Tonight, I walked the streets with the baby, just strapped her onto my chest and headed out because neither one of us could stay in.
It was just cold enough; the air felt bracing.
I held her tiny hands, the only parts uncovered, and although she had been fussing for what seemed like hours indoors, outside she looked at me with solemn eyes, released an occasional conspiratorial chirp.
It was late; I didn't say that yet, but it was late, past ten, and people gave us second looks, wondering why, I'm sure, we were out at all.
And partly because of the cold and partly because I couldn't stop myself, my eyes watered a little,
Which I suppose is a coward's way of saying I was crying.
It is hard, this business of putting someone's needs before your own, of holding an impossibly small person against your body as she jerks away, discontented,
Not with you, per se, but with the night itself, a pain, a wordless fear or sorrow.
Who knows?
And so we walk, we force our fists unclenched, we leave the warmth and spots of lamplight, and we walk direct into the night, holding onto tiny hands, nodding at the bouncer at the nightclub, the dog walkers, the car parkers, the curious faces of the city night folk.
Or I walk, holding you: you baby, who cannot walk, who cannot tell me why, who cannot assent, who can only protest.
And you do not.
Instead, you settle, you settle into me, and I pull your little knit cap down further over your ears, and you meet my eyes, you look at me with what I take for approval,
And we keep walking.
Monday, March 31, 2008
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Thoughts on Aunt Ruth
For some reason, I found myself thinking about my Aunt Ruth this evening. I think it may have started because I bought some Italian pastries at a shop that packs them in white cardboard boxes and ties the boxes with string. My mother used to bring Aunt Ruth pastries called elephant ears, spirals of flaky puff pastry covered in cinnamon sugar that shattered when you bit into them, making the back of the MG--where I often found myself back in the day--a mess of crumbs.
The elephant ears did not come in those white boxes; they were packed into brown paper bags. But the bakery she bought them at used those boxes, which I remember noting at the time. They seemed particularly celebratory: the plainest of packaging with the most decadent of offerings inside. In the back seat, we picked at the elephant ears, broke off little pieces hoping my mother wouldn't check before turning them over.
Aunt Ruth was not actually my aunt but my mother's. She was my grandfather's sister, and when I was growing up she lived near us, one town over, in a condo; her husband was dead. Come to think of it, I did not know very much about Aunt Ruth back then. Like my grandfather, she had retained a thick Swedish accent. She was skinny, bone-thin, with scraggly curly hair that may have been a perm. She used to come to my grandparents' house with a half gallon of ice cream from Friendly's. And she smoked, although I don't really remember her smoking; I just knew that she had lung cancer, from smoking, which is why we brought her the pastries and went to visit her at the condo in Framingham.
At the time, I was not sure exactly what lung cancer was, and I had no idea how sick she must have been. My mother often took us along when she paid these kind of calls; she is the kind of person who makes sure an elderly aunt dying in solitude has the kind of pastry she most prefers. When I squint and try to see Aunt Ruth then, near the end, when Alison and I watched Brady Bunch episodes in her bedroom while she and my mother talked, she looks sick: even skinnier than usual, pale, maybe bald with a scarf, although I may be inventing that image--no, I think I do remember a scarf, a silk one, geometric pattern of some kind.
I don't remember much about her beyond what she looked like. She was kind to us and sort of meek. She seemed a little hard, inside, and a little scared. I knew even then that her husband had been a jerk, a bigot. My mother had been sent to visit them down South as a child and he had become enraged when she defiantly drank from a "colored" water fountain. I knew her son, a sad sack, a damaged man, but also a kind one. I am pretty sure I remember overhearing the husband had hit her. It would not surprise me. I wonder what I made of this as a child.
I don't really remember Aunt Ruth with my grandfather. Did he love her? Did she love him? I imagine so. She was his baby sister. They had come to this country together from another world, another time. I wish I could remember if they spoke Swedish together. I can't. Maybe, just maybe, I remember them laughing in my grandparents' kitchen? I can see her walking across the driveway with the carton of ice cream in a bag.
I am fascinated by how my childhood memories are peppered with a vast supporting cast, people who were, of course, the centers of their own stories, but lent such texture and richness to mine.
The elephant ears did not come in those white boxes; they were packed into brown paper bags. But the bakery she bought them at used those boxes, which I remember noting at the time. They seemed particularly celebratory: the plainest of packaging with the most decadent of offerings inside. In the back seat, we picked at the elephant ears, broke off little pieces hoping my mother wouldn't check before turning them over.
Aunt Ruth was not actually my aunt but my mother's. She was my grandfather's sister, and when I was growing up she lived near us, one town over, in a condo; her husband was dead. Come to think of it, I did not know very much about Aunt Ruth back then. Like my grandfather, she had retained a thick Swedish accent. She was skinny, bone-thin, with scraggly curly hair that may have been a perm. She used to come to my grandparents' house with a half gallon of ice cream from Friendly's. And she smoked, although I don't really remember her smoking; I just knew that she had lung cancer, from smoking, which is why we brought her the pastries and went to visit her at the condo in Framingham.
At the time, I was not sure exactly what lung cancer was, and I had no idea how sick she must have been. My mother often took us along when she paid these kind of calls; she is the kind of person who makes sure an elderly aunt dying in solitude has the kind of pastry she most prefers. When I squint and try to see Aunt Ruth then, near the end, when Alison and I watched Brady Bunch episodes in her bedroom while she and my mother talked, she looks sick: even skinnier than usual, pale, maybe bald with a scarf, although I may be inventing that image--no, I think I do remember a scarf, a silk one, geometric pattern of some kind.
I don't remember much about her beyond what she looked like. She was kind to us and sort of meek. She seemed a little hard, inside, and a little scared. I knew even then that her husband had been a jerk, a bigot. My mother had been sent to visit them down South as a child and he had become enraged when she defiantly drank from a "colored" water fountain. I knew her son, a sad sack, a damaged man, but also a kind one. I am pretty sure I remember overhearing the husband had hit her. It would not surprise me. I wonder what I made of this as a child.
I don't really remember Aunt Ruth with my grandfather. Did he love her? Did she love him? I imagine so. She was his baby sister. They had come to this country together from another world, another time. I wish I could remember if they spoke Swedish together. I can't. Maybe, just maybe, I remember them laughing in my grandparents' kitchen? I can see her walking across the driveway with the carton of ice cream in a bag.
I am fascinated by how my childhood memories are peppered with a vast supporting cast, people who were, of course, the centers of their own stories, but lent such texture and richness to mine.
Friday, March 28, 2008
Going Native
I just took the dogs down for the last walk of the day, and had a cursory glance at myself in the mirror by the elevator in the lobby of our building. Sometimes I do this to determine if I am, indeed, suitably attired for wherever it is I am going. The answer is usually no. I keep waiting for maturity of wardrobe to be thrust upon me, but it never happens. I would be willing to meet it halfway.
But when I am walking the dogs I am not going anywhere, so if I happen to be wearing track pants, flip flops, an ancient, holey cashmere sweater from my dad's days as a Byford salesman, and my "Bush's Last Day" baseball cap, so be it: I will be seen only by the neighborhood regulars, many of whom sport odd semi-uniforms of their own. Tonight when I glanced at myself it may have been because the white necklace I am wearing caught my eye. The rest of the ensemble was pretty true to the above description.
The necklace I am wearing is made of tiny white shells, like mini whelks, whorled at one end and open at the other. They are strung together so closely they look like irregular beads; if you don't look close up it would not necessarily speak of the sea. The necklace is not mine; I bought two of them on our recent vacation: one for four-year-old Lily and one for Violet, who turned five while we were away.
Lily doesn't love jewelry. She wants to, always asks for it when she sees it on other girls, but after about ten minutes in a ring, bracelet or necklace she inevitably removes it and deposits it with me for "safekeeping." She never asks for it back. It's funny; I am not a big jewelry person myself. I prefer to be unencumbered. Except for a weakness for natural objects hanging from cords: pieces of sea glass, a mustard seed encased in a glass ball, shells. So when Lily dumped this one on me, instead of putting it away, I put it on. It made me feel like I was twenty again, the height of my "stuff on cords" days, which is a good thing. Feeling twenty, I mean. Not so much the "stuff on cords."
As I was walking around the block with the dogs, curling my cold toes in my flip flops (March in New York is not exactly flip flop weather), the necklace reminded me of the cross-country trip I took with Nicole about six years ago now, I believe. We were nowhere near a tropical sea. There were no necklaces made from tiny tropical shells, which cannot be found in the waters off the coasts of San Francisco and New York, our starting and ending destinations. But there were many, many souvenirs purchased on this drive, and the nature of the souvenirs is what I was thinking about as I fingered my necklace tonight.
For an unbelievably grounded, non-materialistic person, Nicole really likes to shop, it must be said. And in her presence I catch the fever myself, especially when given total control over the meals, which I care about much more than the shopping. As I was in possession of Jane and Michael Stern's Roadfood book and had micromanaged where we would be stopping if either of us craved so much as a beverage along the way (birch beer, brewed locally; coffee milk from a dairy just off the highway; you get the idea), I was perfectly amenable to poking around in the stores, willing to buy trinkets to remind us of the adventure.
Except that before we'd even left California, the souvenir shopping had taken a wardrobe bent, a life of its own. As we drove East, through Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma (I'll stop before my horrendous sense of US geography reveals itself further), Nicole and I began to look like less well-endowed versions of Dolly Parton, or worse--Dolly Parton as starring in some kind of American themed fashion show, Dolly being my catch-all example of wardrobe excess.
Each place we stopped, we seemed to feel an unconscious pull toward the local artisans' version of the particular city's clothing cliche. We emerged from the Southwest draped in turquoise, and I don't use the word draped lightly. Earrings, rings, belt buckles, watches: if an Albequerque artist had somehow managed to spin turquoise into yarn and knit a bulletproof vest, we would have been wearing it. We drove out of Alabama in ill-fitting second hand cowboy boots, which worked, sort of, with the enormous leather hats we'd bought in Winslow, Arizona, where I'd forced Nicole to detour in a Herculean homage to the Eagles.
By the time we hit Virginia, we looked almost too foolish to get out of the car, but of course there was a rib spot that specialized in the tomato sauce based variety, and there was no way I was passing up an opportunity to compare them to the vinegar based version we'd had for a late morning snack. Now, remembering this last legitimate foodie pit stop, I wonder if Nicole was really thinking: But what do they wear in Virginia? Are powdered wigs still in? Where can I buy one?
That's not what she said she was thinking. What she said was: I am not eating another bite of a regional specialty for the rest of the year. And I am not stopping again in forty-five minutes because you need to try a johnny cake you read about in a back issue of Gourmet. And if you get hungry again before we get home, which I find impossible to imagine, you can eat a granola bar.
Well, she didn't say that exactly. But that was the gist of it. And I might have even taken her seriously had she not been wearing chaps at the time. Okay. She wasn't really wearing chaps either. But I think she had wanted to buy some.
Anyway. I am wearing Lily's little shell necklace. It's actually quite pretty if not exactly sophisticated or grown-up. It's not "stuff on a cord." And it reminds me of where I've just been in a way that did not, as far as I could tell, cause the other late night dog walkers to express any sense of alarm. Nobody noticed my flip flops. And I do think I'm becoming more mature. I didn't even consider going out in my sarong.
But when I am walking the dogs I am not going anywhere, so if I happen to be wearing track pants, flip flops, an ancient, holey cashmere sweater from my dad's days as a Byford salesman, and my "Bush's Last Day" baseball cap, so be it: I will be seen only by the neighborhood regulars, many of whom sport odd semi-uniforms of their own. Tonight when I glanced at myself it may have been because the white necklace I am wearing caught my eye. The rest of the ensemble was pretty true to the above description.
The necklace I am wearing is made of tiny white shells, like mini whelks, whorled at one end and open at the other. They are strung together so closely they look like irregular beads; if you don't look close up it would not necessarily speak of the sea. The necklace is not mine; I bought two of them on our recent vacation: one for four-year-old Lily and one for Violet, who turned five while we were away.
Lily doesn't love jewelry. She wants to, always asks for it when she sees it on other girls, but after about ten minutes in a ring, bracelet or necklace she inevitably removes it and deposits it with me for "safekeeping." She never asks for it back. It's funny; I am not a big jewelry person myself. I prefer to be unencumbered. Except for a weakness for natural objects hanging from cords: pieces of sea glass, a mustard seed encased in a glass ball, shells. So when Lily dumped this one on me, instead of putting it away, I put it on. It made me feel like I was twenty again, the height of my "stuff on cords" days, which is a good thing. Feeling twenty, I mean. Not so much the "stuff on cords."
As I was walking around the block with the dogs, curling my cold toes in my flip flops (March in New York is not exactly flip flop weather), the necklace reminded me of the cross-country trip I took with Nicole about six years ago now, I believe. We were nowhere near a tropical sea. There were no necklaces made from tiny tropical shells, which cannot be found in the waters off the coasts of San Francisco and New York, our starting and ending destinations. But there were many, many souvenirs purchased on this drive, and the nature of the souvenirs is what I was thinking about as I fingered my necklace tonight.
For an unbelievably grounded, non-materialistic person, Nicole really likes to shop, it must be said. And in her presence I catch the fever myself, especially when given total control over the meals, which I care about much more than the shopping. As I was in possession of Jane and Michael Stern's Roadfood book and had micromanaged where we would be stopping if either of us craved so much as a beverage along the way (birch beer, brewed locally; coffee milk from a dairy just off the highway; you get the idea), I was perfectly amenable to poking around in the stores, willing to buy trinkets to remind us of the adventure.
Except that before we'd even left California, the souvenir shopping had taken a wardrobe bent, a life of its own. As we drove East, through Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma (I'll stop before my horrendous sense of US geography reveals itself further), Nicole and I began to look like less well-endowed versions of Dolly Parton, or worse--Dolly Parton as starring in some kind of American themed fashion show, Dolly being my catch-all example of wardrobe excess.
Each place we stopped, we seemed to feel an unconscious pull toward the local artisans' version of the particular city's clothing cliche. We emerged from the Southwest draped in turquoise, and I don't use the word draped lightly. Earrings, rings, belt buckles, watches: if an Albequerque artist had somehow managed to spin turquoise into yarn and knit a bulletproof vest, we would have been wearing it. We drove out of Alabama in ill-fitting second hand cowboy boots, which worked, sort of, with the enormous leather hats we'd bought in Winslow, Arizona, where I'd forced Nicole to detour in a Herculean homage to the Eagles.
By the time we hit Virginia, we looked almost too foolish to get out of the car, but of course there was a rib spot that specialized in the tomato sauce based variety, and there was no way I was passing up an opportunity to compare them to the vinegar based version we'd had for a late morning snack. Now, remembering this last legitimate foodie pit stop, I wonder if Nicole was really thinking: But what do they wear in Virginia? Are powdered wigs still in? Where can I buy one?
That's not what she said she was thinking. What she said was: I am not eating another bite of a regional specialty for the rest of the year. And I am not stopping again in forty-five minutes because you need to try a johnny cake you read about in a back issue of Gourmet. And if you get hungry again before we get home, which I find impossible to imagine, you can eat a granola bar.
Well, she didn't say that exactly. But that was the gist of it. And I might have even taken her seriously had she not been wearing chaps at the time. Okay. She wasn't really wearing chaps either. But I think she had wanted to buy some.
Anyway. I am wearing Lily's little shell necklace. It's actually quite pretty if not exactly sophisticated or grown-up. It's not "stuff on a cord." And it reminds me of where I've just been in a way that did not, as far as I could tell, cause the other late night dog walkers to express any sense of alarm. Nobody noticed my flip flops. And I do think I'm becoming more mature. I didn't even consider going out in my sarong.
I'm Blaming Continental...But Only Just This Once or Human Nature: The Dark Side
Delayed flight, sick baby, home at 11--en route back all day with no computer. Excuses, excuses. I'll be good tomorrow, and at least I'm not skipping out entirely. Don't think I didn't think about it.
Briefly, I will relay an experience from our trip home.
So we're on the plane, the bigger one, from Fort Lauderdale to Newark (sensing a kinship of loserdom in those two cities; hope I'm not offending anyone). Finally, after some of that nonsensical circling due to bad scheduling, we're starting to descend, and the voice comes over the loudspeaker. It explains that there are about ten people on our flight who have a shot of making their connections if the rest of us let them off the plane first once we've landed. It informs us that these flights will be the last ones out of Newark that night; in other words, these people are headed straight for the airport motel and some screwed up plans if we don't comply and show a little compassion.
I listen with a modicum of interest. Annika is sick. Lily is starting to meltdown after a loooong day and a stellar showing. Ben is on edge, not a relaxed traveler under the best of circumstances. I had my free wine with the coupons from our delayed flight on the way down but am still feeling frazzled and exhausted at the same time. But as the plane bumps to a landing, smooths to an actual stop, my interest perks up.
The instant the lights go on, two-hundred seat belts click open and the madness begins. As far as I can tell, not a single person on the plane holds back for the desperate souls trying to make their way off for a joyful run to another terminal while lugging all of their carry-on bags and wondering if all they're going to get to eat until they get wherever they're going is that mini bag of baby carrots.
Seriously, nobody holds back. They argue over the bags in the overhead compartment, push each other, mutter under their breath, swear out loud, then look (but only slightly) apologetic when they see our kids, those in the row behind us. We sit in silence; there is no point in even beginning to gather the massive amounts of equipment and supplies required on even a puddle jump with two children under 4. Ben appears lost in thought. Lily is trying to make her movie come back on. Annika is asleep. A man calls out from some rows back, "Hey guys! I'm one of those people with a connection. Don't make me spend the night in Newark!" He is totally ignored. Nobody stops jostling, steps into an aisle.
When everybody else is off the plane, the cleaning crew stepping on, we gather our things and depart. I am wondering if "Don't Make Me Spend the Night in Newark" would make a good country-western song, but as I pass a flight attendant, I can't help but ask, "Did you actually think people would let those ten passengers off the plane first?" She has the graciousness to smile.
