Moving Friend

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

           

           

Still Smokes

My mom says all the best people smoke

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

They’re the last an-ar-chists you see

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

(Chorus)    

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

She sneaks cigarettes to prisoners and teens

And all manner of hoodlum in between

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

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

(Repeat Chorus)

(Bridge)

Now, I never smoked because it was her thing

Black coffee, cigarettes, and solitaire

White paper napkins blotted saucer-stained rings

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

Wafting stale cigarette smells, in the air…

(Repeat Chorus)

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

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

They’ve gotta sense of humor and take no shit

Aint gonna let the government make them quit 

(Repeat Chorus)

I tried to get my mom to quit

Even hid her cartons, she had a fit

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

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

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

Summer Nights

When I think of summer, I think of the sky, a saturated blue, the color of blue jays, which is so ridiculously, unapologetically blue that they still look fake to me after all these years—like mechanical chirping toys. Smack in the middle of this image is the sun, a bright clementine orange, or yellow like the button on a daisy, shining it’s very heart out like an optimistic cult evangelist, as if it had any choice, as if it knew how to do anything else. This landscape is replete with billowy spinach green treetops above sturdy brown trunks standing immutable in a lawn of thick grass the color of my lime green shag bedroom rug back in the eighties—I picked it out. It could not look more like a kindergartener’s crayon masterpiece, or a cliché advertisement for an anti-depressant. But this vision is not fake. It actually is what a clear, summer day looks like, astonishing in its simplicity and hackneyed splendor. It’s what honestly jumps to mind. But curiously, why is it always the days I imagine?

Summer nights seem to take a back seat as if they were something I’ll get around to eventually like watering the houseplants or putting the folded laundry away. It’s rare that I’m prodded to visit those thoughts and images but when I do, oh, what joy. Short, greasy dinners with paper napkins crumpled on plastic plates spent under patio umbrellas with popsicle desserts, cherry red tongues and lips the color of snapdragons and poppies, straightening after a daytime beating off bees and heat. A cut out of the bright, white moon—also fake-looking, but there it is—low in the still blue sky, a good hour until sunset but enough time to play one more game of badminton or take a walk on the beach—no need to bring beach chairs, just a tennis ball for tossing or a towel for a quick dip. The evening dims almost abruptly, giving way to spectacular lavenders and greens in the west, juicyfruit-striped magentas and peaches bouncing off ribbons of stratus clouds, causing folks to stop mid-conversation and remark, astonished, “Just look at that sky.” Then, the interruption comes, “Yes, you may play a little longer if you run up and brush your teeth and put on your nightgown”—the feeling of bare feet in the cooling grass, the sight of fireflies hovering drunkenly, too slow to escape, the small excitement of wearing indoor clothes outside.

I remember walking back from family bar-b-ques with my son, sweatshirts on, carrying flashlights and glancing over at the flickering TV’s and quiet kitchens of lit neighbor’s houses, dogs called in for the night. I recall riding a bike to as many parties as I can, avoiding the car at all costs, nesting a bottle of wine or crackers and dip in my front basket. Often times I might wedge my tall sandals into the bike basket, too, and pedal off towards the distant noise and bustle of easy conversation and iPod music, loving the feeling of my bare feet on the rubber pedals, glad that I finally got that long-overdue pedicure and deciding not to care that the breeze will compromise whatever efforts I just made on shooing the humidity out of my hair.

Late night, though, is the prize. Lying in the sand, hoping for shooting stars, knowing without a doubt every second that I must be looking in the wrong corner of the sky and probably missing it, there? Not there, darn. But laughing as if the night might, just this once, stretch out into a twenty-fifth or twenty-sixth hour just for me, so that we can keep talking near the dunes, stretched out, sand working its way into pockets and cuffs, arms warmed by the day’s sunburn, voices quiet and spare. There’s little time before the sky lightens over the horizon, have we covered everything we want to say? Is there anything left to wonder?

I love the negligible sound that my bare feet make on the cement sidewalk, strolling back from the beach, barely a pad, hardly a flap, on tip-toes sometimes for no reason. I turn my head in the direction of a rousing ping-pong game in someone’s garage, or of friends conversing on their bikes, side-by-side under streetlamps, riding at a steady clip unaware of how their voices carry in the night, no-handed. No rush. I thrill at the defiance—even if no one cares or notices—of climbing into bed without washing off my feet, sure, I brushed them off with the damp towel hanging on the railing from this afternoon’s swim, not yet dry. And who cares if I didn’t get off all the little white bits that cling to the skin, tiny pieces of shell—clam or crab, hermit or horseshoe. Who cares? I think. It’s “Summer Rules” in every possible way. I’m fine with the straw-like quality of my hair, damp from the waves’ spray, lending my pillow a salty scent, a little sticky. I can shampoo tomorrow, change my sheets the day after that. Who cares, again.

