My mother, sister and I set out for a movie a few days before New Year's on a truly crappy, blustery day. The rain came at us sideways and I took my mother's arm, trying to hustle her under cover as I listen to her tell me for the zillionth time that she had short legs, a short gait and couldn't walk that fast.
"I know, Mom, keep moving," I said.
My sister followed up with, "Good hustling Mom, you're a true athlete."
"Yeah, right," she said, and as we got into line for a matinee behind other heartier, less soggy folks, Mom lit a quick cigarette.
Once inside we nestled into our seats-- Mom in the middle-- next to two women about my age. There never seems to be enough room for my endless veils of winter gear and we chuckled as simpatico travelers, passing purses and coats inward towards the designated Group Coat Chair. This being a small, boarder-line remote, New Jersey town, I could bet you cash money that one of the women was named Sheila and the other one, Lisa. But we didn't introduce ourselves; didn't need to. Would've been too formal. For a bunch of Jersey Girls we knew everything there was to know about each other: New Wave and Gunne Sax dresses; shitty boyfriends and getting chased by the cops off of golf courses at night. Like comrades in a long-forgotten uprising, we'd all been there. "Jerz," my sister often said to describe a certain crass je ne sais quoi to describe our indigenous sisterhood and I know just what she meant every time. So Jerz.
The lights dimmed and within minutes of the first preview I was passed a styrofoam cup filled about three quarters to the rim with what I was pretty sure was red wine. Cheap red wine. I leaned forward and looked over at my sister. "It's for you from the girls," she stage-whispered. I knew she was smiling even though it was dark and I knew what kind of smile it was; mischievous, appreciative.
"Nice," I said, not all that surprised, "tell 'em thanks."
"I did," said my sister. Mom smiled, too. Christmas had been rough, our first without Dad. It was a crap-ass day, pissing rain. We were doing our best, we were cold to the bone. What the hell, I thought as I took the cup in both hands. I'm worth it, I said to myself, I've earned this kindness and took a sip.
A moment later, still in previews and digging into my Raisinettes-- a nice counterpoint to my cup 'o wine-- I was passed something else; something substantial, wrapped in a napkin and, whoa, what's this, it's warm! I leaned forward again. My sister whispered, "It's an egg roll. They want you to have it." No shit, I thought.
To think I was content; totally psyched about my Raisinettes. And a movie! Who needs blue skies and margaritas, bare feet and steel bands. St. Barts is for pussies. It's a lousy day and I'm happy. And then wine! Outta no where! Followed by a deep fried slice of heaven. This was beyond. This was true Jerz.
"Tell 'em thanks," I whispered to my sister.
"I did," she whispered back.
I took a big bite. It was sublime. It soothed my soul and gave me hope. I looked over at my mom who was still smiling. After all she'd been through. Still smiling.
"Wanna bite, Mom?" I asked.
"No thanks, dear," she said as the last preview came to a close. The wowie-zowie action faded to black and the music decrescendoed with a lingering, ominous tone. Then, stretching across the giant expanse of black screen, a single line of white text faded up in quiet resonance: "COMING SOON IN 2010".
It was the first time I'd seen the new year written out anywhere. It looked impressive as far as years go. It had gravitas; was a little intimidating. The audience was silent; perhaps stunned like me. And then a voice broke through, a voice so clear and resonant it could only belong to my culinary benefactor; my soul mate in the shadows just a few seats down.
"Holy crap," she said, "it's gonna be two thousand and ten? What the hell have I done with my life?!"
That cinched it. Everything was going to be fine. For I, was not alone.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Christmas Eve
This isn't really a story; it's more of an archive. Since my dad died, I'm even more interested in chronicling past experiences that I was before. For one thing, my memory is ridiculously, almost comically bad. Unless the moment was set to music or filmed on a Warner Brothers back lot, chances are slim that I remember it at all. (My sisters and I are convinced this is the direct result of growing up with too much tin foil.) My second thought is that if my dad can die in a week maybe I can, too, and believe me there is one hell of a lot of psychic and emotional housekeeping-- on all fronts-- to cram into one's last few days of life. Something as piddly as a pleasant childhood memory would, I'm almost positive, take the backseat to more pressing matters. As I write this I am reminded of a brief conversation I overheard between my mom and Dad on the day before he died.
Mom bent down and whispered gently to Dad, "Honey, I hate to ask, but, do you know offhand what the code is for the answering machine to pick up messages remotely?"
Dad looked up at Mom with genuine regret, "No sweetie, I don't. I'm sorry."
Mom smiled down at Dad, placing her hand to caress his forehead, "Oh, honey, it's fine. I just thought it was worth a shot."
Dad smiled back at Mom, "Yes," he wheezed, "always worth a shot."
So, while the Christmas season is upon us like an unshakable a swarm of locusts and I'm enjoying a rare moment of childhood clarity, I thought I'd write this down:
My Grandmother was Danish. Her name was Ingemargrethe. Her mother's name was Duodecima Henrietta but that's another story for another time. Ingemargtethe went by Greta and would have been horrified to know that I was telling everyone her full first name. Horrified not in a mummies-are-groping-at-us-through-the-shudder-slats kind of way. More in the vein of, "I can't believe you put the ketchup bottle on the dinning room table. Pour a little in a tiny bowl. No, not that bowl, I'll get you the right bowl." She was creative, resourceful, elegant and vain. With one eye in the mirror and the other on the social register, her husband, Norman (my grandfather), never stood a chance.
Greta and Norman had three daughters; my mother, who they named Christine, then Virginia and Laura. (Norman had wanted to name his daughters Carolina, Virginia and Georgia, but Greta would have been horrified.) Every morning Greta rose; set her hair, put on nylons, a dress and full make-up, an apron and heels then woke her daughters without a trace of nostalgia for sleep. They were teenagers in the fifties. They wore bobby socks, bobby pins, and dated boys named Bobby.
Years later, when my mom was twenty-four, she announced at the dinner table that she was getting married. She'd been dating my dad for five weeks and Just Knew. She also knew that she was pregnant, but that's another story for another time. After a round of snaps, my grandfather, with both eyes on the price, muttered, "I hope neither of you other girls are planning on getting married any time soon." They glanced at each other over the the tiny bowl of ketchup on the dining room table. They would both marry their boyfriends within the year.
Granddaddy was Scottish and I suppose because the Danes (vikings!) were tougher than the Scotts (kilts), our clan ended up claiming Christmas Eve for itself because that's when Scandinavians celebrate the holiday, which worked out fine because then each family could do their own thing on Christmas day. The three daughters quickly bore eight cousins between them-- four boys and four girls-- and Christmas Eve became our own private kinder-bacchanalia. Sure we saw each other from time to time through out the year, but rarely all together at the same time, so Christmas Eve was our big night and we got goose bumps just thinking about it.
After leaving a cookie and glass of milk next to the fireplace, Mom, Dad and my two sisters and I drove down to the Jersey Shore where my grandparents lived, wearing the matching outfits that Grandmommy had sewn for us out of navy and green blackwatch plaid-- jumpers for the girls, and short pants with suspenders for the boys, who would be arriving at the same time. My Canadian cousins (a brother/sister team of two) had already settled in for the week, waited for us all to arrive with tightly-wound combustible anticipation.
The frigid December stillness of the tiny, seasonal, beach town enveloped our car in a somber cloak of quiet as we rolled towards their house, passing no other cars on the road and endless closed-up houses. Then with a shake of the cloak everything changed as we approached the gaily lit home. Echoing that indelible scene from the "Wizard of Oz," the front door opened onto a wild world of swirling movement, sound and color. Charm bracelets tinkled and ice cubes clinked as coats were carried up to the bedroom and laughing kids slid down the banister. The long, grand dining room table was set for sixteen with the addition of two extra leaves, and individual place cards, hand-written in Greta's distinctive old-lady script instructed us where to sit. Red and green folded cloth napkins and unobtrusive centerpieces of red roses and holly added color to the sea of stem glasses and shiny, silver flatware. Tall, white taper candles in polished, brass candlesticks stood down the middle of the table like an orchard. The smell of roast turkey, scalloped potatoes, creamed onions and steamed red cabbage mingled with whiffs of wine, beer and scotch, which lingered in the stuffy air after hugs, kisses and hellos.
My mom and aunts always looked so beautiful with their hair set and their best jewelry glistening. All dolled up with powder blush and lipstick, wearing festive dresses, nylons and aprons, they helped Grandmommy ready the meal in the small, cramped kitchen. The men-- who wore winter wool blazers with pocket squares and Christmas ties-- mostly tended bar and kept a loose eye on us kids from the living room's outskirts. My grandfather looked especially dashing in his apple colored sweater and my dad wore the green tie on which I had painted a red and white Christmas tree and a reindeer when I was about four. I painted the tree upside-down so that Dad could look down while he was wearing it and see it right-side-up. It was sloppy and silly, but he wore it every year, without fail, and said that it wouldn't be Christmas without it.
Within about thirty minutes of wiping out the cheese and crackers, mixed nuts, and shrimp cocktail, all the cousin's shoes were off and shirttails were out. We chased each other around the small living room, jumping from winged-back chair to couch, tossing the throw pillows on the ground to use as stepping stones so that we wouldn't have to touch the shag carpet that was teaming with alligators in hot lava. Around and around we went at breakneck speed, panting and squealing; small beads of perspiration forming at our temples until someone banged their knee on the coffee table giving the rest of us a chance to catch our breaths while they cried. We also played, "Bull," with one of us down on all fours as the rest of us darted from sofa to chair to avoid being tagged. This kind of crazed, high-speed red rover caused the crotch on my wool tights inch to just above my knees, slowing me down, so I took 'em off. Then all the girls did, too. Eventually the house got so hot that one of the men would open the front door to let in a little cool air while Granddaddy muttered about heating bills.
Dinner was finally served, which was good because the sooner we ate, the sooner we could open presents. (We would open presents from the real Santa and our parents in the morning.) Dad always said grace, not because he was the only Episcopal, but because he was a man-- which still counted for a lot in our family, even though it was the seventies-- and considered the most churchy after Greta. Also, because he spent the better part of his adult life monologuing at dinner parties about his spiritual quest. We held hands, bowed our heads, and listened to his sincere, ad-libbed prayer that would have to carry us all the way until next Thanksgiving since that was the only other day out of the year our family ever said or heard grace.
Waiting for every last person to be served and for Greta to be seated and raise her fork could take a while. Sometimes we kids hanged spoons from our noses or played, "Iggy-wiggy, I'm a Piggy." And sometimes the adults played jokes on Greta to lighten the tension that the mounting kitchen stress threatened to chip away at our holiday cheer. Someone might sneak a bottle of ketchup onto the dinning room table and we'd all wait, stifling giggles, to see how long it took her to notice. One year, dinner took a little longer than expected and Uncle Tom was getting peckish. So he headed out to McDonald's for a quick hamburger, bringing Greta's horror to new, unimagined heights. The next year my father wrapped up a burger in Christmas paper and ribbon and gave it to Uncle Tom as a gift. Before we left, Uncle Tom sneaked out to our station wagon and hid the burger in the glove compartment. My parents discovered the burger, eventually, and tucked it away in the freezer where it stayed until Dad took it out and wrapped it back up to re-gift to Uncle Tom for next Christmas Eve. "Don't forget the hamburger!" Mom would call out to Dad the week before Christmas and we all knew what she meant. The hamburger hijinks went back and forth for years with the hamburger (and its subsequent replacements) cropping up in different hiding places each time. Until Uncle Tom ran off with his secretary; then the game ended.
After dinner my dad would usually make some crack in front of us kids about how he was too tired to open presents this year and how maybe we should just skip it. A roar of, "Nooooo wayyyy!" went up in the crowd and then Dad would smirk which signaled that it was time to head back into the living room to wait for Santa's arrival.
We sat on the carpet nestled between the corduroyed knees of our dads and uncles while the women folk loaded the dishwasher as fast as they could so that they could turn it on and get it started. Then once all the adults poured themselves another drink and found a seat, we heard jingle bells coming from somewhere distant. Or upstairs, as the case was. Our eyes grew wide and we sat up straight like prairie dogs, pivoting our heads from cousin to cousin in stunned amazement. Then a loud, deep man's voice bellowed, "Ho, ho, ho!" getting louder and louder until Santa ambled down the stairs and right into our very living room. We were pretty sure it was Granddaddy in that velvety red suit with the wide, black shiny belt and the snow-white furry cuffs. But under the silky, white beard and mustache with all that long, white hair flowing from underneath his red hat it was hard to tell, so it was easy to believe that Santa had walked right into our lives. The magic didn't wear off until it got so hot in that little body-filled room, that Santa had to take off his itchy, hot beard and hat and take the pillow out from under his jacket before passing out the rest of the gifts; in descending order, according to age.
We cousins always got eight of the same present from Greta and Norman. My favorites were the solid, black and white Westinghouse clock radios, which stood on our bedside tables and for years no matter whose room I went into in my house or at my cousins'; there was my clock. I also loved the heavy, bright-colored-metal, old-fashion cash register banks. We panhandled my uncles for change, dropping coins into the slot then pulling the lever down to reveal the creeping total. It didn't take us long to realize that the banks would remain locked for days and then weeks until the total amounted to ten dollars and only then could we push back the door to receive our windfall; the whole of which I usually spent at Woolworth's after long and careful consideration.
All the grown-ups exchanged gifts with each other and we got presents from our aunts and uncles as well. There were tears of joy, inside jokes and a huge amount of hooting and laughing among the adults. Sometimes we got the jokes and other times they had to be explained to us. After all was said and done we rolled and reveled in the shallow pond of wrapping paper and ribbon before Greta tossed large, green, plastic garbage bags at us and told us to get to work.
Then it was time for the Annual Favorite Gift Picture. Dad set up the tripod while the rest of us hemmed and hawed over which present to hold up for the group photo. Any present that had made the receiver either cry tears of joy or laugh 'til they cried was a no-brainer, so they usually found a spot on the couch first. Sometime I would try to fudge the parameters of the favorite gift picture by draping my new rainbow suspenders on my head, hanging fancy argyle socks from my ears, and holding up the big picture book, "Free to Be, You and Me." But one of my boy cousins would knock the suspenders off my head or rip the socks from my ears so, so much for that. The older kids perched along the high back of the couch while the adults sat on the cushions, arms and stood on the sides. The little ones filled in on laps and the floor and were ever being reminded to save a spot for my dad. From behind the tripod, he would say, "There will be a series of two photos taken," then he would press the button that began the blinking-red-light countdown. "Hurry! Uncle John, hurry!" people called out as Dad scampered over the tri-pod's legs and over to the laughing mob where he dove onto the floor to sit cross-legged in the middle just in time. More often than not, he forgot his favorite gift in all the hoopla which is why the second in the series of two was always a little livelier with folks shouting, "Uncle John, remember your gift!" and "He made it!" just as the camera flashed and clicked.