"Nope," she says, and looks as though she wants to add something, but lets it go at that. When we get to baggage claim, the bags have not starting coming onto the carousel. All of the people who shoved each other off the plane are standing there, waiting. When we have all of ours, many of them still are.
Does it make me a bad person to hope that some of their luggage ended up in San Diego?
Briefly, I will relay an experience from our trip home.
So we're on the plane, the bigger one, from Fort Lauderdale to Newark (sensing a kinship of loserdom in those two cities; hope I'm not offending anyone). Finally, after some of that nonsensical circling due to bad scheduling, we're starting to descend, and the voice comes over the loudspeaker. It explains that there are about ten people on our flight who have a shot of making their connections if the rest of us let them off the plane first once we've landed. It informs us that these flights will be the last ones out of Newark that night; in other words, these people are headed straight for the airport motel and some screwed up plans if we don't comply and show a little compassion.
I listen with a modicum of interest. Annika is sick. Lily is starting to meltdown after a loooong day and a stellar showing. Ben is on edge, not a relaxed traveler under the best of circumstances. I had my free wine with the coupons from our delayed flight on the way down but am still feeling frazzled and exhausted at the same time. But as the plane bumps to a landing, smooths to an actual stop, my interest perks up.
The instant the lights go on, two-hundred seat belts click open and the madness begins. As far as I can tell, not a single person on the plane holds back for the desperate souls trying to make their way off for a joyful run to another terminal while lugging all of their carry-on bags and wondering if all they're going to get to eat until they get wherever they're going is that mini bag of baby carrots.
Seriously, nobody holds back. They argue over the bags in the overhead compartment, push each other, mutter under their breath, swear out loud, then look (but only slightly) apologetic when they see our kids, those in the row behind us. We sit in silence; there is no point in even beginning to gather the massive amounts of equipment and supplies required on even a puddle jump with two children under 4. Ben appears lost in thought. Lily is trying to make her movie come back on. Annika is asleep. A man calls out from some rows back, "Hey guys! I'm one of those people with a connection. Don't make me spend the night in Newark!" He is totally ignored. Nobody stops jostling, steps into an aisle.
When everybody else is off the plane, the cleaning crew stepping on, we gather our things and depart. I am wondering if "Don't Make Me Spend the Night in Newark" would make a good country-western song, but as I pass a flight attendant, I can't help but ask, "Did you actually think people would let those ten passengers off the plane first?" She has the graciousness to smile.
"Nope," she says, and looks as though she wants to add something, but lets it go at that. When we get to baggage claim, the bags have not starting coming onto the carousel. All of the people who shoved each other off the plane are standing there, waiting. When we have all of ours, many of them still are.
Does it make me a bad person to hope that some of their luggage ended up in San Diego?
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
A Different Day, A Different Dog
For a number of reasons, I am going to keep tonight's post very short. I will not be writing 750 words.
On the one hand, I had a wonderful day today. I spent it with an old friend and the three oldest of our four amazing girls. We drove to a dock, took a fifteen minute boat ride to a much tinier island, and drove around in a golf cart, winding up and down sun-bleached streets lined with coral- and mint green-colored houses and churchs, the ocean visible from almost every angle. I got to drive the golf cart. We ate lobster quesadillas at a little hidden restaurant overlooking a pink sand beach, and after lunch, we went down to the beach and lay in the sand.
We were driving up a hill, Lily and Violet, the older girls, beside me in the front, when I spotted a dog on the side of the road, where a scrubby dried out lawn met the crumbly pavement. This was not unusual in and of itself. Eleuthera, where we've been staying, is full of dogs: We see them everywhere, tails wagging in friendly packs down at the beach, sprawled under trees and on porches. Many of them are clearly strays, but they all seem happy and fed, friendly, clean.
Until this one. As I drove closer, I held my breath. I almost said something I would have regretted, as Lily and Violet at this age are such sponges, so alert to any sign of dismay in us, so quick to pick up on anxiety or distress. But I didn't. Instead, I slowed just enough to get a better look. He was lying on his side; it was a he. His ribs were visible from quite far off, up close they stretched the fur. His shoulder blades and pelvis looked sharp to the touch, jutted out alarmingly. His fur was toffee-colored, a rich light brown, and his chest just barely rose and fell with every breath. His eyes were open. I met them. I kept driving.
Later, before we went back to the dock to get the boat to take us back to Eleuthera, I drove past the spot where the dog was still lying, of course. I'm just going to give that dog a little food, I said, trying to make eye contact with Caitlin. I think the owners are home, she said, carefully, implying, I knew, that I should be careful, both because I wasn't sure how the dog would react to me and because I wasn't sure how the "owners" would.
I set a hot dog and some pieces of bread on the dirt in front of him. He looked up at me, then back down at the food. Up close, his face was gentle, his eyes flat. His nails were long and cracked, as though he hadn't walked in a while. He didn't appear to have moved since we'd passed the first time. I'd expected him to pounce on the food, in spite of his obvious weakness. Instead, he didn't seem to know what to do with it. I almost couldn't bear it. I couldn't look at Lily, who was thrilled I was feeding a new dog, even though I'd told her she had to stay in the cart. As I was standing there, a woman emerged from the house. She glanced at me, didn't even seem to notice the dog. Hey, she said. I nodded.
As we drove away, I watched as he did eat the hot dog. He seemed to enjoy it. I looked straight ahead, then, focused on the road. Aim? Caitlin said, a few seconds later. He's definitely eating the bread.
I realized later, as the spray from the water hit my face, as I looked back in the direction from which we'd come so as not to show my face to the others, that I had never before seen a starving dog, seen anybody starving, literally starving.
What kind of life have I had, what kind of luck have I had, that this can be so?
I will never, ever forget that dog. I will never forget the way I'd imagined him chomping the hot dog, gratefully, hungrily. I will never forget that at first he didn't seem even to recognize it as food.
I wrote more than I planned. There are many things I want to say about this, but I will leave it at that.
On the one hand, I had a wonderful day today. I spent it with an old friend and the three oldest of our four amazing girls. We drove to a dock, took a fifteen minute boat ride to a much tinier island, and drove around in a golf cart, winding up and down sun-bleached streets lined with coral- and mint green-colored houses and churchs, the ocean visible from almost every angle. I got to drive the golf cart. We ate lobster quesadillas at a little hidden restaurant overlooking a pink sand beach, and after lunch, we went down to the beach and lay in the sand.
We were driving up a hill, Lily and Violet, the older girls, beside me in the front, when I spotted a dog on the side of the road, where a scrubby dried out lawn met the crumbly pavement. This was not unusual in and of itself. Eleuthera, where we've been staying, is full of dogs: We see them everywhere, tails wagging in friendly packs down at the beach, sprawled under trees and on porches. Many of them are clearly strays, but they all seem happy and fed, friendly, clean.
Until this one. As I drove closer, I held my breath. I almost said something I would have regretted, as Lily and Violet at this age are such sponges, so alert to any sign of dismay in us, so quick to pick up on anxiety or distress. But I didn't. Instead, I slowed just enough to get a better look. He was lying on his side; it was a he. His ribs were visible from quite far off, up close they stretched the fur. His shoulder blades and pelvis looked sharp to the touch, jutted out alarmingly. His fur was toffee-colored, a rich light brown, and his chest just barely rose and fell with every breath. His eyes were open. I met them. I kept driving.
Later, before we went back to the dock to get the boat to take us back to Eleuthera, I drove past the spot where the dog was still lying, of course. I'm just going to give that dog a little food, I said, trying to make eye contact with Caitlin. I think the owners are home, she said, carefully, implying, I knew, that I should be careful, both because I wasn't sure how the dog would react to me and because I wasn't sure how the "owners" would.
I set a hot dog and some pieces of bread on the dirt in front of him. He looked up at me, then back down at the food. Up close, his face was gentle, his eyes flat. His nails were long and cracked, as though he hadn't walked in a while. He didn't appear to have moved since we'd passed the first time. I'd expected him to pounce on the food, in spite of his obvious weakness. Instead, he didn't seem to know what to do with it. I almost couldn't bear it. I couldn't look at Lily, who was thrilled I was feeding a new dog, even though I'd told her she had to stay in the cart. As I was standing there, a woman emerged from the house. She glanced at me, didn't even seem to notice the dog. Hey, she said. I nodded.
As we drove away, I watched as he did eat the hot dog. He seemed to enjoy it. I looked straight ahead, then, focused on the road. Aim? Caitlin said, a few seconds later. He's definitely eating the bread.
I realized later, as the spray from the water hit my face, as I looked back in the direction from which we'd come so as not to show my face to the others, that I had never before seen a starving dog, seen anybody starving, literally starving.
What kind of life have I had, what kind of luck have I had, that this can be so?
I will never, ever forget that dog. I will never forget the way I'd imagined him chomping the hot dog, gratefully, hungrily. I will never forget that at first he didn't seem even to recognize it as food.
I wrote more than I planned. There are many things I want to say about this, but I will leave it at that.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
No, See, It Happened Like This
So years ago, maybe in our early twenties, my sister and I had an idiotic argument about which one of us had been at a particular Celtics' game in Boston Garden years earlier when Jamie Farr had also been in attendance. If you are a rational sentient being you are now asking yourself: Jamie Farr? The guy from MASH? Who gives a...as I know my father is reading this I will say for his sake "rat's ass." But you know what I mean. I mean, really. Was this worth an actual fight?
To up the idiocy factor, neither of us had ever watched MASH. It was unclear how we were both so sure we even knew who Jamie Farr was. And we each, to bolster our case, tried to get our father to somehow determine who had been with him at this basketball game a decade or so before, because--in the moment of this fight--it seemed essential to be proven right.
Now to be fair to us, it generally seems important to be proven right in the heat of an argument. And as the famous aphorism goes, "Sometimes a Farr is not just a Farr." Oy. Another line I should strike--not that clever, and the necessary "not" renders it inaccurate as a pun--but I'm still at about 75% percent and don't have the energy to rewrite. What I mean is, and I am assuming you saw this coming, is that this fight had next to nothing to do with Jamie Farr.
Tonight, over dinner, Ben, Caitlin and I, each of whom grew up with one same-sex sibling close in age, found ourselves having a discussion about how two people, in identical circumstances, will emerge with different, often vastly so, recollections of said circumstances. I once wrote that siblings were like citizens of a country nobody else inhabits, but I neglected to add that said citizens did not have a collective memory.
This is true of general sense as well as minute detail--and it is not always the general sense that provokes the most dissent. (Case in point: Monsieur Farr.) This seems like stating the obvious, again, but what interests me is why it feels so essential, so necessary, to dig in one's heels and defend one's point of view. I will confess that even writing about this I am pushing away the pointed poisonous little thought bubble containing the words: It was me! I was the one who was able to map where he was sitting! She had him on the wrong side of the stadium!
I had to stop for a minute to flagellate myself, at least in theory. I am going to have to come up with some kind of behavioral modification device invoking Farr's face whenever I find myself venturing into the sadly familiar territory of the pathetically immature. But almost always when my memory doesn't converge with Alison's I find this well-trod ground beneath my feet because, I am realizing, if her memory, version, story doesn't match mine, it somehow throws mine into question. And our memories, our stories are, for better and for worse, nothing less that who we actually are.
Identity again. It always rears its singular little head. It shouldn't matter, should it? The way I saw, felt it, remember it, should be enough for me; why is there something to prove, so much as a crack for doubt to slip into to? If not those, why then the need for assertion, debate? I have always had a visceral loathing for converters, always seen them as weak and desperate. One of my heroes, Ralph Waldo Emerson, wrote that to believe what was true in your own heart was true for all people was genius. As much as I aspire to live by much of what Emerson believed to be true, this always makes me think: And there but for the grace of god goes egomania. But in terms of the courage of your convictions, sure. And by and large, this I think I have.
Except. Except for when it comes to growing up, to my memories of growing up, of the places and people that so powerfully shaped who I am in every imaginable way. Why does it needle me when Alison asserts that she, not I saw Farr, or that I, not she, garnered the lion's share of parental attention? Why, when I know full well the truth, for that last part, anyway, is multifaceted, does vary with perspective?
I'm starting to ramble, know the signs by now, so I'll revisit this more coherently another time, I promise. The notion interests me.
Final note. I wish the "Suicide is Painless" MASH theme song weren't playing along, quietly, insistently, to my indignant righteousness right now. Along with an equally steady backbeat of: Who does she think she is? The debate continues. Sibling: Sharer of childhoof memories or thief of narration? To be continued.
To up the idiocy factor, neither of us had ever watched MASH. It was unclear how we were both so sure we even knew who Jamie Farr was. And we each, to bolster our case, tried to get our father to somehow determine who had been with him at this basketball game a decade or so before, because--in the moment of this fight--it seemed essential to be proven right.
Now to be fair to us, it generally seems important to be proven right in the heat of an argument. And as the famous aphorism goes, "Sometimes a Farr is not just a Farr." Oy. Another line I should strike--not that clever, and the necessary "not" renders it inaccurate as a pun--but I'm still at about 75% percent and don't have the energy to rewrite. What I mean is, and I am assuming you saw this coming, is that this fight had next to nothing to do with Jamie Farr.
Tonight, over dinner, Ben, Caitlin and I, each of whom grew up with one same-sex sibling close in age, found ourselves having a discussion about how two people, in identical circumstances, will emerge with different, often vastly so, recollections of said circumstances. I once wrote that siblings were like citizens of a country nobody else inhabits, but I neglected to add that said citizens did not have a collective memory.
This is true of general sense as well as minute detail--and it is not always the general sense that provokes the most dissent. (Case in point: Monsieur Farr.) This seems like stating the obvious, again, but what interests me is why it feels so essential, so necessary, to dig in one's heels and defend one's point of view. I will confess that even writing about this I am pushing away the pointed poisonous little thought bubble containing the words: It was me! I was the one who was able to map where he was sitting! She had him on the wrong side of the stadium!
I had to stop for a minute to flagellate myself, at least in theory. I am going to have to come up with some kind of behavioral modification device invoking Farr's face whenever I find myself venturing into the sadly familiar territory of the pathetically immature. But almost always when my memory doesn't converge with Alison's I find this well-trod ground beneath my feet because, I am realizing, if her memory, version, story doesn't match mine, it somehow throws mine into question. And our memories, our stories are, for better and for worse, nothing less that who we actually are.
Identity again. It always rears its singular little head. It shouldn't matter, should it? The way I saw, felt it, remember it, should be enough for me; why is there something to prove, so much as a crack for doubt to slip into to? If not those, why then the need for assertion, debate? I have always had a visceral loathing for converters, always seen them as weak and desperate. One of my heroes, Ralph Waldo Emerson, wrote that to believe what was true in your own heart was true for all people was genius. As much as I aspire to live by much of what Emerson believed to be true, this always makes me think: And there but for the grace of god goes egomania. But in terms of the courage of your convictions, sure. And by and large, this I think I have.
Except. Except for when it comes to growing up, to my memories of growing up, of the places and people that so powerfully shaped who I am in every imaginable way. Why does it needle me when Alison asserts that she, not I saw Farr, or that I, not she, garnered the lion's share of parental attention? Why, when I know full well the truth, for that last part, anyway, is multifaceted, does vary with perspective?
I'm starting to ramble, know the signs by now, so I'll revisit this more coherently another time, I promise. The notion interests me.
Final note. I wish the "Suicide is Painless" MASH theme song weren't playing along, quietly, insistently, to my indignant righteousness right now. Along with an equally steady backbeat of: Who does she think she is? The debate continues. Sibling: Sharer of childhoof memories or thief of narration? To be continued.
Monday, March 24, 2008
Taking Notes
I was sick yesterday, which is why I didn't write. I am still not feeling 100%--we have been passing around a nasty stomach flu here at our otherwise island idyll--and yesterday was my turn. As it was only the second day I'd missed, the first being the day we arrived before we had internet access, I made an executive decision that partial recovery was not a sufficient excuse to skip another. As I've said before, this would be a very slippery slope for me. Remember my subtitle? Seven Days a Week. Although lying on the floor in a cold sweat while dry heaving is a legitimate excuse for a missed day. Too much information. Sorry.
Because I am still feeling a little light-headed and weak, I am going to allow myself a note-taking format on a bunch of ideas running through my head. None stuck enough to flesh out, but they might on second look or over time. So here goes:
Tonight I was in Lily and Violet's bed, between them, reading Roald Dahl's Fantastic Mr. Fox. They were rapt; I read an extra chapter, so charmed was I by their raptness. (I think that is the first time in about twenty years I have used the passive voice while writing. Just noting.) But even as I was reading, because this is a book I know well, I was able to let my mind wander, and all I could think about was sitting across from Caitlin, Violet's mother, in seventh grade English class while discussing Inherit the Wind.
It seemed so astonishing to me that these were our children, these two girls, growing longer and wiser almost as I watch them, each possessed of her own singular personality, like us in some ways, and unlike us in others, which I get to observe in this particular case because Caitlin and I have known each other for so long, more than twenty-six years.
This makes me think of many things, in fact. It makes me realize how lucky I am in the friendships I have sustained over time, a surprising number, really. I wonder if this is in part due to my need to be so grounded in my history, so connected to my past. It occurs to me that my father, too, has maintained a number of old friendships, and that he shares this trait of mine: to be connected to the past.
It reminds me of the unusual nature of this particular friendship: mine and Caitlin's. In a funny way, our friendship began, or took off, based on a shared love of language: of reading and writing. Our parents joke that they used to drive us 45 minutes to the other one's house so we could read together. We get the joke, but I think we'd still agree that reading with a great friend in a quiet companionable place is one of the world's best ways to while away an afternoon.
We also started writing together really early. When we were in seventh grade we wrote a satire of the popular Sweet Valley High series called Sweet Wasp High, in honor of the fact that the books eschewed minority characters of all kinds. I am realizing now, writing this, that this friendship may have been my first "grown-up" friendship, in that it was based not on mere proxemics, or membership in the same Campfire Girls troupe or the ability to sing both parts of "Summer Lovin'" from Grease but on a pure intellectual affinity, aligned senses of humor and irony, and shared interests that went beyond, or had no basis in, peer groups or pop culture.
