Safe

A furtive call to my aunt, made from behind a rack of sweaters at a clothing store past 8 p.m., regarding the subject of some worryingly tough cubes of beef in a Boeuf Bourguignon, reminded me of something when I got home and was immensely gratified to find the beef, when tested again, fall apart beneath a fork.

At least twenty-five years ago, probably twenty-seven or twenty-eight, I decided one afternoon to ride my bike to the penny candy store a mile or so from my house. This store was a familiar destination. Along with my grandparents' house, two miles up the street in the other direction, it was one of the first places we were allowed to ride our bikes alone. It was a little unusual that I was by myself, and I can't remember why. Almost always, Alison was with me, or a cousin, or a friend, but I must have really wanted some candy because I'd set out solo. It must have been summer or after school in the fall or late spring, because it was warm, although not sunny, I do remember, and I'd been home alone before deciding to go for the bike ride because there was nobody home at my house when I got there, to the store.

Mostly what I remember about this part of the story is the sensation I had, the intuition or sixth sense, I guess you call it, that something was wrong. From pretty early on in the ride I'd had a feeling that someone was watching or following me. A car had slowed, then sped up, then appeared again as I rode past at a point it should have left far in the distance. This could well have had nothing to do with me. It is likely that this had nothing to do with me. But I was eleven or twelve and had a very active imagination and had read all of the YA books about kidnapping and I did, legitimately, have a funny, skin-crawling, goosebumpy kind of a feeling for most of the ride and then still, once I'd reached my destination. Instead of going into the candy store I went to the payphone--yes, payphone--and dialed my father's office. He was not there. I know my mother must have been occupied doing something out-of-the-ordinary, a doctor's appointment? a haircut? or I would have called her at school. These were the days before cell phones. When someone wasn't there, they weren't there.

So I called my uncle. He was at work; it was the middle of the day. He owns his own business, so it wasn't quite the same thing as calling an employer and asking for him, but it was a workday, the middle of a workday, and I didn't think twice. I am wondering now if I was a little bit older, as I don't think my grandfather, who died when I was thirteen, was alive; I distinctly remember calling my uncle.

And more than the calling, I remember he came. Ten minutes could not have passed, and he pulled up in front of the bench I was sitting nervously on in the parking lot. And he drove me and my bike back home and he waited until I was inside with the door locked, and he went back to work. And what strikes me about this memory now, which my uncle or parents probably don't even recall, is the absolute certainty with which I called my uncle, knowing that if I told him I was scared, told him I was pretty much anywhere, in need of pretty much anything, he would be there as fast as he could. And what struck me tonight, when I got home and checked the beef and called my aunt to tell her it had actually all worked out fine, was how many adults in my life were there for me like this growing up, how surrounded I was by this certainty that if I needed help, it would arrive, quickly, unquestioningly, lovingly, and from one of a dozen people who were part of my everyday life.

Of the many reasons I am lucky, or fortunate is perhaps a more appropriate word, this is one of the greatest, most significant, most lasting. I have never, not for one single day, one hour, one moment of my life, not felt a part of a connected group of people who would do anything for me, and did, who--still, when the phone rings in their home, at any hour, after any period of time--hear my voice and respond, automatically, with gladness: Amy! What can I do for you?

If I do anything for these two girls of mine, for whom I would do anything, it is to make them feel safe, Safe, like this. Thanks to the people who gave me this gift, thanks to my uncle with my bike in the back of his truck in the middle of a workday twenty-five odd years ago, I am trying as hard as I can.

Let There Be Light

Some day, in the far off future, I would like Lily and Annika to know, as Lily might not remember and Annika most certainly won't, that once on a December evening at their grandparents' house, they were put to sleep by candlelight, walked a path of light to reach a room where lights twinkled in the windows and surrounded them, lit their faces as they slept, smiling.

Not real candlelight, of course, but earlier in the day Lily and my mother had found some small real-looking, battery-operated votive candles somewhere in the house, and Lily was taken with them. During the day she had played with them, and at some point, when I was not paying attention, had lined the back staircase with them, bringing more up to the bedroom where we've been sleeping, my childhood room. Then, she'd come back downstairs again, to play with something else, and forgot about the little votives she'd set about. But my mother had not.

When I went up to ready the room before bedtime, I rounded the corner to see that my mother had been there before me. She'd moved some of the lights so they still lined the stairs but had also set some in the hallway to the bedroom, lining the pathway. In the room itself, which was dark, she'd set small clusters in the window sills and by the walls, so the entire walk from the downstairs to the bedroom was lit with what appeared to be actual votive candles. It was lovely; it was magical.

