Ballet Boy

An old college friend from D.C. stopped over for the night on her way to N.Y.C. to drop off her son at boarding school.  But this was no ordinary boarding school.  Her fifteen-year-old son, Noah, would be living in the Julliard campus’ dorms and studying at the School of the American Ballet (SAB) while taking his academic classes at a Manhattan performing arts school.  Though he was very calm and collected on the outside, he assured us he was extremely nervous and excited on the inside. I asked mother and son how it all began over nachos and burritos. 

“At 9 years old Noah played competitive concert piano, but he also loved to dance in the basement,” Mom said, “and he loved sports, especially baseball. He was already good at sports but I knew that if he was going to also be a good dancer he would need a foundation in ballet training. So I bribed him with permission to play ball after dinner if he took just one ballet class. He agreed. Then I searched for an all boy ballet class taught by a man. It was much further away but I finally found one. He went once and loved it.”

Noah started dancing once a week, then twice. In 5^th grade The Kennedy Center used him when they needed young boys for their performances. “Basically, I found out I was an attention junkie,” Noah said with a smirk, “but I was still a huge Nationals baseball fan as well.” However, his school community wasn’t as open minded about his dual passions. He was bullied, so the decision was to home school in 6^th through 8^th grades. “He was homeschooled so he wouldn’t be brainwashed out of doing what he loved,” said his mother with a smirk looking reminiscent of her son’s. At 12 years old, Noah was dancing 6 days a week, 2-6 hours a day at a top D.C. city ballet school and commuting by himself while excelling in academics and still practicing baseball. And keeping up with his classical piano. I thought how altered our society would be if all the children who happen to know their passion at 12 could attend specialized schools to hone, explore and master their desire.

Noah auditioned for SAB’s summer school program when he turned 13 and was waitlisted. Feeling stifled by leveling at his own ballet school, he nearly quit, but reluctantly continued. I asked, “What do you think made you stand out?” It was a fair question; SAB accepted only 25 new students for the school term this year after holding worldwide auditions. Between bites he said, “I noticed I was bypassing my peers in drive, desire and overall physical ability.” When I asked about physical ability, he said simply, “I was born with straight knees.”

The following summer Noah auditioned again for SAB’s summer program and was accepted. (Feeling certain it was a long shot, his mother didn’t check the website’s acceptance list until 48 hours before the confirmation deadline. She screamed and woke the whole family at 1am when she saw his name.) “Let’s be serious,” Noah said, “when you think of ballet you think of little girls in pink tutus. It makes me mad because it’s so athletic and we work so hard. If people had any idea… I challenge any soccer or football player to go through the training we go through—the strength and balance, the sheer stamina—forget it. No contest.” (He can do 8 pirouettes in a single launch. Try it sometime.)

I asked what he thought would be different from his high school experience from that of a typical public school student. Without hesitation he said, “Public schools hold back kids, restrict them from discovering a passion that might not be what everyone else is doing. When I get to SAB, I’ll be surrounded by people who are as passionate as I am and I won’t be exposed to ignorance and scrutiny, which will free me up to focus and study.” He spoke with maturity and eloquence but his eyes also flashed with an intensity I hadn’t witnessed until now. We paid the check and made our way down the street for dessert. He’d more than earned an ice cream cone.

The next morning we stood in line at the local bagel place to get breakfast sandwiches to go. I recognized a neighbor eating with his daughter and brought my friends over to introduce them. I quickly said to Noah, “I’m so proud of you, is it okay if I tell him?” He hesitated then nodded imperceptibly, which I barely acknowledged before blurting to my neighbor that Noah was headed off to SAB. My friend, a tall athletic looking man wearing a t-shirt with a sports logo smiled wide and reached out his hand to congratulate him. “That’s really cool,” he said, “Congratulations, man, have a great time.” Noah, also wearing sports shorts with a Nationals logo smiled tentatively and shook his hand. “Thanks,” he said then they had a brief chat about the Nationals’ standing this year in the league and made a few jokes about the Orioles.

