Sim Carter: Past Tense Imperfect

Laughing with my baby sister. Izmir, Turkey/ 1957 My sister, in an adjacent dressing room at Ross, is as doubled over with laughter as I am. We're trying on dresses and as we both squeeze into outfits designed with her twenty-something daughters in mind, there's plenty to snort about. She's taught me a word I wish I didn't know. Gunt. The kind of fat that goes from your gut to your—ahem, I can't even say it. But that's Nancy, my younger sister. Brash, a little bit bawdy, she's always been the one that's more out there, unafraid to teeter on the edge of conventional good taste and expressing herself like a modern day Wife of Bath. Unafraid of being herself, while I shrink back, the good girl, wrapped up in gentility. Unless I've had a glass or two of wine, that is. Wine and my sister have always had a way of bringing out the naughty in me. Don't get me wrong; we're not the kind of sisters who talk on the phone every day. We don...

Women were burning their bras and sticking up posters proclaiming "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle." Billy Jean King and Bobby Riggs were fighting it out on the tennis court in the Battle of the Sexes at the same time that Marabel Morgan was advising the females of the species  to greet their husbands at the door with a cocktail in hand, clad in nothing but Saran Wrap. As a young woman of twenty in 1973, working my way through college, it wasn't always easy to know where on the line between those polar opposites to plant one's flag. While I planned to work after graduation—some vaguely formed notion of a writerly job, in publishing perhaps or advertising, I thought, flipping through my glossy copy of Mademoiselle on my break, devouring the ads for Wind Song with as much fervor as I did the magazine's short stories—I assumed at some point I'd fall in love and marry, raise a family. It was what women did. Not to marry wouldn't be a...

I'm heading back to my apartment, carrying my plastic laundry basket, heavy with 2 loads of freshly washed whites. The basket itself is pale green, only because I couldn't find turquoise. I am absolutely crazy about turquoise. So there I am, walking down the path, when I'm startled by a glimpse of turquoise at the top of a neighbor's stairs.  My eyes dial in and I see it's a girl, a girl with bright aqua-colored hair, the very same Katy Perry blue I yearn to dye my own hair . The girl, talking to her boyfriend (my assumption from how close to each other they stand) catches my eye, we smile. "I love your hair," I call out as I pass. "Oh, to be young again, I'd love to have hair that color." At which point she peels away from her boyfriend and heads down the stairs. "You should!" she says. "And I'm not that young, I'm thirty."  "Ha! You're a baby!"  But  I'm glad I haven't called h...

I’m taking a virtual walking tour ‘above ground’ on the London Underground. Using  my Tube guide & my fitbit® device, my goal is to walk 10,000 steps a day roughly following along the Underground route, reporting back here on Fridays with my findings.  Here are the days that came before . This is Day 29 and we're still on the Piccadilly line. Twitter. Facebook. YouTube. There are plenty of places these days for people to sound off. An abundance, an excess of spots, from which to tell your point of view. Which sometimes means vomiting all over the rest of us. It’s so easy to do when it’s electronic: write and press that  submit   post button . Easy. It’s a bit tougher to get up on your soapbox when you have to face your audience in real time.   Which brings us to the original soap box, Speakers'  Corner at Hyde Park.  image credit: Wikipedia Speakers’ Corner It’s a short walk from our Knightsbridge hotel, down Knightsbridge Ro...

I’m sick to death of writing about myself. I’m sick to death of my writing. It’s one and the same. I can ’ t write fiction. I ’ ve tried. It ’ s just another story about me, supposedly incognito as a brunette instead of a blonde—a bottle blonde, at that.  That ’ s this week ’ s excuse for not carrying on with my story about Derek. But really, do you even know or care who Derek is? Some boyfriend I had when I was twenty? Or was it nineteen? Is there a point? Right now I ’ m feeling like Richard Harris singing McCarthur ’ s Park — MacArthur's Park is melting in the dark All the sweet green icing flowing down Someone left the cake out in the rain I don't think that I can take it 'Cause it took so long to bake it And I'll never have that recipe again Oh, no I  usually relish  disappearing into my girlish headspace, settling  back  into the mushy comfort of memory but I ’ m feeling too old and too cranky to even try. The cosmetics company th...

Governor Jerry  ‘   Moonbeam’  Brown with Linda Ronstadt  From left: Don Henley, Don Felder, Linda Ronstadt, Glenn Frey, Governor Jerry Brown, Randy Meisner, Dan Fogelberg, Joe Walsh, and Jackson Browne circa 1977. When  I read Friday ’ s  news that the California legislature had passed the right to die legislation, I thought maybe  my husband was going to be able to throw the pillow away . We have a deal, you see, if Alzheimer ’s comes to strip me of my brain, and with it the lifetime of memories I’m penning feverishly here in this space, he’s going to off me with a pillow. A nice big fat puffy down pillow. It’s only half in jest; my mother died after living with Alzheimer’s for over a dozen years, each one more and more debilitating, each one leading her down a rabbit hole I have no desire to dive down into. It’s dark in there, and dank. I’d rather die while it’s still light. While I can still look at my son and know his face, say his ...

If you follow me at Chapter1-Take1 you know I'm conflicted about this week's newest Disney release, a live action Cinderella directed by Kenneth Branagh . Bizarre timing considering it's International Women's Week! Is it a fun, frothy, girlish fantasy or is it another example of women unable to part with a deeply buried inner Cinderella complex; that outmoded desire to have Prince Charming come along and rescue us. To save us from the mundane business of succeeding in the world, an issue that really came to the fore in the 70's when I was coming of age and the women's movement was liberating many of my fellow boomer females from our apron strings. We were suddenly free to go out into the world just like the men. Ah, but what to do when we got there? We knew how to be wives and mothers, that was imprinted on our feminine DNA, but how to climb the corporate ladder, how to make our way in the new world? Colette Dowling who coined the term The Cinderella Complex,  ...