Lily is quite taken with magic these days. She asked for, and received, a magic set for her birthday, and has been performing her own creative acts of magic, making herself disappear, under the carpet, for example. She has also become keen on what she sees as acts of magic in the world around her: snow, for example, a line of geese in flight, her ability to make Annika laugh and laugh. I didn't want to spoil this one.

I brought Annika up first, told Lily one more story. When we entered the room and Annika saw the lights, her little mouth pursed into an "O," and she turned in my arms to see my face. "Oh, oh!" she said, and when I placed her in her crib she stood up and walked its perimeter, noting all of the lights in the room. And then I came back down for Lily. Instead of walking her up as I typically would, I told her to go up by herself on the back stairs. I heard her sleeper-covered feet padding on the stairs, stopping at the landing, picking up speed in the hallway.

I walked around the other way, stopped at the top of the stairs where she stood in the doorway, her back to me. Annika was standing in the crib, smiling, pointing at the lights in the window. Lily turned to me, then, not technically in my arms, and her eyes were huge.

"It's like--" she started.

"I know," I said. She didn't have to say it.

Remember. Know.

Bigotry, Plain and Simple

I keep thinking about Frank Rich's column in today's New York Times about Obama's selection of Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his inauguration this January. Reading it was one of those uncanny experiences when I found myself thinking: Yes, yes. Exactly. This is exactly how I feel.

I have heard a few people I respect and some I do not claim that they are "okay" with Obama's choice of Warren to be the most significant religious figure at his swearing-in ceremony. The general sentiment among these people, Obama supporters all, is that the choice is perhaps disappointing but indicative of Obama's oft-stated belief in inclusivity, in bringing many different and differing points of view to the table.

Well, I agree with Rich: This is "too cute by half" as explanations go in terms of the statement this choice makes to the country, the world at large, in a year that has seen some real setbacks for gay Americans, Prop 8 in particular. Warren has compared homosexuality to pedophilia and incest. Until very recently his website made it quite clear that homosexuals were not allowed in his church. Now as a half Jew and a woman and a pro-choice advocate and a huge proponent of stem cell research, I am clearly not Warren's target audience. To paraphrase (nonsensically loosely) from that Tom Cruise sports agent movie, he'd have me burning in hell at "half-Jew." I'm also not naive about the evangelical movement and its millions of homophobic adherents. But pedophilia? Incest? Seriously? This is okay to utter out loud? This gets you invited to the White House? Have other presidents chosen religious leaders to deliver their invocations who espouse bigotry in many--more--forms? Sure. Of course. But I know I am not alone when I say I expected more from Obama. Much, much more.

Obama did not come down on the side of gay marriage when he was running for president. It would probably (although not certainly) have meant the loss of the election. I got this, Democrats got this, gay and straight Americans who would have rather lived in cardboard boxes in Canada than under a McCain/Palin administration and at least four more years of failed Bush policies got this. But Obama was elected. He won. By a lot. And he would not have been unelected if he had chosen a more open-minded, tolerant, accepting, positive role model for Christian Americans to stand up with him and pray for our country's future. There are plenty of options that would not have involved a tacit endorsement of the worst kind of hate-mongering, would not have involved sending what will be taken as a wink by people who really deserve a smack in the face.

I don't really care what Obama thinks of Warren and his weird, cult-like bands of purpose-driven followers in his private life. I am glad that Warren apparently does much to fight poverty and "believes in" global warming, I guess, although the children in my daughter's preschool class understand the science well enough to explain it to an adult. I am not so glad that the millions of children in his church are being taught that homosexuality contradicts, and therefore disproves, Darwin's theory of evolution. I am glad that Obama believes everyone deserves a "voice at the table." I believe this too. I believe the KKK has the right to exist under our Constitution. But I am not inviting a Klansman to dinner.

This was not the right time for Obama to make this gesture. It is the right time for him to do what we elected him to do, what I actually--surprising myself sometimes how much--believe he can do: Change the world. But this requires action, not acquiescence. Words and gestures are powerful, actions more so. And one transgendered marching band does not cancel out a viewpoint that in my humble opinion really doesn't need any more airtime.

Women's Hands

I actually forgot I was supposed to be back yesterday. Remembered today and put it off until now; it's amazing how rusty I feel. I will ease back in.