I walked my girlfriend and her son to their car. On the way Noah said to me, “You know, when you started to tell that man about SAB I was really afraid of what he would say. I never tell anyone at home, especially straight men, that I’m a dancer. I couldn’t believe that he was so cool with it. I still can’t believe it.” I told him that South Orange and Maplewood were not like other towns. I said, “You can be a dancer or a writer, a musician or artist and folks support you. A boy dancing ballet isn’t unusual here. Everyone would be psyched for you.” We said our goodbyes and good lucks, hugged and they drove off.

Later his mother left me a voice message telling me how transformative that moment had been for her son. A straight man had told him that being a ballet dancer was cool and wished him good luck with genuine warmth. She said, “He got in the car and said, ‘I was so scared, Mom, but I realized I’m proud and it’s okay and I can be who I am.’” She said it was good practice for him to be able to tell people. I agree. 95% of the graduates of SAB are hired to dance for the New York City Ballet, arguably the best ballet company in the world. I hope that by living in New York, Noah will grow comfortable enough to say, “I’m a ballet dancer,” far beyond the reaches of Maplewood and South Orange, and be who he is—amazing.

Author's Note: For more information, check out “School of American Ballet – Boys Program” on YouTube.

Middle School

I was a middle school girl once and I survived. Barely. What little I recall of this unsavory phase is that it’s one of the more cutthroat and potentially traumatizing chapters of one’s life. I’ve often joked that if you can get through middle school, the ensuing years will be a cakewalk in comparison. I made it through, but I was scathed all right. I was a girl and girls are stealthy. They can also be calculating, manipulative, cold-blooded and cruel. Boys, I’m told, are another story. I had no brothers, so I have nothing to grasp onto, no memory shred of their experience save for the boys I hung around with and the scant few that I dated. They all seemed to be gliding though on a drama-less landscape, shooting hoops and eating pizza crusts off each other’s plates. That’s all I saw at the surface; from my view there was little strife.

Since then, I’ve learned through late night discussions with countless male friends and by watching Cameron Crowe movies, that boys are devastated by their hormones in middle school—nearly felled by a brutal combination of acne and desire. And now, I must watch my son be tortured similarly as I send him off. I see the heartache on the horizon, the thousand painful slights from girls, the sinking realization of what he’s not good at and embarrassed by. I can just make out the beginnings of the stress of social positioning; birthday party invites not forthcoming, vacant weekends spent in the company of empty hours.

I’m trying not to stress out on his behalf. An older parent, I have the good fortune to have forgotten most of my middle school experience—it was so long ago. I’ve given him a heads up about the swear words he’ll be blasted with in the school hallways. We’ve assigned a point value to the basics 1-5 with ‘crap’ and ‘sucks’ awarded “one pointers” and, well, you can fill in the rest. I’ve hammered the mantra, “Know your audience” at him for years, hoping that when this day would finally come, he would be mindful of who was listening when he, too, tried his hand at the color and occasional wicked delight of swearing. “Remember, you don’t want teachers, play date parents, grandparents or coaches ever hearing you use off-color language.” “Yes, mom.” He’s bored. He tuned me out at “Remember”.

But I continue because I don’t know how to stop. I think that maybe, just maybe, as I speak my words will turn to a gossamer silk, strong and resilient, and wrap themselves around him like a protective burrito, just his head poking out of the top. “And this is when people you know are going to start smoking cigarettes and pot and sneaking beers and trying their hand at kleptomania, and I’m not going to be there. You’re going to have to decide for yourself what kind of kid you’re going to be.” “Yes, mom,” he intones again in the same voice he uses when I ask him to put on a collared shirt for a holiday meal or put his napkin in his lap. He has no idea what he’s in for. And I do, and yet, I’m still sending him. Oh, what vultures lie in wait! Oh, what demons troll in the shadows! Voldemort aint got nothing on middle school. Thank goodness I remember so little.

I don’t even begin to visit the horrors that are girls in middle school. When I ask him what he thinks of girls at this point he replies, “Weird.” When I press him, asking how, he says, “They just giggle all the time and whisper and it’s so boring and dumb.” Right. For about another ten minutes, and then, whammo—he will be all consumed to the extent that he’ll lose his mind texting and his body to goodness knows what else and then the strings that keep us tethered to one another now will fray and break until we are two people living under the same roof, communicating in a one-sided morse code of mumbles and grunts. And then, he’s gone, I’m told until he’s about 26 years old. At which time he’ll be back and tell me all about it, his trip through the rushing rapids of puberty that started in middle school, with me pushing him off in his raft.