Folks stood, groaning wearily, making cracks about getting older then reached down to help one another up as we headed back to the dinning room table one more time for home-made plumb pudding with hard sauce, and cookies decorated in the shapes of angels and Christmas trees. We cousins usually skipped the dreaded plumb pudding and opted for two-fisting the Christmas cookies before heading upstairs to put on our pajamas. It was about 9pm now and we'd been gunning it on high speed since about 4pm. We were pooped, every last one of us. Packages were gathered, coats were exhumed and thank-yous made the rounds while our cars purred out in the street, warming up for the long ride home. I could never believe that Christmas Eve was already over. It went by so fast.
When Dad went out to pack up the car, he must have folded down the back seats and laid out our all- cotton sleeping bags because they were always there, three in a row with the corners turned down and our pillows at the top just behind the front seats. We wriggled in and hunkered down while Dad tuned the FM radio to which ever station was playing Christmas carols. I remember looking up out the side window at so many stars-- too many to count-- and listening to Bing Crosby sing, "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," in low volume from the tinny, front speakers while Mom and Dad debriefed each other on the evening's B stories and long-running subtexts that went over our heads. In those moments before I succumbed to sheer exhaustion, I was tingly with excitement. Soon I would be asleep and then I would wake up to Santa's certain arrival. It's one of my happiest, coziest, most contented memories, laying in the back of that car on that night. I am safe, I am loved and Santa is on his way.
Pulling onto the Garden State Parkway Mom reminded us to keep and eye out for Santa and his sleigh in the night sky as she passed a little tied bundle of Christmas cookies to Dad so that he could hand them to the toll booth collector who had to work on Christmas Eve. "Merry Christmas," Dad said brightly as he placed the bag and a quarter in the toll collector's open palm. And that was usually the last thing I remembered him saying before I drifted off to sleep.
Back at home, Dad carried us in from the car to our beds, in ascending order. As I got older I would wake up when our Volkswagon's rumbling motor was cut in the driveway but I faked being asleep so that I could still be carried in. Eyes fluttering, I wrapped my arms around his neck and once my bed was warmed up I quickly willed myself back to sleep because-- as Mom had told us, time and time again-- Santa didn't come until we were all fast asleep. And do you know she was right.
Santa always came. He always would. And nothing would ever change.
Mom bent down and whispered gently to Dad, "Honey, I hate to ask, but, do you know offhand what the code is for the answering machine to pick up messages remotely?"
Dad looked up at Mom with genuine regret, "No sweetie, I don't. I'm sorry."
Mom smiled down at Dad, placing her hand to caress his forehead, "Oh, honey, it's fine. I just thought it was worth a shot."
Dad smiled back at Mom, "Yes," he wheezed, "always worth a shot."
So, while the Christmas season is upon us like an unshakable a swarm of locusts and I'm enjoying a rare moment of childhood clarity, I thought I'd write this down:
My Grandmother was Danish. Her name was Ingemargrethe. Her mother's name was Duodecima Henrietta but that's another story for another time. Ingemargtethe went by Greta and would have been horrified to know that I was telling everyone her full first name. Horrified not in a mummies-are-groping-at-us-through-the-shudder-slats kind of way. More in the vein of, "I can't believe you put the ketchup bottle on the dinning room table. Pour a little in a tiny bowl. No, not that bowl, I'll get you the right bowl." She was creative, resourceful, elegant and vain. With one eye in the mirror and the other on the social register, her husband, Norman (my grandfather), never stood a chance.
Greta and Norman had three daughters; my mother, who they named Christine, then Virginia and Laura. (Norman had wanted to name his daughters Carolina, Virginia and Georgia, but Greta would have been horrified.) Every morning Greta rose; set her hair, put on nylons, a dress and full make-up, an apron and heels then woke her daughters without a trace of nostalgia for sleep. They were teenagers in the fifties. They wore bobby socks, bobby pins, and dated boys named Bobby.
Years later, when my mom was twenty-four, she announced at the dinner table that she was getting married. She'd been dating my dad for five weeks and Just Knew. She also knew that she was pregnant, but that's another story for another time. After a round of snaps, my grandfather, with both eyes on the price, muttered, "I hope neither of you other girls are planning on getting married any time soon." They glanced at each other over the the tiny bowl of ketchup on the dining room table. They would both marry their boyfriends within the year.
Granddaddy was Scottish and I suppose because the Danes (vikings!) were tougher than the Scotts (kilts), our clan ended up claiming Christmas Eve for itself because that's when Scandinavians celebrate the holiday, which worked out fine because then each family could do their own thing on Christmas day. The three daughters quickly bore eight cousins between them-- four boys and four girls-- and Christmas Eve became our own private kinder-bacchanalia. Sure we saw each other from time to time through out the year, but rarely all together at the same time, so Christmas Eve was our big night and we got goose bumps just thinking about it.
After leaving a cookie and glass of milk next to the fireplace, Mom, Dad and my two sisters and I drove down to the Jersey Shore where my grandparents lived, wearing the matching outfits that Grandmommy had sewn for us out of navy and green blackwatch plaid-- jumpers for the girls, and short pants with suspenders for the boys, who would be arriving at the same time. My Canadian cousins (a brother/sister team of two) had already settled in for the week, waited for us all to arrive with tightly-wound combustible anticipation.
The frigid December stillness of the tiny, seasonal, beach town enveloped our car in a somber cloak of quiet as we rolled towards their house, passing no other cars on the road and endless closed-up houses. Then with a shake of the cloak everything changed as we approached the gaily lit home. Echoing that indelible scene from the "Wizard of Oz," the front door opened onto a wild world of swirling movement, sound and color. Charm bracelets tinkled and ice cubes clinked as coats were carried up to the bedroom and laughing kids slid down the banister. The long, grand dining room table was set for sixteen with the addition of two extra leaves, and individual place cards, hand-written in Greta's distinctive old-lady script instructed us where to sit. Red and green folded cloth napkins and unobtrusive centerpieces of red roses and holly added color to the sea of stem glasses and shiny, silver flatware. Tall, white taper candles in polished, brass candlesticks stood down the middle of the table like an orchard. The smell of roast turkey, scalloped potatoes, creamed onions and steamed red cabbage mingled with whiffs of wine, beer and scotch, which lingered in the stuffy air after hugs, kisses and hellos.
My mom and aunts always looked so beautiful with their hair set and their best jewelry glistening. All dolled up with powder blush and lipstick, wearing festive dresses, nylons and aprons, they helped Grandmommy ready the meal in the small, cramped kitchen. The men-- who wore winter wool blazers with pocket squares and Christmas ties-- mostly tended bar and kept a loose eye on us kids from the living room's outskirts. My grandfather looked especially dashing in his apple colored sweater and my dad wore the green tie on which I had painted a red and white Christmas tree and a reindeer when I was about four. I painted the tree upside-down so that Dad could look down while he was wearing it and see it right-side-up. It was sloppy and silly, but he wore it every year, without fail, and said that it wouldn't be Christmas without it.
Within about thirty minutes of wiping out the cheese and crackers, mixed nuts, and shrimp cocktail, all the cousin's shoes were off and shirttails were out. We chased each other around the small living room, jumping from winged-back chair to couch, tossing the throw pillows on the ground to use as stepping stones so that we wouldn't have to touch the shag carpet that was teaming with alligators in hot lava. Around and around we went at breakneck speed, panting and squealing; small beads of perspiration forming at our temples until someone banged their knee on the coffee table giving the rest of us a chance to catch our breaths while they cried. We also played, "Bull," with one of us down on all fours as the rest of us darted from sofa to chair to avoid being tagged. This kind of crazed, high-speed red rover caused the crotch on my wool tights inch to just above my knees, slowing me down, so I took 'em off. Then all the girls did, too. Eventually the house got so hot that one of the men would open the front door to let in a little cool air while Granddaddy muttered about heating bills.
Dinner was finally served, which was good because the sooner we ate, the sooner we could open presents. (We would open presents from the real Santa and our parents in the morning.) Dad always said grace, not because he was the only Episcopal, but because he was a man-- which still counted for a lot in our family, even though it was the seventies-- and considered the most churchy after Greta. Also, because he spent the better part of his adult life monologuing at dinner parties about his spiritual quest. We held hands, bowed our heads, and listened to his sincere, ad-libbed prayer that would have to carry us all the way until next Thanksgiving since that was the only other day out of the year our family ever said or heard grace.
Waiting for every last person to be served and for Greta to be seated and raise her fork could take a while. Sometimes we kids hanged spoons from our noses or played, "Iggy-wiggy, I'm a Piggy." And sometimes the adults played jokes on Greta to lighten the tension that the mounting kitchen stress threatened to chip away at our holiday cheer. Someone might sneak a bottle of ketchup onto the dinning room table and we'd all wait, stifling giggles, to see how long it took her to notice. One year, dinner took a little longer than expected and Uncle Tom was getting peckish. So he headed out to McDonald's for a quick hamburger, bringing Greta's horror to new, unimagined heights. The next year my father wrapped up a burger in Christmas paper and ribbon and gave it to Uncle Tom as a gift. Before we left, Uncle Tom sneaked out to our station wagon and hid the burger in the glove compartment. My parents discovered the burger, eventually, and tucked it away in the freezer where it stayed until Dad took it out and wrapped it back up to re-gift to Uncle Tom for next Christmas Eve. "Don't forget the hamburger!" Mom would call out to Dad the week before Christmas and we all knew what she meant. The hamburger hijinks went back and forth for years with the hamburger (and its subsequent replacements) cropping up in different hiding places each time. Until Uncle Tom ran off with his secretary; then the game ended.
After dinner my dad would usually make some crack in front of us kids about how he was too tired to open presents this year and how maybe we should just skip it. A roar of, "Nooooo wayyyy!" went up in the crowd and then Dad would smirk which signaled that it was time to head back into the living room to wait for Santa's arrival.
We sat on the carpet nestled between the corduroyed knees of our dads and uncles while the women folk loaded the dishwasher as fast as they could so that they could turn it on and get it started. Then once all the adults poured themselves another drink and found a seat, we heard jingle bells coming from somewhere distant. Or upstairs, as the case was. Our eyes grew wide and we sat up straight like prairie dogs, pivoting our heads from cousin to cousin in stunned amazement. Then a loud, deep man's voice bellowed, "Ho, ho, ho!" getting louder and louder until Santa ambled down the stairs and right into our very living room. We were pretty sure it was Granddaddy in that velvety red suit with the wide, black shiny belt and the snow-white furry cuffs. But under the silky, white beard and mustache with all that long, white hair flowing from underneath his red hat it was hard to tell, so it was easy to believe that Santa had walked right into our lives. The magic didn't wear off until it got so hot in that little body-filled room, that Santa had to take off his itchy, hot beard and hat and take the pillow out from under his jacket before passing out the rest of the gifts; in descending order, according to age.
We cousins always got eight of the same present from Greta and Norman. My favorites were the solid, black and white Westinghouse clock radios, which stood on our bedside tables and for years no matter whose room I went into in my house or at my cousins'; there was my clock. I also loved the heavy, bright-colored-metal, old-fashion cash register banks. We panhandled my uncles for change, dropping coins into the slot then pulling the lever down to reveal the creeping total. It didn't take us long to realize that the banks would remain locked for days and then weeks until the total amounted to ten dollars and only then could we push back the door to receive our windfall; the whole of which I usually spent at Woolworth's after long and careful consideration.
All the grown-ups exchanged gifts with each other and we got presents from our aunts and uncles as well. There were tears of joy, inside jokes and a huge amount of hooting and laughing among the adults. Sometimes we got the jokes and other times they had to be explained to us. After all was said and done we rolled and reveled in the shallow pond of wrapping paper and ribbon before Greta tossed large, green, plastic garbage bags at us and told us to get to work.
Then it was time for the Annual Favorite Gift Picture. Dad set up the tripod while the rest of us hemmed and hawed over which present to hold up for the group photo. Any present that had made the receiver either cry tears of joy or laugh 'til they cried was a no-brainer, so they usually found a spot on the couch first. Sometime I would try to fudge the parameters of the favorite gift picture by draping my new rainbow suspenders on my head, hanging fancy argyle socks from my ears, and holding up the big picture book, "Free to Be, You and Me." But one of my boy cousins would knock the suspenders off my head or rip the socks from my ears so, so much for that. The older kids perched along the high back of the couch while the adults sat on the cushions, arms and stood on the sides. The little ones filled in on laps and the floor and were ever being reminded to save a spot for my dad. From behind the tripod, he would say, "There will be a series of two photos taken," then he would press the button that began the blinking-red-light countdown. "Hurry! Uncle John, hurry!" people called out as Dad scampered over the tri-pod's legs and over to the laughing mob where he dove onto the floor to sit cross-legged in the middle just in time. More often than not, he forgot his favorite gift in all the hoopla which is why the second in the series of two was always a little livelier with folks shouting, "Uncle John, remember your gift!" and "He made it!" just as the camera flashed and clicked.
Folks stood, groaning wearily, making cracks about getting older then reached down to help one another up as we headed back to the dinning room table one more time for home-made plumb pudding with hard sauce, and cookies decorated in the shapes of angels and Christmas trees. We cousins usually skipped the dreaded plumb pudding and opted for two-fisting the Christmas cookies before heading upstairs to put on our pajamas. It was about 9pm now and we'd been gunning it on high speed since about 4pm. We were pooped, every last one of us. Packages were gathered, coats were exhumed and thank-yous made the rounds while our cars purred out in the street, warming up for the long ride home. I could never believe that Christmas Eve was already over. It went by so fast.
When Dad went out to pack up the car, he must have folded down the back seats and laid out our all- cotton sleeping bags because they were always there, three in a row with the corners turned down and our pillows at the top just behind the front seats. We wriggled in and hunkered down while Dad tuned the FM radio to which ever station was playing Christmas carols. I remember looking up out the side window at so many stars-- too many to count-- and listening to Bing Crosby sing, "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," in low volume from the tinny, front speakers while Mom and Dad debriefed each other on the evening's B stories and long-running subtexts that went over our heads. In those moments before I succumbed to sheer exhaustion, I was tingly with excitement. Soon I would be asleep and then I would wake up to Santa's certain arrival. It's one of my happiest, coziest, most contented memories, laying in the back of that car on that night. I am safe, I am loved and Santa is on his way.