As much as I love holidays, and family celebrations, and Christmas at my parents' house in particular, having a five- and a one-year-old makes the occasion a little more, should we say, chaotic. More magical. Less restful. My mother, who somehow manages to be the primary caretaker for, well, everybody, when we are under her roof, has been sick--laid out in bed, barely able to sit up--for two full days, adding to the sense of chaos.

This afternoon, Lily, my father and I drove to my grandmother's house, two miles up the street, to pick her up and bring her over here to spend the rest of the day with us. My mother has been preparing my grandmother's meals for some time now, filling her freezer with homemade meals and helping her fix a tray twice a day, or more. We had brought her breakfast, and my aunt had made shrimp stew for her for lunch while visiting, but she was to have dinner here, which made all of us happy, I think. There is something lonely about the meal tray, even when the meal in question is eaten with company.

Anyway, the day made me realize a number of things, perhaps most of all how mothering, when done well, is a lifetime job. Over the past week-and-a-half, my mother has cared for her own mother daily, including accompanying her to regular doctor's visits, driven to another state to make it possible for me to host two special birthday gatherings for Lily, one of which she designed on her own, created our immediate family's holiday celebration pretty much singlehandedly, invited seven children to a gingerbread house-making party for which she had baked the cookies herself, painted and sent out holiday cards to at least a hundred friends and family members, and had thirty relatives over for a full Swedish smorgasbord on Christmas Day itself. This while working, making art, sharing the care of my two children, and keeping up with her own schedule of appointments and commitments.

My mother's mother is almost ninety-three, I am almost forty, my children are five and one; I don't really see an end in sight for all this mothering. I wonder now, as my perspective has shifted from that of sister, granddaughter, daughter to a more complicated view from my spot in this line of complicated women, how, in what ways, the burdens and pleasures of her role as relates to us have shaped her.

I have always found women awe-inspiring and infinitely powerful. I remember as a small girl noticing my grandmother's hands: sun worn, leathery, even, with long, gnarled, beautiful fingers. My grandmother herself does not have a powerful presence. She is quiet and self-effacing in a crowd, almost always. But her capabilities shone through her hands, in her own way, and even now, her hands can do: Do what they need to, when they need to, even as the rest of her seems more frail, sometimes, when I choose to notice. This morning, when we brought her breakfast, she arranged the food on her tray with her pills and a glass of water. She picked up the tray, balanced it, and started to walk toward her room, where she eats many meals now, at her comfortable chair, surrounded by photographs and books. "Let me take that," I said, reaching for the thin tray. She looked at me, eyes steady.

"You can take the glass of water," she allowed. And so I did.

And for now, that was all.

Holiday Sentiments Et Al

It is amazing how much I do not want to be writing right now. The problem with writing 365 days a year is that a person needs a break, a sanctioned break, from ANYTHING, and although I have essentially taken one over the past few days in that I have written a line or two at most, I have been thinking about writing, or rather not writing, and feeling anxious about the blog, in a way that is threatening to impinge on my holiday cheer. So, I hope my loyal readers won't abandon me, but I have made an executive decision (easy, when there is only one of you), that I am going to take a blog break until December 26th, the day after Christmas. This way, I can focus on introducing Lily and Annika to several feet of untouched snow, eating chocolate in front of the fireplace, wrapping presents, and reading as many books as I can pack into the next few days without the thought hanging over me that there is something else I am meant to be doing. Part of me wants to--now that I am writing (see! it works! writing begets writing!)--erase this post and write about parties. I am fascinated by why and how we commemorate signposts in our lives. Or snow. How being here, now, in this white, white world is so evocative to me of my childhood winters and so alien to my winters of today. But I am giving myself a few days off as a gift. So when I return, on Friday, I will be invigorated and excited to write. In spite of the task I have set for myself, it should not feel like a chore. Work, yes. A chore, no.

Happiest holidays full of warmth and light and laughter to anyone happening upon this. Please come back on Friday.

Lame, Again

Post to come: Why Parties?

On Pork and Parenthood

Blog called on account of need to search internet for succulent ham glaze. Back tomorrow, no holds barred. Or at least back tomorrow. I don't know what I meant with the whole "no holds barred" thing. Feeling punchy, I guess.

Feel like I should also mention that five years ago I had been a mother for a not much more than an hour. It took a little longer for it sink in.