I want to hold him and apologize now, before he even gets there, tell him that I’m doing it for his own good and that I love him and know he’ll get through it, hopefully not too scathed, but he would just chalk that up to Mom is a Nutjob, a file already bulging. So, I let his biggest worry be remembering his locker combination for now, and, “I’m scared I won’t have enough time to switch classrooms.” I tell him he’ll do fine as if I’m not making him walk a plank. I tell myself to stop sweeping his hair on his forehead to the side. I remind myself that one of these days will be the last time he holds my hand possibly for a very long time. I hold my breath, I count to three, then I say a little prayer, and send him—to middle school.

Slow Food - Happy Meal

“Mom, can we please go to McDonalds more than like once a year?” “Sure,” I said, “we can go twice a year.” He shot back with, “How about once a month?” I countered with, “How about never?” I’m trying to instill in my son the notion that there is a world of locally run restaurants out there with individual menus and handmade curtains and that we should default to those establishments whenever possible. We should be supporting family owned businesses and eating healthier, possibly locally grown food. He doesn’t buy it; he wants the crappy plastic toy. But he doesn’t ask for much, so on a recent summer road trip up to New Hampshire I pulled into the parking lot of a McDonalds masquerading as a small local diner with its shingled roof and window shutters. My son had fallen deeply asleep so I woke him gently. “Sweetie,” I said, we’re breaking for lunch. I found a little family owned restaurant that supposedly makes a pretty good burger. I think you’ll like it.” His eyes fluttered open but the golden arches didn’t register until we were halfway across the parking lot. Then he threw his arms around me. “Thanks, mom!” “No prob, kid.” It was a happy meal.

Last week, on a seven-hour road trip to the Adirondacks my son knew not to mention fast food and I didn’t either. After forever on the New York Thruway, we wound along two lane roads for hours. It was getting to be dinnertime and the towns were getting smaller and more scantily populated, so when we ended up driving through Minerva, I suggested we turn around and try that place we just passed back there. “Are you sure?” he said. “No, but we’ll never know unless we try,” I said. “Looks friendly enough, right? There are cars in the driveway, which is a good sign, right?” He was dubious, which is his standard setting for all adventures with Mom, but didn’t hesitate.

Sporty’s Iron Duke Saloon was first and foremost a bar, populated with guarded, middle-aged folks who could have been extras in a Dennis Hopper biker movie set at any point between 1977 and 1989. The room itself was a large open barn plan whose walls and peeked ceiling were built with new-seeming blonde varnished wood. Beyond the cluster of bar tables was a pool table and then a single, large, family-style eating table. It had the feel of a roadhouse with lots of room for folks to stand around and, who knows, dance. On every inch of wall space was a tastefully framed photo or movie poster or magazine ad paying homage to the Harley Davidson motorcycle or rider. When the wall space ran out the decorator did what any enthusiast would do and covered the ceiling as well. All of it.

I asked if children were allowed to dine in. “Sure,” a friendly, grey muttonchop-mustached man with close-cropped hair and a black T-shirt and jeans answered, “C’mon in.” He smiled warmly and I blurted out, “This place is amazing!”

“It’s my place,” he said, “I’m Sporty. Welcome. I did it all myself.”

“Wow,” my son said. We sat down at the table and asked what he recommended for dinner. “Have ya had hog wings?”

“No,” I said.

“Oh, you’ve got to have ‘em.”

“Great, done. Plus a cheeseburger, thanks.”

My son and I got up from the table to take a closer look at Sporty’s shrine to Harley Davidson and the biker culture we’d stumbled upon. There was a lot to take in. Magazine ads dated back to the sixties, biker movie posters to the seventies. We spotted photos of a younger Sporty with a full head of thick black hair and a black bushy mustache with his arms around comrades standing in front of state signs reading Welcome to Montana, Arizona and California. There were mannequins showcasing early leather biker wear and a collection of vintage oil cans on a window sill. Along one whole side of the room was a cordoned off area where antique Harleys were parked with tags dangling from their handlebars giving the reader the year, make and model of the bike.