Lily and Violet are too young for that kind of friendship. They enjoy each other's company while bickering constantly, but they are 4 and almost 5. It is too soon to tell if they share a sense of humor that goes beyond nonsense words and underpants on heads. It is too soon to tell if they will develop into the kind of friends who will take notes for each other in Algebra class in a desperate attempt to enliven the subject by constructing crossword puzzles incorporating the terms and poetry written (mercilessly) in the style of innocent classmates.
What they will have, indisputably, is something else. They are already old friends, by definition, and regardless of how their relationship develops over time, they will have known each other all of their lives. I will always remember, and will tell Lily, how I wheeled her to Gramercy Park in March of 2004 when she was 3 months old, to bring Violet a present for her first birthday.
Now, they will probably just remember the afternoon their mothers, still young enough to belt out Bon Jovi ballads in the car but old enough to know how to tend to ailing babies in the middle of the night, took them to the grottoes on Eleuthera. They will, I hope, remember what it felt like to be sitting in a cool, clear pool in the middle of ledges of nearly black porous prehistoric-looking rock, while fish hid on the far side of the smooth white rocks at the bottom of the biggest pool, while waves crashed against the ledges, carving out more grottoes, more pools, to change the landscape for some other family in a thousand years.
They will remember the strawberry ice cream cones they ate in the backseat, that the kind woman in the ice cream shop--shack, really--in Gregory Town told them to press down on the ice cream with their mouths, to press it into the cones. They will remember their new starfish magnets, their white shell necklaces, the way they persisted in bragging about having a window seat in spite of the inherent equality of the situation; they were the only two people in the back seat. They may even remember the feeling of feeling at home with each other, in some indefinable way, simply because of the women they were born to. Old friends. I am so glad for Lily that she will have them too.
Because I am still feeling a little light-headed and weak, I am going to allow myself a note-taking format on a bunch of ideas running through my head. None stuck enough to flesh out, but they might on second look or over time. So here goes:
Tonight I was in Lily and Violet's bed, between them, reading Roald Dahl's Fantastic Mr. Fox. They were rapt; I read an extra chapter, so charmed was I by their raptness. (I think that is the first time in about twenty years I have used the passive voice while writing. Just noting.) But even as I was reading, because this is a book I know well, I was able to let my mind wander, and all I could think about was sitting across from Caitlin, Violet's mother, in seventh grade English class while discussing Inherit the Wind.
It seemed so astonishing to me that these were our children, these two girls, growing longer and wiser almost as I watch them, each possessed of her own singular personality, like us in some ways, and unlike us in others, which I get to observe in this particular case because Caitlin and I have known each other for so long, more than twenty-six years.
This makes me think of many things, in fact. It makes me realize how lucky I am in the friendships I have sustained over time, a surprising number, really. I wonder if this is in part due to my need to be so grounded in my history, so connected to my past. It occurs to me that my father, too, has maintained a number of old friendships, and that he shares this trait of mine: to be connected to the past.
It reminds me of the unusual nature of this particular friendship: mine and Caitlin's. In a funny way, our friendship began, or took off, based on a shared love of language: of reading and writing. Our parents joke that they used to drive us 45 minutes to the other one's house so we could read together. We get the joke, but I think we'd still agree that reading with a great friend in a quiet companionable place is one of the world's best ways to while away an afternoon.
We also started writing together really early. When we were in seventh grade we wrote a satire of the popular Sweet Valley High series called Sweet Wasp High, in honor of the fact that the books eschewed minority characters of all kinds. I am realizing now, writing this, that this friendship may have been my first "grown-up" friendship, in that it was based not on mere proxemics, or membership in the same Campfire Girls troupe or the ability to sing both parts of "Summer Lovin'" from Grease but on a pure intellectual affinity, aligned senses of humor and irony, and shared interests that went beyond, or had no basis in, peer groups or pop culture.
Lily and Violet are too young for that kind of friendship. They enjoy each other's company while bickering constantly, but they are 4 and almost 5. It is too soon to tell if they share a sense of humor that goes beyond nonsense words and underpants on heads. It is too soon to tell if they will develop into the kind of friends who will take notes for each other in Algebra class in a desperate attempt to enliven the subject by constructing crossword puzzles incorporating the terms and poetry written (mercilessly) in the style of innocent classmates.
What they will have, indisputably, is something else. They are already old friends, by definition, and regardless of how their relationship develops over time, they will have known each other all of their lives. I will always remember, and will tell Lily, how I wheeled her to Gramercy Park in March of 2004 when she was 3 months old, to bring Violet a present for her first birthday.
Now, they will probably just remember the afternoon their mothers, still young enough to belt out Bon Jovi ballads in the car but old enough to know how to tend to ailing babies in the middle of the night, took them to the grottoes on Eleuthera. They will, I hope, remember what it felt like to be sitting in a cool, clear pool in the middle of ledges of nearly black porous prehistoric-looking rock, while fish hid on the far side of the smooth white rocks at the bottom of the biggest pool, while waves crashed against the ledges, carving out more grottoes, more pools, to change the landscape for some other family in a thousand years.
They will remember the strawberry ice cream cones they ate in the backseat, that the kind woman in the ice cream shop--shack, really--in Gregory Town told them to press down on the ice cream with their mouths, to press it into the cones. They will remember their new starfish magnets, their white shell necklaces, the way they persisted in bragging about having a window seat in spite of the inherent equality of the situation; they were the only two people in the back seat. They may even remember the feeling of feeling at home with each other, in some indefinable way, simply because of the women they were born to. Old friends. I am so glad for Lily that she will have them too.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Another Trifle. No, a Coconut Pie.
So today is Ben's birthday, and I'd pre-ordered two pies in honor of the occasion at the island's best and possibly only bakery that my mother had scoped out for me on her February trip. I'd chosen coconut cream and key lime, partly because I knew Ben would love them and partly because they seemed the most true to the spirit of the Bahamas. Ben is not a fan of cake.
It was actually a stellar eating day from start to finish. When we drove to the bakery--about ten minutes from our house in the middle of a tiny rundown neighborhood populated by stray dogs and roosters--to get the pies, they weren't ready yet. Instead, we got the "local breakfast" to go: sausage, tuna and grits in a tomato sauce. Sounds highly questionable, I know, but trust me. It worked. And the croissants were the best I've had outside France. And there were cinnamon buns and cheese danish and still-warm doughnuts with a spoonful of guava jam in the middle.
I had brought Lily and Violet along, and I could tell they were a little mystified by the place. Don't let my mention of France throw you off; if you had not been told, assured, really, that it was indeed a place of business, you wouldn't guess it from the out- or inside. The aforementioned stray dogs and roosters were on the front stoop. Trash and crushed cocount shells littered the "parking lot," and inside, the two large cases were totally empty. A few bored looking teenaged girls behind the counter literally ignored the customers. After about five minutes I realized aggressive tactics were required to so much as place an order.
Not ready, one of them told me, after disappearing into what I figured was the kitchen for about ten minutes. Come back at one. No pies, I told the girls, who were peering in the empty cases. We'll come back after lunch. We headed home.
At one, Ben and I set out to the bakery again, but we stopped when we saw a man taking something out of the back of his pickup, which was parked on the beach, and placing it on a make-shift table in front of him. He was making conch salad right on the spot; the back of his truck was full of flesh-colored conch shells. He chopped the seafood in a practiced way, without even looking down. He chopped tomatoes, fresh ones, onion, pepper and little hot chiles and put it all in a bowl. Then, he took oranges and limes--from my yard he mumbled--and squeezed them over all.
Beside him, three men were cleaning mammoth fish, which glinted red and silver in the intense sunlight. Ben and I looked at each other. The question was only: How much. You want the head? one of the guys asked. I hesitated for a second before shaking my head no. Our kitchen and pantry weren't equipped for stock, and we had planned a number of meals out. There would be no point. But we bought the fish.
On the way to the bakery, bags of just-cut fillet at my feet, we shared bites of the conch salad, fell silent and watched the rooster and chicken show on the side of the road. I'll just be a minute, I said, naively, as I headed in to get the pies.
The place was still busy, although there were still no actual baked goods in the cases. A woman emerged from the back room carrying boxes with clear plastic lids full of hot cross buns, in honor of Easter, but she handed then to a waiting customer who grabbed them and left. Immediately three other people asked about the buns and were told: No more buns.
When it was my turn I managed to get one of the teenagers to acknowledge my existence and said I was back, as requested, for my pies. The girl rolled her eyes and disappeared. Somehow I knew what she would say upon her return. No pies. Come back at 2:15, she added. I bought spiced beef and conch patties, steaming hot and flaky. I bit into one in the car and sighed with satisfaction. It was good enough to make me forget about the pies until we got back to the house.
I made lunch. I beat an egg with a little milk and stirred Old Bay seasoning into some flour and fried the filets in a little olive oil. I had made a black bean salad with avocado and tomato and onion and lime, and we ate the fish with the beans and some guacamole and the rest of the conch salad, and it tasted like the view from the deck, the spray of the ocean, the warmth of the sun. But we didn't have pie for dessert. The little girls wanted a birthday celebration. We all wanted to go to the beach.
For the third time, at almost 3, I headed out through the pastel colored concrete houses, the screeching roosters, to the bakery. When I pushed open the screen door, the girls were on cell phones, all three of them. My pies, I said, a declarative sentence this time. It was time to meet fire with fire. One of the girls looked up at the clock. Another one disappeared into the back. I resisted the impulse to leap over the counter and follow her, seize my pies by force.
She returned. Soon, she said. I paced, observed with interest as a dozen other customers picked up pastries that were not advertised on the sign on the wall, not visible to customers, and usually assembled wrongly, in ways that annoyed the obvious regulars. A man standing at the counter looked as though he'd been there all day, was becoming a part of the decor. When his boxes emerged, he opened one, peered in, and pounded his fist on the counter.
After half an hour, a woman came out holding two white boxes, propped open. These hers, she said, thrusting an elbow in my direction. I reached for an edge of the box to check that they were the right pies, but she pulled back the box as though I were attempting to steal it. It's hot, she snapped. Don't touch.
I carried the two boxes out to the car without looking inside. I knew that if they weren't the right pies, there was nothing to be done about it, nothing to be done until the Tuesday after Easter Monday (Easter Monday--who knew?), as the door had been locked behind me.
We ate them tonight after dinner: the spiced beef and conch patties, pina coladas, more beans and guac. It seems essential to mention that they were both excellent.
It was actually a stellar eating day from start to finish. When we drove to the bakery--about ten minutes from our house in the middle of a tiny rundown neighborhood populated by stray dogs and roosters--to get the pies, they weren't ready yet. Instead, we got the "local breakfast" to go: sausage, tuna and grits in a tomato sauce. Sounds highly questionable, I know, but trust me. It worked. And the croissants were the best I've had outside France. And there were cinnamon buns and cheese danish and still-warm doughnuts with a spoonful of guava jam in the middle.
I had brought Lily and Violet along, and I could tell they were a little mystified by the place. Don't let my mention of France throw you off; if you had not been told, assured, really, that it was indeed a place of business, you wouldn't guess it from the out- or inside. The aforementioned stray dogs and roosters were on the front stoop. Trash and crushed cocount shells littered the "parking lot," and inside, the two large cases were totally empty. A few bored looking teenaged girls behind the counter literally ignored the customers. After about five minutes I realized aggressive tactics were required to so much as place an order.
Not ready, one of them told me, after disappearing into what I figured was the kitchen for about ten minutes. Come back at one. No pies, I told the girls, who were peering in the empty cases. We'll come back after lunch. We headed home.
At one, Ben and I set out to the bakery again, but we stopped when we saw a man taking something out of the back of his pickup, which was parked on the beach, and placing it on a make-shift table in front of him. He was making conch salad right on the spot; the back of his truck was full of flesh-colored conch shells. He chopped the seafood in a practiced way, without even looking down. He chopped tomatoes, fresh ones, onion, pepper and little hot chiles and put it all in a bowl. Then, he took oranges and limes--from my yard he mumbled--and squeezed them over all.
Beside him, three men were cleaning mammoth fish, which glinted red and silver in the intense sunlight. Ben and I looked at each other. The question was only: How much. You want the head? one of the guys asked. I hesitated for a second before shaking my head no. Our kitchen and pantry weren't equipped for stock, and we had planned a number of meals out. There would be no point. But we bought the fish.
On the way to the bakery, bags of just-cut fillet at my feet, we shared bites of the conch salad, fell silent and watched the rooster and chicken show on the side of the road. I'll just be a minute, I said, naively, as I headed in to get the pies.
The place was still busy, although there were still no actual baked goods in the cases. A woman emerged from the back room carrying boxes with clear plastic lids full of hot cross buns, in honor of Easter, but she handed then to a waiting customer who grabbed them and left. Immediately three other people asked about the buns and were told: No more buns.
When it was my turn I managed to get one of the teenagers to acknowledge my existence and said I was back, as requested, for my pies. The girl rolled her eyes and disappeared. Somehow I knew what she would say upon her return. No pies. Come back at 2:15, she added. I bought spiced beef and conch patties, steaming hot and flaky. I bit into one in the car and sighed with satisfaction. It was good enough to make me forget about the pies until we got back to the house.
I made lunch. I beat an egg with a little milk and stirred Old Bay seasoning into some flour and fried the filets in a little olive oil. I had made a black bean salad with avocado and tomato and onion and lime, and we ate the fish with the beans and some guacamole and the rest of the conch salad, and it tasted like the view from the deck, the spray of the ocean, the warmth of the sun. But we didn't have pie for dessert. The little girls wanted a birthday celebration. We all wanted to go to the beach.
For the third time, at almost 3, I headed out through the pastel colored concrete houses, the screeching roosters, to the bakery. When I pushed open the screen door, the girls were on cell phones, all three of them. My pies, I said, a declarative sentence this time. It was time to meet fire with fire. One of the girls looked up at the clock. Another one disappeared into the back. I resisted the impulse to leap over the counter and follow her, seize my pies by force.
She returned. Soon, she said. I paced, observed with interest as a dozen other customers picked up pastries that were not advertised on the sign on the wall, not visible to customers, and usually assembled wrongly, in ways that annoyed the obvious regulars. A man standing at the counter looked as though he'd been there all day, was becoming a part of the decor. When his boxes emerged, he opened one, peered in, and pounded his fist on the counter.
After half an hour, a woman came out holding two white boxes, propped open. These hers, she said, thrusting an elbow in my direction. I reached for an edge of the box to check that they were the right pies, but she pulled back the box as though I were attempting to steal it. It's hot, she snapped. Don't touch.
I carried the two boxes out to the car without looking inside. I knew that if they weren't the right pies, there was nothing to be done about it, nothing to be done until the Tuesday after Easter Monday (Easter Monday--who knew?), as the door had been locked behind me.
We ate them tonight after dinner: the spiced beef and conch patties, pina coladas, more beans and guac. It seems essential to mention that they were both excellent.
Friday, March 21, 2008
Perspective Again, Island-Style
There are many reasons I love to travel but one of the most seminal at this point in my life is that it enlargens my world. Although I live in one of the world's largest cities, in which a person should theoretically be able to exist anonymously, sometimes I feel as though it is the most inward-looking, clubbiest, cliquiest, narrowest place I have ever lived, which I guess says good things about Sudbury, Massachusetts and Poughkeepsie, New York.
Lately, I have been feeling not exactly blase about New York--I don't think it will ever go that far for me--but a little jaded, I guess. Part of this is my increasing awareness of what is New York's increasing tendency to be a place where only very rich people can afford to live. This has been true to some extent since I have been here, almost 14 years, but now that I have children it is harder to ignore.
People without children can avoid this feeling a little more easily, I think, when I look back on my own experience, think about those I know now. If you have children and you deny this feeling, this awareness of the all the money, you are in denial. And it's not just the money, not even mostly the money: it's the closing in of the walls in terms of almost everything. I am so rarely surprised in New York these days, by people's politics, cultural references, clothing choices, anything. I almost feel as though each day is a script I have already written. And it's not always a flattering portrayal.
I have more to say about this, and I can tell already that as was true with some of my earlier gender posts I will regret the brevity and lack of careful forethought. But I am, after all, away--really away, on a little tiny island shaped like an elongated backward letter "C" where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Carribean--and I am doing my best under the circumstances.
I guess what I wanted to say initially, before all the treading water in a pool of platitudes about Manhattan money, was that being away, really and truly away, makes me realize like a slap in the face that other people live rich and meaningful lives in vastly different ways than I do, in vastly different places, and that the existence of these millions if not billions of people renders about 98% of my daily anxieties irrelevant.
That's not really being fair to myself. I can't realistically expect to have anxieties that don't stem from my personal experience, the world I inhabit, by choice I may add. And my anxities are nothing but relevant, but they are also, at least in part, a choice, in that I allow myself sometimes to see my little corner of the world as a web, in which I am constantly getting stuck. Does this make any sense or does it sound like the rum talking?
Just kidding. I don't even like rum. But today, Jeremy and I took the two older girls for a walk down along the beach and through the little township of Governor's Harbour. I was carrying a bottle of beer, and Jeremy said, "Aim, can we do that?" I shrugged. He ran in and got one too. We walked in silence as the girls, arms linked, skipped ahead, past three young men on the beach cleaning a fish, an old man whistling on a wooden bench, a group of kids playing stickball, a pickup truck with a bed full of laughing teenagers: in short, a random assortment of people who live here and whose lives, superficially--in the details--have nothing in common with mine.
How can I say this, not knowing these people as individuals? Because I know it, knew it after an hour here. There are no stores here, really, no advertising, few cars, few strangers, few rules. Nobody stopped us with our open beers becasue nobody cares. There is little crime. There are few starving people and few rich people; most people seem to have, as Mick Jagger would say, maybe not what they want but what they need.
It is a cliche, and an embarrassing one, to be the American tourist who visits a place like this and patronizingly, ignorantly, and yes wistfully extols the simplicity of life. This has been written about, and well, many times before, and I have no desire to take on the task myself or to open myself to the many, and obvious retorts and reactions. I know what they are. And actually, to be fair to myself again, that's not actually what I am getting at, exactly.