Pulling onto the Garden State Parkway Mom reminded us to keep and eye out for Santa and his sleigh in the night sky as she passed a little tied bundle of Christmas cookies to Dad so that he could hand them to the toll booth collector who had to work on Christmas Eve. "Merry Christmas," Dad said brightly as he placed the bag and a quarter in the toll collector's open palm. And that was usually the last thing I remembered him saying before I drifted off to sleep.
Back at home, Dad carried us in from the car to our beds, in ascending order. As I got older I would wake up when our Volkswagon's rumbling motor was cut in the driveway but I faked being asleep so that I could still be carried in. Eyes fluttering, I wrapped my arms around his neck and once my bed was warmed up I quickly willed myself back to sleep because-- as Mom had told us, time and time again-- Santa didn't come until we were all fast asleep. And do you know she was right.
Santa always came. He always would. And nothing would ever change.
Retail Therapy
With a small, wordless shift in our gaits, my mother and I turned and stopped to read the little hand-printed card in the bookstore window. Mom and I are about the same height now so it's easy for us to convey these little detours to one another, especially when our arms are linked. We're also both single now, living independently for the first time in a while and re-fashioning brand new lives for ourselves from the dregs of our recent marital losses; groping our way towards new balance and rhythms. I think that makes us simpatico in a way, more synchronistic than most, but I don't think she thinks about that. I thinks she's too full of missing Dad to think of much else.
Christmas was pressing down hard; not in a welcoming, warm, panini way; but more like your taxes are due the day after tomorrow. We were trying to make the best of it by pumping some Santa dollars into my quaint village's local economy, but I recognized our ladies lunch by it's true name: retail therapy. One of the stores we walked into sold porcelain kitchen spoon rests that said, "Rest in Grease," in script across the top. I picked one up and Mom and I looked at each other, deadpanned. I knew we were both wondering silently if it would be too inappropriate, so soon after Dad died, to buy them to give out at our first Christmas without him. Then her mouth curled up and I knew she agreed. We bought three, one for each of us daughters, in honor of Dad.
Mom and I had just spent lunch discussing holiday season strategies for safeguarding ourselves against any public displays of hysteria or private spirals of despair. We'd even cried briefly-- between our soup and sandwich course-- and brought the stiff, white, polyester napkins up to our eyes to sop up the tears, but the cheap, restaurant-grade fabric was useless. Instead it was some joke that one of us made that got us smiling and nodding and managed to stop the flow. Probably about how there would be no more mylar balloons at birthdays now, thank God. She'd always hated the shiny, stupid balloons and secretly pricked holes in them so they would die faster. She repeatedly told Dad how much she hated them but he brought them home anyway; each time with a smirk. When I suggested it might be funny to buy mylar balloons for-- she cut me off. "No," she said with all seriousness, "no mylar balloons."
Outside now the sun was warming the afternoon and we enjoyed our constitutional with a reprieve of absolute contentment; that kind that even the most pathetically maudlin can usually waive after a lovely meal and full belly. There was plenty to look at as we peered in the charming shoppe windows. Our town had enjoyed a recent boom of artist types and creatives who'd set up residence and opened up new stores and their window displays had a certain sophisticated composition, whimsey and panache.
But the bookstore was different. The dolls in the window weren't much to look at. They were awkward and unappealing and wore ill-fitting clothes made from lame, cheesy print fabrics; the kind with sketches of beige watering cans and brown wheelbarrows. They looked incongruous among the books so we moved closer to investigate. The hand-printed index card sat in the lap of the center doll surrounded by others. It read something to the effect of:
"Hand-crafted by the artistic members of our mentally challenged community."
Mom and I both stood quietly for a moment, looking back over the dolls. Then I said, "Clearly."
Mom started to laugh and then I started to laugh and then there we were; two adults doubled over on a public sidewalk, in essence, making fun of retarded people, a week before Christmas. We laughed at how wrong it was and how I'm probably going to hell and how inappropriate that line of thinking is much less saying out loud and Mom said, "That's just what your father would have said." And we laughed some more as we imagined Dad there with us, giggling over the sad, handicapped dolls (they, too, looked mentally challenged), and how funny he was. And how Mom always got his jokes and was just as funny right back.
Mom said, "I really miss that about your Dad. I could say anything to him. Or he could just look at me and I would break up because I knew what he was thinking."
"Yeah," was all I could say. For all the speeches about healing and moving on, keeping busy and embracing the future, you don't ever get that back. This is no approximation for a constant companion who fully knows his or her audience. Every comedian's dream-audience of one; who gets every joke, every time.
So I've been thinking about life's gloriously inappropriate moments and how different they are, now, for Mom. All the embarrassments unscathed; cringes left to hang in the air. All those thoughts precipitated by, "I could never say this to anyone but you..." and then you say them, because you can, because you know the listener will get it and love it, but keep it safe and hidden like found change in a warm pocket. All those moments begging for comment; like when a minister pronounces the deceased's name wrong, or when a rehearsal dinner speech gets too personal. When the waitress with the lisp walks away with your order or the docent on the museum tour gets it wrong. Those are life's new lonely moments; the ones that beg for a pal. Anyone can spend the afternoon watching TV, reading or answering email in pleasant solitude, but who do you turn to when someone farts while you're stuck in line at the airport? Those are life's new hurdles. They're the ones that hurt now.
Later I called and left a message on her answering machine as she drove the 30 minutes back to her quiet home-- my childhood home-- and her evening without Dad.
"Thanks for a great day, Mom, lunch was delish," I said and then paused, "retail therapy really does work, doesn't it? Every time. It's astounding. Anyway, thanks for everything. Love you, bye."
I hung up the phone and then remembered why mom cried at lunch. She and dad used to go to the mall all the time. They would have nothing to do and so, to get out of the house, they'd put on their coats and go to the mall.
"I would shop and shop and never find anything for myself," Mom said, "and your father would buy sixteen CDs." We laughed. "Then we'd go sit in the food court with our lunch trays and look out at all the people and just sort of talk and laugh." That's when she started to cry. "I went the other day by myself and when I got to the food court with my tray, I started crying and couldn't stop. I had to leave."
"Aw, Mom," I said, tearing up, "I'll go with you to the mall any time." Now I was crying.
"I know dear, thanks," she said, "It's just not the same without your father."
And she's right. It's not.
"I know," I said, "but it can be sort of close," I brightened. "I'm almost as funny as Dad, and I'll buy seventeen CDs."
She laughed. We both did.
Rest in grease.
Christmas was pressing down hard; not in a welcoming, warm, panini way; but more like your taxes are due the day after tomorrow. We were trying to make the best of it by pumping some Santa dollars into my quaint village's local economy, but I recognized our ladies lunch by it's true name: retail therapy. One of the stores we walked into sold porcelain kitchen spoon rests that said, "Rest in Grease," in script across the top. I picked one up and Mom and I looked at each other, deadpanned. I knew we were both wondering silently if it would be too inappropriate, so soon after Dad died, to buy them to give out at our first Christmas without him. Then her mouth curled up and I knew she agreed. We bought three, one for each of us daughters, in honor of Dad.
Mom and I had just spent lunch discussing holiday season strategies for safeguarding ourselves against any public displays of hysteria or private spirals of despair. We'd even cried briefly-- between our soup and sandwich course-- and brought the stiff, white, polyester napkins up to our eyes to sop up the tears, but the cheap, restaurant-grade fabric was useless. Instead it was some joke that one of us made that got us smiling and nodding and managed to stop the flow. Probably about how there would be no more mylar balloons at birthdays now, thank God. She'd always hated the shiny, stupid balloons and secretly pricked holes in them so they would die faster. She repeatedly told Dad how much she hated them but he brought them home anyway; each time with a smirk. When I suggested it might be funny to buy mylar balloons for-- she cut me off. "No," she said with all seriousness, "no mylar balloons."
Outside now the sun was warming the afternoon and we enjoyed our constitutional with a reprieve of absolute contentment; that kind that even the most pathetically maudlin can usually waive after a lovely meal and full belly. There was plenty to look at as we peered in the charming shoppe windows. Our town had enjoyed a recent boom of artist types and creatives who'd set up residence and opened up new stores and their window displays had a certain sophisticated composition, whimsey and panache.
But the bookstore was different. The dolls in the window weren't much to look at. They were awkward and unappealing and wore ill-fitting clothes made from lame, cheesy print fabrics; the kind with sketches of beige watering cans and brown wheelbarrows. They looked incongruous among the books so we moved closer to investigate. The hand-printed index card sat in the lap of the center doll surrounded by others. It read something to the effect of:
"Hand-crafted by the artistic members of our mentally challenged community."
Mom and I both stood quietly for a moment, looking back over the dolls. Then I said, "Clearly."
Mom started to laugh and then I started to laugh and then there we were; two adults doubled over on a public sidewalk, in essence, making fun of retarded people, a week before Christmas. We laughed at how wrong it was and how I'm probably going to hell and how inappropriate that line of thinking is much less saying out loud and Mom said, "That's just what your father would have said." And we laughed some more as we imagined Dad there with us, giggling over the sad, handicapped dolls (they, too, looked mentally challenged), and how funny he was. And how Mom always got his jokes and was just as funny right back.
Mom said, "I really miss that about your Dad. I could say anything to him. Or he could just look at me and I would break up because I knew what he was thinking."
"Yeah," was all I could say. For all the speeches about healing and moving on, keeping busy and embracing the future, you don't ever get that back. This is no approximation for a constant companion who fully knows his or her audience. Every comedian's dream-audience of one; who gets every joke, every time.
So I've been thinking about life's gloriously inappropriate moments and how different they are, now, for Mom. All the embarrassments unscathed; cringes left to hang in the air. All those thoughts precipitated by, "I could never say this to anyone but you..." and then you say them, because you can, because you know the listener will get it and love it, but keep it safe and hidden like found change in a warm pocket. All those moments begging for comment; like when a minister pronounces the deceased's name wrong, or when a rehearsal dinner speech gets too personal. When the waitress with the lisp walks away with your order or the docent on the museum tour gets it wrong. Those are life's new lonely moments; the ones that beg for a pal. Anyone can spend the afternoon watching TV, reading or answering email in pleasant solitude, but who do you turn to when someone farts while you're stuck in line at the airport? Those are life's new hurdles. They're the ones that hurt now.
Later I called and left a message on her answering machine as she drove the 30 minutes back to her quiet home-- my childhood home-- and her evening without Dad.
"Thanks for a great day, Mom, lunch was delish," I said and then paused, "retail therapy really does work, doesn't it? Every time. It's astounding. Anyway, thanks for everything. Love you, bye."
I hung up the phone and then remembered why mom cried at lunch. She and dad used to go to the mall all the time. They would have nothing to do and so, to get out of the house, they'd put on their coats and go to the mall.
"I would shop and shop and never find anything for myself," Mom said, "and your father would buy sixteen CDs." We laughed. "Then we'd go sit in the food court with our lunch trays and look out at all the people and just sort of talk and laugh." That's when she started to cry. "I went the other day by myself and when I got to the food court with my tray, I started crying and couldn't stop. I had to leave."
"Aw, Mom," I said, tearing up, "I'll go with you to the mall any time." Now I was crying.
"I know dear, thanks," she said, "It's just not the same without your father."
And she's right. It's not.
"I know," I said, "but it can be sort of close," I brightened. "I'm almost as funny as Dad, and I'll buy seventeen CDs."
She laughed. We both did.
Rest in grease.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Reunion
It couldn't have been more humid on the night of my 25th high school reunion. I'd just learned to blow-dry my hair in a way that would make my latest cut respond with a certain adult containment, which would surely signify maturity. I might finally look the part of a grown-up, wizened from years of searching, traces of recent heartache. But no, the humidity saw to it that I looked the way I had, when the air commanded the frenzied curl of a teenager too busy to blow-dry her hair now that the Curling Iron Seventies had given way to the Mousse and Scrunch Eighties. My hair was like Debra Winger's hair, which was a good thing back then, the bigger the better, the off-shoulder sweater-- a sort of Flashdance sans flash-- but this was not the eighties. So off I marched in the drizzle with nothing particular to lose and nothing reasonable to gain.
Lou, who has maintained the same big-hearted open manner and guileless smile since high school, was the perfect choice to host our fee-less reunion's Friday night get-together in this, our eighties legacy; post-economic gloom. He had thrown this reunion together with six or seven other big-hearted guys in the last few months. A scrappy troupe, they'd done a great job, winging it BYOEverything.
It was a modest yet gun-ho crowd of about thirty that gathered at his place in the drizzle. Lou and his new bride live in the back cottage apartment of the dog kennel his family has owned and operated for generations and he arranged the plastic chairs in circles around the bonfire that he spent all afternoon building. Once through the door, the familiar combo of bonfire, Bud and burgers transported all of us back to where we'd been, all those years ago, as if we were taking part in a living history experiment, the way they do at Waterloo Village, churning butter and wearing bonnets. Except our exhibit displayed the way high school kids spent their autumn weekends twenty-five years ago, awash in new wave and mud, big hair in a small town-- minus the crippling insecurity, seething resentment, paranoia, invincibility and fear.
Sadly, the rain persisted as the seats gathered puddles but we were just as happy to stand cozy, elbow to elbow, in the warmth of Lou's kitchen, just like the old days; parents on vacation, hours before the cops would arrive to tell us to turn the music down and confiscate our beer. The errant children of some of my old classmates ran, muddied, through the back yard, keeping gene pools in tact and reminding us that it's just rain, for petessake. They discovered the s'mores fixins' that Carl had thoughtfully bought that afternoon and gathered sticks with pointy ends. The rain ebbed from time to time and we ventured outside and huddled under tents and tarps, about thirty of us, chatting up a storm and laughing our brains out, guileless at last (finally, like Lou) and partied like it was 1984.
I learned a thing or two about a thing or two between Friday night at Lou's and Saturday night at our town's local bar where the turn-out grew to forty-five, maybe fifty. People came and went even as our hairstyles stayed more or less the same, and I slowly came to understand that these weren't the people I thought I knew so well. Twenty-five years before, as we rallied against the imprisonment of being stuck in a "boring" one-horse town, where "nothing ever happens," we were incubating the adults we would become and our errant ways were festering and evolving in ways I never could have imagined in my wildest dreams. These are the stories I heard about and directly from a random sampling of average Jerseyites and what has become of them so far, twenty-five years since high school.