I read a few pages of a trashy novel before drifting off to the rolling beat of the cicadas. The steady hum of the day-trippers’ engines slow to an intermittent swish; someone home later than usual, or up insanely early, hell-bent on missing the next day’s traffic. In between cars, if the wind is still and before the birds awaken, sometimes, very seldom, but sometimes, I can make out the waves crashing, or hear a morning alarm clock going off in the middle distance, just as I’m falling asleep and the sun is breaking. Only in summer does the night last so magically and impossibly long.

Only in summer.

Paris Lately

Have you been to Paris lately? Don’t worry if you haven’t. It’s still there. Nothing’s changed. City of Lights. And bridges and crepes. And those woven plastic café chairs and waiters who are slightly more friendly than they were twenty odd years ago. Honestly, there have been only one or two notable changes to the activity roster that I’ve noticed since I lived there for my junior year in college, after I first visited with my French class in high school. There’s also a fascinating public art installation phenomenon, which we stumbled upon. The rest is exactly the same. Exactly. It’s sort of astonishing how little changes.

My son and I were just there for Spring Break. We had a grand time. I could write this piece and sprinkle French words throughout it but you’d think I was a pretentious pain in the neck. Not so much if I’d gone to Mexico and sprinkled Spanish. Or Miami. There’s something about Paris that gets everyone’s hackles up, it’s funny. Tell folks you’re going to California or Florida and they say, “Have a good time!” Tell them you’re going to Paris and they say, “Ohh, Paris. Well, la di da” as if it’s some fancy private club. But it’s not. It’s open to the public. And like Bergdorf’s, anyone can go and just browse. You don’t have to shop along the Champs Elysee or stay in fine hotels. There are dumps in Paris, too. It’s cheaper than Disney and you don’t have to be a young couple in love, or a high school kid on a French class trip. You just have to give yourself permission to go.

I choose our travel destinations by the food they serve since I’m traveling with a kid. I don’t want to spend an iota of time hearing complaints about the weird food while I’m on vacation. Needing a rest from all the walking and time spent in yet another museum I can negotiate, but not meals. A full-bellied kid is a complacent kid. I didn’t think I could go wrong with crepes and gelati and French fries galore and I was right. The mass transit is also superb and the entire city upstairs and down, inside and out is clean as can be and safe, as long as you stick to the obvious, which we mostly did.

You name the cliché Parisian highlight and we did it—bateau mouche ride, Sacre Coeur, Musee d’Orsay: check, check, check, plus umpteen more. Though the line at Notre Dame was too long as was the Eiffel Tower’s. But we were happy to toss a tennis ball in the park just below it’s shadow and play a little two square in the plaza in front of the cathedral. I told him he can always visit when he returns one day. Both icons will be there and it’s good to leave something left undone. He nodded and asked to keep playing. As long as we have a tennis ball, there is fun to be had for this boy, a welcome break from the onslaught of cultural enrichment. I never travel without one.

We did have a few new and unusual pleasures along the way. There was the recently opened museum for non-European art and culture—the Quay Branly—that we checked out, very cool. And there was the chic new Marais district that’s blossomed out of the old Jewish quarter since I was there last. We also picnicked and played hide-and-seek in the exquisite Pere la Chaise cemetery and visited the modest yet incredibly comprehensive Musee du Chocolat. We stumbled upon a year old initiative, Les Berges, along the banks of the Siene, which offers free badminton, tetherball, a climbing wall and tabletop games to all who wander up. There was also the astonishing pedestrian bridge behind Notre Dame, which is has been completely covered with ordinary padlocks—thousands of them—inscribed with the names of couples, families and friends from all over the world, who have locked these mementos to the railing of the bridge, or to another padlock. Their brushed brass glistens a dull golden hue from afar, but up close, the locks crowd the railing 5 inches deep, top to bottom and on both sides. One wonders if the bridge will be able to sustain the unexpected weight—and if this charming new tradition was started by a savvy locksmith or hardware store salesman.

The French, bless their arrogant little hearts, are not as crushingly and boarder-line hilariously rude as they used to be. Someone must have wrapped them on the knuckles and told them to shape up or else lose their bread and beurre—wups, slipped—tourists. They are everywhere in Paris, from all over. It’s a constant barrage for Parisians, so it’s a real treat when they make you feel special, as one waiter did for us. It was a simple thing, really. On our third night returning to the same St. Michel café after dinner and a long day of walking and looking, we settled into our favorite sidewalk table in the second row. I sat where a shaft of the day’s last twenty minutes of clear, waning sunlight warmed my face. My son eagerly reached for the Kindle, then dug in, oblivious. Before I could order our usual, the same waiter caught my eye and made a swift pointing gesture to our table with a knowing smirk. I smiled and said, “Oui.” In a moment he returned with our usual order of a panache—beer and lemon soda mixed—and a lemon soda for my son, served each time, curiously, with a long spoon.