I don't want to live here, wouldn't be able to tolerate it for more than a couple of weeks, I suspect. And I don't think life--with the ups and downs of human relationships, desires, and disappointments--is simpler here or anywhere else. It is always hard and easy, simple and complex. And, and, and I am the world's biggest believer in the quote: Wherever you go, there you are. Ask anyone: I say this all the time.
It's just that being here--and really anywhere that isn't or ever will be home--makes me look at home a little differently, sometimes a lot differently. I like to think that some of that ability to shift perspective, or gain some, travels home with me. This time, I'd like to remember that walks don't always have destinations, that a dead starfish won't come back to life if resubmerged in water, as Lily somberly informed me at the edge of a tidal pool, and that getting away--even when I bring (drag) my weary, whiny self along--is always always worth it.
Lately, I have been feeling not exactly blase about New York--I don't think it will ever go that far for me--but a little jaded, I guess. Part of this is my increasing awareness of what is New York's increasing tendency to be a place where only very rich people can afford to live. This has been true to some extent since I have been here, almost 14 years, but now that I have children it is harder to ignore.
People without children can avoid this feeling a little more easily, I think, when I look back on my own experience, think about those I know now. If you have children and you deny this feeling, this awareness of the all the money, you are in denial. And it's not just the money, not even mostly the money: it's the closing in of the walls in terms of almost everything. I am so rarely surprised in New York these days, by people's politics, cultural references, clothing choices, anything. I almost feel as though each day is a script I have already written. And it's not always a flattering portrayal.
I have more to say about this, and I can tell already that as was true with some of my earlier gender posts I will regret the brevity and lack of careful forethought. But I am, after all, away--really away, on a little tiny island shaped like an elongated backward letter "C" where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Carribean--and I am doing my best under the circumstances.
I guess what I wanted to say initially, before all the treading water in a pool of platitudes about Manhattan money, was that being away, really and truly away, makes me realize like a slap in the face that other people live rich and meaningful lives in vastly different ways than I do, in vastly different places, and that the existence of these millions if not billions of people renders about 98% of my daily anxieties irrelevant.
That's not really being fair to myself. I can't realistically expect to have anxieties that don't stem from my personal experience, the world I inhabit, by choice I may add. And my anxities are nothing but relevant, but they are also, at least in part, a choice, in that I allow myself sometimes to see my little corner of the world as a web, in which I am constantly getting stuck. Does this make any sense or does it sound like the rum talking?
Just kidding. I don't even like rum. But today, Jeremy and I took the two older girls for a walk down along the beach and through the little township of Governor's Harbour. I was carrying a bottle of beer, and Jeremy said, "Aim, can we do that?" I shrugged. He ran in and got one too. We walked in silence as the girls, arms linked, skipped ahead, past three young men on the beach cleaning a fish, an old man whistling on a wooden bench, a group of kids playing stickball, a pickup truck with a bed full of laughing teenagers: in short, a random assortment of people who live here and whose lives, superficially--in the details--have nothing in common with mine.
How can I say this, not knowing these people as individuals? Because I know it, knew it after an hour here. There are no stores here, really, no advertising, few cars, few strangers, few rules. Nobody stopped us with our open beers becasue nobody cares. There is little crime. There are few starving people and few rich people; most people seem to have, as Mick Jagger would say, maybe not what they want but what they need.
It is a cliche, and an embarrassing one, to be the American tourist who visits a place like this and patronizingly, ignorantly, and yes wistfully extols the simplicity of life. This has been written about, and well, many times before, and I have no desire to take on the task myself or to open myself to the many, and obvious retorts and reactions. I know what they are. And actually, to be fair to myself again, that's not actually what I am getting at, exactly.
I don't want to live here, wouldn't be able to tolerate it for more than a couple of weeks, I suspect. And I don't think life--with the ups and downs of human relationships, desires, and disappointments--is simpler here or anywhere else. It is always hard and easy, simple and complex. And, and, and I am the world's biggest believer in the quote: Wherever you go, there you are. Ask anyone: I say this all the time.
It's just that being here--and really anywhere that isn't or ever will be home--makes me look at home a little differently, sometimes a lot differently. I like to think that some of that ability to shift perspective, or gain some, travels home with me. This time, I'd like to remember that walks don't always have destinations, that a dead starfish won't come back to life if resubmerged in water, as Lily somberly informed me at the edge of a tidal pool, and that getting away--even when I bring (drag) my weary, whiny self along--is always always worth it.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Getting Away
I just spent an hour standing a few feet away from the ocean eating fish caught this afternoon and grilled in a kettle as I watched smoke twist up into a black sky filled with stars. It was warm; my shoulders were bare. We had conch fritters, too, and cold beer in sweaty bottles, and the night swelled with the mingled sounds of reggae blasting from a boom box and the laughter and conversation of about fifty people, black and white: from a little boy about Lily's age to a man who looked about eighty. A handful of couples danced in the street as we ate. A woman in a tight belted dress turned away from us, and we noticed she was wearing a leather back-pack shaped like a jack-o-lantern. Caitlin and Ben rummaged for bills and I went back to the bar for more fritters. I leaned on the driftwood bar, standing deliberately in the cloud of smoke from the fish kettle, and watched the waves hit the shoreline, tiny waves that left a line of froth and then backed away, reluctantly, only to roll right back in. I saw the way the little white church with light blue shutters glowed in the moonlight; the moon was one sliver away from full. I noticed the wooden sign at one end of the bar: Da Friday Night Fish Fry, it read. But it's Thursday, I said, without thinking, to the woman about my age who stood on the other side of the bar turning the fritters with a metal spoon with holes to drain out the oil, turning them one by one, removing them to a large pan behind her, dropping in more dollops of batter. Good Friday, baby, she said, without looking up from the oil. I looked over at Caitlin and Ben, saw Caitlin watching a woman in white pants dancing with a much younger man, possibly still a teenager, in front of a paint-peeling pick-up, saw Ben looking out at the ocean, at a boat on the horizon, saw them say something to each other, then laugh. A small boy ran by, shrieking, joyfully, and a woman holding a pink drink in a plastic cup stumbled past me mumbling 'scuse me as she edged into all of us waiting there, for the fritters. I went back to the huge wooden spool that served as a table, and we ate the fritters with toothpicks, in silence, the kind of silence in which you know that you and the people you are with are each feeling perfect contentment, which is not redundant, because not all contentment is perfect, some of it is just smooth. When we were done, we put our trash in another kettle, by the side of the road, and walked to the edge of the water to see how cold it was. I took off my sandals, and then put my sandy feet back in them; it's just right, Caitlin said, meaning the temperature. It was time to go home, not because we had to, but because there was nothing else we could do to make the night any better.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
From Both Sides Now
A break in the epic saga of my Unitarian roots (sarcasm intended) for more thoughts on siblings...
So this afternoon I was tutoring two of my all-time favorite students: a quietly brilliant, absent-minded, sweet, dog and music loving teenager and his precocious, hilarious, inquisitive, quirky younger sister, as I do every Tuesday afternoon. I worked with the older brother first, and when we were done he took the book he was reading, the third part of a trilogy on World War II, and sank into a chair in the next room, where he was visible from where we sat in the study.
His younger sister and I began working, then, and after about ten minutes she said, "Hang on one second. I just want to go ask Jack something." I said sure, and watched as she approached him--his legs draped over one arm, fully absorbed in the book. "Jack?" she said, in a voice more tentative than any I had heard her use before. He didn't look up from the book. She persevered. "Do you think I could have one of those gumballs in your room on the window sill?"
"No," he said, still not looking up from the book. He didn't sound angry, just dismissive. Even I knew she would not ask again; there would be no point. She returned to our work table.
"He doesn't even like gum," she said, shaking her head a little but turning right back to her work. I had the distinct sense she wasn't surprised.
I confess that I was, though, a little anyway, watching the scene. My exact thought, just after Jack's "no," was: Why so mean? When she told me he didn't even like gum, was not planning to chew it all himself, not that that's a valid reason for refusing to spare a single gumball, I had another thought. I didn't like it, but I couldn't make it go away.
How many times had I said "no" for no other reason than that I could? Can I use your special crayons? No. Can I wear your sparkly headband? No. Can I just sit near you and bask in your aura? No, no, and no again. Why so mean?
Although I have thought about sibling relationships a lot in the past, read about them, wrote about them, I have never before seen one from the perspective I am now. Before Annika was born, I worried that I would overidentify with Lily. Guess what? I do. Every time Annika's needs take me away from her, or take time or affection or attention that would previously have been hers, I feel terrible. But I did not expect how I would feel watching Annika watch Lily. Lily was Annika's first favorite face, voice, presence. She follows her with her eyes religiously. If I put Annika, who is starting to crawl, down on the floor, she uses every ounce of her strength to move in the direction of Lily. And then Lily jumps up to go and get a piece of cheese in the kitchen, and Annika is left floundering on the floor: sunless, bereft.
In these moments, I feel terrible for Annika, probably--although I am loathe to admit it--remembering myself. I can see, now, how little it costs to do so much, to turn on the sunlight and let it stay for just a while. Not always, nobody's that patient, that nice. But all those "no's." All that indifference. All that, well, power.
Jack is one of the nicest kids I have ever met. He is the kind of kid who would help an elderly woman cross the street. I cannot imagine him making fun of someone, ever being even slightly cruel. These are rare qualities in a teenager. I was not as nice a kid as Jack, but I was pretty nice. I too would have helped the woman cross. I was especially nice to and good with younger kids, who generally loved me. I knew this, basked in it, even. But in our household, I was the one slung in the chair, eyes half closed, buried in my book, too cool to be bothered. I was, alas, the bestower of rejection.
How will I navigate this as a parent? How will I allow Lily her independence and prominent spot in the solar system without allowing her, even unconsciously, to relegate Annika to the role of a minor moon? I have inklings already; it's not about what I do or don't allow. It actually has, will have, very little to do with me.
So this afternoon I was tutoring two of my all-time favorite students: a quietly brilliant, absent-minded, sweet, dog and music loving teenager and his precocious, hilarious, inquisitive, quirky younger sister, as I do every Tuesday afternoon. I worked with the older brother first, and when we were done he took the book he was reading, the third part of a trilogy on World War II, and sank into a chair in the next room, where he was visible from where we sat in the study.
His younger sister and I began working, then, and after about ten minutes she said, "Hang on one second. I just want to go ask Jack something." I said sure, and watched as she approached him--his legs draped over one arm, fully absorbed in the book. "Jack?" she said, in a voice more tentative than any I had heard her use before. He didn't look up from the book. She persevered. "Do you think I could have one of those gumballs in your room on the window sill?"
"No," he said, still not looking up from the book. He didn't sound angry, just dismissive. Even I knew she would not ask again; there would be no point. She returned to our work table.
"He doesn't even like gum," she said, shaking her head a little but turning right back to her work. I had the distinct sense she wasn't surprised.
I confess that I was, though, a little anyway, watching the scene. My exact thought, just after Jack's "no," was: Why so mean? When she told me he didn't even like gum, was not planning to chew it all himself, not that that's a valid reason for refusing to spare a single gumball, I had another thought. I didn't like it, but I couldn't make it go away.
How many times had I said "no" for no other reason than that I could? Can I use your special crayons? No. Can I wear your sparkly headband? No. Can I just sit near you and bask in your aura? No, no, and no again. Why so mean?
Although I have thought about sibling relationships a lot in the past, read about them, wrote about them, I have never before seen one from the perspective I am now. Before Annika was born, I worried that I would overidentify with Lily. Guess what? I do. Every time Annika's needs take me away from her, or take time or affection or attention that would previously have been hers, I feel terrible. But I did not expect how I would feel watching Annika watch Lily. Lily was Annika's first favorite face, voice, presence. She follows her with her eyes religiously. If I put Annika, who is starting to crawl, down on the floor, she uses every ounce of her strength to move in the direction of Lily. And then Lily jumps up to go and get a piece of cheese in the kitchen, and Annika is left floundering on the floor: sunless, bereft.
In these moments, I feel terrible for Annika, probably--although I am loathe to admit it--remembering myself. I can see, now, how little it costs to do so much, to turn on the sunlight and let it stay for just a while. Not always, nobody's that patient, that nice. But all those "no's." All that indifference. All that, well, power.
Jack is one of the nicest kids I have ever met. He is the kind of kid who would help an elderly woman cross the street. I cannot imagine him making fun of someone, ever being even slightly cruel. These are rare qualities in a teenager. I was not as nice a kid as Jack, but I was pretty nice. I too would have helped the woman cross. I was especially nice to and good with younger kids, who generally loved me. I knew this, basked in it, even. But in our household, I was the one slung in the chair, eyes half closed, buried in my book, too cool to be bothered. I was, alas, the bestower of rejection.
How will I navigate this as a parent? How will I allow Lily her independence and prominent spot in the solar system without allowing her, even unconsciously, to relegate Annika to the role of a minor moon? I have inklings already; it's not about what I do or don't allow. It actually has, will have, very little to do with me.
The Plays: A Continuation from Yesterday
Well, I can't call this "Further Thoughts on Faith" because Anne Lamott already used it, but this essay I am working on is not about faith, per se anyway. I started, yesterday, by writing about the origins of my connection to Unitarianism. Now I will write a little bit about the plays.
Each year the children in the Religious Education program (Unitarianism for Sunday School) put on a play. The plays were written by, directed and produced by and embodied by a powerful woman named Alorie, who had a shock of black hair that I remember--rightly or wrongly--with a white streak that developed over time. Alorie was intimidating. She was smart and strong and loud and forceful, and we all did exactly what she wanted us to. I think she also wrote the music and either wrote or modified the songs.
The plays must have been something else. I realize I am using the expression "something else" in a way that makes me sound about 80, but it fits, so I will use it anyway. I say this because I can't remember them that well, in entirety, and of course I never saw them as an audience member anyway; I was in them. I remember much of some of them, less about others, but even in my very earliest First Parish productions, when I wasn't much older than Lily, I knew they were political, and I knew I wanted, at least, to understand what they meant.
The first play I was in I performed a song and dance number with the other children my and Alison's age called "Weave Me the Sunshine." For some reason this song (and the dance, or the part of it that involved the waving outstretched arms) really made an impression on my father. He can still be counted on to sing it in exaggerated falsetto once every couple of years when something triggers a memory for him. I remember some of the lyrics to the song, which went, "Weave, weave, weave me the sunshine, out of the falling rain. Weave me the hope of a new tomorrow, and fill my cup again."
I remember the Trial of the Whizmabongs, and not just because of the title. I think this was one was existential and about social justice, although that is like saying that the civil rights movement was about obtaining civil rights. In other words, all of the plays were about social justice. The Trial play featured a stirring (read intentionally angry) performance of the Beatles' song "Revolution," to which I still remember all of the words.
There was one about a circus, too. I think this one was called The Greatest Show on Earth, and in case you are thinking that this one was a typical elementary school production the circus was a big-time metaphor, for life, no less, if I am remembering correctly. I do know that I was a Poodle Trainer, and that this was considered a good part, certainly better than being one of the poodles. And there was one about Noah's Ark, or a variation on Noah's Ark, because in this I was one of Noah's daughter's: Leah, I believe. And because Unitarians are feminists, virtually by definition, Leah was not a simpering wife on the sidelines. I can't remember any of my dialogue, but I can conjure up the vehemence with which I was meant to speak it.
And from still another play, I think, was the first time I heard the song, "Little Boxes." I remember rehearsing the dance to this one, lined up on stage with a bunch of kids I still remember really well--Ned, Emily, Andy, Paul--and acting out this depressing ode to suburban living, meant unironically, I am certain, although we lived--and were rehearsing in--the very epicenter of a quintessential American suburb.
But that's the funny thing about Unitarians, about Alorie, about all of the adults I remember from these days. They transcended the dictates of suburban living, managed to exist outside the "little boxes" of the song. In fact, I like to think that the First Parish itself was, maybe still is, a home for people who don't want to live in little boxes "made of ticky tacky" even as they watch the all -American Fourth of July parade from the picture-perfect green lawn of a colonial town church under a spreading chestnut tree, no less.
I just did a little (as in 10 second) research project online to see if I could find anymore about Alorie's plays. I found one line describing one I only vaguely remember and am not sure I was ever in. It reads as follows: A group of Questions demand answers from Life, who responds with examples of many religious possibilities. Yikes. What were the costumes? Can you imagine the stage direction, the choreography? Questions! Over here, stage left. Now...jazz hands! Life, get over yourself. You have an understudy, remember?
At school, at all of the schools I attended, and they were all pretty liberal and creative places, we put on Stone Soup, Annie Get Your Gun, Oliver, Macbeth. At the First Parish Church, where Alorie ruled the stage, and the soundtrack was protest music, regardless of the decade at hand, we were the questions. We were being to taught to demand answers from life. It was scary sometimes. It was over the top sometimes. As my dad--mincing around the kitchen while singing "Weave Me the Sunshine" will attest, it could even be a little bit silly. But all in all, it was powerful stuff. Ned, Emily, Andy, Paul? I bet you remember those little boxes we were encouraged not to ever, ever fit into too.
Each year the children in the Religious Education program (Unitarianism for Sunday School) put on a play. The plays were written by, directed and produced by and embodied by a powerful woman named Alorie, who had a shock of black hair that I remember--rightly or wrongly--with a white streak that developed over time. Alorie was intimidating. She was smart and strong and loud and forceful, and we all did exactly what she wanted us to. I think she also wrote the music and either wrote or modified the songs.
The plays must have been something else. I realize I am using the expression "something else" in a way that makes me sound about 80, but it fits, so I will use it anyway. I say this because I can't remember them that well, in entirety, and of course I never saw them as an audience member anyway; I was in them. I remember much of some of them, less about others, but even in my very earliest First Parish productions, when I wasn't much older than Lily, I knew they were political, and I knew I wanted, at least, to understand what they meant.
The first play I was in I performed a song and dance number with the other children my and Alison's age called "Weave Me the Sunshine." For some reason this song (and the dance, or the part of it that involved the waving outstretched arms) really made an impression on my father. He can still be counted on to sing it in exaggerated falsetto once every couple of years when something triggers a memory for him. I remember some of the lyrics to the song, which went, "Weave, weave, weave me the sunshine, out of the falling rain. Weave me the hope of a new tomorrow, and fill my cup again."
