Defending America

I always had a job.  When I was fourteen I got a position as a candy concessions girl at our local movie theater, but really I’d babysat long before that and would waitress for many years thereafter.  Because I loved to travel more than anything I lived in a perpetual state of earning money for my next trip.  During my twenties, instead of eating in swank restaurants, buying designer shoes or having a nice one-bedroom apartment to myself, I ate at diners, wore second-hand shoes I bought off the street, and lived in inhumanely small apartments with strange roommates in lousy neighborhoods.  I spent the money I earned on plane tickets—chiefly to Europe—patiently watching the airlines for fare wars then pouncing when prices fell.  Any time a friend of mine or a friend-of-a-friend ended up anywhere in Europe on a student visa, a work visa or—in the case of my Philippina girlfriend, long story, stuck in Paris and unable to return to the states for five years-- I visited.  If I met you on the F train, or at a roof party or waited on your table, and you lived outside of America, then I’d come visit you.  It didn’t matter where.  I just wanted to be not here.

The more countries I visited and the further afield I traveled the more often I found myself in the peculiar position of Defender of All Things American: Including but Not Limited to All the People, their Customs, their Many Foibles, the Government and its Stunning Catalogue of Incompetency, the Ineptitude of the Educational System, All Crass Major Motion Pictures, Delinquent Rock Stars, a 20 Year Span of Bad Television Re-runs and Fast Food.  The onslaught could be overwhelming.  What might start out as a modest get-together of gracious locals looking forward to practicing their English with an American visitor often ended up with me getting the third degree.  “You Americans all think you’re so…” or “You don’t even bother to learn…” or “Your president is so…” pelted me through my smile.  Sometimes I would try to defend Whatever it Was they were so irked by and sometimes I let them vent.  But, I wasn’t there to get lambasted and I had no interest in proselytizing.  I was there to flirt with cute guys, look at cool clothes, check out architecture and eat cheese.  But they were going to make me work for that cheese.  I would have to earn that hazelnut chocolate, the Belgian beer, the kugel and fresh figs.   

I had not majored in political science and was a naturally feeble debater.  I knew I should have an eloquent show-stopping speech ready where I would wax about our constitution and the genius of it’s forethought, its exquisite malleability via the amendment process, and our peaceful transition of power every four or eight years.  What a marvel is America!  Why do you trash-talk it so?  But to be honest, I sometimes agreed with what they were saying.  They occasionally had a point.  So, I suffered through these awkward diatribes until my next run in and eventually became inured. 

What was curious to me, though, was the reaction I seemed to have, time and again, upon my return home.  Sometimes it came to me as early as my wait at the luggage carousel at JFK.  Some old broad with a voice like gravel, resplendent in leopard would say something absurd to a cabbie in a thick Brooklyn accent and my heart would sing.  Or some wry graffiti would catch my eye my on first day back and make me laugh out loud in a public restroom.  Or I would bite into a slice of local pizza and swoon.  Each of these moments caused me to relish another singularly American phenomenon.  I was home again, at long last, and with each return, I fell more deeply in love with America. 

We are a grand experiment still—a great collaboration between the educated and the instinctual, an unlikely amalgam of the exquisite and the crass.  We are doing the best we can, except for when we could be doing so much more, which is nearly always.  But we know that about ourselves and we’re working on it.  We are a national work in progress, yes, but one teaming with such creativity and humor—and passion.  Our freedom of expression informs us in some way, everyday, in so many tiny little ways that we can’t help but take it for granted.  So when our President is inaugurated and my son asks me about our government and constitution, I want to yank him off the couch and put him on a plane.  I want to take him somewhere where he will see how people eat fresh food in small portions and live at a reasonable pace among the carefully carved stone facades of beautiful, majestic buildings, then I will return him home, to where it’s complicated and messy, sometimes ugly and often uneven.  And so implausibly great to be American.

Singing Our Hearts Out

My father’s mother, Alice, was a divorcee in the early forties back when there weren’t many around.  Her shoes and bag always matched her hat and she wore a size 10, even though she was a size 14.  If Alice was lunching at Lord and Taylor she would pull a little bottle of vodka from her purse and add it to her beverage because she maintained, “It’s uncivilized to not have a drink with lunch.”  She went to Elizabeth Arden once a week where she got her hair done along with all the gossip about movie stars in town.  She never went out in the sun and as she aged semi-gracefully, passersby mistook her for the Queen Mum. 

Alice was a concert pianist who never played the piano.  She enjoyed the single life in Manhattan and had many friends, most of whom were gay.  At the parties she went to there was always a fair amount of singing.  Alice loved to sing and most everyone in those days had a piano, even if it had to be lifted into your 9^th floor apartment by a crane.  Not wanting to be caught unprepared, she kept a list in her purse of all the songs that she knew all the words to, just in case.  If no one asked her to sing, she would sidle up to the piano player and offer her list.  Knowing Alice, if he didn’t choose a song, she probably chose one for him.

When I first heard this story in college, I too, set about creating a list of songs I knew all the words to so that I would always be ready.  Besides twenty or so standards, there were also the titles of various eighties tunes like Roxanne, Heartbreaker and 867-5309.  I kept this list in my purse and waited to be called upon to sing.  My shoes did not match my hat, but I was ready. 

I was never called upon to sing.  Most apartment pianos were long gone and the days when folks stood around a piano and sang at parties were gone, too.  But sometimes if the lights were low enough and the stereo was loud and Billy Joel or Prince came on, we all sang, in unison, at the top of our lungs.  We sang and danced and jumped on furniture and sweated so much that the mousse we’d scrunched into our hair ran down our faces alongside our mascara.  We had a ball singing our hearts out—shouting the lyrics we knew so well.  It was admittedly uncivilized, but it was crazy-fun.  And thankfully, I’m happy to report, if the lights are low enough at parties and the music is loud, it still happens—this crazy-fun singing and dancing. 

The business of singing around the piano, however, is taking more effort to resurrect.  But, it can be done.  It helps if the guests know what will be expected of them, and it helps if you live in a community where two out of three people either sings or dances or plays a musical instrument—or is married to someone who does.  Then, after dinner’s been cleared and the lights have been lowered, folks with pianos sit down to play.  Or if they don’t play they ferret out the guests who do.  And those guests, rather than pretending with false modesty that they don’t want to play or no longer play say, “Why, yes!  What the heck, I’ll play!”  Then the magic happens. 

This past holiday season I witnessed it all come together beautifully.  The piano player began with a few recognizable favorites and one or two ringers were tapped to mosey over to the piano and sing.  People came out of the woodwork, edging closer like moths to flame.  Before we knew it, there was a robust group singing round the piano and many more joining in from the sidelines. 

The words on the sheet music for some of the more obscure songs were printed in tiny font, which drew us closer together, huddled over the pianist like a squinting scrum.  He persevered under our elbows as a table lamp was moved closer to the music stand and folks found their glasses.  Then a standing lamp was plugged in and a cell phone flashlight was aimed.  We chuckled at our poor eyesight and laughed when the piano player commanded us to sing the last verse, “Now, in Latin!”  But we sang our hearts out and it was marvelous.  My list is long since gone and my shoes still don’t match my purse, but Alice would have been proud.