We were taking a selfie in front of one spectacularly patriotic bike, the sort that Evil Kinevil might have ridden, when Sporty walked up. I thought he would ask me not to take photos; I realized in that moment I should have asked first. Or maybe he was here to tell us our food was ready—my stomach was beginning to rumble. But it was neither. He lifted up the chain and offered my son a chance to sit on a bike with the American flag emblazoned across the gas tank. I snapped away as my son smiled then we both thanked him heartily for the privilege. Our food wouldn’t be ready for another fifteen minutes.

We wandered around and kept reading—it was an exhaustive collection. I wondered what folks would think if I ran out of room for art in my house and started to nail thrift store paintings onto the ceilings. A man in a sleeveless black T-shirt wandered over to the internet jukebox and punched in “You Shook Me” and “Paradise by the Dashboard Light.” I peered out the back door and saw a well-tended fire pit. Beyond that twelve or so picnic tables dotted a freshly mowed green lawn. Circling the tables were eight or so individual guest cabins, freshly painted. It was a beautiful, peaceful setting. I imagined what fun it must be here at night.

Our food finally arrived and we bopped to the music as we ate. The cheeseburger and coleslaw were terrific but the hog wings were sublime. Two fist-sized hunks of dark, tender, pork meat nearly fell off our bone handles and we rolled our eyes to the heavens as we chewed. The sky turned lavender out the back door and the grass, lime green. Sporty shook our hands heartily as we said our thank-yous and goodbyes and invited us back for helicopter rides in September. The business card read, “Everybody Always Welcome.” “That was awesome,” my son said as we got back on the road. It hadn’t been fast food, but it was fresh, delicious and well worth the wait. It was truly a very happy meal.

Tap Dancer/Financier

A seventy-nine-year-old man recently asked me to give him tap lessons. He’s known me since I was a child. Of course I said yes. He’s a successful finance manager and grandfather of thirteen. He’s also a fabulous dancer who always gave me a spin around the dance floor at the wedding receptions we attended of mutual friends, his daughter’s among them. He knows I love to dance.

We’ve decided this summer to meet once a week in the morning for 30 minutes in his workshop, between the worktable and the saw table. He sweeps the floor of woodchips and sawdust before I arrive so that the sounds we make with our formal shoes on the floor—we’re not wearing proper tap shoes—will be clearly heard. We have a narrow corridor—about 3’ by 6’—in which to move; the floor is unvarnished wood. The workbench before us has been cleared off so that we have a neat open space to jot our choreography onto the back of the lyric sheets I printed out. Screwdrivers and chisels hang on prongs in the wall. We make up our own shorthand for our tap steps like a stenographer’s vocabulary—fl for flap, sh for shuffle, H for hop and so forth. His wife reads the paper in the next room. The breakfast dishes have long since been cleaned up. The door is kept ajar.

My student wears his brown dress loafers with dark socks pulled to mid-calf and shorts. I wear silver cocktail heels and a cover up over my bathing suit. This is so that we can both easily see our feet. I run through the basics of the tab dancer’s vocabulary, the building blocks of every routine you’ve ever seen in the movies or on TV. My student’s hearing must still be very good because he is able to discern the components of each combination as we review the basics. He repeats after me and gets each step right away; clear hearing is germane to tap. It’s an intricate and nuanced language comprised of only a few letters or moves. Step, stomp, toe, heel, dig. There are others and we scribble them down. I think I’ve remembered them all from my childhood and am too confident to check, preferring instead to feel cocksure.