I remember the Trial of the Whizmabongs, and not just because of the title. I think this was one was existential and about social justice, although that is like saying that the civil rights movement was about obtaining civil rights. In other words, all of the plays were about social justice. The Trial play featured a stirring (read intentionally angry) performance of the Beatles' song "Revolution," to which I still remember all of the words.
There was one about a circus, too. I think this one was called The Greatest Show on Earth, and in case you are thinking that this one was a typical elementary school production the circus was a big-time metaphor, for life, no less, if I am remembering correctly. I do know that I was a Poodle Trainer, and that this was considered a good part, certainly better than being one of the poodles. And there was one about Noah's Ark, or a variation on Noah's Ark, because in this I was one of Noah's daughter's: Leah, I believe. And because Unitarians are feminists, virtually by definition, Leah was not a simpering wife on the sidelines. I can't remember any of my dialogue, but I can conjure up the vehemence with which I was meant to speak it.
And from still another play, I think, was the first time I heard the song, "Little Boxes." I remember rehearsing the dance to this one, lined up on stage with a bunch of kids I still remember really well--Ned, Emily, Andy, Paul--and acting out this depressing ode to suburban living, meant unironically, I am certain, although we lived--and were rehearsing in--the very epicenter of a quintessential American suburb.
But that's the funny thing about Unitarians, about Alorie, about all of the adults I remember from these days. They transcended the dictates of suburban living, managed to exist outside the "little boxes" of the song. In fact, I like to think that the First Parish itself was, maybe still is, a home for people who don't want to live in little boxes "made of ticky tacky" even as they watch the all -American Fourth of July parade from the picture-perfect green lawn of a colonial town church under a spreading chestnut tree, no less.
I just did a little (as in 10 second) research project online to see if I could find anymore about Alorie's plays. I found one line describing one I only vaguely remember and am not sure I was ever in. It reads as follows: A group of Questions demand answers from Life, who responds with examples of many religious possibilities. Yikes. What were the costumes? Can you imagine the stage direction, the choreography? Questions! Over here, stage left. Now...jazz hands! Life, get over yourself. You have an understudy, remember?
At school, at all of the schools I attended, and they were all pretty liberal and creative places, we put on Stone Soup, Annie Get Your Gun, Oliver, Macbeth. At the First Parish Church, where Alorie ruled the stage, and the soundtrack was protest music, regardless of the decade at hand, we were the questions. We were being to taught to demand answers from life. It was scary sometimes. It was over the top sometimes. As my dad--mincing around the kitchen while singing "Weave Me the Sunshine" will attest, it could even be a little bit silly. But all in all, it was powerful stuff. Ned, Emily, Andy, Paul? I bet you remember those little boxes we were encouraged not to ever, ever fit into too.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Tadpoles, Whizmabongs, and Jerry...with Peace, A Beginning
Some people find Jesus. Others become bar mitzvahs and it sticks. My religious awakening began in the late seventies, in springtime, at a small pond in the woods behind the First Parish Church.
For those of you who didn't grow up in New England, where a First Parish Church seems to dot every town center, First Parish churches are Unitarian churches, and I was a Unitarian. At first, I didn't know what this meant. When we started going to this church, with our mother, I was pretty young: maybe 5 or 6.I knew why we were going as early as this, though. If you are into miracles (and thus probably not a practicing Unitarian), it is something of one that my parents actually met and married each other, as my mother, daughter of two Swedes, was a Lutheran Sunday school teacher when my father met her, and my father had been raised as an Orthodox Jew.
There was actually never any religious tension in our household, or very little. This was for many reasons, but one was certainly the Unitarian church: one of my parents' best shared decisions, in hindsight. When they had decided to marry, knowing they both wanted children, they had had "the talk." My father was by this point a lapsed Orthodox Jew, lapsed to such a massive extent that he was eager to marry a Lutheran, although he couldn't help himself, once we were no longer hypothetical but actual Unitarians, to whispering pointedly to us once in a while that "Martin Luther was actually a significant anti-Semite." This was okay. My mother had been perfectly willing to drift away from her Lutheranism, but she--unlike my father--wanted something, some spiritual education, organization, community for us. My father was not exactly down with this; I suspect he was a bit confused. But whatever he was told about Unitarianism must have seemed preferable to the rigid rules and doctrines of his own religious education, which had, in part, turned him away from a faith he never had much of a chance to embrace.
So this was the agreement--Unitarianism--and although my father never attended church with us, I think he grew to understand that it posed no threat to his latent primarily cultural attachment to his own religion, for he remains more Jewish than he realizes; as I am realizing now, one's initiation to religion is actually more significant and formative than one may initially think.
The First Parish Church of Sudbury turned out to be the perfect place for our family: my mother, whose idea of rapture was Cat Stevens--or the Unitarian choir--singing "Morning Is Broken," my father, whose idea of rapture was guilt-free Sunday morning basketball, and us, unsullied by the labels and posturing and hatred and bigotry and conversion and bias and judgment and superiority complexes and insecurities that are the underbelly of most organized religions, at least to some extent, at some point in history.
Like most I have encountered since, and certainly those in our neck of the woods in Massachusetts, the First Parish Church was a repository for a number of groups that appeal to me still. Ours housed many mixed-marriage families, mixed in terms of race, religious background, gender, age. It boasted more than a few members who went by a single name (this may have been a seventies thang, and yes I meant to spell that with an "a"), tons of hippies and those slightly too old to be hippies but still totally grooving with the movement, an inordinate number of guitar players, atheists, agnostics, people who'd been alienated from churches, temples or mosques and were exploring, and, I think it's safe to say, not a single member whose politics were to the right of George McGovern. Not the most diverse group, in a certain light, but in my opinion, not diverse in all of the best possible ways.
Children at our First Parish church attended Sunday school, although all four of my grandparents would have been shocked by what this entailed, had they known. Each year, Sunday school was different. One year, for example, you studied world religions and went to a Baptist church to observe a Baptism, a Catholic church to witness communion, a temple to meet with a rabbi. This was of minor interest to me; I had both Catholic cousins and Jewish cousins, all of whom got a better deal with the parties as far as I could tell. But except for a few moments over one cousin's First Communion dress and another's bat mitzvah pinball machines, I didn't envy any of them. They didn't have Mr. Fisher.
Mr. Fisher, whose two children were around my age, was the best Sunday school teacher in the history of the world, if I may say so objectively. I can't actually remember what the exact subject of the class he taught was meant to be on paper, which is true of so much of what I learned at First Parish. The names of things have disappeared; it is their spirit which remains. And for me, it is the memory of walking through these woods, with children who seemed like relatives to me in a funny way, based, I can only assume, on this shared and rare community, as Mr. Fisher described what we were seeing.
As is true of most important memories, I remember these mornings as sensory experiences, the literal opposite of a lecture or the way most people use the word "sermon." In fact, although as we got older we did go into the main church to hear the sermons, for me a sermon will always be Mr. Fisher explaining how tadpoles transformed into frogs, not just explaining it, though, but showing us: as we crouched around him in the cool dark woods around the edge of this little pond and saw what actually is a miracle, Unitarian-style.
How many of us can say that we were taught about evolution, and the miracles of the natural world, and the importance of viewing the natural world as one of the ultimate miracles, when we were 7 or 8 or 9, by a man who crouched down with us, in the mud, and explained it in a way that both made sense and was spiritual? I cannot deny it, in spite of my hedging around this word, when I remember this moment, the realization that at one point there had been a tiny little tadpole in a little pool of water and that it had sprouted legs and changed the future of the universe, life its very self, it was nothing but spiritual. What's more, it shaped the way I view the world.
More to come, and some of it will even be funny....
For those of you who didn't grow up in New England, where a First Parish Church seems to dot every town center, First Parish churches are Unitarian churches, and I was a Unitarian. At first, I didn't know what this meant. When we started going to this church, with our mother, I was pretty young: maybe 5 or 6.I knew why we were going as early as this, though. If you are into miracles (and thus probably not a practicing Unitarian), it is something of one that my parents actually met and married each other, as my mother, daughter of two Swedes, was a Lutheran Sunday school teacher when my father met her, and my father had been raised as an Orthodox Jew.
There was actually never any religious tension in our household, or very little. This was for many reasons, but one was certainly the Unitarian church: one of my parents' best shared decisions, in hindsight. When they had decided to marry, knowing they both wanted children, they had had "the talk." My father was by this point a lapsed Orthodox Jew, lapsed to such a massive extent that he was eager to marry a Lutheran, although he couldn't help himself, once we were no longer hypothetical but actual Unitarians, to whispering pointedly to us once in a while that "Martin Luther was actually a significant anti-Semite." This was okay. My mother had been perfectly willing to drift away from her Lutheranism, but she--unlike my father--wanted something, some spiritual education, organization, community for us. My father was not exactly down with this; I suspect he was a bit confused. But whatever he was told about Unitarianism must have seemed preferable to the rigid rules and doctrines of his own religious education, which had, in part, turned him away from a faith he never had much of a chance to embrace.
So this was the agreement--Unitarianism--and although my father never attended church with us, I think he grew to understand that it posed no threat to his latent primarily cultural attachment to his own religion, for he remains more Jewish than he realizes; as I am realizing now, one's initiation to religion is actually more significant and formative than one may initially think.
The First Parish Church of Sudbury turned out to be the perfect place for our family: my mother, whose idea of rapture was Cat Stevens--or the Unitarian choir--singing "Morning Is Broken," my father, whose idea of rapture was guilt-free Sunday morning basketball, and us, unsullied by the labels and posturing and hatred and bigotry and conversion and bias and judgment and superiority complexes and insecurities that are the underbelly of most organized religions, at least to some extent, at some point in history.
Like most I have encountered since, and certainly those in our neck of the woods in Massachusetts, the First Parish Church was a repository for a number of groups that appeal to me still. Ours housed many mixed-marriage families, mixed in terms of race, religious background, gender, age. It boasted more than a few members who went by a single name (this may have been a seventies thang, and yes I meant to spell that with an "a"), tons of hippies and those slightly too old to be hippies but still totally grooving with the movement, an inordinate number of guitar players, atheists, agnostics, people who'd been alienated from churches, temples or mosques and were exploring, and, I think it's safe to say, not a single member whose politics were to the right of George McGovern. Not the most diverse group, in a certain light, but in my opinion, not diverse in all of the best possible ways.
Children at our First Parish church attended Sunday school, although all four of my grandparents would have been shocked by what this entailed, had they known. Each year, Sunday school was different. One year, for example, you studied world religions and went to a Baptist church to observe a Baptism, a Catholic church to witness communion, a temple to meet with a rabbi. This was of minor interest to me; I had both Catholic cousins and Jewish cousins, all of whom got a better deal with the parties as far as I could tell. But except for a few moments over one cousin's First Communion dress and another's bat mitzvah pinball machines, I didn't envy any of them. They didn't have Mr. Fisher.
Mr. Fisher, whose two children were around my age, was the best Sunday school teacher in the history of the world, if I may say so objectively. I can't actually remember what the exact subject of the class he taught was meant to be on paper, which is true of so much of what I learned at First Parish. The names of things have disappeared; it is their spirit which remains. And for me, it is the memory of walking through these woods, with children who seemed like relatives to me in a funny way, based, I can only assume, on this shared and rare community, as Mr. Fisher described what we were seeing.
As is true of most important memories, I remember these mornings as sensory experiences, the literal opposite of a lecture or the way most people use the word "sermon." In fact, although as we got older we did go into the main church to hear the sermons, for me a sermon will always be Mr. Fisher explaining how tadpoles transformed into frogs, not just explaining it, though, but showing us: as we crouched around him in the cool dark woods around the edge of this little pond and saw what actually is a miracle, Unitarian-style.
How many of us can say that we were taught about evolution, and the miracles of the natural world, and the importance of viewing the natural world as one of the ultimate miracles, when we were 7 or 8 or 9, by a man who crouched down with us, in the mud, and explained it in a way that both made sense and was spiritual? I cannot deny it, in spite of my hedging around this word, when I remember this moment, the realization that at one point there had been a tiny little tadpole in a little pool of water and that it had sprouted legs and changed the future of the universe, life its very self, it was nothing but spiritual. What's more, it shaped the way I view the world.
More to come, and some of it will even be funny....
Another Saturday Night...
I was about to start writing about family vacations, and how so many of my most intense childhood memories are of the trips we took together, and how I think of this now--creating these memories--with my own children, but then I suddenly started thinking about Saturday nights instead. So Saturday night(s) it is.
Although I did not watch much TV as a kid--it was discouraged and I was just not that into it--as I got older Saturday night TV became a bit of a thing.In the suburbs, a 12, 13, 14 year old has limited possibilities on a Saturday night. Sleepovers were big, and often I had a friend over or went to somebody else's house. But Saturday nights are when suburban parents go out to dinner, sans les enfants, if you will, and that meant that once the days of the babysitter were over, whatever combination of kids was in whatever location could make their own rules for what was to shape the evening.
Do you remember Solid Gold? This was on early, just after the parents had left, sometimes when they were still home. I wasn't as into it as Alison was. I seem to be missing some pop music gene, or at least I have one that renders me immune to the charms of the pop music of my generation. I watched this because I sort of had to, to play along at the equivalent of the 6th grade water cooler, and I liked the theme song. It also served as a symbol of the transition from childhood to adolescence with its tight spangly lycra and seductive (or so it seemed to me) dance moves. Although hugely cheesy, maybe even back then, it felt illicit, dare I say sophisticated, in the same way slightly older girls with eye shadow and feathered hair seemed sophisticated.
But the big tickets items were for later, when the parents were definitely gone, and the evening was ours to, well, turn over to Aaron Spelling. Frozen pizza or popcorn at hand, we settled in for Loveboat--racy, innuendos galore, guest stars from the Brady Bunch--it only got better and better. Until Vicki, the first example I can remember personally of shark jumping. Better yet was Fantasy Island. I feel embarrassed to say that about a year ago I actually had a nightmare about a Fantasy Island episode in which a mother somehow saw what her life would be like if she wasn't in it--what her world (husband, child, etc.) would be like without her. In my nightmare the little girl on her tricycle was riding around in the driveway, and I wasn't sure if I was the girl or the missing (dead?) mother, but in my sleep, the second time around, a solid twenty-five years later, it still gave me a chill.
Saturday Night Live was the final stage on the transition train: watching Eddie Murphy sneak into the window of the ghetto apartment made me feel like a teenager, which maybe I was at that point. This show was not for kids. I didn't know about the drugs, but I could sense, sunk into the couch cushions in our little den, wiping popcorn grease on the underside of the cushion to avoid having to get up to wash them, that this was hardcore. I didn't get all the jokes, but I was willing to try. I can almost remember the mystified expression on the faces of a few friends at a sleepover once as we tried, together: It's a disconcerting feeling, knowing you're supposed to think something's funny, but not understanding why.
Anyway, it's Saturday night, and I'm 38 years old, and I'm watching Saturday Night Live. It's still only funny in spots, although I get the jokes now, and in a recurring theme--in spite of Ben, Lily and Annika asleep upstairs--I don't really feel that different from the me on the couch beside a snoring Alison, squinting in befuddlement at Chevy Chase impersonating Gerald Ford.
Although I did not watch much TV as a kid--it was discouraged and I was just not that into it--as I got older Saturday night TV became a bit of a thing.In the suburbs, a 12, 13, 14 year old has limited possibilities on a Saturday night. Sleepovers were big, and often I had a friend over or went to somebody else's house. But Saturday nights are when suburban parents go out to dinner, sans les enfants, if you will, and that meant that once the days of the babysitter were over, whatever combination of kids was in whatever location could make their own rules for what was to shape the evening.
Do you remember Solid Gold? This was on early, just after the parents had left, sometimes when they were still home. I wasn't as into it as Alison was. I seem to be missing some pop music gene, or at least I have one that renders me immune to the charms of the pop music of my generation. I watched this because I sort of had to, to play along at the equivalent of the 6th grade water cooler, and I liked the theme song. It also served as a symbol of the transition from childhood to adolescence with its tight spangly lycra and seductive (or so it seemed to me) dance moves. Although hugely cheesy, maybe even back then, it felt illicit, dare I say sophisticated, in the same way slightly older girls with eye shadow and feathered hair seemed sophisticated.
But the big tickets items were for later, when the parents were definitely gone, and the evening was ours to, well, turn over to Aaron Spelling. Frozen pizza or popcorn at hand, we settled in for Loveboat--racy, innuendos galore, guest stars from the Brady Bunch--it only got better and better. Until Vicki, the first example I can remember personally of shark jumping. Better yet was Fantasy Island. I feel embarrassed to say that about a year ago I actually had a nightmare about a Fantasy Island episode in which a mother somehow saw what her life would be like if she wasn't in it--what her world (husband, child, etc.) would be like without her. In my nightmare the little girl on her tricycle was riding around in the driveway, and I wasn't sure if I was the girl or the missing (dead?) mother, but in my sleep, the second time around, a solid twenty-five years later, it still gave me a chill.
Saturday Night Live was the final stage on the transition train: watching Eddie Murphy sneak into the window of the ghetto apartment made me feel like a teenager, which maybe I was at that point. This show was not for kids. I didn't know about the drugs, but I could sense, sunk into the couch cushions in our little den, wiping popcorn grease on the underside of the cushion to avoid having to get up to wash them, that this was hardcore. I didn't get all the jokes, but I was willing to try. I can almost remember the mystified expression on the faces of a few friends at a sleepover once as we tried, together: It's a disconcerting feeling, knowing you're supposed to think something's funny, but not understanding why.