Let's start with Ben. One of the two or three smartest guys in our class who could always be found in the "computer room," Ben emailed the reunion committee that he couldn't make it because he was in grad school in Seattle and couldn't get away. But he sent us all a link to the charming Thai website he created and manages, helping enthusiasts to learn the language and discover the Thai culture's charms. I clicked on the link and found a small photo of him there on the lower right, looking fit and relaxed, and was gratified to see that he'd done well for himself. At the reunion, I learned that he left out the footnote that he'd been arrested by the FBI for running an LSD lab and had gone to prison. (I'll say, relaxed) No one knew the time line for this episode in Ben's life, so it was unclear whether or not "grad school in Seattle" was a euphemism for jail.
Julian and Fritz, best friends in high school and inseparable thereafter, had a falling out and stopped speaking to each other after one of them tried to kill the other with a pick ax-- so the story goes-- when they were working together in the African diamond mine that Fritz's dad bought for him to manage in the early nineties, long before he bought the ski mountain in Vermont and just before he embezzled millions from the German banking system and ended up on the lamb in L.A., wearing disguises in order to leave his apartment to buy half and half at the local food mart. Fritz, who is a German emigrant from long ago, couldn't make it to the reunion, sadly, and is now a poet and real estate agent living in L.A. Julian-- who grew up in New Jersey-- still lives in Germany, we think, where he married a much older woman and was last seen managing a Ralph Lauren Polo store. This was all according to Djurmo, the Estonian.
Djurmo, the son of the local Estonian veterinarian, got his family's land back when the wall came down twenty years ago but I already knew that. What I didn't know is that the reason no one knew him until senior year is that he spent every weekend with other clandestine New Jersey Estonians, learning their folk dances, eating their folk food, and speaking their nutty Estonian language. I got to know him on our senior class trip to Disneyland in Florida where we laughed for four days straight. Who knew Estonians could be so hilarious, so numerous, and so drunk? I do.
One classmate of ours, an effortlessly popular guy throughout high school and long before, married quite young and had some kids. On his 35th birthday his wife asked him for a lady lover. It seems she'd already had just about everything else she'd ever wanted-- he'd done very well for himself over the years-- so this couple folded another classmate into their lives and loins, taking her to bed and on vacation as if she'd always been a part of the family. This big, happy pajama party worked out for everyone for quite some time until the married couple upgraded to a Florida stripper. (The Floridian ilk of stripper, it's been explained to me, is a much higher caliber than that of New York strippers.) I couldn't tell you if they're still in touch or even still married and to whom. Sadly, he didn't make the reunion.
Ilsa, who was teased for singing like an opera singer in chorus class while the rest of us sang like street urchins in a Charlie Brown special, became-- wait for it-- a professional opera singer. Ilsa didn't make the reunion either, but emailed the committee that she had wanted to come. A tall, sturdy blonde in grade school with thick, Viking ringlets and excellent posture, she sailed past us in the hallways with purpose while we all slumped around stooped shouldered and aloof. She lives in Vienna now with her husband and daughter and performs around the globe. Ilsa sings at Carnegie Hall and we don't. Now who are the idiots?
Jerry (now Gerald) showed me photos of him feeding a tiger at the local wild animal sanctuary were he volunteers in upstate New York when he's not working for the road department. Just a simple snapshot of a big lug of a shy guy putting a baby bottle to the gaping jaws of a striped tiger, for fun, on his off hours, after putting in a long day draining a sewer. Because why not. Our class, it also turns out, was lousy with lesbians. We could all name at least ten but nary a queen, (although we seemed to be in agreement on a few married guys we suspected.) I'm hoping the ladies all had a rip roaring good time back then, sneaking off after field hockey practices-- all sweaty and panting in knee socks and mouth guards-- but it's more than likely they didn't. Which is too bad, because there were a whole bunch of them and they would have had themselves a time.
Catherine and Margaret, two super-smart school friends became attorneys and moved away, which surprised no one. Two other pretty, best friends, Lisa and Amy, became housewives to local bankers, and stayed in the area although they kept in touch with only a few folks, which also surprised no one. Only Catherine was able to make the reunion and wished that she'd kept in touch with Margaret, who counsels in D.C. or was it Chicago. In a way, I'm kind of glad that Margaret wasn't there, otherwise I might not have gotten the chance to catch up with Catherine, who, it turns out, is very funny. (In high school she worked so hard that there was little time to be funny.) Lisa and Amy, sneaked out the side door of the bar half way through Saturday night, mouthing that they'd be back soon, only never to return. This, too, surprised no one.
Billy, the sweetest kid you've ever met with sunshine eyes and a wide, quiet smile, became a cop and has been policing in the same Jersey town for 24 years. My own personal hero of the night, Billy, together with Rick, who became a fireman, admitted to loving their wives and kids and thoroughly enjoying their jobs; wouldn't trade their lives for nuthin.' For a brief, glossy moment while I waited for my beer to arrive, I wondered how my life would have unfolded if I'd married a sweet guy from my high school class and stayed in town. Then my beer arrived.
There were lots of second marriages and a couple of recent firsts. Julia Gilariano got married just last year, for the first time, at 42, after having gone through a bout with cancer and skipping her first-- and possibly her second-- marriages. And no one knew what happened to Julia Reggiano, but everyone wanted to know because she was the sort of person that you just knew wouldn't disappoint. All night people asked Shelly what happened to Julia-- they were BFFs for ages-- and Shelly hadn't the foggiest, a notion that I don't think really hit her as a bit sad until she had to tell the eleventh person who asked her, "I have no idea."
Shelly really wished that she had stayed in touch with Julianne Denise Cassandra Reggiano or at least knew what happened to her. (I can't tell you my license plate number but I can still recall Julia's full name, including her communion name.) Shelly, who's son was born missing fingers, and Mary, who's daughter was born with a hole in her heart, swapped stories about kind doctors, nail-biting surgeries and the indomitable spirit of kids with moxie. Shelly, who was one of the funniest, bawdiest, Jerseyest girls growing up described what a crazy pisser her son is and how she honestly can't fathom where he gets it. (And she wasn't joking.) Mary told me that she was sorry to hear about my dad then went on to tell me that her dad died recently but was brought back to life. Personally, this sounded like a pretty neat trick, having just lost my dad to permanent death, and I wondered if my dad had been at whatever miracle spa her dad had been admitted to, if he'd still be alive and puffing on a cigar on my iphone, just like Mary's. I also wondered why someone would tell a story like that, in just that way, to someone who's dad had just died for good, until I remembered that I was talking to Mary, after all, and that it was just the kind of thing she would say. This brought me odd comfort as I moved on to talk to someone else.
Susie fluttered by with her camera, talking away as she clicked, raising the camera up to her eye, lowering it, then up again; her hands vying for air space amongst the steady stream of words that tumbled forth, crowding the area around her pretty mouth. I wouldn't have thought she would turn out to be so striking. As a child she had thick glasses with thick frames which hid her alert brown eyes; pupils big and black. Her Dorothy Do had let go of its stronghold and the baby fat that softened all of us back then, gave way to small, sculptured features on Susie's unconventionally beautiful face. I caught up with the ticker tape of her monologue just as she was talking about being in a 12-step group for clutter; which made sense, if you remembered her house growing up. All I could recall were the candy dishes on the end tables (Holy crap, candy!) and the piles of up-going flotsam along the right side of each step of the staircase. Later, Cate tried to remind me that there were tall piles of magazines, newspapers and all manner of detritus in all the rooms, on all the surfaces, with little narrow alleyways that carved paths from room to room. Oh, how I wished I could remember those exquisite images, but my visual retrieval system came up maddeningly short, yet again. (I asked my Mom the next morning if she ever went into Susie's house in all the years she dropped me off and picked me up at her house after playing and she said, "No, why would I?" God love the seventies.) But I admit that I think of Susie every time I set piles of folded laundry, smoke alarm batteries or my son's light saber on the steps to go upstairs. And I am wary.
Cate, a straight-A student and statuesque, natural blonde with flawless skin, bright teeth, and smart, clear eyes, married a Mormon-- imagine him finding her attractive. She reminded me that we didn't get our periods until we were fifteen or sixteen, a long-missing piece of information, occasionally asked for on medical forms, that I've groped for in the dark recesses of my health history but it always seemed too outlandish of an answer in this day and age when girls get their periods at age ten. Cate became an attorney with a terrific streak of chutzpah, once removing her entire family abruptly from the middle of a Sunday sermon when her priest went on a bit too long about how women should obey their husbands no matter what. She laughs a lot more now than I remember her doing then although we must have laughed a lot then, too. I wished I could remember but I can't remember much.
Phil, however, remembered everything. One of the funniest men at the reunion and the token stay-at-home dad to five kids, Phil also grew up very Catholic and went to a Catholic all-boys school taught by Benedictine monks. This much I knew. What I didn't know was that when his parents renewed their vows before the sanctity of the church after twenty-five years of marriage, under the guidance of their beloved priest-- also one of Phil's Benedictine monk teachers-- his mother fell in love with the priest and he with her. She left her marriage and he left the church and they got married at which point Phil's teacher and priest became his stepfather Father. His dad was still his dad, and sadly, out of luck, the house and his marriage. Not sure if either Phil or his Dad continued to go to that church. I forgot to ask.
Dawn and Jim, high school sweethearts, married early and had three kids who are now around 10, 12 and 14. Last year Dawn presented her family with the news that she was pregnant, which was received warmly by her husband and only luke-warmly by the older teens in the house. The recurring parents thought, What the heck! and jumped in with both feet. The newborn infant arrived just two weeks before the reunion, and Dawn, voted most beautiful and best hair for a seemingly endless run in junior high and high school, looked fabulous. Another classmate, Norman, we discovered, also bestowed his wife and three young teenagers with a fourth miracle in the last two months and so we joked at length about vasectomies. Their wives didn't laugh as heartily. They may have been too tired.
Finally, a classmate not named Melanie asked me about an absent classmate not named Jim. Seems Jim had found her on facebook and was looking to meet up for drinks and "catch up" in the city. Melanie, single and unattached, mentioned it to me remembering that he and I were friends back in the day and wondered if I happened to know much about him. I said that I did; that he was married with kids; and that seemed to surprise her. We ended the conversation abruptly with the understanding that we didn't have to say out loud what we were both saying to ourselves. I took this unfortunate news as far as my next sip of warm beer and then swallowed it along with other thoughts and judgments. It's none of my business; la, la, la, la. No one knows, not really, nor should we even suppose. So I drop kicked it from my mind and turned to talk to Mario, one of the top ten nicest guys in our grade, who suddenly and thoroughly lost all his hair a few years ago. All of it. From all points on his body. They figured out what it was and he's going to be A-okay and his wife still loves him because, as she said to me wryly, she didn't marry him for his hair.
The reunion finally wound down after midnight or so. Allison, who's dad was the local mortician and grew up above the town's funeral parlor-- and would have won the award for Changed The Least, if awards were given out-- confirmed what I had heard: that she really did compete in synchronized swimming in college. I thought I'd died and gone to heaven and could now leave the reunion a full and happy woman. I hugged and thanked our rag-tag committee one last time and walked forward into the night, back through my home town bar's portal to the present.
For years while we were growing up we complained that we were so hopelessly normal and our town was so painfully boring. We were a bunch of whiny, disaffected teens, half-giddy, half-annoyed at the specter of another Saturday night, jammed elbow-to-elbow with a bunch of classmates in the back of a pick-up, in a basement rec room; aching for action, yearning for sex, wanting something to happen; gossip, intrigue, anything that would tilt us a little further back on the rear two chair legs in our amped-up minds. How were we to know that our lives would get odder and more extraordinary and then more reasoned and sure? Only time had told who had surprised us in curiously bizarre, unpredictable, and comforting ways. Marriages and divorces, births and deaths, successes and failures-- life, it seems, is long after all. There's still room and there's still time and no one is who you think they are, not entirely. Which is excellent.
Lou, who has maintained the same big-hearted open manner and guileless smile since high school, was the perfect choice to host our fee-less reunion's Friday night get-together in this, our eighties legacy; post-economic gloom. He had thrown this reunion together with six or seven other big-hearted guys in the last few months. A scrappy troupe, they'd done a great job, winging it BYOEverything.
It was a modest yet gun-ho crowd of about thirty that gathered at his place in the drizzle. Lou and his new bride live in the back cottage apartment of the dog kennel his family has owned and operated for generations and he arranged the plastic chairs in circles around the bonfire that he spent all afternoon building. Once through the door, the familiar combo of bonfire, Bud and burgers transported all of us back to where we'd been, all those years ago, as if we were taking part in a living history experiment, the way they do at Waterloo Village, churning butter and wearing bonnets. Except our exhibit displayed the way high school kids spent their autumn weekends twenty-five years ago, awash in new wave and mud, big hair in a small town-- minus the crippling insecurity, seething resentment, paranoia, invincibility and fear.
Sadly, the rain persisted as the seats gathered puddles but we were just as happy to stand cozy, elbow to elbow, in the warmth of Lou's kitchen, just like the old days; parents on vacation, hours before the cops would arrive to tell us to turn the music down and confiscate our beer. The errant children of some of my old classmates ran, muddied, through the back yard, keeping gene pools in tact and reminding us that it's just rain, for petessake. They discovered the s'mores fixins' that Carl had thoughtfully bought that afternoon and gathered sticks with pointy ends. The rain ebbed from time to time and we ventured outside and huddled under tents and tarps, about thirty of us, chatting up a storm and laughing our brains out, guileless at last (finally, like Lou) and partied like it was 1984.
I learned a thing or two about a thing or two between Friday night at Lou's and Saturday night at our town's local bar where the turn-out grew to forty-five, maybe fifty. People came and went even as our hairstyles stayed more or less the same, and I slowly came to understand that these weren't the people I thought I knew so well. Twenty-five years before, as we rallied against the imprisonment of being stuck in a "boring" one-horse town, where "nothing ever happens," we were incubating the adults we would become and our errant ways were festering and evolving in ways I never could have imagined in my wildest dreams. These are the stories I heard about and directly from a random sampling of average Jerseyites and what has become of them so far, twenty-five years since high school.
Let's start with Ben. One of the two or three smartest guys in our class who could always be found in the "computer room," Ben emailed the reunion committee that he couldn't make it because he was in grad school in Seattle and couldn't get away. But he sent us all a link to the charming Thai website he created and manages, helping enthusiasts to learn the language and discover the Thai culture's charms. I clicked on the link and found a small photo of him there on the lower right, looking fit and relaxed, and was gratified to see that he'd done well for himself. At the reunion, I learned that he left out the footnote that he'd been arrested by the FBI for running an LSD lab and had gone to prison. (I'll say, relaxed) No one knew the time line for this episode in Ben's life, so it was unclear whether or not "grad school in Seattle" was a euphemism for jail.