I forgot to ask about the long spoon in the tall soda glass. I’m sure he would have responded kindly. I’ll have to remember to ask what it’s for when I return.

Sometimes

(part A- snapping)

Sometimes a nap, is really just a nap

You’re not depressed.  You don’t have cancer.

It doesn’t mean, you’re lazy or a hack.

Sometimes a nap is just a nap.

(part B)

Sometimes a sneeze, is really just a sneeze

You’re not sick.  Don’t have the flu.

Your soul’s not exiting, your body through your nose

So make some noise, let it out, it’s just a sneeze.

(part A)

Sometimes when you, get stuck behind a school bus,

On your way to work, it doesn’t mean take off the day.

It’s not an omen or a harbinger of ruin.

Sometime’s a bus is just a bus.

(part C)

Not everything has to mean something

Sometimes it doesn’t mean a thing,

There’s no hidden message, no secret signifier

It’s just teaching youoooo to push throuuuugh

(part A- key change)

Sometimes the waitress, brings you the wrong dish

It doesn’t mean-- she’s out to get you.

Sometimes a kiss is just a friendly kiss

It means helloooo, hello-hello, it means nothing more than helloooo

It’s nice to see you.

(instrumental)

(part C)

Not everything has to mean something

Sometimes it doesn’t mean a thing,

Life’s just unfolding-- doom’s not in disguise

So get wiiiiiiiiiiiiiise and wipe your eyeeeeeeees

Buck up kid and wipe your eyes

(part A - snapping)

Sometimes a nap, is really just a nap

You’re not depressed.  You don’t have cancer.

You’ve just hit a wall and could use a little shuteye.

Sometimes a nap is just a nap.

Last Bit of Winter

Spring has sprung. Or has it. Just kidding. It totally has and I have tiny white lantern snowdrops in my garden to prove it. But this is not a gardening story. Nay, the garden will have to wait. Until what? Well, since you asked I will tell you, but the answer is goofball at best. I would tell you it must be true because I read it in a book and not on the internet, but really it sounds more like Monty Python-penned myth than anything else. I have a slim volume on olde timey gardening lore, which explains the farmer’s foolproof method for telling when it’s planting time. You should probably pronounce time, “tahm”, in your head if this story is going to feel at all legit. And when I say farmers, think men in overalls and straw hats looking like eager background extras in a local cast production of Oklahoma. So, these farmers would wait until nighttime, drop their trousers and sit bare-arsed on the ground. If the ground was cold to the buttocks’ touch, then it wasn’t planting time yet. However, if that very farmer could drop his trousers and sit comfortably upon the warm earth, then, yes, it was time. Makes absolute sense to me. No, I haven’t tried it.

But, never say never—pun intended. I have other fish to fry. Like how I’m going to empty out the 30 gallon garbage can in my garbage hutch that’s filled with water. Seems the hutch lid was left up by a kindly waste management employee and it rained. A lot. Water filled all the way up to the very top then froze. So now it’s too heavy to lift up and out and can’t be tipped over—no room. I will have to lean over and down into the hutch, head first, and bail out the water now that it’s no longer frozen, trying not to lose my balance and fall, head first, into my garbage can like some cartoon. Come to think of it, I should probably have a spotter. At least it didn’t freeze with a bag of garbage encased in ice. That would be something.

Meanwhile, my son said goodbye to the snow the other day, or what was left of the white snow. He knelt down in our yard, patted it and kissed it goodbye. “See ya,” he said, “it was really fun having you around and I liked how you made everything so bright and cool looking. Plus the sledding was awesome.” I said, “Don’t forget the snow days,” and he said, “Oh, right,” and thanked the snow gods for all the luxurious time away from school. Then he picked up a piece and added it to the plastic cup in our freezer of snow left over from two winters ago. It’s melted a few times when the fridge has gone out, but still counts as snow in my book.

My guilty pleasure this spring will consist of seeing how long it takes the gigunda mountains of filthy snow at all the vast parking lots to melt. Will there still be tiny sooty vestiges of our wintry wonderland left at the end of April? Beginning of May? Some of those piles are mountainous and I imagine teen snowboarders in T-shirts sneaking out at night to hop on their boards one more time in the temperate Springtime air. I also love seeing what’s been buried under those piles all winter. Bits of trash, broken shovels, deflated balls, frozen in time like dinosaur fossils trapped in amber. There are only a scant few weekends left of quiet before the leaf blowers resume their aural assault and the garden explodes, begging for attention. I think I’ll spend them wrapping up indoor projects, picking up errant trash off the street, bailing out my garbage can and watching the black snow unceremoniously disappear.