Anyway, it's Saturday night, and I'm 38 years old, and I'm watching Saturday Night Live. It's still only funny in spots, although I get the jokes now, and in a recurring theme--in spite of Ben, Lily and Annika asleep upstairs--I don't really feel that different from the me on the couch beside a snoring Alison, squinting in befuddlement at Chevy Chase impersonating Gerald Ford.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Friday, March 14, 2008
Further Thoughts on Second Child
This evening I was on Lily's bed with Annika and Scout as Lily was getting and putting on her pajamas. She'd wanted us to come in with her, and I'd agreed: It's actually pretty funny to watch Lily get dressed. She's picked up on the concepts of "matching" and "fancy" and "casual" and chooses everything from underpants to socks to nightgowns with meticulous attention to detail. I'm a little embarrassed to say that she's better at assembling outfits than I am. I'm too safe--she has flair. Maybe she gets that from Alison.
She finally decided, after considering and discarding several alternatives, on a footed sleeper, and the three of us watched as she put it on, narrating her actions, pleased to have an audience. When she was done, she came over to the bed and stage-whispered "Boo!" at Annika, who unexpectedly chortled. Lily and I raised our eyebrows at each other.
"Go behind the bed and hide," I suggested, "And then run around and say it again. Let's see what she does." Lily did so, and when she hid I said dramatically, "Where is Lily? Where on earth could she be?" As planned, Lily ran around and shouted "Boo," flinging her arms as though to add, "Ta Da!" Annika cracked up. Really, she laughed harder than I've ever seen her, as though she was watching Richard Pryor live, which reminds me of a time when my cousin Brandon and I watched a Richard Pryor special on TV when you would have thought we were too young to get it and found ourselves rolling on the floor, tears streaming from our eyes.
But that's, clearly, another story for another time. Lily was so thrilled by this reaction--not what she usually gets from more distracted, harder-to-please family members (ahem)--that she did it again and again. I played my (minor) role each time, and each time, unfailingly, Annika burst into laughter at the moment of the big "Boo." Watching them, absentmindedly pantomiming chagrin at the "missing" Lily, I started thinking about a question an old and kindred-spirit friend had asked me over coffee earlier in the afternoon. This friend is a writer too, a tremendously successful one, and we were talking about the challenges of writing with kids. I told her that I thought one was actually manageable, once you got the hang of it. She told me about a mutual acquaintance, like my friend also a tremendously successful writer, who had told her she was only having one child for exactly this reason. And then, the obvious question, although for some reason I hadn't been expecting it. Why, she asked, did I have two?
I couldn't really answer her. I tried, said something about siblings and only children and allies and a bunch of stuff that I do, pretty much believe in principle, but as I was saying it I realized that for many reasons it would have been easier for me--for me to do the kind of work I want to do--to have had just one child. And yet, although I had researched only children enough to learn that contrary to popular belief they are almost always unusually well-adjusted, confident, successful and yes, happy, even more so than their siblinged counterparts on average, I had always known in the back of my head that in spite of all logic I wanted a second child, wanted, yes I can admit it now, a sister for Lily.
And then, not over coffee but sitting on the bed, holding Annika, watching Lily, grinning at the exchange without even realizing I was doing so, I understood something. Lily was so enthralled by this unadulterated audience, the purity of being watched and appreciated in this way, that it affected her very performance. She became more herself, somehow; she was acting, reacting, to Annika's laughter, response. And isn't this true of youngest children in general, by definition: they are the oldest child's first audience. They watch, and laugh, or react in less happy ways sometimes, but they watch from as early as they humanly can because there is nothing more compelling to watch than this bigger person you orbit around who is not a baby but can do everything you want to do and is still little like you.
I don't mean to suggest anything about adult siblings. Nobody is an audience for very long, after all. But it reminded me, made me think for the millionth time, of how I have been shaped by my first audience, the person I have loved most and with the most difficulty all of my life. I remember reading to Alison, in her bed, in our sleeping bags in her closet, and changing my voice for the parts. I remember trying to sell her on my ideas--nothing was fun without her. If I pitched it and it didn't sell, it died in the water. What was a puppet show, a school, a cruise ship, a mail system by myself? Not fun, that's for sure.
I think there's so much here that I want to say that I keep losing the thread. The original point was that watching Lily make Annika laugh, Annika laughing like that at Lily, I felt the first real, emotional surge of joy for them both, that they would have that, that apparently they already do. It has taken me awhile to know what that is--although apparently I still can't define it. But it's unlike any other relationship they will ever have, and although it may give them heartache along with the laughter, I maintain they are incredibly lucky to have it.
She finally decided, after considering and discarding several alternatives, on a footed sleeper, and the three of us watched as she put it on, narrating her actions, pleased to have an audience. When she was done, she came over to the bed and stage-whispered "Boo!" at Annika, who unexpectedly chortled. Lily and I raised our eyebrows at each other.
"Go behind the bed and hide," I suggested, "And then run around and say it again. Let's see what she does." Lily did so, and when she hid I said dramatically, "Where is Lily? Where on earth could she be?" As planned, Lily ran around and shouted "Boo," flinging her arms as though to add, "Ta Da!" Annika cracked up. Really, she laughed harder than I've ever seen her, as though she was watching Richard Pryor live, which reminds me of a time when my cousin Brandon and I watched a Richard Pryor special on TV when you would have thought we were too young to get it and found ourselves rolling on the floor, tears streaming from our eyes.
But that's, clearly, another story for another time. Lily was so thrilled by this reaction--not what she usually gets from more distracted, harder-to-please family members (ahem)--that she did it again and again. I played my (minor) role each time, and each time, unfailingly, Annika burst into laughter at the moment of the big "Boo." Watching them, absentmindedly pantomiming chagrin at the "missing" Lily, I started thinking about a question an old and kindred-spirit friend had asked me over coffee earlier in the afternoon. This friend is a writer too, a tremendously successful one, and we were talking about the challenges of writing with kids. I told her that I thought one was actually manageable, once you got the hang of it. She told me about a mutual acquaintance, like my friend also a tremendously successful writer, who had told her she was only having one child for exactly this reason. And then, the obvious question, although for some reason I hadn't been expecting it. Why, she asked, did I have two?
I couldn't really answer her. I tried, said something about siblings and only children and allies and a bunch of stuff that I do, pretty much believe in principle, but as I was saying it I realized that for many reasons it would have been easier for me--for me to do the kind of work I want to do--to have had just one child. And yet, although I had researched only children enough to learn that contrary to popular belief they are almost always unusually well-adjusted, confident, successful and yes, happy, even more so than their siblinged counterparts on average, I had always known in the back of my head that in spite of all logic I wanted a second child, wanted, yes I can admit it now, a sister for Lily.
And then, not over coffee but sitting on the bed, holding Annika, watching Lily, grinning at the exchange without even realizing I was doing so, I understood something. Lily was so enthralled by this unadulterated audience, the purity of being watched and appreciated in this way, that it affected her very performance. She became more herself, somehow; she was acting, reacting, to Annika's laughter, response. And isn't this true of youngest children in general, by definition: they are the oldest child's first audience. They watch, and laugh, or react in less happy ways sometimes, but they watch from as early as they humanly can because there is nothing more compelling to watch than this bigger person you orbit around who is not a baby but can do everything you want to do and is still little like you.
I don't mean to suggest anything about adult siblings. Nobody is an audience for very long, after all. But it reminded me, made me think for the millionth time, of how I have been shaped by my first audience, the person I have loved most and with the most difficulty all of my life. I remember reading to Alison, in her bed, in our sleeping bags in her closet, and changing my voice for the parts. I remember trying to sell her on my ideas--nothing was fun without her. If I pitched it and it didn't sell, it died in the water. What was a puppet show, a school, a cruise ship, a mail system by myself? Not fun, that's for sure.
I think there's so much here that I want to say that I keep losing the thread. The original point was that watching Lily make Annika laugh, Annika laughing like that at Lily, I felt the first real, emotional surge of joy for them both, that they would have that, that apparently they already do. It has taken me awhile to know what that is--although apparently I still can't define it. But it's unlike any other relationship they will ever have, and although it may give them heartache along with the laughter, I maintain they are incredibly lucky to have it.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Not Just Fishing
Above my desk, where I write, I have hung a picture of me and my grandfather on a dock in Martha's Vineyard. I am about six, which would make him about sixty. We are holding hands, looking out at the water. Actually, as I examine the picture more closely I see that he is looking out at the water; I am looking down at the dock. I am wearing one of the Irish knit sweaters made by my other grandmother, the one who is not his wife. I have red ribbons in my braids. My grandfather's hair is white, as are the ribbons of clouds and the sailboats dotting the sea.
I can't say I remember this particular moment, the day this photograph was taken. But it is evocative to me of my childhood summers spent on this island, with this man, and more than that it speaks to me of how much my grandfather loved the ocean. I understand this now, when I think about him looking at and over the boats along the docks, and when I realize how much my mother, too, loves the ocean, and how much I do, and that these loves are all related, connected, linked like scenes in a movie in that they are essentially seamless, one flowing into the next.
My grandfather was born in a port city, in Goteborg, Sweden. He was of the ocean, as much as a person can be. He looked it: white hair for as far back as anyone could remember, the bluest eyes I ever saw, skin that looked as though there was never a winter, not wrinkled, or leathery, but golden. Every summer, when we were on Martha's Vineyard, he would set out in the morning with his fishing rod, his bait box. He would spend the day on the dock, some dock--there were a few he favored--and return home well in time for dinner.
He did this pretty much every day, but I don't remember him ever catching any fish. I remember my sister and I were a little worried about this, or at least I was. I felt a little sorry for him, even. He tried and tried all day and then nothing. We had been taught that when you tried as hard as you could you were often rewarded with results. He never caught fish, had results, or at least that was the way it seemed to me then.
Once in a while he would take one of us with him, but never both of us at the same time. Was this one of his quiet wisdoms, to know how desperate we were to be alone with one of our grown-ups, how precious it felt to spend a day just with him? I don't know. He never would have assessed it that way out loud, and I suppose it's possible it was easier to just have one of us: no fighting, less responsibility, more quiet.
For these fishing days were quiet. They were not about our having special conversations, or conversation at all. We rarely spoke. When I went I would bring either a sketchbook and charcoals or, more usually, a regular book, and I would sit with my legs dangling over the edge of the dock and read while he fished. He did talk, now that I think about it, to the other fishermen. He would ask about technique, or lures or their boats: he loved boats, you could see it in the way he looked at them, hear it in the way he spoke about them. And he loved these fishermen, too, men who maybe reminded him of the men he'd known as a boy, when he'd probably hung out on the docks for hours at a time, day in and day out, throughout the year.
I found a picture some years back of him fishing in Sweden, as a young teenager, before he came here. He is with a cousin, I think, and a dog. He also loved dogs, who loved him back, melted in his presence, proving the whole sixth sense thing with a single gaze of adoration. There are no fish in this picture, or evidence of any having been caught. Maybe there were never any fish.
I did not understand this as a child. The idea of doing something simply for the sake of doing it is still sometimes difficult for me to fully comprehend, accept, embrace. But it interests me--no, seems essential to me--that when I think of my grandfather now, and I think of him often, and I look at this picture of him standing on the dock every single day, he is almost always standing by the ocean, looking out. I remember the mist wetting the bottom half of my legs, and the seaweed encrusted nets piled on the decks of the boats, and licking chocolate off my fingers from the ice cream sandwich he bought me and tasting salt, and the blue sky, and his blue, blue eyes, and his shock of white fine hair and the fishing rod. I remember him fishing. And finally, I realize that it was never about catching fish.
I can't say I remember this particular moment, the day this photograph was taken. But it is evocative to me of my childhood summers spent on this island, with this man, and more than that it speaks to me of how much my grandfather loved the ocean. I understand this now, when I think about him looking at and over the boats along the docks, and when I realize how much my mother, too, loves the ocean, and how much I do, and that these loves are all related, connected, linked like scenes in a movie in that they are essentially seamless, one flowing into the next.
My grandfather was born in a port city, in Goteborg, Sweden. He was of the ocean, as much as a person can be. He looked it: white hair for as far back as anyone could remember, the bluest eyes I ever saw, skin that looked as though there was never a winter, not wrinkled, or leathery, but golden. Every summer, when we were on Martha's Vineyard, he would set out in the morning with his fishing rod, his bait box. He would spend the day on the dock, some dock--there were a few he favored--and return home well in time for dinner.
He did this pretty much every day, but I don't remember him ever catching any fish. I remember my sister and I were a little worried about this, or at least I was. I felt a little sorry for him, even. He tried and tried all day and then nothing. We had been taught that when you tried as hard as you could you were often rewarded with results. He never caught fish, had results, or at least that was the way it seemed to me then.
Once in a while he would take one of us with him, but never both of us at the same time. Was this one of his quiet wisdoms, to know how desperate we were to be alone with one of our grown-ups, how precious it felt to spend a day just with him? I don't know. He never would have assessed it that way out loud, and I suppose it's possible it was easier to just have one of us: no fighting, less responsibility, more quiet.
For these fishing days were quiet. They were not about our having special conversations, or conversation at all. We rarely spoke. When I went I would bring either a sketchbook and charcoals or, more usually, a regular book, and I would sit with my legs dangling over the edge of the dock and read while he fished. He did talk, now that I think about it, to the other fishermen. He would ask about technique, or lures or their boats: he loved boats, you could see it in the way he looked at them, hear it in the way he spoke about them. And he loved these fishermen, too, men who maybe reminded him of the men he'd known as a boy, when he'd probably hung out on the docks for hours at a time, day in and day out, throughout the year.
I found a picture some years back of him fishing in Sweden, as a young teenager, before he came here. He is with a cousin, I think, and a dog. He also loved dogs, who loved him back, melted in his presence, proving the whole sixth sense thing with a single gaze of adoration. There are no fish in this picture, or evidence of any having been caught. Maybe there were never any fish.
I did not understand this as a child. The idea of doing something simply for the sake of doing it is still sometimes difficult for me to fully comprehend, accept, embrace. But it interests me--no, seems essential to me--that when I think of my grandfather now, and I think of him often, and I look at this picture of him standing on the dock every single day, he is almost always standing by the ocean, looking out. I remember the mist wetting the bottom half of my legs, and the seaweed encrusted nets piled on the decks of the boats, and licking chocolate off my fingers from the ice cream sandwich he bought me and tasting salt, and the blue sky, and his blue, blue eyes, and his shock of white fine hair and the fishing rod. I remember him fishing. And finally, I realize that it was never about catching fish.
Consider Yourself
Tonight I was watching American Idol, which I used to scoff at until I actually watched it for the first time a few years ago and found myself spellbound after about ten minutes. Anyway, watching the show, I remembered something I haven't thought about in a long, long time. I have always had a theory that most people have one thing they spend their whole life secretly wishing they could do well, one thing they simply aren't capable of doing but admire and covet and relish in others who can. For me, this is singing.
Most of the things I actually want to do I can do well enough to make doing them enjoyable. I have known since I was a little girl, however, that I did not have a beautiful singing voice. I have always loved to hear people sing. I remember being really young, five maybe, and listening to my dad play Elvis on a turntable, Elvis singing "Love Me Tender," and not wanting the sound to stop, ever. One afternoon when I was a little older, he brought home the record on which Paul Simon sang "Slip Slidin' Away"--I remember him putting it on the turntable in the living room--and realizing watching my dad that other people felt this way too, that to be able to sing like that, make people feel like this, was something of a miracle.
I loved listening to music so much that I used to beg people to sing to me, people who did have beautiful voices. I think that some of the friends I made in college--Nicole, Dana, Katrina--would not be surprised if, in 50 years I were to call them on the phone in the middle of the night and plead, "Please, please, please will you just do 'Carolina in My Mind' or 'Mockingbird?' Please?" I kind of want to call them right now.
But having people you love, whose voices you love, sing songs you love is not the same thing as being able to make that music yourself. And for a very long time, I couldn't let that one impossible dream die. I joined my (volunteer) high school chorus and sang tenor. I didn't mention that besides not being good, my voice is also unnaturally low. I am musical, meaning I can read music, play instruments, have relative pitch, so I passed for a while in this chorus by singing very quietly in my low voice and remaining, for the most part, on key, but I knew I was just sliding by, that I didn't belong. Sometimes when the singers with talent were hitting their stride I would actually stop singing, forget to sing, caught up in the listening that did come naturally to me. Once a friend, after a chorus performance in front of the school, did an impression of me with open mouth, slack jaw, glazed eyes: I looked like a lobotomy patient. I started standing behind a taller tenor. Actually, they were all taller; as is generally true of tenors, the rest of them were all boys.
So the thing I remembered while watching American Idol was this: As a freshman in high school, new to the school, certainly not bursting with confidence or bravado, and knowing already--although my stint in the chorus was still to come--that I had no talent, I auditioned for the school production of Oliver. I remember waiting outside the theater space where the auditions were held. I remember the older, confident, talented students who were already known to me as the theater kids, the ones who got all the parts in all the shows. I remember feeling small and scared on the middle of the huge dark stage looking out at a few unfamiliar businesslike faces in the audience. I don't remember singing for them. I don't remember what I sung. But I did it, finished an entire song. I knew as soon as I'd started that I would never get cast in the show. I did not get cast in the show. I think I got a kind, if patronizing note from the musical director thanking me for "giving it my best shot." I'm glad no documentation exists of the experience.
I did not feel proud of myself back then for being brave, for giving it my all, for putting myself out there even though I knew, on some level, I would fail. I felt pretty crappy about it, at the time, to be honest. I was jealous of the freshman who got the lead in the show, and I even felt a little bit glad when I got sick and couldn't see the actual performance. But you know what? Now, now when I get pleasure from singing to Lily and Annika, who aren't tough critics and like my voice because it is mine, and a lot of pleasure out of singing loudly when I am alone in the car, I kind of do feel proud of that skinny kid with the wobbly tenor who tried out for the big show. I can almost even remember her.
Most of the things I actually want to do I can do well enough to make doing them enjoyable. I have known since I was a little girl, however, that I did not have a beautiful singing voice. I have always loved to hear people sing. I remember being really young, five maybe, and listening to my dad play Elvis on a turntable, Elvis singing "Love Me Tender," and not wanting the sound to stop, ever. One afternoon when I was a little older, he brought home the record on which Paul Simon sang "Slip Slidin' Away"--I remember him putting it on the turntable in the living room--and realizing watching my dad that other people felt this way too, that to be able to sing like that, make people feel like this, was something of a miracle.
