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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.