Julian and Fritz, best friends in high school and inseparable thereafter, had a falling out and stopped speaking to each other after one of them tried to kill the other with a pick ax-- so the story goes-- when they were working together in the African diamond mine that Fritz's dad bought for him to manage in the early nineties, long before he bought the ski mountain in Vermont and just before he embezzled millions from the German banking system and ended up on the lamb in L.A., wearing disguises in order to leave his apartment to buy half and half at the local food mart. Fritz, who is a German emigrant from long ago, couldn't make it to the reunion, sadly, and is now a poet and real estate agent living in L.A. Julian-- who grew up in New Jersey-- still lives in Germany, we think, where he married a much older woman and was last seen managing a Ralph Lauren Polo store. This was all according to Djurmo, the Estonian.
Djurmo, the son of the local Estonian veterinarian, got his family's land back when the wall came down twenty years ago but I already knew that. What I didn't know is that the reason no one knew him until senior year is that he spent every weekend with other clandestine New Jersey Estonians, learning their folk dances, eating their folk food, and speaking their nutty Estonian language. I got to know him on our senior class trip to Disneyland in Florida where we laughed for four days straight. Who knew Estonians could be so hilarious, so numerous, and so drunk? I do.
One classmate of ours, an effortlessly popular guy throughout high school and long before, married quite young and had some kids. On his 35th birthday his wife asked him for a lady lover. It seems she'd already had just about everything else she'd ever wanted-- he'd done very well for himself over the years-- so this couple folded another classmate into their lives and loins, taking her to bed and on vacation as if she'd always been a part of the family. This big, happy pajama party worked out for everyone for quite some time until the married couple upgraded to a Florida stripper. (The Floridian ilk of stripper, it's been explained to me, is a much higher caliber than that of New York strippers.) I couldn't tell you if they're still in touch or even still married and to whom. Sadly, he didn't make the reunion.
Ilsa, who was teased for singing like an opera singer in chorus class while the rest of us sang like street urchins in a Charlie Brown special, became-- wait for it-- a professional opera singer. Ilsa didn't make the reunion either, but emailed the committee that she had wanted to come. A tall, sturdy blonde in grade school with thick, Viking ringlets and excellent posture, she sailed past us in the hallways with purpose while we all slumped around stooped shouldered and aloof. She lives in Vienna now with her husband and daughter and performs around the globe. Ilsa sings at Carnegie Hall and we don't. Now who are the idiots?
Jerry (now Gerald) showed me photos of him feeding a tiger at the local wild animal sanctuary were he volunteers in upstate New York when he's not working for the road department. Just a simple snapshot of a big lug of a shy guy putting a baby bottle to the gaping jaws of a striped tiger, for fun, on his off hours, after putting in a long day draining a sewer. Because why not. Our class, it also turns out, was lousy with lesbians. We could all name at least ten but nary a queen, (although we seemed to be in agreement on a few married guys we suspected.) I'm hoping the ladies all had a rip roaring good time back then, sneaking off after field hockey practices-- all sweaty and panting in knee socks and mouth guards-- but it's more than likely they didn't. Which is too bad, because there were a whole bunch of them and they would have had themselves a time.
Catherine and Margaret, two super-smart school friends became attorneys and moved away, which surprised no one. Two other pretty, best friends, Lisa and Amy, became housewives to local bankers, and stayed in the area although they kept in touch with only a few folks, which also surprised no one. Only Catherine was able to make the reunion and wished that she'd kept in touch with Margaret, who counsels in D.C. or was it Chicago. In a way, I'm kind of glad that Margaret wasn't there, otherwise I might not have gotten the chance to catch up with Catherine, who, it turns out, is very funny. (In high school she worked so hard that there was little time to be funny.) Lisa and Amy, sneaked out the side door of the bar half way through Saturday night, mouthing that they'd be back soon, only never to return. This, too, surprised no one.
Billy, the sweetest kid you've ever met with sunshine eyes and a wide, quiet smile, became a cop and has been policing in the same Jersey town for 24 years. My own personal hero of the night, Billy, together with Rick, who became a fireman, admitted to loving their wives and kids and thoroughly enjoying their jobs; wouldn't trade their lives for nuthin.' For a brief, glossy moment while I waited for my beer to arrive, I wondered how my life would have unfolded if I'd married a sweet guy from my high school class and stayed in town. Then my beer arrived.
There were lots of second marriages and a couple of recent firsts. Julia Gilariano got married just last year, for the first time, at 42, after having gone through a bout with cancer and skipping her first-- and possibly her second-- marriages. And no one knew what happened to Julia Reggiano, but everyone wanted to know because she was the sort of person that you just knew wouldn't disappoint. All night people asked Shelly what happened to Julia-- they were BFFs for ages-- and Shelly hadn't the foggiest, a notion that I don't think really hit her as a bit sad until she had to tell the eleventh person who asked her, "I have no idea."
Shelly really wished that she had stayed in touch with Julianne Denise Cassandra Reggiano or at least knew what happened to her. (I can't tell you my license plate number but I can still recall Julia's full name, including her communion name.) Shelly, who's son was born missing fingers, and Mary, who's daughter was born with a hole in her heart, swapped stories about kind doctors, nail-biting surgeries and the indomitable spirit of kids with moxie. Shelly, who was one of the funniest, bawdiest, Jerseyest girls growing up described what a crazy pisser her son is and how she honestly can't fathom where he gets it. (And she wasn't joking.) Mary told me that she was sorry to hear about my dad then went on to tell me that her dad died recently but was brought back to life. Personally, this sounded like a pretty neat trick, having just lost my dad to permanent death, and I wondered if my dad had been at whatever miracle spa her dad had been admitted to, if he'd still be alive and puffing on a cigar on my iphone, just like Mary's. I also wondered why someone would tell a story like that, in just that way, to someone who's dad had just died for good, until I remembered that I was talking to Mary, after all, and that it was just the kind of thing she would say. This brought me odd comfort as I moved on to talk to someone else.
Susie fluttered by with her camera, talking away as she clicked, raising the camera up to her eye, lowering it, then up again; her hands vying for air space amongst the steady stream of words that tumbled forth, crowding the area around her pretty mouth. I wouldn't have thought she would turn out to be so striking. As a child she had thick glasses with thick frames which hid her alert brown eyes; pupils big and black. Her Dorothy Do had let go of its stronghold and the baby fat that softened all of us back then, gave way to small, sculptured features on Susie's unconventionally beautiful face. I caught up with the ticker tape of her monologue just as she was talking about being in a 12-step group for clutter; which made sense, if you remembered her house growing up. All I could recall were the candy dishes on the end tables (Holy crap, candy!) and the piles of up-going flotsam along the right side of each step of the staircase. Later, Cate tried to remind me that there were tall piles of magazines, newspapers and all manner of detritus in all the rooms, on all the surfaces, with little narrow alleyways that carved paths from room to room. Oh, how I wished I could remember those exquisite images, but my visual retrieval system came up maddeningly short, yet again. (I asked my Mom the next morning if she ever went into Susie's house in all the years she dropped me off and picked me up at her house after playing and she said, "No, why would I?" God love the seventies.) But I admit that I think of Susie every time I set piles of folded laundry, smoke alarm batteries or my son's light saber on the steps to go upstairs. And I am wary.
Cate, a straight-A student and statuesque, natural blonde with flawless skin, bright teeth, and smart, clear eyes, married a Mormon-- imagine him finding her attractive. She reminded me that we didn't get our periods until we were fifteen or sixteen, a long-missing piece of information, occasionally asked for on medical forms, that I've groped for in the dark recesses of my health history but it always seemed too outlandish of an answer in this day and age when girls get their periods at age ten. Cate became an attorney with a terrific streak of chutzpah, once removing her entire family abruptly from the middle of a Sunday sermon when her priest went on a bit too long about how women should obey their husbands no matter what. She laughs a lot more now than I remember her doing then although we must have laughed a lot then, too. I wished I could remember but I can't remember much.
Phil, however, remembered everything. One of the funniest men at the reunion and the token stay-at-home dad to five kids, Phil also grew up very Catholic and went to a Catholic all-boys school taught by Benedictine monks. This much I knew. What I didn't know was that when his parents renewed their vows before the sanctity of the church after twenty-five years of marriage, under the guidance of their beloved priest-- also one of Phil's Benedictine monk teachers-- his mother fell in love with the priest and he with her. She left her marriage and he left the church and they got married at which point Phil's teacher and priest became his stepfather Father. His dad was still his dad, and sadly, out of luck, the house and his marriage. Not sure if either Phil or his Dad continued to go to that church. I forgot to ask.
Dawn and Jim, high school sweethearts, married early and had three kids who are now around 10, 12 and 14. Last year Dawn presented her family with the news that she was pregnant, which was received warmly by her husband and only luke-warmly by the older teens in the house. The recurring parents thought, What the heck! and jumped in with both feet. The newborn infant arrived just two weeks before the reunion, and Dawn, voted most beautiful and best hair for a seemingly endless run in junior high and high school, looked fabulous. Another classmate, Norman, we discovered, also bestowed his wife and three young teenagers with a fourth miracle in the last two months and so we joked at length about vasectomies. Their wives didn't laugh as heartily. They may have been too tired.
Finally, a classmate not named Melanie asked me about an absent classmate not named Jim. Seems Jim had found her on facebook and was looking to meet up for drinks and "catch up" in the city. Melanie, single and unattached, mentioned it to me remembering that he and I were friends back in the day and wondered if I happened to know much about him. I said that I did; that he was married with kids; and that seemed to surprise her. We ended the conversation abruptly with the understanding that we didn't have to say out loud what we were both saying to ourselves. I took this unfortunate news as far as my next sip of warm beer and then swallowed it along with other thoughts and judgments. It's none of my business; la, la, la, la. No one knows, not really, nor should we even suppose. So I drop kicked it from my mind and turned to talk to Mario, one of the top ten nicest guys in our grade, who suddenly and thoroughly lost all his hair a few years ago. All of it. From all points on his body. They figured out what it was and he's going to be A-okay and his wife still loves him because, as she said to me wryly, she didn't marry him for his hair.
The reunion finally wound down after midnight or so. Allison, who's dad was the local mortician and grew up above the town's funeral parlor-- and would have won the award for Changed The Least, if awards were given out-- confirmed what I had heard: that she really did compete in synchronized swimming in college. I thought I'd died and gone to heaven and could now leave the reunion a full and happy woman. I hugged and thanked our rag-tag committee one last time and walked forward into the night, back through my home town bar's portal to the present.
For years while we were growing up we complained that we were so hopelessly normal and our town was so painfully boring. We were a bunch of whiny, disaffected teens, half-giddy, half-annoyed at the specter of another Saturday night, jammed elbow-to-elbow with a bunch of classmates in the back of a pick-up, in a basement rec room; aching for action, yearning for sex, wanting something to happen; gossip, intrigue, anything that would tilt us a little further back on the rear two chair legs in our amped-up minds. How were we to know that our lives would get odder and more extraordinary and then more reasoned and sure? Only time had told who had surprised us in curiously bizarre, unpredictable, and comforting ways. Marriages and divorces, births and deaths, successes and failures-- life, it seems, is long after all. There's still room and there's still time and no one is who you think they are, not entirely. Which is excellent.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Paris
When your ex is flying to Paris
over Thanksgiving with some French au pair,
Try not to fantasize about
what they'll be doing there.
Don't picture them out strolling
dans le Jardin des Tuilleries,
Where they might pause a little
pour embrasser in les trees.
Or picnicking at Père Lachaise,
like my days à l'université,
Après, peut-être, a quiet visit
par l'awesome Musée d'Orsay.
Then, lounging at Les Deux Magots;
sipping panaché for fun,
Arrêtez avant you see him watching
her warm her face dans le sun.
Don't see them stretch their legs, baiser,
et après, regard à la vue.
Then retournez to her atelier
to take un nap, or two.
The autumns leaves; d'or, magenta, et rouge
will beg them to awaken,
but even the smell of croque monsieur
will be pas possible to shake them.
For they are dans a ville magique;
far, far from les Etats-Unis.
Time will elude them, his life won't intrude on him.
He's one lucky bastard, mais, oui?
On Thanksgiving Day I'll prenez ma fourchette
and stab a creamed onion or two,
run it lazily through my piscine of Mom's gravy,
Honestly, what else can I do?
Then I'll help clear la table, grab my sweet fils
and snuggle on the rug for a while,
Maybe ride bicyclettes, then marchez sur la plage,
let the long jour unfold without guile,
Gaze out at la mer, and be thankful I'm here
because Paris isn't going anywhere,
"The trip is the trip," as my père used to say,
and my vie is beaucoup plus than fair.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Hot Damn
Found some money!
Right there in my pocket.
Fifteen bucks!
Hot damn.
Found some money
right out of the gate.
First thing in the morning.
What a day.
Reached in and there is was.
Waiting for me to find it.
Just waiting. No rush.
Like anything else lost,
or not yet found.
I felt the paper
with my two longest fingers,
that particular "money" paper,
--kinda soft, kinda friendly--
and I knew before I knew.
It was money!
Then I realized,
These pants are mine!
These pants I'm wearin' belong to me!
So this money must be mine!
I get to keep the money!
Yipee!
I guess it was my money
all along.
Not really extra, one could say.
But it's more fun
to think of it as a treat. So,
I'm gonna think of it that way.
Found some money.
Didn't even matter how much.
Coulda been two or coulda been twenty.
But I counted it, anyway.
Fifteen bucks.
Not a bad haul.
For reachin' in my pocket.
Day's lookin' up.
Hot damn.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Beer and Corn
A few years ago, the morning after a rather new babysitter sat, I turned on my computer to find right there, in the previous evening's history: porn. His brains lodged squarely in his pants, my new sitter didn't have the where-with-all to clear the history before I arrived home, so there it was. Porn, porn, porn. The very next day he became my former sitter and I began a "No computer usage" rule among my varied stable of high school sitters. I also had my laptop password protected. So much for, "Can I just borrow your computer to do my homework, Mrs. Chicky?" The answer was now, "No, you may not."
I'm still very pro boy babysitter for my son and always have been. Now that his father lives elsewhere and even when he technically lived here, it was the boy babysitter who taught Jimmy how to throw a frisbee and hold a lacrosse stick. It was the boy babysitter who shot hoops, played tag and sat on the floor with him for hours building lego ships and discussing plans for an outer space satellite sub station with duel action laser shields, blasting power and plenty of storage space for energy pellets. The girl sitters tended to watch, standing slouched with their hands on their hips telling him what to do and what not to do, but the boys sat down and did it with him.