On our first day we have a short conversation about Bob Hope and Gene Kelly, and how effortlessly they made it look. He tells me a story about his father trying to teach him to dance as a child in the 1940s. I’ve chosen “Tea for Two” as our song to work on, hoping that this is something that he will know well and feel comfortable with. He nods and agrees that that’s a good one. I start simple and try to use the same language each time. I also try to marry the steps with the words to the song as soon as we set the choreography. “Picture you upon my knee…”, I sing. I make up little nick names for the steps we do: the saunter, the clock. I always needed mnemonic devices to help me remember things, always needed to see it done, get up and do it, or push the buttons myself so that whatever I needed to remember would code not only in my brain but in my body. I wonder what kind of learner my student is. I wonder what kind of brain one needs to be excellent at finance and banking, numbers and risk. I wonder how long this extremely successful man has harbored dreams of being an effortless tap dancer. He’s certainly been talking to me about lessons for at least ten years. “Someday” he’s said at least once a summer for as far back as I can remember. But this summer he held me to it. This summer must be different somehow. Tomorrow he turns eighty.

My student sings alongside me as we run the steps again and again. I feel very comfortable singing and dancing alongside him and the forty or so years between us melt away, irrelevant. For a brief moment I picture myself Ginger Rogers to his Fred Astaire. We circle the saw table in the middle of the room—flap-right ball-change, flap-left ball-change—smiling as we say the words aloud until we land back at the start, slightly winded, but laughing. I picture Bob Hope and Bing Crosby in suits, swaying side to side then hop-shuffling with their arms out before them, bent at the elbow as if gently resting on a counter. I remember the steps they did, the easy weight change, the steady shoulders. I recall them turning together, the vents of their suit jackets opening slightly, then finding themselves facing the audience at the same moment, just in time to thwack at their own thighs a few time and end with a clap.

I decide to add the slap/clapping bit to our routine and see his eyes light up as he looks at what’s to come. “Oh, that’ll be good,” he says, but his wife looks in and I know that’s our signal to wrap it up. “We’ll add that next week,” I assure him and he says okay. Something about the way he says it makes me think he’d go on dancing all day if he could. Maybe possibly would have started years ago if he could have. I wonder how many bankers have wished they could tap dance as well as Gene Kelly, and how many dancers have wished they had the financial savvy of bankers. Then I scoop up my lyrics, kiss my student lightly on the cheek and say goodbye until next week.

I Was a Valet Car Parker

Summer jobs are all around me: the kid scooping my ice cream, taking my tickets at the roller coaster, replacing bicycle tires, babysitting. I had similar summer jobs as a teenager: teaching kids’ recreation courses, waitressing, working at a cookie chain, babysitting. My friends worked at the Dairy Queen, landscaped and caddied. At night we snuck around town in the flatbed of pick-up trucks or the back seats of Cameros, slipping through chain link fences and skittering across golf courses under dark, starry skies. Then I went off to college and the summer jobs seemed to get a little more serious—became a shade more strenuous. I’m not sure if someone told me outright or if I just noticed it happening, but maturity was implied. Friends started to commute into the city, intern at banks and non-profits, wear high heels and use the drycleaner. So I upped the ante for myself.

The summer after my college freshman year at college in New York City, I moved in with a girlfriend who had an apartment in Boston and applied for a job at the Four Seasons Hotel right on the Boston Common. I knew banking wasn’t my milieu—I had always been more of a service industry gal, myself—so I filled out an application. There were loads of options in the various departments at a grand hotel: housekeeping, kitchen, dining room, and concierge. There were so many boxes where I could imagine myself working that I checked the majority of them. “That sounds like fun, oh, I could do that.” But the call I received from HR was for the parking department. Would I be interested in parking cars? “Sure,” I replied gamely. I could drive a manual and automatic shift, I hadn’t had any accidents and was confident behind the wheel. What the heck. I got the job.

I was issued a polyester beige tunic-type top with a neru collar, itchy black pants and a little plastic nametag that read my first name only. I was the only woman on the crew. The rest of the nametags read Mohit or Obadu, Micky, Ricky and Juan. We were a motley crew from a panoply of nations but got along famously. Obadu was appointed the boss and would tell us whose turn it was when a car pulled in, and toss us keys for the cars we needed to bring up. Some men balked briefly when I came around the hood of their car with a big smile and my palm out, but they acquiesced and handed me the keys. Only one guy insisted on driving his car down to the carport himself, then later asked for his car, refusing to give me the alarm code so I had to drive his car up from below with the alarm shrieking. George Benson made up for it the following week, though, by letting me drive his Mercedes 6000 series without batting and eye, and Kenny Logins gave me a big smile and a very nice tip. Most folks were kind and generous, and the work was fascinating and fun.