Five Years Ago

Five years ago from right about now, meaning this very minute, I went into labor with Lily. I was sitting with Nicole on the floor in our old apartment on the second floor, which was filled with unpacked boxes. The bed was not made; the mattress and boxspring weren't on the frame. All of a sudden I felt a little funny. I wasn't in pain, exactly; something just felt different. And then the feeling went away. A little while later, it came back. "Nicole?" I said.

About sixteen hours later she was half-carrying me down the stairs because I could barely walk, and the elevator wouldn't come. Late that evening, Lily was born. When I think about this now--the fact that I left home without a baby, just me, and returned five days later forever the mother of Lily--it is hard, impossible, to fathom.

We talk about becoming a parent like this: as a transformation, a sudden entry into an unknown universe. The gist of it is that it is impossible to understand something so vast and complex before it becomes a reality. But tonight I found myself thinking: Life is like this. I really have no idea what could happen tomorrow, and try as I might to foresee the scenarios, I cannot know what will happen or how I will face it when it does. I am thinking now that becoming a parent is really just a metaphor for life. We step out into an abyss, close our eyes in anticipation, and are.

The Dance

Annika has taken to dancing. She dances when Lily dances, when music is played, when you say the word "dancing" in an excited, sing-songy voice. She stands up in her high chair and sways side-to-side, looking altogether pleased with herself. This, in spite of the fact that much of the rest of the world seems to be speaking in grim, hushed voices, that I can't remember the last time I danced, really danced--not just wiggled around a little with the girls--which is a shame, now that I think of it.

And it reminds me of how I always feel when I see a ballet. When I watch ballet dancers perform, it is as though my body has a memory. I feel it in my muscles and joints, in my bones: the way it felt to move like that, to be in a place where moving like that was the entire world in a movement, where nothing outside a small room with barres on three sides, a mirror on the fourth, existed.

It's funny; I can remember one specific moment from one specific class over thirty years ago. I was raised on half-toe, my left leg in passe, and the pose was perfect. It felt different than it ever had, and I held it, held it after the music had ended, after the other girls had finished the subsequent motions and relaxed, as they watched me, brows furrowed, and our teacher watched me, knowing smile, knowing, I think, what was happening, letting me stand there, not frozen but by choice suspended in this perfect place, until finally--and not because my leg gave out, or I lost the pose--I decided it was time to let it go.

It is said that a person never forgets how to ride a bike. I maintain that you never forget those moments, when your body does exactly what you want it to, the way you want it to, when it is an instrument, a vehicle. Dancing, in general, is about joy, not precision or perfection. But there is joy in the art of dance, the artistry of dance. My most joyful memories of ballet are of motion, constant motion, learned so as to be completely automatic, allowing for the expression in the movement, the suspension of deliberate thought, the body over the mind, as it were.

I'm not sure how this came from Annika loving to dance, except that when Annika dances, it is with and from a place of joy, and I hope that she never loses that manifest joy.

Everything Best

Abbreviated post due to lingering head cold IN SPITE OF copious amounts of cold medicine.

But do want to say that tonight, due to tickets that were a much anticipated, pre-purchased gift, Lily and I went to the Nutcracker at Lincoln Center, and for two hours I actually forgot about how my head feels like it is filled with cement. When we walked out into a magical snowy night, I asked Lily, "So, what did you like best? Mother Ginger and the Polichinelles?"

"Yes," she said, through catching snowflakes on her tongue. "Actually, no, Mama. That's not what I liked best."

"What was it?" I asked, more curious now than I'd been.

"Everything. I liked everything about it best. And the snow."

More tea. More meds. Sleep.

Head Cold

Blog called on account of atrocious head cold. Back tomorrow, armed with massive quantities of Sudafed.

Why I Can

Today I stood over an outdated stove in an unrenovated kitchen, stirring a big pot with a wooden spoon. Lily sat at the kitchen table, drawing with her colored pencils. Because there was a refrigerator drawer full of apples that needed to be used, but really because this is one of the secret things I do to relax, I had decided to can.

Canning is a weird little hobby of mine that fell out of nearly universal favor fifty years ago, although it has its mad modern adherents, to be sure. Some people still can because it is thrifty, and although I am thrifty, this is not why I can. Some people can because it is crafty and one of the original home arts. These people enjoy Martha Stewart and make little cloth tops for their finished jars. Although I have been known to do labels, and admire Martha as a talented freak of nature, this is not why I can. To tell you the truth, I'm not sure why I ever started doing this, but it must have something to do with the fact that my mother did, and my grandmother and my great-grandmother, although they all made clothes for their children too, with a sewing machine. The last time I tried to use a sewing machine, which was in the 1980s, I somehow managed to cut myself. I have never, needless to say, made clothes for my children.