Fast forward to this past summer to when a couple of teen brothers-- lovely young fellows whose parents are childhood friends of mine-- offered to babysit for my young son. They're good kids who actually like each other's company and so I offered them the gig together. I rattled off bedtimes and optimistic notions of book reading and teeth brushing and as I scribbled down my cell phone number said off-handedly, "If you get hungry, help yourself. No beer, no porn." And then I took my leave. I said it to be funny. I said it because I know their parents. At any rate, I said it.
Apparently what happened was, the older of the two let the comment roll of his back. What-ever, Old Lady. Do you even know what porn is? He was probably thinking. If he thought about it at all. But the younger of the two thought about it. He thought and thought. And the thing of it is, he thought I said, "Corn."
He wondered silently to himself why on earth I might forbid him to have corn. He though back on everything he knew about corn and considered that he may have missed a crucial piece of information, but how? And what?! Was she saving it for something? Was this corn super special? Maybe there's something very bad about corn and I don't know what it is, he thought. How could I not know? Does everyone else know but me? How could this have slipped me by? For two weeks he thought about corn and it's potentially damaging properties. Was it an age thing? Choking perhaps? Is corn illegal in some states? Is it poisonous? Maybe there are kids who are allergic? But he'd never heard of such a thing. It must be so obvious, something everyone accepts as common knowledge because his big brother didn't even flinch.
"Huh, corn," Little Brother mused. Who knew?
He had to find out but was too nervous to ask. Why else would he let two weeks get by? That's a long time to stew. And when was the right moment to ask about corn? He had to time it just right. Finally, he approached his dad while he was reading.
"Uh. Mm, Dad?"
"Yes, Dear."
"Um remember when we babysat for Jimmy?"
"When?"
"When we babysat for Jimmy that one night. Remember?"
"That was two weeks ago."
"Yes. Remember?"
"What's up? Everything okay?"
"Why is corn bad?"
"Yeah. Mrs. Chicky, she said, 'No beer. No corn.' Why is corn bad?"
"Why is-
"Why can't we have it?"
Well you can imagine my friend as he looked at his young son. The light bulb switched on. His face flushed red. He shook his head and a smile cracked so wide across his face that for a moment he looked like a muppet. His older son locked eyes with him and they both began to laugh hysterically.
"You've been thinking about this for two weeks?" Big Brother asked.
"What, Dad? C'mon tell me," said Little Brother. He chose to ignore his older brother and wait for his dad to answer but Dad was laughing too hard at this moment and wanted to compose himself so that his tone would be respectful enough that his young son wouldn't feel even more embarrassed than he already was.
"C'mon, jeeze, what?" his younger son implored. He, too, was starting to blush.
"Porn, not corn," Big Brother chided. My friend was still laughing.
"What? Porn?" Little Brother said.
"Yes, Dear," their Dad answered, "She said, 'No beer, no porn.' She didn't want you drinking beer and watching porn while you were babysitting."
Little Brother finally got it. His eyes seemed to leaf through the imaginary porn file in his mind and he inhaled deeply.
"Ohhhh," he said. He could relax now, mission accomplish. The anguish was over and all was right with the world once again. Porn not corn. Phew! Little Brother smiled, got up and left the room. Big Brother went back to what he was doing and Dad laughed about it to himself for the next two weeks.
Now, I'm told, whenever the boys are getting ready to go out somewhere; to a friend's house or a soccer game; a guitar lesson or movie; their dad reminds them of their curfew, reminds them to watch out for each other, then adds-- thanks to me-- "And remember, boys: No beer. No corn."
I'm still very pro boy babysitter for my son and always have been. Now that his father lives elsewhere and even when he technically lived here, it was the boy babysitter who taught Jimmy how to throw a frisbee and hold a lacrosse stick. It was the boy babysitter who shot hoops, played tag and sat on the floor with him for hours building lego ships and discussing plans for an outer space satellite sub station with duel action laser shields, blasting power and plenty of storage space for energy pellets. The girl sitters tended to watch, standing slouched with their hands on their hips telling him what to do and what not to do, but the boys sat down and did it with him.
Fast forward to this past summer to when a couple of teen brothers-- lovely young fellows whose parents are childhood friends of mine-- offered to babysit for my young son. They're good kids who actually like each other's company and so I offered them the gig together. I rattled off bedtimes and optimistic notions of book reading and teeth brushing and as I scribbled down my cell phone number said off-handedly, "If you get hungry, help yourself. No beer, no porn." And then I took my leave. I said it to be funny. I said it because I know their parents. At any rate, I said it.
Apparently what happened was, the older of the two let the comment roll of his back. What-ever, Old Lady. Do you even know what porn is? He was probably thinking. If he thought about it at all. But the younger of the two thought about it. He thought and thought. And the thing of it is, he thought I said, "Corn."
He wondered silently to himself why on earth I might forbid him to have corn. He though back on everything he knew about corn and considered that he may have missed a crucial piece of information, but how? And what?! Was she saving it for something? Was this corn super special? Maybe there's something very bad about corn and I don't know what it is, he thought. How could I not know? Does everyone else know but me? How could this have slipped me by? For two weeks he thought about corn and it's potentially damaging properties. Was it an age thing? Choking perhaps? Is corn illegal in some states? Is it poisonous? Maybe there are kids who are allergic? But he'd never heard of such a thing. It must be so obvious, something everyone accepts as common knowledge because his big brother didn't even flinch.
"Huh, corn," Little Brother mused. Who knew?
He had to find out but was too nervous to ask. Why else would he let two weeks get by? That's a long time to stew. And when was the right moment to ask about corn? He had to time it just right. Finally, he approached his dad while he was reading.
"Uh. Mm, Dad?"
"Yes, Dear."
"Um remember when we babysat for Jimmy?"
"When?"
"When we babysat for Jimmy that one night. Remember?"
"That was two weeks ago."
"Yes. Remember?"
"What's up? Everything okay?"
"Why is corn bad?"
"Yeah. Mrs. Chicky, she said, 'No beer. No corn.' Why is corn bad?"
"Why is-
"Why can't we have it?"
Well you can imagine my friend as he looked at his young son. The light bulb switched on. His face flushed red. He shook his head and a smile cracked so wide across his face that for a moment he looked like a muppet. His older son locked eyes with him and they both began to laugh hysterically.
"You've been thinking about this for two weeks?" Big Brother asked.
"What, Dad? C'mon tell me," said Little Brother. He chose to ignore his older brother and wait for his dad to answer but Dad was laughing too hard at this moment and wanted to compose himself so that his tone would be respectful enough that his young son wouldn't feel even more embarrassed than he already was.
"C'mon, jeeze, what?" his younger son implored. He, too, was starting to blush.
"Porn, not corn," Big Brother chided. My friend was still laughing.
"What? Porn?" Little Brother said.
"Yes, Dear," their Dad answered, "She said, 'No beer, no porn.' She didn't want you drinking beer and watching porn while you were babysitting."
Little Brother finally got it. His eyes seemed to leaf through the imaginary porn file in his mind and he inhaled deeply.
"Ohhhh," he said. He could relax now, mission accomplish. The anguish was over and all was right with the world once again. Porn not corn. Phew! Little Brother smiled, got up and left the room. Big Brother went back to what he was doing and Dad laughed about it to himself for the next two weeks.
Now, I'm told, whenever the boys are getting ready to go out somewhere; to a friend's house or a soccer game; a guitar lesson or movie; their dad reminds them of their curfew, reminds them to watch out for each other, then adds-- thanks to me-- "And remember, boys: No beer. No corn."
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Pen Pals
I was at a movie tonight wherein our two bright stars-- love struck naïf’s with small pores and Hollywood hair-- scratched away, furiously, with stark, ink pens at stiff, white paper for the better part of the film. Besides being entertaining, the movie transported me back in time-- against my will and the will of the actors, who were fine, really, perfectly competent. Good teeth, nice hair.
In the beginning I watched, rapt, as their words hurried out from between blackened fingers, their scripted shapes arcing and slanting to keep pace with their nimble minds, faster and faster until their thoughts, like their hands, (and their doomed love affair) finally slowed to a stop. But then for moments towards the end I began to drift just above the movie-- still submerged in it's special brand of Jane Campion pathos, luxuriating in his fabulous lips and her incredible clothes-- and started to notice memories of my own hand crowding the story. Back before carpel tunnel, before word perfect, there were imperfect letters and I must have written hundreds in my heyday; between my first crush and my last crushing blow.
As she ran to her room and tore open the letter, I, too, remember walking briskly from the house to the back yard, lowering onto our swing set's bouncy seat then stilling myself as I turned over the envelope in order to confirm what I darn well knew-- that the addressee's handwriting was indeed his.
Nowadays it might be ages before I'll get to know some one's handwriting. Women still have a chance, buying and sending birthday cards as is our want, but men? Forget it. Back then you might know a suitor's handwriting long before you could recognize his smell. And the fantasies it conjured... well you remember. Forward-leaning letters meant confidence while broken Ts and Ks-- can't commit. Too loopy? Too daffy. Actually, most handwriting tags seemed to mean confidence or some synonym, and only cheerleaders and smokers dotted their I's with a circle. I paid close attention to whether or not the top of his T joined, headstrong, at the neck and was wary of indecipherable chicken scratch. Unfortunately, that described the bulk of the boys I wrote to, except for the gays and future architects, whose penmanship was like a fairytale.
Soon, I learned to decipher chicken scratch as I replied, filling pages (double sided) of Ziggy stationery. Sets were particularly exciting-- with their cardboard pockets and matching lined envelopes-- and I received scads of them at birthday parties and for holidays. Pens became more important to me the more I wrote and I finally ended up eschewing ball points after brief and, I'm sure, annoying phases where I swapped out colored pens (turquoise and pink, every other line) and later, in college, wrote with pen and ink. Eventually I would begin what would become my long-time, monogamous, love affair with Paper-Mate roller balls. To this day I wander the house in search of the right pen for the right occasion. Note to teacher? Roller ball fine. Note to self? Fat Sharpie. Health forms in triplicate? Okay, you got me where you want me. I'll use a ball point, but I won't be happy about it. Borrow my roller ball? I'll watch you like a hawk.
I could traverse oceans and ravines with the pages I wrote, and get nauseous with the stamps I licked. Hyperbole, you say? How can I be so sure of myself, so certain of missives sent? Very simple, I say, for I've saved every friggin' letter I've ever received. Horrifying but true. They're all tucked away in the attic in jars, suitcases and files. Every note passed. Every thought scribbled. Letters from boys and letters from Europe. Letters from girlfriends, pen pals and Mom.
Mom used to write me letters at college, even though it was only an hour away. Sometimes she'd just xerox a mention from the local police blotter, something really dumb that some incompetent spaz had gotten caught doing. And then dash off a remark, a three-word retort, and mail it off to my dorm room. I laughed every time I glanced at them and hung them on my wall. Friends would read them and comment on how funny my mom was. "Yes," I'd say, "She's hilarious."
Dad's letters were more intense. Why we should vote for someone or other, or why the country's going to pot. He'd write exhilarating monologues if he'd just come from an art opening or heard a particularly inspirational seminar on oneness and being, let's say. I never wrote him back. It didn't occur me to. I'd call or email, or bring it up the next time I saw him. We'd talk about it some more, Dad reiterating what he'd written. I'd agree and that would be that. Maybe I should have written him back. It's fun to get mail. My mom knew that. I'm sure my dad did, too. But I didn't.
Sadly, there have been few letters since my first email account rendered my stellar stationery collection null and void. All that monogramming for naught; rainbows and lightening bolts ignored.
I did write a letter recently, though, to a friend, just for fun. It had been so long and yet, I remembered all at once as I searched for the absolute best place to compose, with adequate light and proper ventilation. I made some tea and found my pen. I put on wordless, classical, letter writing music. I took pains to chose the right stationery, aware that it would set the tone, of what it would convey. Then I headed off.
I ran headlong into my spelling, crashed into punctuation and ran after after-thoughts. Then made small, yet thoughtful decisions about how my cross-outs should look. Hash marks or scribbles? To block out or slash? I made great, sweeping, arrogant capitals and wrote quickly, drunk on my own penmanship-- I've always been complimented on my penmanship-- until E came before I and I was humbled. Now I'd gone too far. I had to slow down. Time to wrap up; in conclusion.
I chose the right stamp-- hyper aware that there are wrong ones-- and dropped it into the void. I waited, forgot, then remembered before feeling that long-ago familiar rush of adrenaline. I knew the handwriting. It was exciting to get mail. I waited until the time was right then searched the house for the right chair-- the swing set long ago dismantled-- and, peeling back the sealed envelope, sunk further into the page. I read the letter slowly, like eating ice cream in September. I'd embarked on a familiar journey full of chicken scratch and pathos. Full of hurried thoughts and cross-outs. Full of long ago desire.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Billy Collins
How does he know when to break
at the end of the line then begin again
with the next simple, elegant thought?
I count the syllables and eye the stanzas
but it's all Greek to me.
I'll tell you how he knows,
he went to poet school, that's how.
He probably spent every waking moment
inhaling the classics, skinny and pale,
a preference for his father's upholstered
reading chair, legs dangling,
while I frittered away my youth
making up dance routines to the Carpenters
on the back stoop
of a neighborhood pal's patio
in bare feet.
Then perhaps his career really took off
with creative writing classes, his teachers
noticing a spark of genius, mentioning his wit
to one another over cobb salad,
while I nurtured my hand by passing notes to
friends during quizzes and wrote
ten page tomes to pen-pals in the same county.
All I remember from senior English poetry
was having to work too hard to figure out
what they meant. Underlining and re-reading,
I didn't care that Man had a thing against Nature.
I just wished my hair could look as voluminous
as that cheerleader's at the away game,
second to last from the right.
And that, in a nutshell, is why Billy Collins
is a U.S. Poet Laureate,
and I am not.
He was probably an English Major,
devoured the masters,
read and read and you-name-it-he's-read-it
while I ended up majoring in acting and film
but waited tables, mostly,
and fretted about men.
Then I learned to diaper and garden and spackle.
And maybe he has learned to as well, Old Bill,
but can he do the time step
and a pretty decent cartwheel?
Probably not and who cares because he
can write the pants off a poem
and not just because he has a drawer full
of heavy medals on thick, shiny ribbons,
but because his poems are fun to read and easy-as-pie and
feel as though you've just hung around a bit
with that wise older guy from up the street
who doesn't say much, and pretends to shoo kids
off his lawn in the summer,
but you know to be funny-as-hell when he invites you up
onto his porch for a beer, and you listen, rapt,
mostly because you love his lilting Irish brogue.