I learned from the doorman, Vincent, how the underbelly of holding cars at the front door worked, and how much tax-free cash he made daily just from keeping track of who’s beamer he should bring up when and which cars he could afford to bury and for how long. His pants and breast pockets were jammed with keys and wads of cash yet he cut a slick figure in his captain’s hat and brass-button coat that went down to his knees. He knew just when to bow and how far to scrape and even though his Southy accent was thick, he held himself high and made everyone feel fancy. Then he would wait a beat or two until the cheap sun-of-a-gun had driven off in his Rolls and unleash a torrent of curse words befitting… a doorman from South Boston.

Soon, I befriended Jamie the bellman. He had light blue eyes that actually twinkled and long blonde eyelashes that nearly trumped his dimples. Jamie told me all about how he could be commissioned—for a price—to acquire a whole host of booty at a hotel guest’s request from cigarettes to prostitutes and a bizarre lot of randomness in between. The Four Seasons was putting up many of the headliners for the summer concert series in the park, so I learned which famous rock stars wore wigs and which used drugs, who was really nice, and who was a jerk. I learned which fake names they gave to register with at the front desk, who made the biggest mess for housekeeping and who skimped at tipping.

Jamie told me all the dirt when we got off our shifts at 11pm and met up for ‘last call’ lobster bisque at our bar up the street. Sometimes we’d sneak back into the hotel afterwards and up into the labyrinth of service elevators and hallways that paralleled the guest hallways, up to secret rooftop alcoves or balconies of vacant suites. When we started to date I often slept over at his apartment on Charles Street. Jamie had a mattress on the floor of a rent controlled apartment that was so besieged by cockroaches, he had poured a little moat-like mound of white cockroach powder onto the floor that circumnavigated all four sides of the bed. I stepped over it to climb under the covers feeling like a giantess from Gulliver’s travels. Somehow I didn’t find this situation repugnant—his place was a much easier stroll through the park to and from work, and I like having a boyfriend—yet I often dreamt of cockroaches.

Nearing Labor Day there was a new hire. She was a tiny dark haired woman from Thailand whose nametag read “Mom”. Jamie and I made her feel welcome because she was so lovely and shy, and also because we loved calling her Mom. Jamie and I broke up the week before I returned to college. I would be going and he was staying. This wasn’t a summer stint for him, but his full-time job. We said a heartbreaking but understanding goodbye and hugged for a while up on the roof. It had been a wonderful, oddly magical summer. At least, I joked through tears, we could find comfort in knowing my spot on the car valet crew was being filled by Mom.

Moving Friend

In a few weeks one of my closest friends is moving to the leftern most third of the United States. If you’re looking a child’s puzzle it’s one of the ones that are big and blocky and really far away. I know this because I’ve driven across country six times and this is no day trip. I also know that physical distance doesn’t factor in always, such as in the case of neighbors who moved 20 minutes away whom I hardly see anymore. There are other, more subtle distances, which can account for space. There are connective tissues, effort’s twine, that may weaken and break allowing friends to float away, drifting off slowly on an ice floe labeled “busy”, everyone waving and getting smaller by the month.

            This friend will be missed. And not only by me. She’s been an inscrutable force in the lives of many, creating parties where none existed, coercing folks to put on a wig or get out on the dance floor, check out a band, or ride a mechanical bull. She’s forged a neighborhood where there might not have been one. And she’s taken in the strays, without judgment or expectation, opening her heart and home to whomever needs a pal or an ear, a drink or a nap, a bowl of cereal or a laugh. I know this generosity of spirit first hand and I can say without exaggeration that it’s changed my life.

            In my experience, I know people who found their friends early and are happy with their choices, so they’ve rolled up the welcome mat and stopped noticing potential. No need to look further. Then there are the folks who stick to their kind, which, out here means other married people. They like nice round numbers and knowing that everyone is spoken for—no loose ends or unpredictability. At the restaurant they want their husbands to have other men to talk man things with and not get into conversation with some wanton unattached woman who upsets the boy-girl ratio at the table. They crave a guarantee.