Iditarod Lady

            I joke about Jersey Girls. You know, the scary ones with big hair and “extra Jerz” who talk tough and are always looking for a fight. I wouldn’t want to meet up with one in a dark alley, but I would want one on my team for dodge ball, or, say, if I were competing in the Iditarod, which I am not, nor will I ever, and this is why.

            I met an Iditarod competitor recently at family resort weekend in the Poconos. Besides ice-skating, laser tag and ping-pong, one could take a dog sled ride, so we went, en masse, to meet the Dog Sled Lady. She had twelve dogs harnessed next to a little shed on the edge of a field. She introduced herself as Kim, and couldn’t have been friendlier. We said hello to the dogs—thinner than I would have thought, turns out they’re bread with greyhounds for speed—then she ushered us inside to tell us her story.

            “My dogs are my family,” Kim said and we all nodded in complete agreement. Growing up in Blairstown, NJ, she bread dogs all her life and never gave away a litter. She worked towards running the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race for ten years, raising $50,000. The race began in 1974 originally to celebrate the famous diphtheria serum run in 1925 that saved children’s lives and to bring awareness to a dwindling sled dog culture, which was being replaced by the snowmobile. Though more people have summated Mt. Everest than have competed in the Iditarod, Kim qualified in 2009, becoming the first person from New Jersey to do so. But not the first woman, there have been lots of those.

            The Iditarod—named for the river, ghost town and race checkpoint-- runs 1,100 miles and takes at least 8 days to race from Anchorage to Nome, sometimes a lot longer. Each dog sled team must begin with 16 dogs and finish with at least six. If dogs become ill or injured they are retired by a team of vets waiting to check the dogs at every checkpoint. Team leaders run the dogs 6 hours then rest them 6 hours. While the dogs sleep at checkpoints, the team leaders pick up the supply drops, spread out hay and blankets for the dogs, prepare their meals, build a fire, set up their own tents, cook their food, eat their meals, try to sleep for at least 2-4 hours, then pack up, clean up, harness the dogs, put on all their booties, and continue on their way. In 20 - 40 degree below zero weather—five layers of clothing on the bottom and nine on top. Or was it the other way around? It didn’t matter. She lost me at 20 below.

            I was taking in all of this information—sort of—nodding my head along with my son, nieces, and the rest of my family. My mother was silently and hilariously aghast as Kim spoke. I could tell what she was thinking: “No siree. Not on your life.” I had to agree. It all seemed to make sense in the same way that bungee jumping makes sense to me—not my cup of tea, but I understood why it would be to some. But still, wow. I raised my hand, “So how many people on each team?” I asked. “One,” Kim answered. “Right,” I said, “Okay, one at a time on the sled, got it. But how many people were on your team? You know, sleeping in shifts, following along side in a snowmobile, waiting at checkpoints or whatever?” “Just me,” she said. “It’s a single person race. In fact, if you accept even so much as a hot cup of coffee from any non-official during the race you’re disqualified.”

            “Wait, what?” I thought. You’re what? All alone? For a week and a half until however long it takes to finish? (30 days for some last place finishers). The look on my face gave her clear delight. “I lost 30 pounds in 10 days,” she said with an impish grin. Woa. I realized that the wind seeping in the little cracks on my cheeks between my goggles and facemask alone would have prevented me from even getting out of New Jersey. I would have had to forego my own food to make room for more toe warmers. Then there were the charging moose, avalanches and blizzards to consider. Nope, not me.

            Kim finished up her story as we stood mesmerized. There was a blizzard and one of her dogs caught hypothermia. Faced with the decision to continue the trail, or travel with her dog by helicopter to the vet hospital, she dropped out of the race. Her dog made it. Now she’s saving up again for her next race. We smiled and thanked her, bought her children’s book based on her story, then she led us outside to take us on our rides. The dogs barked as we approached, clearly excited for the chance to run again. Taking turns sitting and standing on the back of the sled, it was a smooth ride without bumps or potholes. Very calm, completely relaxing. I enjoyed it immensely. Then I remembered the blizzards and the 40 below, the standing for 6 hours at a stretch then 2 hours of sleep a night for weeks. The terrifying solitude and concern for injured dogs. I watched the dog’s shadows on the clean white snow ahead of me dance. I looked at the sun through the trees and thought of the incredible sunsets and breathtaking panorama.

            The dogs slowed as we pulled in. It was my mother’s turn for a ride. “Not me,” I thought, “but I may have just met the bravest woman I am ever likely to meet face to face: Kim Darst.” Certainly the bravest from New Jersey.