But none of that is true.
He was born in Manhattan and went to high school in
White Plains. He's friends with Bill Murray
which makes sense. Just a regular schmo
who likes to write
and does so with grace and aplomb,
so that some oaf like me can read his poems,
and feel smug while saying, "Do I read poetry?
Why, yes, love it. Why do you ask?"
But no one ever does, which is fine by me
because that's not the only reason I read them.
I'm able to understand and get a kick out of
his poems. I use them to get out of my head
when I haven't much time,
just a minute here and there
to whisk myself away, slow my breath, quiet my mind.
Anyone can. Many people do.
Then I close my book-- it's easy to stop--
and picture Billy Collins sitting, groggy, stubbled,
at his kitchen table,
a wreath of laurel balanced, askew on his bed-head head.
With one finger he moves the medal hanging
around his neck, just out of reach so that it
doesn't clink against his mug
then pours a smidge of milk into his morning coffee.
He starts to stir with his wrong hand then,
without looking, reaches the other forward
and gently slides all the awards out of the way,
groping for the sugar bowl.
Just another day in Poet-Laureateville.
Friday, August 28, 2009
Sex-y Spouses
Seems there are well-worn paths and covert plans of action that coupling parents must engage in in order to have clandestine sex when sharing the house with teenagers-- teenagers who are too drunk on their own hormones to question why they're miraculously getting another thirty minutes to stay out after curfew.
I have one very young son and no husband to speak of, so at a dinner party this summer, I was enlightened. We sat, thigh to thigh, six or so couples and myself surrounding a centerpiece of white, summer garden hydrangea. No strangers among us, we were all friends; old friends married to childhood friends. The comments grew ribald, the laughter rolled and crescendoed and I had little to add on the subject, so I listened.
I listened carefully to their tone and noticed when they reached for their wine glasses. I looked at their spouses and tried to catch the signals-- shifts in posture, the timing of their sips, small smiles lit by candlelight-- and took it all in. I scanned the long, rectangular table and looked at their eyes for traces of something that might tell me more than what was being said. But I caught nothing because there was nothing to catch. Their smiles remained genuine and no one snapped or scolded. Maybe they do at home-- in fact I'm sure of it-- but here, at this dinner party, they laughed. They were simply folks who'd married their best friends. Under a spectacular seashell chandelier, rubbing elbows as they carved their fillet, they were well-fed and contented, and at this moment, they were in love.
Not dewy-eyed in love or Hey-world-we're-in-love, these couples had logged twelve, sixteen, eighteen years of marriage. They weren't trying to get pregnant and they weren't in competition, they just enjoy having sex with each other and so they do from time to time. They drive each other batty and go through painful, dark, rough patches but they work it out somehow and eventually wind up giggling together as they sneak around, in the dead of night, to the far guest bathroom while their in-laws lay sleeping.
The candles burned down as their banter trailed off. Then one of them announced that they'd all gotten together and hatched a plan to fix me up with one of the local, universally-understood-to-be-closeted gay men. I reached for my wine glass, took a breath, then a sip. I asked them why, if this man is such a catch, didn't any of them snap him up? For ten years, while they were all single and dating they could have had him. "How did such a gem of a guy slip by every single one of you," I asked, "and why is he so perfect for me?"
I know that they just want to see me happy and that their suggestion comes with the best of intentions, but haven't I illustrated, quite dramatically at times, that being married to the wrong person makes me unhappy? Don't they get that being with Any Guy or Some Guy is not the solution to being single? And isn't the greater problem the possible issue that being single, in their eyes, seems to be something that needs a solution and must be fixed at all costs and right away? Like that adhesive stripping that people stick around the cracks in their window jams in the winter. Quick, do something, anything.
I put down my glass and collected my thoughts. I explained that if I were going to be fixed up with a gay man that he'd better be a big queen. He'd better be hi-larious, love to dance and do my hair for special occasions. He'd better want to cook for me, travel with me and stop at every single yard sale from here to Bora-Bora. He'd better be gay with a capital G so loud that it jumps out of a cake wearing pasties. Otherwise, I'll pass on the mearly whelming patch job, thank you.
In the meantime, I find comfort knowing that there are husbands who go home to their families on Friday nights or who dance with their wives the whole time. I relish the minutia, I'm thrilled it exists. I see husbands cross the lawns at bar-b-ques with a glass in each hand and wordlessly give their wives the drink they didn't have to ask for. "It's cold, take my jacket." "When you're tired, we'll go." I'm privy to their pleases, thank- yous and, "Great haircut, Honey,"s and I log these moments with invisible ink. They've been doing it for so long that it's rote now: the non-verbal endearments; their knee-jerk kindness; the quiet, faceless kisses. The love.
I have a friend who's so crazy for his wife-- after seventeen years-- so flabbergasted that he caught such a dish, that he'll tell you outright, "I'm the luckiest bastard." Then shake his head in wonderment. Another guy I know was describing his life to me a while ago. He said offhandedly, "I get to commute in to work with my wife every day." He didn't say, "I commute in," or, "I have to commute in," but "I get to commute in." With my wife. Every day. What fortune, what a coup, what a life.
I know that their arguments have been fierce and their venom can be strong. I know there is imbalance and want. I can spot a floundering marriage from fifty yards away now, so attuned is my misery-dar in light of it's recent recalibration. But when a man touches the small of his wife's back as they cross a quiet street with no car in sight, or burrows his feet under her warm thigh from the chair next to the couch, where she's turning the page, just to be touching her, just to be near, just because he likes her, I'm comforted. That's my goal, if I must have one, to like and be liked. The love is easy.
Back at the dinner party, birthday candles were being blown out. When given the chance to sit anywhere, my friends had all chosen to sit next to their spouses. And why not, (they don't wonder), this is the person I chose. So until some one chooses me and I them, until that some one finds that sort of comfort in me, I'll pass. The view from where I'm sitting has it's fair share of perks. It may not be my first choice, but it's my choice at last and my standards haven't been lowered. On the contrary. The bar's been raised by the very same childhood friends passing plates of cake counter-clockwise. I want my cake and will eat it, too. Until then, I'm just fine.
Friday, August 7, 2009
Baby Mamma
I misunderstood the invitation’s homework assignment which is so typical of me in my state—that of a newly single mother, responsible for all the household finances, navigating a divorce and finding a job while raising a son to love his father when what I really want to do is whisper all the jerky things he’s done into his precious little ear as he sleeps.
The occasion was a baby shower for my girlfriend, Celeste. We were supposed to write letters to her gestating daughter to be read aloud at Saturday’s cocktail hour and again, in theory, when she’s older. I goofed and wrote a letter in the voice of the baby to her mother, but was forgiven by the crowd who’d assembled in the hotel’s lounge, wearing sundresses and sandals-- too giddy to notice the whir of Thomas Circle and still high from the lack of humidity during our spectacular day in D.C.
All baby showers are special, but this was ultra-special in that there’s no father in the picture. Celeste-- a well-respected, headstrong broad with a bright mind and glistening career-- decided to forge ahead with her unexpected pregnancy as women have done for centuries-- some of their own choice, many without. After logging myriad hours as aunt and dear friend to so many children who adored her, Celeste knew that this might be her last chance to cradle her own, so, tentative family and steadfast friends flew in to Washington from all over the country to fete the bravest woman in the room.
I had been her staunch supporter from the get-go, knowing first hand that not all babies’ fathers are the answer to the wail of two a.m. feedings or five p.m. colic. Many fathers need to be coerced into getting on the same parenting page concerning breastfeeding and bedtimes, discipline and diapers. Some fathers I know work late, go online, you-tube and tune out while others simply disappoint and disappear.
My estranged husband had been pretty good in many ways but the thought of having ample means to provide for a baby myself alone sounded, I’m afraid to say it, a little dreamy to me. I couldn’t imagine my son’s formative years without the added stress of our incessant bickering and now that we were separated I was getting a taste of the simple life and it was sheer heaven. Save for squashing bugs, fastening bracelets and rubbing sun block on my middle upper back, single parenthood was a much smoother ride. Having far less money to work with now and needing to return to work just served as a reminder that the compromises we’d pledged in marriage don’t end when the marriage does. So I told Celeste to go for it although I don’t think it made a difference. She had made up her mind with steadfast calm and steely resolve from almost the moment the child was conceived. Almost.
As we took turns reading our letters full of love and support for Celeste and the life-altering choice she’d made, I secretly siphoned off a bit for myself to fortify the life-altering choice I had so bravely made. We would both be on our own, now, to boldly go where millions of women have gone before us and we would do our best because that’s all we can do. There would be no pats on the back and few words of encouragement from our respective peanut galleries. It was up to us, now, to tell ourselves we were doing a good job. We were it.
I thought the letter writing was a good idea and wondered if it was too late to ask my friends to write letters for my first-grader to read about me, years from now, when he’s surly and hormonal and blames me for the divorce. I could sneak them into his smelly duffel bag as he’s stomping out the door to go live with his father. Or I could post them on his Facebook page. Or decoupage them to his nightstand.
Celeste’s nameless baby kicked in her mother’s itchy tummy as my guileless, young son kicked a soccer ball with his father somewhere in New Jersey. I rose to stand, squared my shoulders, and read my letter from a baby to her mother, when it occurred to me that in too many ways, I had written it to me. Which would account for my choking up towards the end. Either that or I was just tired.
Mom, You’re Beautiful When You’re Tired
I know you’ll look at me and think, jeeze, what do I do now?
I’ve changed your diaper, tried to wipe your tears and made a solemn vow
That if indeed you do stop crying, I’ll do anything you want
I’ll feed you all day, rock you and sway while remaining nonchalant
As passers-by and women (not shy) who will stop you on the street
Following questions with suggestions, “How’d you and your husband meet?”
And when you nod and smile demurely, thoughts of strangling with wire
Keep in mind I love you so and think you’re beautiful when you’re tired.
There may be nights that I’m not sleepy and you’re teetering on collapse
Put me to bed, earplug your head, I’ll fall asleep and then perhaps
I’ll learn to trust you as you’ll trust me to still love you in the morn
Because forgiveness, pure forgiveness beats a path to hearts well worn
So I will wear your silly outfits, I’ll roll over on command
I’ll learn to talk; I’ll not stop walking toward you, craving for your hand
You’ll guide me gently, bruised and bloody, let me slobber with desire
I’ll look a wreck but what the heck, you’re beautiful when you’re tired.
Yes, beautiful when you’re tired.
I may not thank you right away for letting me try then trip and fall
I will grow bolder as I’m older—I’m your daughter after all—
I’ll push the envelope quite often, challenge you to make me think
Of ways to get my way all day but deep inside I may be sinking
Wanting boundaries and your guidance, yearning for the tantrum’s end
So discipline me, time-outs give me— you’re my mother not my friend
And if you’re wondering if I love you bet I do with heart afire
You are my sun, my moon, my stars and you’re beautiful when you’re tired
You’re so beautiful when you’re tired
You’re amazing, you’re incredible, and you’re beautiful when you’re tired.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Erma, Son and the Holy Ghost
There are about four or five sock puppets hanging around my shoulders at all times, sometimes whispering, sometimes barking at me to remember how to deal with the sudden loss of my dad, the savvy navigation of my divorce and boundaries to be maintained with my ex, the mindful single-mom raising of my only-child son, the finding of a job, the maintaining of all the household finances without said job, and the low-grade yearning I still have for another child which surges every time someone asks me how many kids I have. These puppets are in lieu of a best girlfriend-- something I am sorely lacking these days but am clearly not meant to have at this time-- and a husband-- something I have chosen to do without. So my sock puppets fill in. They hover at ear level and say things like, "Let go," "Accept," "Be Strong," and "Forgive." They whisper, "Be there for yourself," in one ear while cooing, "Reach out towards others," in another. They keep me from throwing all of my estranged husband’s belongings onto the front lawn and kicking him in the shins. Like me, they're doing the best they can.
Last night it was vaguely suggested to me that life is unfair, bub, and I'm welcome to go jump in a lake. I had just that morning been to therapy and yoga and found myself in a swivet that church was days away. Who would mollify my whiny prattling in the interim? Who would soothe me with balms of reason? My kitchen cabinets were bespeckled with self-help post-it notes but suddenly, they seemed lackluster and dusty. My sock puppets lacked pith.
There was one thing left to do, I thought. (Actually, there are the drugs and prostitution cards I'm still keeping close to my chest.) But before I play them, there's this other thing I keep hearing about. They call it praying.
I know. I make a slight squinchy face every time I say it, too.
People I know talk about it and others I would never suspect slip it into conversation. I figured I’ve got to try it. I know I probably should have been doing it all along since jumping back on the church bandwagon last year, but I haven't. Not in a person-to-person sense. I've chimed in for the rote-learned religious limericks that are the mainstay of every organized service. I take heart the messages embedded in the little stories that we mumble in unison reminding us of Jesus and his father and friends, and the epic Spanish soap opera that was their lives, but alone in my car, in my room or my head? No, I don't. I don't "do" praying.
But last weekend, two unsuspecting friends, a Christian and a Jew, both told me that they drop to the floor in the mornings before brushing their teeth. One hits her knees and thanks the good Lord for all her blessings. (The Jewess) The other slithers onto the rug against her bed and meditates for a full ten minutes. (The lapsed Catholic) I was surprised at both of these revelations. I wouldn't have pegged either woman for the type. You know, the praying kind: the Wal-Mart-shopping, bible-meeting-attending, teddy-bear-collecting, scrapbooking kind. In other words, not me.
Maybe it’s the lexicon. I could call it meditation. That would be socially acceptable to the others in my 30 Rock-watching, Target-shopping, NPR-listening demographic, but then I’d have to actually meditate. As far as I can tell, praying is different from meditation. Meditation, from what little I've learned from my kundalini yoga teacher and from reading “Eat, Pray, Love” only once, is the emptying of one's thoughts so that the mind may be clear and hollow enough to allow one's own strength and wisdom to bubble up from within. It's the act-- or, non-act, as it were-- of listening to one’s inner teacher or honing your intuition but only after emptying the head of all its administrative and emotional pablum.
Sound easy? It is and it isn’t.
The sock puppets get in the way, interfering, as is their wont. They leap into my head with all the subtlety of a Mexican hat dance, reeling off lists of phone calls to make, emails to return, chores to do and permission slips to sign. Most importantly, they remind me not to obsess over things out of my control. It’s loud and crowded in there. Asking them all to leave with an alamand left seems like a worthwhile pursuit but one that might take a full lifetime to master and monks don’t get health care benefits.