The canning began when we acquired our little house in Connecticut. I guess I was looking for something to do. I had been spending my weekends in New York, and it was so quiet and still, and although I love to read and garden and cook, I am a night owl, and I had some time on my hands. As is typical of me, I plunged in without research or preparation. I bought some jars and started with my own fruit: tomatoes and rhubarb. The jars piled up, and that year, along with a number of varieties of chutneys and glistening jewel-toned marmalades, I had holiday gifts. My grandmother was especially appreciative.

Whenever I mentioned to a friend that I had made jam, or apple butter--today's project--or jalapeno jelly, I was always met with the same puzzled expression. Several people asked me if I had ever tried a particular brand of canned product, their personal favorite, as if somehow I'd arrived in the twenty-first century with no knowledge of gourmet grocery stores. I sort of stopped mentioning it, and canning became, as I said before, my own secret weird little hobby, reserved for late nights alone in the country, while my husband slept and the dogs lay at my feet, hoping for drips from the spoon.

Today, as I stirred, and the house filled with the smells of the apples cooking down with cider vinegar and cinnamon and allspice, and the mixture spattered on the stovetop around the pot and Lily hummed at the table as she drew, I found myself thinking about how satisfying I always find it to make something, to use something wisely and well, to begin a project, see it through, and set it resoundingly down on the counter in neat old-fashioned Ball jars. Done, and done. Canning is particularly gratifying because canned goods keep. What you make is shared. And the technique, unlike mastery of the sewing machine, apparently, is learned through osmosis, while sitting in a warm kitchen while someone you love wields an old wooden spoon.

Mother

For a variety of reasons I have been thinking about endings lately, about the final stages of things. I like to think of my life as an enterprise full of second and even third or more chances, but sometimes there is no second chance. Sometimes stages are finite. Childhood is finite.

This morning I was relaying the story of Friday's visit to the pediatrician with both girls to my mother. As is so often true when I am talking to my mother, because she is my mother, and by definition (mine) is required to tolerate me,a note of complaint threaded my story, the underlying message being that the excursion, involving as it had the drawing of blood, the eating of stickers, the incessant managing of behavior, had left me spent.

My mother, a wise but occasionally cryptic storyteller herself, said, when I had finished, "You know, a very close friend once said something I think about often." I waited. Trying to hurry the message out of her generally proves fruitless. "She said that when her mother, to whom she was exceptionally close but whose primary caretaker she had become, died, she had expected to feel a sense of relief along with her grief." I waited again. "But she did not."

The silence stretched. Finally, I said, "So what did she feel?" I know my mother's friend, and knew her amazing mother, but I also have some sense of how complicated it can be to be a caretaker in this fashion, responsible for someone you love most of all whose mind is intact but whose body is increasingly frail.

"She felt, along with her grief, a tremendous gratitude that she had been the person to help her mother through this difficult stage of life. That has hard as it had been sometimes, she now realized how much the experience had shaped them both. She felt lucky to have been that person. The person." That was it, I could tell. We talked about other things for a few minutes, then she had to go, and I did, and we said good-bye, hung up the phones.

There is beauty, I think, actual beauty, in the experience of being needed, and in giving what is needed when you are needed, even when it feels excruciating. There is always enough of you left when you do it even if it doesn't feel like it in the moment itself. There is a reason I need my mother, most, when I really need. There is a lesson in this for me.

In Brief

Today, because I had not had one yesterday, Lily and I made me a birthday cake. We made exactly the kind of birthday cake I like, or rather one of the kinds of birthday cake I like, which is angelfood, with a beaten egg white frosting. Many people do not like this kind of cake, but I do, and so that is what we made. I gave Lily the box of food coloring, and she chose yellow for the frosting. Yellow is not what I would have chosen, and in fact I was surprised that she chose it, as it's not in her rotating cast of favorite colors, but yellow it was, so the cake is yellow. She sprinkled sugar crystals on it, and placed five candles on top, in a circle. "It looks like a flower, Mama," she said, and in fact, it sort of did. And then we went out into the cold, dreary day to do things like have blood drawn at the pediatrician's office and stand in the returns line at TJ Maxx.

