the hair color. When I teach I like to claim how elderly and cranky I am, and there are days when I actually feel that way- but I like being young, too. It's nice to have that choice, since so many women don't.