So, always one to explore the easy way out, I thought I'd give praying a little go round. Praying is more like a little chit-chat with your supreme being of choice, your own personal god or what have you. I liked the idea of it because I could just keep talking and complaining, as if I were on the phone, to my imaginary friend, who, I'm told, is always listening. When I've said my piece and explained my side of the story, I can wrap up the conversation with a closing sentiment akin to, "So, there you have it. Please give me the strength and guidance to see this through in whatever manner you see fit. Ball's in your court." And then I would sign off with pretty much the same panache as hanging up a phone. No stillness or time to reflect on the solution. Gotta run.
I remembered Carolyn's advice. "As soon as you wake up, get right onto the floor and pray. If you don't do it first thing, you'll never do it." Easy I thought. If I can remember to put a thermometer in my mouth the moment after opening my eyes, still supine, which is what I did for all those years while trying to get pregnant, then I can do this. I called her a few days later.
I said, "Carolyn, I just wanted to tell you that I thought and thought last night before bed about praying in the morning."
"Good," she said.
"I went to sleep with it on my mind. I even visualized doing it the next morning," I said.
"Excellent," she said.
"It was the very last thought I had before slipping into unconsciousness," I went on.
"Fantastic," she said.
"And do you know what happened the very next morning?" I asked.
"You forgot," she said very matter-of-factly.
"I forgot," said I, "how did you know?"
"Because it's hard to start. It's hard to get in the habit. Keep tryin' and keep me posted."
"Alright. Seeya," I said.
"Bye," she said and hung up.
Then, this morning, I visualized my conversation or my prayer if you must. I thought about praying to Jesus, who always looked a bit too much like a Dead Head for my comfort zone, but praying to him seemed dishonest-- too fake, too Grammys. I envisioned Mister God with his fabulous, white Grizzly Adams hair and beard, all tumbling down and well groomed. But what does he know from girlfriends and husbands, mothers and pregnancy? My god needed to be a woman, at least to start with. I know there are a bazillion goddesses out there, but I'm not familiar with them and didn't want to feign familiarity. I was already on thin ice in that department. So I thought and thought. Who would I cast as God if I could cast anyone?
I started with Madeline Khan, of course. I pictured her draped in white silk, very Dior, cut on the bias, her auburn hair fluffed up around her face like a halo but she seemed too young and flip for the job. It’s imperative that my God have a great sense of humor, but also the gravitas to take her responsibilities seriously. I needed someone with a little heft, a little deity-esque bravado. I considered Bea Arthur. She's got the seasoned age thing and the white streaks in her hair so she certainly looks the part. I would put her in something long and loose with bell sleeves and a golden rope belt. She'd want to wear one of those long-to-the-floor vests she favored on "Maude" which would be fine with me as long as it was white, too.
But my god is a benevolent god and Maude was tough and cutting. I needed her to have warmth and compassion, the scathing remarks I could do without. My own local reverend fit the bill, but I was wary of deifying anyone mortal and refused to have her in the running. She was politely asked to leave the audition.
Then a face came to mind; female, wizened, kind and forgiving, with a great sense of humor and a warm, comforting smile. My God would be Erma Bombeck. Or at the very least, have her face. I put her in something scoop necked with pleats and long sleeves because, like my mother, she is mindful of the loose skin under her forearms dangling. A shimmering white, cotton-poly blend would be most flattering and breathable and she may chose to belt her robes or not depending on how fat she feels that day.
I think I chose well when I chose Erma. It's been a few weeks since I started this essay and I would say that I remember to pray about half of the time. Curiously, I rarely conjure Erma’s face or anyone’s face for that matter. It’s just nice to have her on retainer if I need her.
I wake up and roll down onto my knees, my head and upper body flopping onto my folded arms on the bed because I’m too tired to hold up my spine. If anyone shuffled by at 6:30am they might think I was drunk. I begin by briefly thanking Erma for yesterday, and then ask her to give me strength and guidance for today. I acknowledge, with the nudge of a sock puppet, that I’m not in control and that I’m sure she’ll do right by me. A handful of times, I’ve slithered onto the floor and done a few deep breaths, clearing out the lungs as I attempt to quietly empty out my brain. This is my spine’s big chance to straighten up and fly right and my mind’s opportunity to shut down. It doesn’t. It thinks about the day, and I berate myself for being so inept. Then my sock puppets berate me for berating myself. So, up I get to brush my teeth and forget about the whole thing until the next time I remember.
I'm trying. Like someone determined to follow a diet, I'm going to try with all my might. Why is it so hard to fold this into my routine? The ground seems so far away. Do I think I'll get sucked under my mattress? Am I afraid of becoming a weirdo? I put toothbrush to tooth and these thoughts, too, fly out of my mind.
"Chicken," the sock puppets say, moving their heads side to side, eyes cast down. With a few muffled clicks of their wooly tongues they say again, “chicken.”
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Blue
Ok. You need to hear about my divorce like you need a hole in the head, but there is one little morsel I'd like to share, a little sum-sum that bears repeating, and trust me, there is precious little worth repeating that you haven't read in a dime store novel or dozed through on the small screen about my divorce. It's your basic garden variety split laden with all the hack dialogue and cliche scenarios you would expect. Except for this:
Back in our salad days of love, when we were about half way through our seven month courtship, my soon to be ex-husband-- soon to be husband at the time-- let me paint his toenails dark blue. Once his size twelves dried, he galumphed proudly up to the beach and around the conservative little shore town where my family has spent their summers for generations. Some folks raised their eyebrows but most raised his glass and toasted the man who was presumably "made for me." He was smart, funny, creative, driven, then throw in the confidence of throwing caution-to-the-wind and he was a dream come true. Sound the trumpets.
So we did.
Months later, we were engaged. Ten months later, we were to be married. A grand wedding was planned. A lovely dress was bought. We were feted and fawned over until finally the big day arrived.
My father-- a memorable public speaker who reluctantly embraced the spot light-- had worked hard and surreptitiously on his father-of-the-bride toast and now it was his turn to speak. He stood there, beaming and be-tuxed, and told 180 of our nearest and dearest how pleased he was that Jim and I had found each other. He made mention of his first favorable impressions of Jim and how excited he was for our future. Dad had looked up on the Internet some phraseology from Jim's entirely foreign career path (my father was an artist, Jim was the opposite) and wove his newly-learned definitions into the speech with a panache that suggested how proud he was of his new son-in-law's impressive career path and smacked of his willingness to embrace him as family. Wrapping things up he said, "You know, there were some in this small town who clucked when they saw Jim's blue toenails, but I'm hear to tell you," and he leaned into the mic and steadied his voice for effect, "any son-in-law of mine who wants to paint his toenails blue, is okay by me." Then he stepped away from the mic, bent down, and took off his shiny black shoes and socks to reveal that he had, indeed, painted his toenails dark blue. The crowd went wild. My dad had brought down the house.
Fast forward eight years. Our marriage had reached the harrowing depths that marriages have to reach before something or some one gives. Jim and I separated with Jim moving an hour away to the big city-- city of dreams-- for the usual textbook last-gasp rigmarole. After a year of separat
ion, my dream died and so did my father. By now I expect the marriage to expire, my dad's death, on the other hand, was a complete surprise. I was blind-sided. But after the year I'd had, I was almost used to this feeling of harrowing, moaning-groaning despair. Almost.
Six weeks after my dad died and a day after we scattered his ashes, my pending-ex-husband did something that necessitated that I retain a divorce attorney pronto. Time to get this ball rolling. And so with that, I headed into her office with calm resolution, empty tear ducts, and a sharpened number two pencil. My attorney was a whip-smart, toughened Jersey Girl in her forties-- her haircut, like her suit, was no nonsense. She laid it all out for me and explained the deal in the simplest of terms and then we set about disentangling our finances, which, for those of you unfamiliar to these waters, is really all a divorce is at the end of the day. The rest is emotional muckety-muck which should be directed at one's therapist or drinking buddies and has no business in the crass bureaucracy of divorce. When we were nearly through, she got up from the table to make a xerox. When she returned, I glanced at her feet.
She was wearing open-toed sandals. Her toenails were blue.
My conservative, beige-suit-wearing divorce attorney's toenails were dark blue. The same shade of blue as my ex and my dad. On this day of all days, of all seasons, of all time-- the same freaky shade of friggin' blue. Not green or purplish, light blue or mauve, or any one of a jillion shades of red which, lined up end to end could reach Pittsburgh and back again, but dark blue.
I asked her about it and she laughed and then told me in a clipped aside that no, this was not her usual shade. Her teenage daughter put her up to it. I told her the abridged version of my story and she touched her forehead to the table in disbelief. Yeah, you and me both.
The next day I told an old friend my story. She got goosebumps. She was convinced that my dad was sending me a message.
"And what message would that be?" I asked.
"You know, that you're doing the right thing," she said, "That your dad's still behind you 100%."
My dad had been my greatest advocate in my life's Spanish soap opera turn of events. Not because he didn't like my ex, but because he wanted what was best for me and my son and was convinced that I knew what that was. Remarkably, I did and I do. I think he was also secretly pretty relieved that I hadn't turned to drugs or prostitution as a result of my last year's undoing. Now, as I fill out the at-times overwhelming tsunami of paperwork, I occasionally imagine his particularly exuberant voice telling me how proud he is of me. Then I push away from the calculator and have myself a little cry.
I told my friend that I liked the idea that my father was sending me a message via my attorney's toes, but that I would prefer to think of it as a sort of cosmic wink. After all, I've known for months that I would have to make this decision myself, with no outside influence or encouragement. And that ultimately I am making the right choice, regardless of what signs or signals Dad sends me. Although, I do get a huge kick out of this sort of thing and hope they keep 'a comin'.
So there's a little full-circle fun for ya. The next time you get a pedicure, you can think o
f me and my dead marriage and deader father and my alive and well divorce attorney.
You know I will. And I won't be choosing dark blue.
Back in our salad days of love, when we were about half way through our seven month courtship, my soon to be ex-husband-- soon to be husband at the time-- let me paint his toenails dark blue. Once his size twelves dried, he galumphed proudly up to the beach and around the conservative little shore town where my family has spent their summers for generations. Some folks raised their eyebrows but most raised his glass and toasted the man who was presumably "made for me." He was smart, funny, creative, driven, then throw in the confidence of throwing caution-to-the-wind and he was a dream come true. Sound the trumpets.
So we did.
Months later, we were engaged. Ten months later, we were to be married. A grand wedding was planned. A lovely dress was bought. We were feted and fawned over until finally the big day arrived.
My father-- a memorable public speaker who reluctantly embraced the spot light-- had worked hard and surreptitiously on his father-of-the-bride toast and now it was his turn to speak. He stood there, beaming and be-tuxed, and told 180 of our nearest and dearest how pleased he was that Jim and I had found each other. He made mention of his first favorable impressions of Jim and how excited he was for our future. Dad had looked up on the Internet some phraseology from Jim's entirely foreign career path (my father was an artist, Jim was the opposite) and wove his newly-learned definitions into the speech with a panache that suggested how proud he was of his new son-in-law's impressive career path and smacked of his willingness to embrace him as family. Wrapping things up he said, "You know, there were some in this small town who clucked when they saw Jim's blue toenails, but I'm hear to tell you," and he leaned into the mic and steadied his voice for effect, "any son-in-law of mine who wants to paint his toenails blue, is okay by me." Then he stepped away from the mic, bent down, and took off his shiny black shoes and socks to reveal that he had, indeed, painted his toenails dark blue. The crowd went wild. My dad had brought down the house.
Fast forward eight years. Our marriage had reached the harrowing depths that marriages have to reach before something or some one gives. Jim and I separated with Jim moving an hour away to the big city-- city of dreams-- for the usual textbook last-gasp rigmarole. After a year of separat
ion, my dream died and so did my father. By now I expect the marriage to expire, my dad's death, on the other hand, was a complete surprise. I was blind-sided. But after the year I'd had, I was almost used to this feeling of harrowing, moaning-groaning despair. Almost.Six weeks after my dad died and a day after we scattered his ashes, my pending-ex-husband did something that necessitated that I retain a divorce attorney pronto. Time to get this ball rolling. And so with that, I headed into her office with calm resolution, empty tear ducts, and a sharpened number two pencil. My attorney was a whip-smart, toughened Jersey Girl in her forties-- her haircut, like her suit, was no nonsense. She laid it all out for me and explained the deal in the simplest of terms and then we set about disentangling our finances, which, for those of you unfamiliar to these waters, is really all a divorce is at the end of the day. The rest is emotional muckety-muck which should be directed at one's therapist or drinking buddies and has no business in the crass bureaucracy of divorce. When we were nearly through, she got up from the table to make a xerox. When she returned, I glanced at her feet.
She was wearing open-toed sandals. Her toenails were blue.
My conservative, beige-suit-wearing divorce attorney's toenails were dark blue. The same shade of blue as my ex and my dad. On this day of all days, of all seasons, of all time-- the same freaky shade of friggin' blue. Not green or purplish, light blue or mauve, or any one of a jillion shades of red which, lined up end to end could reach Pittsburgh and back again, but dark blue.
I asked her about it and she laughed and then told me in a clipped aside that no, this was not her usual shade. Her teenage daughter put her up to it. I told her the abridged version of my story and she touched her forehead to the table in disbelief. Yeah, you and me both.
The next day I told an old friend my story. She got goosebumps. She was convinced that my dad was sending me a message.
"And what message would that be?" I asked.
"You know, that you're doing the right thing," she said, "That your dad's still behind you 100%."
My dad had been my greatest advocate in my life's Spanish soap opera turn of events. Not because he didn't like my ex, but because he wanted what was best for me and my son and was convinced that I knew what that was. Remarkably, I did and I do. I think he was also secretly pretty relieved that I hadn't turned to drugs or prostitution as a result of my last year's undoing. Now, as I fill out the at-times overwhelming tsunami of paperwork, I occasionally imagine his particularly exuberant voice telling me how proud he is of me. Then I push away from the calculator and have myself a little cry.
I told my friend that I liked the idea that my father was sending me a message via my attorney's toes, but that I would prefer to think of it as a sort of cosmic wink. After all, I've known for months that I would have to make this decision myself, with no outside influence or encouragement. And that ultimately I am making the right choice, regardless of what signs or signals Dad sends me. Although, I do get a huge kick out of this sort of thing and hope they keep 'a comin'.
So there's a little full-circle fun for ya. The next time you get a pedicure, you can think o
f me and my dead marriage and deader father and my alive and well divorce attorney.You know I will. And I won't be choosing dark blue.
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