When we came home, it was past dinnertime, basically bedtime, and I looked at my yellow, flower-like cake on the cake stand, and I looked at Lily, who had insisted on watching her blood flow into the vial to the doctor's shock, had patiently waited on line, and then on another line, and had busied herself typing love notes to me into my iphone, and I said, "What do you say we have that birthday cake for dinner?"

And so we lit the candles, and we sang happy birthday to me, one day late, and we each ate one fat wedge of cake, and then I ate another, and outside it was cold and dank, and inside, we had sugar sparkles on our sweaters and crumbs all over the table, and pale yellow icing on the lightest, fluffiest, most successful angelfood cake I have ever made. When we were done, Lily went in to the bathroom to brush her teeth, and I picked up the stubs of candles from the table and thought about how cake for breakfast wouldn't be such a terrible follow-up idea.

Twenty-nine Plus Ten

Hmm. About fourteen years ago--or exactly fourteen years ago--I was co-hosting a huge party in a loft on 20th Street in honor of my twenty-fifth birthday. My roommate and I had been listening to the Gin Blossoms all afternoon in anticipation (her album; I believe I've mentioned that when left to my own devices I listen only to music recorded before 1978), and we'd played the song "29" over and over again. I can't remember the lyrics all that well, but there was one line that stuck: "29 you'd think I'd know better, living like a kid."

I remember this line because I remember when I was listening to the song that I couldn't imagine being 29, not even close. It seemed truly impossible, so impossible that I melodramatically decided perhaps I was not destined to reach that ripe old age. The number sounded ridiculous. Twenty-nine-year-olds were not kids. They were full fledged adults. Or should be, I thought even then. Twenty-five meant it was okay to dance until 5 in the morning with everyone you knew surrounded by Christmas lights and a makeshift bar on your boss's desk in the loft space she'd let you borrow because although she was so old--pushing forty--she remembered twenty-five, maybe a little too well. Twenty-nine year olds wore suits and sneakers over stockings and read the paper on the subway. They went to bed on time, and met each other for dinner and a single, tasteful glass each of fairly-priced red wine.

Now, tonight, I am thirty-nine, and although it sounds much younger than it used to, and it feels like a relief to be on the safe side of forty still, it also feels like standing with one foot poised over a landmine. Not that I've been in that exact situation before, but now--in an unlikely turn of events--I can imagine that more easily than I used to be able to glimpse the far side of thirty. It's not that forty as an age to be seems old anymore. In fact, so many of my friends and loved ones are over forty now that the number should have lost all of its resonance. Some of the fifty-year-olds I know seem to be living like kids, to paraphrase the Gin Blossoms. But I didn't expect that at thirty-nine I'd still feel so in progress, if that makes any sense. I have this unpleasant sensation that I'm running out of time in the molding department, that by forty--or shortly thereafter--I'd better have a pretty good idea who I am.

Unfortunately for those who know me, I'm not one of those people who let birthdays--mine or anyone else's--pass unnoticed, unassessed. I want them to mean something, need them to reveal something or point me in a certain direction, and so far--although it's only been an hour--thirty-nine is holding her cards pretty close to the vest.

I guess we shall see.

In Anticipation

So tonight is Sadie's first "job." Lily and I are taking her to a place called Gilda's Club less than a mile from our apartment, where the three of us will meet and play with children whose parents are undergoing treatment for cancer. We have been forewarned that many of their parents are dying, and that some of the children are under enormous strain. We have also been told that this is typically one of the most rewarding places to go with a therapy dog, as the children are so immediately and obviously enamored of the dogs.

I was planning to write today's entry after we got home. But all morning I have been thinking about our visit, and wondering what it will be like, and I think, instead, I'd like to write now, about anticipation. There is so much focus, I feel, in our society on the actual experience. We talk earnestly about living in the moment. I myself try to remember this when I am with my children, or older members of my family, and whenever I feel guilty about not doing more to record the experiences I am having. Although the records can trigger memories later on, it is the experiences themselves that leave the imprint that shapes our selves. But it cannot be denied that the reflection of an experience, after the fact, is an integral component of the whole, and that the anticipation of it, beforehand, is essential, too.

In fact, sometimes I wonder how profoundly anticipation has colored many of the significant, big-ticket events of my life, let alone the daily or more routine ones. In a way, I have been waiting for this evening's visit for several years, since Lily first commented on how excited the severely disabled adults on our block were whenever we walked by with Sadie and Scout. There was the idea, the research, the contact made with the organization, the deferrals of the course itself, the course, the graduation, the scheduling, and now--at last--the visit. Will it be anticlimactic? I don't think so, somehow. Will it be different than I expect it to be in a hundred ways? Yes. This, I have found to be true.