I loved listening to music so much that I used to beg people to sing to me, people who did have beautiful voices. I think that some of the friends I made in college--Nicole, Dana, Katrina--would not be surprised if, in 50 years I were to call them on the phone in the middle of the night and plead, "Please, please, please will you just do 'Carolina in My Mind' or 'Mockingbird?' Please?" I kind of want to call them right now.
But having people you love, whose voices you love, sing songs you love is not the same thing as being able to make that music yourself. And for a very long time, I couldn't let that one impossible dream die. I joined my (volunteer) high school chorus and sang tenor. I didn't mention that besides not being good, my voice is also unnaturally low. I am musical, meaning I can read music, play instruments, have relative pitch, so I passed for a while in this chorus by singing very quietly in my low voice and remaining, for the most part, on key, but I knew I was just sliding by, that I didn't belong. Sometimes when the singers with talent were hitting their stride I would actually stop singing, forget to sing, caught up in the listening that did come naturally to me. Once a friend, after a chorus performance in front of the school, did an impression of me with open mouth, slack jaw, glazed eyes: I looked like a lobotomy patient. I started standing behind a taller tenor. Actually, they were all taller; as is generally true of tenors, the rest of them were all boys.
So the thing I remembered while watching American Idol was this: As a freshman in high school, new to the school, certainly not bursting with confidence or bravado, and knowing already--although my stint in the chorus was still to come--that I had no talent, I auditioned for the school production of Oliver. I remember waiting outside the theater space where the auditions were held. I remember the older, confident, talented students who were already known to me as the theater kids, the ones who got all the parts in all the shows. I remember feeling small and scared on the middle of the huge dark stage looking out at a few unfamiliar businesslike faces in the audience. I don't remember singing for them. I don't remember what I sung. But I did it, finished an entire song. I knew as soon as I'd started that I would never get cast in the show. I did not get cast in the show. I think I got a kind, if patronizing note from the musical director thanking me for "giving it my best shot." I'm glad no documentation exists of the experience.
I did not feel proud of myself back then for being brave, for giving it my all, for putting myself out there even though I knew, on some level, I would fail. I felt pretty crappy about it, at the time, to be honest. I was jealous of the freshman who got the lead in the show, and I even felt a little bit glad when I got sick and couldn't see the actual performance. But you know what? Now, now when I get pleasure from singing to Lily and Annika, who aren't tough critics and like my voice because it is mine, and a lot of pleasure out of singing loudly when I am alone in the car, I kind of do feel proud of that skinny kid with the wobbly tenor who tried out for the big show. I can almost even remember her.
Monday, March 10, 2008
Just Climbing a Tree
Sometimes I write down a word or a phrase in my daily planner or on a scrap of paper in order to remind me of something I want to write about. Often, I end up transcribing the note from a scrap loose in my bag into the planner, and then from one month to the next in the planner, until I finally write about whatever it is I made the original note on. A note I took years ago now has been transcribed so many times that I'm not sure I remember exactly what I had intended when I first wrote it. It says, "When will my photos look like my parents'--faded, yellowed?"
I think I wrote this note after looking at one of the albums at my parents' house from my childhood. I remember on more than one occasion thinking how old the photographs looked, older even than they actually are. And I remember wondering if--trying to imagine when--looking at photos of, say, me at a college party would look so ancient, so "of the past."
For some reason this doesn't seem as interesting to me as it once did. I was trying to get at this a little bit the other night when I wrote about turning ten and age and perspective: The older I get, the less I seem focused on aging, which is counter to everything I'd expected. It's like having a second child in a way--you just don't have time to worry about the things you used to worry about. This is a good thing, I think, for we worriers. It is always a good thing when there is more to do, less to worry about.
But this is a journal entry, not the kind of writing I am supposed to be doing, so I am going to stop myself midstream. The old fallback: A memory.
The house we lived in until I was seven was my first house, my home of origin. I remember so much about this house that I think would surprise even my parents. I remember the yard: where the hammock was, the garden in the back corner, where the grapes and peas grew, the summer there were $100,000 dollar bars in the freezer in the garage, where I was sitting on the kitchen counter when I accidentally stabbed myself in the thigh with a pair of scissors. I remember the blue and green geometric pattern on the kitchen floor, the orange bedspread in my parents' room, the wall on which my nightlight was plugged in.
And I remember the big fir tree in the back of the house, near the garage, with branches low to the ground and sturdy. And I remember climbing this tree, using all the upper body strength I had to heave myself onto the lowest branch, and then climbing up, legs and arms getting scratched by the needles, never looking down, until I reached a comfortable perch and could just sit, surveying the yard--our playhouse, the roof of the Lewis' house next door, the high fence, the dog in a hole he'd dug in the dirt. The smell of a fir tree from inside the tree is not Christmassy, as you'd expect. It's deep and cool and clean and just a little minty, and if you have never climbed a tree, not to get to a tree house or with any sense of purpose, just to sit in a crook of branches and swing your legs and think about nothing while breathing in deeply, I highly recommend it.
I think I wrote this note after looking at one of the albums at my parents' house from my childhood. I remember on more than one occasion thinking how old the photographs looked, older even than they actually are. And I remember wondering if--trying to imagine when--looking at photos of, say, me at a college party would look so ancient, so "of the past."
For some reason this doesn't seem as interesting to me as it once did. I was trying to get at this a little bit the other night when I wrote about turning ten and age and perspective: The older I get, the less I seem focused on aging, which is counter to everything I'd expected. It's like having a second child in a way--you just don't have time to worry about the things you used to worry about. This is a good thing, I think, for we worriers. It is always a good thing when there is more to do, less to worry about.
But this is a journal entry, not the kind of writing I am supposed to be doing, so I am going to stop myself midstream. The old fallback: A memory.
The house we lived in until I was seven was my first house, my home of origin. I remember so much about this house that I think would surprise even my parents. I remember the yard: where the hammock was, the garden in the back corner, where the grapes and peas grew, the summer there were $100,000 dollar bars in the freezer in the garage, where I was sitting on the kitchen counter when I accidentally stabbed myself in the thigh with a pair of scissors. I remember the blue and green geometric pattern on the kitchen floor, the orange bedspread in my parents' room, the wall on which my nightlight was plugged in.
And I remember the big fir tree in the back of the house, near the garage, with branches low to the ground and sturdy. And I remember climbing this tree, using all the upper body strength I had to heave myself onto the lowest branch, and then climbing up, legs and arms getting scratched by the needles, never looking down, until I reached a comfortable perch and could just sit, surveying the yard--our playhouse, the roof of the Lewis' house next door, the high fence, the dog in a hole he'd dug in the dirt. The smell of a fir tree from inside the tree is not Christmassy, as you'd expect. It's deep and cool and clean and just a little minty, and if you have never climbed a tree, not to get to a tree house or with any sense of purpose, just to sit in a crook of branches and swing your legs and think about nothing while breathing in deeply, I highly recommend it.
Sunday, March 9, 2008
A Revelation
So my grandparents, whose house is equidistant and smack in between my parents' house and my aunt and uncle's house, had a swimming pool when we were growing up. This could be a minor detail, along the lines of, "The house also had a sun porch," or it could be what it is: The defining feature of my childhood summers. We spent almost every day at their house in the summertime, and approximately 87.75% of my childhood memories of summer involve this pool. I remember once, swayed by tales of cabin raids and hotdogs on sticks and champion-grade versions of "light as a feather, stiff as a board" I asked my mother if we could go to camp. I can still see her face, the wrinkled forehead, genuine puzzlement. "But you have the pool," she said. And so we did.
There were five of us, for the significant years, anyway, and there isn't more than 2 1/2 years between me and Brandon, the oldest and the youngest. We paired off by age with Brandon as a sort of swingman (which he is perfectly suited to by temperament: me and Andy, a month apart, Alison and Jacy, a month apart, and Brandon, almost a year and half behind them. This meant two things, our closeness in age: that we argued constantly, divisively and in ways that became so routine we wore patterns into the ground, and that we played together so harmoniously, inventively and joyfully that I sometimes feel I will spend the rest of my life trying to recapture snippets of this dynamic.
At the pool we played pool games: Marco Polo, something we called the "Colors" game, which was a variation on "Red Light, Green Light," if I remember correctly, had chicken fights (for the first time ever I am wondering why chicken fights are called chicken fights--is this offensive in some way?), raced, practiced dives and backflips, and just floated around, becoming who we were going to be. We did one thing I was telling Lily about the other day that seems funny to me--and possible sadomasochistic in a G-rated way--now. We would turn on the hose that was always screwed on for gardening purposes and ran icy cold. One of us would hold it up so it made an arc in the sky, and the others would, one by one, stand under the frigid stream for as long as he or she could stand it. Then, the shivering, partially blue child whose turn it was would sprint to the pool and jump in--the idea was to feel how much warmer the pool water seemed after the contrast of the hose water. Hmmm. For some reason I really think this was my idea. I will see if anybody remembers, which will lead to four tales of my being "bossy" and making everyone do something they didn't want to do. I can take it. (Once I hit 35 being the oldest didn't seem so hot anymore, as I suspect the rest of them--fresh-faced and with the added spring of at least a month and a day less of hard-living--gloat about behind my back.)
Anyway. This is a preamble for what started me thinking about our days at the pool. Among many powerful and vivid memories is one in particular--not of a specific incident but of a recurring motif, if you will. Picture one of us, any one of us, for we all did it (two perhaps more than the rest, but I won't name names), standing at the end of the diving board, shivering a little, perhaps goosebumped or slightly sunburned, hair plastered to head, hopping a little from one foot to the other in excitement, anticipation. Now picture the adults present: our parents, grandparents, other aunts and uncles, family friends, whoever was around on that particular day. It doesn't really matter--all you need to know is that were always a number of them, they were always drinking and eating and talking, they generally ignored us (not all of the time but as a pack, and we were all lifeguard quality swimmers, as they'd insisted, as well as unusually self-sufficient), and we thought of them in such situations not as a disparate group of adults but as The Audience.
Imagine this screamed, at the top of a healthy set of ten-year-old lungs: HEY!!! HEY YOU GUYS!!! WATCH THIS! ARE YOU WATCHING?! YOU WATCHED HER--I SAW YOU! YOU HAVE TO WATCH ME TOO! YOU'RE NOT WATCHING, AUNT LINNEA! ARE YOU ALL WATCHING NOW? SERIOUSLY, I'VE NEVER DONE THIS ONE BEFORE. OKAY, NOW I'M READY. WAAAAATTTTTTCCCCHHHH MEEEEEEEE!!!!!.
Wow. That even looks unpleasant in writing. Now imagine it shouted, with the slightest variation, over and over again, from as early in the morning as we could pedal over to as late in the day as we were allowed to remain. Oh, I almost forgot to mention that what the audience was supposed to watch was something along the lines of a jackknife, a bellyflop, occasionally a single flip, a backward dive. That's it. We could all do all of them, pretty much. Not that well; it's not like we were junior Olympians.
Here's my point. Is it possible that all everybody really needs, really, really needs to make life bearable, enjoyable, worth living, is a little more attention?
There were five of us, for the significant years, anyway, and there isn't more than 2 1/2 years between me and Brandon, the oldest and the youngest. We paired off by age with Brandon as a sort of swingman (which he is perfectly suited to by temperament: me and Andy, a month apart, Alison and Jacy, a month apart, and Brandon, almost a year and half behind them. This meant two things, our closeness in age: that we argued constantly, divisively and in ways that became so routine we wore patterns into the ground, and that we played together so harmoniously, inventively and joyfully that I sometimes feel I will spend the rest of my life trying to recapture snippets of this dynamic.
At the pool we played pool games: Marco Polo, something we called the "Colors" game, which was a variation on "Red Light, Green Light," if I remember correctly, had chicken fights (for the first time ever I am wondering why chicken fights are called chicken fights--is this offensive in some way?), raced, practiced dives and backflips, and just floated around, becoming who we were going to be. We did one thing I was telling Lily about the other day that seems funny to me--and possible sadomasochistic in a G-rated way--now. We would turn on the hose that was always screwed on for gardening purposes and ran icy cold. One of us would hold it up so it made an arc in the sky, and the others would, one by one, stand under the frigid stream for as long as he or she could stand it. Then, the shivering, partially blue child whose turn it was would sprint to the pool and jump in--the idea was to feel how much warmer the pool water seemed after the contrast of the hose water. Hmmm. For some reason I really think this was my idea. I will see if anybody remembers, which will lead to four tales of my being "bossy" and making everyone do something they didn't want to do. I can take it. (Once I hit 35 being the oldest didn't seem so hot anymore, as I suspect the rest of them--fresh-faced and with the added spring of at least a month and a day less of hard-living--gloat about behind my back.)
Anyway. This is a preamble for what started me thinking about our days at the pool. Among many powerful and vivid memories is one in particular--not of a specific incident but of a recurring motif, if you will. Picture one of us, any one of us, for we all did it (two perhaps more than the rest, but I won't name names), standing at the end of the diving board, shivering a little, perhaps goosebumped or slightly sunburned, hair plastered to head, hopping a little from one foot to the other in excitement, anticipation. Now picture the adults present: our parents, grandparents, other aunts and uncles, family friends, whoever was around on that particular day. It doesn't really matter--all you need to know is that were always a number of them, they were always drinking and eating and talking, they generally ignored us (not all of the time but as a pack, and we were all lifeguard quality swimmers, as they'd insisted, as well as unusually self-sufficient), and we thought of them in such situations not as a disparate group of adults but as The Audience.
Imagine this screamed, at the top of a healthy set of ten-year-old lungs: HEY!!! HEY YOU GUYS!!! WATCH THIS! ARE YOU WATCHING?! YOU WATCHED HER--I SAW YOU! YOU HAVE TO WATCH ME TOO! YOU'RE NOT WATCHING, AUNT LINNEA! ARE YOU ALL WATCHING NOW? SERIOUSLY, I'VE NEVER DONE THIS ONE BEFORE. OKAY, NOW I'M READY. WAAAAATTTTTTCCCCHHHH MEEEEEEEE!!!!!.
Wow. That even looks unpleasant in writing. Now imagine it shouted, with the slightest variation, over and over again, from as early in the morning as we could pedal over to as late in the day as we were allowed to remain. Oh, I almost forgot to mention that what the audience was supposed to watch was something along the lines of a jackknife, a bellyflop, occasionally a single flip, a backward dive. That's it. We could all do all of them, pretty much. Not that well; it's not like we were junior Olympians.
Here's my point. Is it possible that all everybody really needs, really, really needs to make life bearable, enjoyable, worth living, is a little more attention?
Saturday, March 8, 2008
Aging, Time and a Few Other Lite Tidbits
I apologize for the use of "lite," even sardonically, in my title. One of my few pet peeves, actually, is misspellings of this nature. The "word" "Xmas" makes me want to scream. But I wanted to use "lite" there; it felt right. Uh oh. I feel myself on the verge of annoying myself and quite possibly you in a painfully familiar circular talky kind of way. Let's get right to the writing, as it were.
In the weeks before I turned ten, I was filled with anxiety. I had decided that in becoming an age with double digits I would be, in some sense, leaving behind my childhood, I was in mourning in advance. I had decided that I loved nine, that it was--and would always be--my favorite age. I suspect this is a little strange; regardless, I was preoccupied with age, aging and the passing of time from very early on. I remember worrying that I would not be able to function when I was say, sixteen--the oldest age I could imagine if I really, really tried--because I would be so close to death that thoughts of my death would be all-consuming. I imagined myself totally paralyzed by my proximity to death pretty much twenty-four hours a day once I reached adulthood.
Aging is so colored by perspective. I am going to try right now to place myself at my tenth birthday, for argument's sake, and I can see myself sitting on the floor in the living room full of relatives. I am setting up a game just given to me by my great aunt Esther. It has lots of colored plastic pieces. It is not that Hungry Hippos game that still, for some reason, seems appealing to me in spite of myself, but it is something like it, a game that my mother--champion of wooden toys and handmade doll clothes--would never have given me. I remember feeling excited about it.
The relatives: how old were they, and how old did I think they were? When I was ten my parents would have been--oh my god--38. Just. Exactly the age that I am now. They seemed old to me--not old in a white-haired grandparent way, but so out of the realm of youth as to be no longer on a first name basis with it. My mother would have been preparing, serving or cleaning up food. My father would have been talking to people, socializing, perhaps clearing plates, although this may have been before his involuntary and only partial conversion to equal partner in all things household. I won't even start with the seemingly ancient white-haired grandparents and great aunts and uncles, who would have been younger than sixty, younger than my young-seeming parents are now.
There is no way, no conceivable way, that I can be the same age that my parents were at that tenth birthday party, the family party, where I escaped up to my room at one point to sit on the floor on the far side of my bed and cry, literally weep as I counted seconds in my head as what I thought were the best seconds of the best minutes of the best portion of my life were lost forever to all time. Ten. I somehow knew it wasn't for me.
Ten was fine. Not as good as nine, but I think that was a coincidence. Two things occur to me. Well, more than two, but the two big ones are: If I still feel like exactly the same person in my head as I did on the brink of ten, does that mean I will still feel like a ten-year-old when I am sixty-five? Is that a problem? And why does everyone else seem so comfortable in their grown-up skin? As a person who tends to idealize others I'd like to speculate that there are a lot of would-be ten-year-olds running around masquerading as grown-ups. Or maybe I'm just trying to make myself feel better.
Now, of course, that I am a parent myself more age and time questions raise themselves. Does Lily think I am as old--as other--as I did of my parents then? And at what age is the sense of one's self first formed? In other words, when does that moment occur when a person says to him or herself: Okay. This is me.
I actually do think I will cut this short to try to remember more about my parents at my age now. (This is code for: play online Scrabble. The ten-year-old me would have liked it too.)
In the weeks before I turned ten, I was filled with anxiety. I had decided that in becoming an age with double digits I would be, in some sense, leaving behind my childhood, I was in mourning in advance. I had decided that I loved nine, that it was--and would always be--my favorite age. I suspect this is a little strange; regardless, I was preoccupied with age, aging and the passing of time from very early on. I remember worrying that I would not be able to function when I was say, sixteen--the oldest age I could imagine if I really, really tried--because I would be so close to death that thoughts of my death would be all-consuming. I imagined myself totally paralyzed by my proximity to death pretty much twenty-four hours a day once I reached adulthood.
