One Evening in April

I think I said in my very first post that I had never been able to keep a diary, and not for lack of trying. This is true. I used to receive those little pink padded ones with the tiny appealing locks and keys all the time because people knew I liked to write. I rarely made it past the first day. I found one once, in my twenties, I think, from about third grade. In another example of how one's second hand memories are on the sorry side, all I can remember was being surprised by the paltry nature of the handful of entries, one of which was about making cupcakes, the others all variations on either my mother making me do something I didn't want to do or my sister bothering me.

Not the stuff of the Great American Novel. But somehow, even as a second hand memory, I can see it is, in some elusive way, the stuff of life. Although I like to sum up periods of my life in ways that make it easy to categorize, compartmentalize, even idealize, the details of a day can be mind-numbingly dull when recorded, except, except when enough time has passed that it is exactly those details--how important and exciting cupcakes used to be, how angry I was when Alison copied me--that make me come anywhere near remembering what my life was actually like.

I say this because it has occurred to me, recently, that among other good things this blog is doing for me is providing me with a record not of what I am doing with my days but what I am thinking about, or wanting to write about, which are often for me the same thing. On a less positive note, I can already see that for me anyway, reading between the lines will provide me with a sharper record than I may want later on of the harried, wistful exhaustion of these days of parenting two young children while trying to write, but maybe that's not ultimately such a bad thing. A person's life, my life, is what it is. I have left plenty of blank space for illusions if I need them, more than enough that has gone unsaid.

So I thought in honor of my recognition, my perhaps subconscious desire to keep a record, I would just describe in brief the evening I just had so, in 50 years time, I won't remember my late 30s as a television sitcom with me covered in pureed root vegetables with unwashed hair in Old Navy track pants while Lily lies on the floor whining and Annika screeches in her high chair.

This evening, at the end of the work day, my friend, our friend Bryant came over to have dinner with me and the girls. Because he is allergic to our dogs, we had decided to go out, a decision complemented nicely by the temperature, which hovered around 70 degrees, even at dinnertime. Bryant is the kind of friend who, although he is allergic to our dogs, has often agreed to care for them while we are away, and when he cares for them, although it makes him sneeze violently, his eyes turn red and water, puts his hand in a plastic bag to pet them, partly because he genuinely loves animals but mostly because he knows that I will be worried that nobody is petting them. Needless to say, Lily loves him as much as I do; Annika is starting to get it too. For all intents and purposes, although it is not a term I am fond of unless Al Pacino is involved, he is their godfather. It is fitting somehow, because he teaches fifth grade at the Rodeph Sholom School here in Manhattan in spite of his rural Alabama Southern Baptist upbringing, to say he is the ultimate mensch.

Anyway, Bryant showed up, bearing a brown paper bag containing two expensive scented candles for some reason, a purchase he'd made for himself on the way, and we eventually got everybody sufficiently clad to head out the door. Lily was hopping with excitement because I had said she did not need to wear a jacket, that a sweater would suffice. She told every stranger we passed for the first two blocks that she was wearing "short sleeves, under the sweater." Annika, in deference to the beautiful weather, my state of exhaustion, fell peacefully asleep the moment we reached the restaurant. Bryant and I each had a quarto of wine; Lily had a Shirley Temple. We ate a salad with shredded celery root and toasted walnuts and thin slices of bresaola, baccala fritters with lemony aioli and a grilled pizza, like the ones from the best restaurant in Providence, where my sister went to college.

The pizza sauce was described on the menu as "spicy," and although Lily actually likes slightly spicy things if she doesn't hear them labelled as such, I was worried it might actually be too spicy, so I told Bryant I was worried about the--and I spelled it out--s-a-u-c-e. "What's sah-ukuh, Mama?" Lily said, and we agreed that there was only a short window left for spelling before she mastered the ability to verbally decode the silent E.

Bryant described a guy he'd met in his tennis league, and Lily asked what we were talking about after trying and failing with one of her current favorite lines, which is, "Please no talking about boring grown-up things." I told her we were talking about somebody that Uncle Bryant really liked, hoping maybe that she would ask why he liked a boy so I could indignantly and self-satisfiedly feign outrage at her narrow-mindedness and explain gently, wisely and lovingly, in age-appropriate fashion, that people can love anybody they want to, but she is both too young to care about this conversation and--thanks New York, for this--already so aware of this that we will actually never get to have this conversation, which is a good thing. Maybe someday I will be asked to write an after-school special about acceptance and I can give my speech then. Probably not, though. I can live with that.

And then Annika woke up, and Lily got fussy, and the sky got darker, and Bryant quietly sang camp songs to Lily, including one I'd never heard before called, "This Little Song Has Only Six Words," and after he'd sung it about a dozen times, I said, "Hey! That's actually seven words!" And Bryant looked at me like I was a little bit dim. And so, in fact, did Lily. And I took Annika out of her stroller and held her, and the mother and daughter at the next table, the only other people eating outside, said, "Oh! What a perfectly beautiful baby," and we all beamed at them, because it is true and because we all liked hearing it, in different ways.

And then it was time to go home, past bedtime, actually, and I let Lily climb into the baby stroller and wrap Annika's blanket around her, and I pushed her, and Bryant held Annika, and we walked back home up Seventh Avenue, Lily pretending to be asleep until each time we teased her into forgetting she was pretending she was asleep, such as by my saying, in an exagerrated way, "Well, if Lily's asleep, I'll have to give you all the ice cream to take home, Bryant."

And when we got back home Lily ate the three bites of ice cream she'd been promised, decided to wear her ladybug shirt as a "nightshirt," and put herself to bed so quickly I didn't even realize she'd done it until I went in her room and she was snuggled up with her Flat Duck, sound asleep. Bryant gave Annika back, he'd been holding her, collected his candles, and headed out into the night. I changed Annika, who beamed at me from the changing table, then fell instantly asleep as soon as I set her in the Pack-and-Play.

So some evenings are like this. Remember this: future self. Some nights, this night, was just like this.