Anticipation is a way of being prepared, a good way of being prepared--not as productive, perhaps, as organizing, or packing, or strategizing. But in anticipating we are assuming our role in an experience, and assuming the impact the experience will have on us. In anticipating, we are participating, before, as well as during, and presumably afterward as well.

Instead of waiting until 9 o'clock at night, when I will have returned home, put an exhausted Lily to bed, and had no time to process therapy dog in action, I write now, when I am in a heightened state of looking forward, the place of the hopeful unknown. Which, all in all, is a pretty good place to be.

A Sister Like Mine

This evening, I put the girls to bed at a little before 7:30, the usual time, and sat down at my computer to do a little work. After about ten minutes, I thought I heard whispering from behind their bedroom door. A few minutes later, I heard muffled laughter from Lily and delighted chirps from Annika, and I got up, walked to the door and pushed it open.

I peered in. There were pillows on the floor, and a few blankets, but I couldn't see if Lily was lying under them or was still up on the bed. The room was silent. I quietly closed the door and went back to my desk. The cycle started up again: first whispers and giggling, then actual laughter and some thumping and banging that led me to believe the trundle was being pulled out and jumped on. For some reason, although it was getting later, and I am the person who pays the price when they are overtired, I couldn't quite bring myself to be annoyed.

I got up again, tiptoed over to the door, and stuck my head in the room for the second time. The instant I did so, the room fell silent. I went back to my desk.

Although Lily and Annika have been playing together for a while now, by which I mean Annika follows Lily around and tries to be as involved as possible with whatever she's doing in an often destructive fashion, this was the first episode I had noted of organized rebellion. Somehow, although Annika is essentially preverbal, and I hadn't heard much talking even on Lily's part, a joint decision had been made that if I so much as peeped in the room, silence would ensue. How did Lily impart this strategy to Annika? Had she needed to?

Regardless, something about this dynamic, this episode, made me so happy and hopeful that I abandoned my newfound bedtime vigor and allowed them to fall asleep on their own. Lily may be in the crib, she may be on the floor; I don't really care. By 8, the room was consistently quiet, and I may or may not peek in before going to bed myself. But all I could think about as I sat listening to the sounds of their cheerful voices in cahoots was one of the saddest days of my life many years ago when I called my own sister because of everyone in the world, she is the person I feel safest being sad with. She listened to me, offered consolation and advice, told me in no uncertain terms that no matter what, I would be okay. I hung up, feeling infinitely better than I had been feeling and immediately realized I had forgotten to tell her something. I called back.

She answered the phone--this was in the days before caller ID--and was crying so hard she could barely manage to speak. When she realized it was me again, she tried to pull herself together, but it was too late.

And I will always remember this. That in spite of the many times and ways my sister has made me apoplectic with anger, when I needed one person in the world to make me believe the world was not going to fall apart, she did so, and she suppressed her own sadness, at mine, at the situation, at sadness in general, until she knew she had succeeded.

When I catch these glimpses of Lily and Annika building this bond, even as Lily rejects Annika's advances, Annika hits Lily on the head with a pot lid, I know that in this, at least, I have done good. I hope for as few moments of profound sadness for these girls as is humanly possible. But when they come, I hope for each of them--feel optimistic for each of them--to have a sister like mine.

Ramble, While a Little Bit Cold

It isn't cold very much anymore here, in New York City, where I live. When it is, as it was today, the cold becomes preoccupying, not just for me but for lots of people, the other parents at school drop-off, the people shivering on the subway platform, waiting outside the library for it to open, walking their dogs. It becomes a topic of conversation, an easy in if you want one, a time-filler if you need one. I found myself telling an elderly woman waiting to buy a newspaper while I was waiting to buy a cup of coffee/handwarmer all about how I had to unpack the heavy-duty winter artillery. I found myself listening to a man my age on the train this morning tell his friend all about the plane tickets he had ordered for an impromptu trip to Miami Beach motivated by his walk home the previous evening.