Aging is so colored by perspective. I am going to try right now to place myself at my tenth birthday, for argument's sake, and I can see myself sitting on the floor in the living room full of relatives. I am setting up a game just given to me by my great aunt Esther. It has lots of colored plastic pieces. It is not that Hungry Hippos game that still, for some reason, seems appealing to me in spite of myself, but it is something like it, a game that my mother--champion of wooden toys and handmade doll clothes--would never have given me. I remember feeling excited about it.
The relatives: how old were they, and how old did I think they were? When I was ten my parents would have been--oh my god--38. Just. Exactly the age that I am now. They seemed old to me--not old in a white-haired grandparent way, but so out of the realm of youth as to be no longer on a first name basis with it. My mother would have been preparing, serving or cleaning up food. My father would have been talking to people, socializing, perhaps clearing plates, although this may have been before his involuntary and only partial conversion to equal partner in all things household. I won't even start with the seemingly ancient white-haired grandparents and great aunts and uncles, who would have been younger than sixty, younger than my young-seeming parents are now.
There is no way, no conceivable way, that I can be the same age that my parents were at that tenth birthday party, the family party, where I escaped up to my room at one point to sit on the floor on the far side of my bed and cry, literally weep as I counted seconds in my head as what I thought were the best seconds of the best minutes of the best portion of my life were lost forever to all time. Ten. I somehow knew it wasn't for me.
Ten was fine. Not as good as nine, but I think that was a coincidence. Two things occur to me. Well, more than two, but the two big ones are: If I still feel like exactly the same person in my head as I did on the brink of ten, does that mean I will still feel like a ten-year-old when I am sixty-five? Is that a problem? And why does everyone else seem so comfortable in their grown-up skin? As a person who tends to idealize others I'd like to speculate that there are a lot of would-be ten-year-olds running around masquerading as grown-ups. Or maybe I'm just trying to make myself feel better.
Now, of course, that I am a parent myself more age and time questions raise themselves. Does Lily think I am as old--as other--as I did of my parents then? And at what age is the sense of one's self first formed? In other words, when does that moment occur when a person says to him or herself: Okay. This is me.
I actually do think I will cut this short to try to remember more about my parents at my age now. (This is code for: play online Scrabble. The ten-year-old me would have liked it too.)
Friday, March 7, 2008
Just Thinking...
Feeling a little braindead tonight and also like giving myself a bit of a break. Hey, if I don't do it, who will? So I'm going to assign myself that little creative writing exercise I give students all the time, to write about a childhood memory; I've done this before. Sometimes, you end up with unexpectedly good material. Other times, you do not. I love that I am getting braver about just plunging in, not worrying as much as I used to about it being right the first time out. I didn't expect this to happen. Not to be overly dramatic, but it feels really important.
So, I was thinking about how when I was a kid there were no ATM machines and when you needed money you had to go to the bank. As you can probably imagine (or remember, depending on how old you are), this meant that quite a lot of time was actually spent en route to, driving away from, or in the bank itself. Seriously, when is the last time you were inside a bank? The modern revelation at one time when I was pretty little still was the drive-through window at the bank, which meant that--hold onto your hats--you didn't actually have to get out of your car! Not that this drive-through window was open at night, or at any other time other than 9 to 5 on weekdays, but still. I thought it was pretty exciting from my vantage point in the back-seat. What I really liked about the drive-through window at the bank we went to, the one at the end of the Star Market Plaza that featured a Brigham's ice cream parlor (raspberry sherbet, lime rickeys), was that when the metal drawer opened and my mother took out her little envelope full of bills, it held two lollipops: one for me and one for Alison. Needless to say they were never the same color, and we always wanted the same color, and we always fought about it, and they were only those little flat circle lollipops like they have at doctors' offices. But still.
And one other story about the bank. Apparently once when we were very small, maybe 2 and 3 or 3 and 4, my mother and my grandfather took us to the bank, a different bank, the one you had to go inside. My mother parked the car in a shady corner of the lot and left us with my grandfather while she went in to do whatever transaction she had to do, possibly cashing a check? In the seventies that could really take up a chunk of your day as I recall. While she was in the bank, probably waiting in line--I remember there was always a line--Alison and I took off all our clothes in the backseat for no reason at all except that clearly we felt like it. When my grandfather realized what we'd done he became vaguely hysterical, did not know what to do with us. I actually don't know what happened when my mother got back to the car. I assume she made us get dressed again. But the point is--or a point is, anyway--that it used to be a pretty big hassle to have to go to the bank.
Okay. Bubkas. But I wouldn't have known if I hadn't tried.
So, I was thinking about how when I was a kid there were no ATM machines and when you needed money you had to go to the bank. As you can probably imagine (or remember, depending on how old you are), this meant that quite a lot of time was actually spent en route to, driving away from, or in the bank itself. Seriously, when is the last time you were inside a bank? The modern revelation at one time when I was pretty little still was the drive-through window at the bank, which meant that--hold onto your hats--you didn't actually have to get out of your car! Not that this drive-through window was open at night, or at any other time other than 9 to 5 on weekdays, but still. I thought it was pretty exciting from my vantage point in the back-seat. What I really liked about the drive-through window at the bank we went to, the one at the end of the Star Market Plaza that featured a Brigham's ice cream parlor (raspberry sherbet, lime rickeys), was that when the metal drawer opened and my mother took out her little envelope full of bills, it held two lollipops: one for me and one for Alison. Needless to say they were never the same color, and we always wanted the same color, and we always fought about it, and they were only those little flat circle lollipops like they have at doctors' offices. But still.
And one other story about the bank. Apparently once when we were very small, maybe 2 and 3 or 3 and 4, my mother and my grandfather took us to the bank, a different bank, the one you had to go inside. My mother parked the car in a shady corner of the lot and left us with my grandfather while she went in to do whatever transaction she had to do, possibly cashing a check? In the seventies that could really take up a chunk of your day as I recall. While she was in the bank, probably waiting in line--I remember there was always a line--Alison and I took off all our clothes in the backseat for no reason at all except that clearly we felt like it. When my grandfather realized what we'd done he became vaguely hysterical, did not know what to do with us. I actually don't know what happened when my mother got back to the car. I assume she made us get dressed again. But the point is--or a point is, anyway--that it used to be a pretty big hassle to have to go to the bank.
Okay. Bubkas. But I wouldn't have known if I hadn't tried.
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Humor Me; Pretend You're Five
Once upon a time there was a bird named Felix who lived on the most beautiful island in the world. There were no people on this island, but there were hundreds of kinds of birds: birds as big as elephants with wings like the sails of boats, birds as tiny as marbles who flew as fast as shooting stars, birds with feathers that shimmered in the sunlight like a perfect pearl.
There were other animals on this island, too. There were crabs of all colors who lived in the tidal pools between the dunes and the rocky strip where the waves crashed onto the shore. There were grey wolves who lived on the island's one mountain and howled into the black sky when the moon was full. And there were giraffes who ate the leaves from the tops of the tallest trees and peered into the nests that dotted each and every one.
Felix loved his island, loved swooping down and scattering the nervous crabs along the shoreline, loved napping in the crook of a pomegranate tree, loved to gaze up at the patterns the stars made in the sky as he fell asleep every night in his own soft nest. But most of all, Felix loved the music.
On an island populated almost, although not quite entirely by birds, there is music around the clock, music so varied, and earth-shatteringly lovely, and exciting and soothing and miraculous, that Felix knew he could never explain it to anyone who didn't live there. From morning to night, the sounds of birdsong filled the air. Sometimes, when one bird caught wind of another bird's pleasing melody, he would pick it up and harmonize, until another bird joined in, and another, and the wolves froze on the mountainside to listen, and even the crabs stopped rattling in their shells to hear the symphony.
Of all the birds who lived on the island, Felix was perhaps the most in love with the constant sounds of singing. He would beg his friends to sing for him. Sometimes he would organize them in groups so the solid, low-to-the-ground Dodo with the booming voice could sing doo-wop bass as the proud Phoenix belted out a jazzy accompaniment. Felix would lie on a flat rock with his wings behind his head and just listen, eyes closed, as happy as a bird could be.
But although every single other bird on the island had an unlimited repertoire of songs, Felix never sang. He had tried, as an eager hatchling, tried to jump in when the other birds started riffing and trilling, but as soon as he heard his own voice he would stop. You see, Felix knew--he always knew somehow--what the music was supposed to sound like, what it could sound like when all the stars were aligned and all the birds fat full of pomegranate juice and ready to sing, sing, sing their hearts out. When he sang along, even in a muted whisper, it ruined the sound. It made him sad, sadder than a bird on such a joyful island should ever have to be, but Felix could not sing.
The only other creature on the island who knew how sad Felix really felt was his best friend, a giraffe named Boo. Whenever Felix felt really down about his voice, Boo would try to comfort him. "You don't need to be able to sing, Felix," Boo would say. "You can fly!" Felix appreciated Boo's efforts to cheer him up, but they both knew that birds were supposed to fly and sing, not just one or the other.
Sometimes Boo would try a different strategy. "Felix," she would say, "I'm a giraffe, and I can't even...." This never worked because, well, giraffes can't really do very much at all, and everything they were supposed to be able to do--chomp leaves, scope out goings-on thanks to their long necks--Boo could do. What she couldn't do was make Felix feel better about his voice. Even pointing out how much joy he got from listening to all the birds sing didn't help. Felix wanted to make music too. He simply couldn't get over it.
One day Boo was eating some leaves from a particularly lush tree near the base of the mountain when she saw something amazing. "Felix!" she called. "Come quickly!" Felix, who'd been listening to a couple of morning doves whistling a little ditty from nest to nest nearby, oblingly flew on over.
"What is it?" he said glumly. Boo craned her long, long neck and looked out at the sea again. It was still there, bobbing in the waves and getting closer and closer to the shore.
"Follow me," she said, and bounded off through the trees, her head just slightly taller than the treetops. Felix flew beside her. By the time they reached the beach, it had washed up on the shore. It was a giant trunk, belted with two bands of gold. It looked watertight, but it was locked, and there was no key. Felix hopped along the rocks for a few minutes until he found a long thin piece of shell. He carried it back to Boo in his beak. When he placed it in the keyhole and turned, the top of the trunk flew open. Boo and Felix, shaking with anticipation, peered inside.
After a few minutes of staring in silence, Boo began removing the objects with her mouth and placing them gently on the sand. Felix wove in and out among them, stopping to peck one, brush a wingtip over another. Finally, Boo had emptied the trunk, and Felix stopped examining. "Felix?" Boo said, sounding a little embarassed. "Um, do you know what these are?"
"No," said Felix in wonderment. He had never seen objects like this before on the island, and each was more pleasing to him than the next. Some were long and thin and silver, like the leg of a heron. Others were curvy and made of gleaming wood. One was the size of an ostrich egg and made of brass, another round and covered with what looked like a thin thin sheet of bark. Felix picked up the long, thin, silver object in his wings. It was cool and smooth. It had little holes along its length, what looked like a flat beak at one end.
Without stopping to think about what he was doing, Felix held the object to his beak and blew. Boo jumped, then sank to a sitting position in the sand so she could listen. For the first time since she had known him, Felix was making beautiful music, the most beautiful music she had ever heard. When he was finished, other birds and crabs and wolves had gathered around, and they all clapped and whistled and sang in approval. The music was like nothing they had ever heard, and on an island like this, populated almost entirely by birds, they'd heard almost every kind of birdsong that there was.
Felix looked at the crowd, at the amazed faces, and picked up the curvy glossy object and the long curved bow. He held the object in one wing and the bow in the other and drew it across the strings. The growing audience gasped. For the rest of the afternoon, Felix made music for his friends. Each object was different and seemingly more beautiful than the next. By the time the sun had set, he had mastered every one. He was a natural. And making music, as Felix had always suspected, was just as glorious as listening to it.
As the moon rose in the sky, Felix and Boo sat on the beach surrounded by the miraculous objects that had washed to shore in the trunk. "It's a full moon," observed Boo. Suddenly the sound of the wolves on the mountain filled the night. From one end of the island to the other, birds could be heard joining in, singing along, creating melodies to accompany the rich full howls. Felix smiled in the darkness. He had never really noticed it before, but the wolves were singing too. There was, he had finally learned, more than one way to make music, more than one way to be an absolutely perfect bird.
There were other animals on this island, too. There were crabs of all colors who lived in the tidal pools between the dunes and the rocky strip where the waves crashed onto the shore. There were grey wolves who lived on the island's one mountain and howled into the black sky when the moon was full. And there were giraffes who ate the leaves from the tops of the tallest trees and peered into the nests that dotted each and every one.
Felix loved his island, loved swooping down and scattering the nervous crabs along the shoreline, loved napping in the crook of a pomegranate tree, loved to gaze up at the patterns the stars made in the sky as he fell asleep every night in his own soft nest. But most of all, Felix loved the music.
On an island populated almost, although not quite entirely by birds, there is music around the clock, music so varied, and earth-shatteringly lovely, and exciting and soothing and miraculous, that Felix knew he could never explain it to anyone who didn't live there. From morning to night, the sounds of birdsong filled the air. Sometimes, when one bird caught wind of another bird's pleasing melody, he would pick it up and harmonize, until another bird joined in, and another, and the wolves froze on the mountainside to listen, and even the crabs stopped rattling in their shells to hear the symphony.
Of all the birds who lived on the island, Felix was perhaps the most in love with the constant sounds of singing. He would beg his friends to sing for him. Sometimes he would organize them in groups so the solid, low-to-the-ground Dodo with the booming voice could sing doo-wop bass as the proud Phoenix belted out a jazzy accompaniment. Felix would lie on a flat rock with his wings behind his head and just listen, eyes closed, as happy as a bird could be.
But although every single other bird on the island had an unlimited repertoire of songs, Felix never sang. He had tried, as an eager hatchling, tried to jump in when the other birds started riffing and trilling, but as soon as he heard his own voice he would stop. You see, Felix knew--he always knew somehow--what the music was supposed to sound like, what it could sound like when all the stars were aligned and all the birds fat full of pomegranate juice and ready to sing, sing, sing their hearts out. When he sang along, even in a muted whisper, it ruined the sound. It made him sad, sadder than a bird on such a joyful island should ever have to be, but Felix could not sing.
The only other creature on the island who knew how sad Felix really felt was his best friend, a giraffe named Boo. Whenever Felix felt really down about his voice, Boo would try to comfort him. "You don't need to be able to sing, Felix," Boo would say. "You can fly!" Felix appreciated Boo's efforts to cheer him up, but they both knew that birds were supposed to fly and sing, not just one or the other.
Sometimes Boo would try a different strategy. "Felix," she would say, "I'm a giraffe, and I can't even...." This never worked because, well, giraffes can't really do very much at all, and everything they were supposed to be able to do--chomp leaves, scope out goings-on thanks to their long necks--Boo could do. What she couldn't do was make Felix feel better about his voice. Even pointing out how much joy he got from listening to all the birds sing didn't help. Felix wanted to make music too. He simply couldn't get over it.
One day Boo was eating some leaves from a particularly lush tree near the base of the mountain when she saw something amazing. "Felix!" she called. "Come quickly!" Felix, who'd been listening to a couple of morning doves whistling a little ditty from nest to nest nearby, oblingly flew on over.
"What is it?" he said glumly. Boo craned her long, long neck and looked out at the sea again. It was still there, bobbing in the waves and getting closer and closer to the shore.
"Follow me," she said, and bounded off through the trees, her head just slightly taller than the treetops. Felix flew beside her. By the time they reached the beach, it had washed up on the shore. It was a giant trunk, belted with two bands of gold. It looked watertight, but it was locked, and there was no key. Felix hopped along the rocks for a few minutes until he found a long thin piece of shell. He carried it back to Boo in his beak. When he placed it in the keyhole and turned, the top of the trunk flew open. Boo and Felix, shaking with anticipation, peered inside.
After a few minutes of staring in silence, Boo began removing the objects with her mouth and placing them gently on the sand. Felix wove in and out among them, stopping to peck one, brush a wingtip over another. Finally, Boo had emptied the trunk, and Felix stopped examining. "Felix?" Boo said, sounding a little embarassed. "Um, do you know what these are?"
"No," said Felix in wonderment. He had never seen objects like this before on the island, and each was more pleasing to him than the next. Some were long and thin and silver, like the leg of a heron. Others were curvy and made of gleaming wood. One was the size of an ostrich egg and made of brass, another round and covered with what looked like a thin thin sheet of bark. Felix picked up the long, thin, silver object in his wings. It was cool and smooth. It had little holes along its length, what looked like a flat beak at one end.
Without stopping to think about what he was doing, Felix held the object to his beak and blew. Boo jumped, then sank to a sitting position in the sand so she could listen. For the first time since she had known him, Felix was making beautiful music, the most beautiful music she had ever heard. When he was finished, other birds and crabs and wolves had gathered around, and they all clapped and whistled and sang in approval. The music was like nothing they had ever heard, and on an island like this, populated almost entirely by birds, they'd heard almost every kind of birdsong that there was.
Felix looked at the crowd, at the amazed faces, and picked up the curvy glossy object and the long curved bow. He held the object in one wing and the bow in the other and drew it across the strings. The growing audience gasped. For the rest of the afternoon, Felix made music for his friends. Each object was different and seemingly more beautiful than the next. By the time the sun had set, he had mastered every one. He was a natural. And making music, as Felix had always suspected, was just as glorious as listening to it.
As the moon rose in the sky, Felix and Boo sat on the beach surrounded by the miraculous objects that had washed to shore in the trunk. "It's a full moon," observed Boo. Suddenly the sound of the wolves on the mountain filled the night. From one end of the island to the other, birds could be heard joining in, singing along, creating melodies to accompany the rich full howls. Felix smiled in the darkness. He had never really noticed it before, but the wolves were singing too. There was, he had finally learned, more than one way to make music, more than one way to be an absolutely perfect bird.
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