And finally, there are those who feed on exclusion, little thrills of being on the inside, knowing others didn’t make the cut. These folks find comfort in a fixed roster of friends, inside jokes, and endless references harkening back to earlier social events like a closed circuit. There’s a social currency exchanged between these insiders, whispers and nods, which for some brings a tiny buzz. It’s also predictable, cozy and safe.

            My friend who’s moving is odd in this respect. She’s open to new experiences, delights in them. And if that new experience comes in the form of a recently divorced mom, then great—the more the merrier. “We can always make room.” So she opened up her heart and home to me, scooping me up and taking me along to wherever she was invited that would be appropriate to take, for instance, a house guest. Always, it seemed, she said, “Just come along, they won’t mind,” which spoke volumes to me about her marriage—rock solid—and her friends, also open-hearted, generous people who welcomed a new person, a different face, a fresh point of view.

It felt European to me, this ‘join us’ mentality, or maybe it’s mid-western—she’s from Ohio. This generosity of spirit is certainly more Christian that many of the Christians I know, yet, she’s not religious so I know she doesn’t do it to get points. She couldn’t care less about even numbers and gets no rush from being on the list. I don’t even think her powers of empathy are so finely tuned that she understands implicitly how brutal it can be to get dressed and leave the house alone for the thousandth time, to show up alone, searching for a familiar face, hoping to find someone to sit with. Personally, I don’t think she thinks about what it’s like to live alone in a community full of couples. I think she’s just curious about people. It’s one of the ways she gets her thrills.

So she introduces herself to the guy who butters her bagel, the lady in the bra department, the haggler at the flea market, and stray cats, like me. She wants to know their name then a little bit of their story, not too much, but just enough to make each day a little different from that last. She looks everyone in the eye, and tells it like it is. When she has a party, the plumber comes. I asked her once why she thinks she might be so socially generous, and where she gets it. She shrugged and said that maybe it was her mom. “Everyone was always welcome at my house.”

Thanks to my friend who’s moving, and her mom, I now have a bunch of friends who’ve been coerced into trying me on for size even when they might have had all the friends they needed in the world, people who’ve given me a chance because she told them to. Her friends are my friends, and they don’t care that I’m not half of a couple. I’ll miss that she’s creative, funny and always up for a good time, but the legacy of inclusivity she’s leaving behind is beyond value. In her physical absence, I’ll think of her when I’m at estate sales, order her drink from time to time, and never pass up a theme party. I’ll vow to laugh off the small stuff, let go of the big stuff, and be as openhearted—especially to stray cats—as she was to me. Call it Christian, or generosity of spirit. Call it whatever you want. But call. Scoop someone up and ask them to join you. I’ll do the same.

           

           

Still Smokes

My mom says all the best people smoke

She doesn’t crack a smile because it’s no joke

They’re the last an-ar-chists you see

They’re the most fun at parties, believe you me

(Chorus)    

Still smokes ("Still smokes"). My mom still smokes ("Still smokes")

She sneaks cigarettes to prisoners and teens

And all manner of hoodlum in between

She says, “I’m a smoker, that’s who I am”

“Like it or not, I don’t give a damn.”

(Repeat Chorus)

(Bridge)

Now, I never smoked because it was her thing

Black coffee, cigarettes, and solitaire

White paper napkins blotted saucer-stained rings

As I wrote my name, in the ashtray’s ashes, in script, with a used butt,

Wafting stale cigarette smells, in the air…

(Repeat Chorus)

When you’re at an event and bored out of your mind

She says, “Go find the smokers, ‘cause-they’re-the best kind”

They’ve gotta sense of humor and take no shit

Aint gonna let the government make them quit 

(Repeat Chorus)

I tried to get my mom to quit

Even hid her cartons, she had a fit

I-pleaded, “Mom, yer gonna-die!” then hit the wall

She said, “Relax (take a drag) I’ll outlive you all”

Still smokes ("Still smokes"). She’ll out live us all ("Still smokes") x 3