It's funny how cold, the sheer fact of it, can displace all of the other thoughts in your head so you find yourself walking down a street, focused on your breath freezing in puffs in font of your face, thinking only of how cold you are, in a way that might be almost like meditation. It's really not that interesting, being cold, but coldness has this way of becoming all-encompassing, to the extent that even this evening, several hours after I returned home from the day's last venture out into the cold, I found myself remembering how cold my hand was when I took off my glove to rummage in my bag for my wallet eight hours earlier, remembering the way it felt to be cold. Which I think one does primarily to subconsciously revel in one's current state of warmth.

What I think of when it is cold, now, when it is cold like this outside, which it so often was when I was growing up in Massachusetts, is the radiator wall panel in the upstairs bathroom in my childhood home, which to this day blasts hot air periodically when the heat's turned high, which it generally is when I am home. Even now, although I am pushing perilously close to 40, and my parents have had their house to themselves for nearly twenty years, there is a silent battle with the heat controls. I tiptoe down and turn it up. My mother tiptoes in and turns it down. And ultimately, at some point during my visits home, I end up with my back against the bathroom wall, my bare feet pressed against the hot metal grating in a way that crystallizes the fine line between pain and pleasure, until I am warm enough to venture back to bed.

Mine, With Something Like Awe

Today I sat cross-legged on a carpeted floor in an indoor gymnasium at a children's birthday party and watched Lily scale a rock-climbing wall. At first I was shocked she volunteered to do this; many, most, of the children said no way. Which is unquestionably what I would have said at 4 if presented with such a proposition, frankly what I would have said now. Then, I was surprised by the determination with which she began, gripping one anchor with one tiny hand, then lifting her leg higher than seemed possible to place her foot on an another. And as she kept climbing, higher than most of the willing children had gone, all the way to the ceiling, 30 feet off the ground? I'm bad with distance estimation, I watched silently as people around us pointed and marveled, watched her as though she were somebody else's child.

She squeezed the horn at the top to signify success and was pulled back down to the mat by the staff member manning the wall. He turned to me and mouthed the word, "Wow." I nodded, and then, aloud, he asked, "How old is she?"

"Four," I said, and stood up, ready to accompany her back to the main area where there was dancing and a balance bean surrounded by foam. She came running to me, eyes shining.

"Did you see me, Mama?" she asked. I told her I did, hugged her a little bit hard.

"Let's dance," I said, turning, but she tugged my arm, planted her feet.

"No, we have to wait," she said. "He says if there's time I can do it again."

Note to Self

I actually forgot to write yesterday, for the first time ever (the forgetting, not the not writing), and I forgot my uncle's birthday, and I suspect there are other things I have forgotten as well, which I will discover over the next few days, unless the forgetting continues or, god forbid, gets worse.

So I think I should forgo a long entry now, in favor of memory-enhancing sleep, but I will write a very short one.

This evening, as I exited our building with both the girls in tow, we were greeted by the sight of the colored Christmas lights the people in the building down the street decorate the exterior of the building with each year. My personal taste in holiday decoration tends toward fresh greenery and tiny white lights, but the truth is I barely noticed the colored Santa face literally staring me in the eyes, not to mention the other assorted and sundry constellations. But Lily did. I had walked twenty feet ahead with the stroller before I realized she was standing still, gazing at the display. "Come on, Lil," I called. "The store is going to close." She pointed.

"But Mama. It's so, so beautiful. I just can't stop looking."

And so it was.

Curly

You know how families have myths? Legends? Stories that get repeated so often, or are so compelling in some way that generations later people who never even knew the central figures are still passing them on? We have lots of these. Myths and legends aren't quite the right words, though, because in our family, at least, many of the stories that have stuck are small in scope, like miniatures, or dioramas: a single heightened scene. Or an emotional experience that resonates for generations.

For most of my life, I have had a dog. There have been periods of a few years here, a few there, where a dog has died and a new one not yet appeared on the scene, but for the most part there has been at least one dog by my side at every stage. This was not a conscious decision, although I can say now that I don't ever again want to live without a dog, or two, or three, but a natural outgrowth of the fact that I come from people who love--and have--dogs. On my mother's side, my grandfather, Papa, was a latter-day, full-blown Swedish version of the Dicken character from The Secret Garden. Seriously, the first time I read the book, at 6 or 7, when Dicken was introduced, I thought: Just like Papa. Not in that he was a pink-cheeked, working-class boy who worked with his hands (although he sort of was, come to think of it) but in the way he related to animals. Dicken would appear, and--like a scene in a Disney movie--animals of all kinds, from cats and dogs to their undomesticated cousins, would surround him, alighting on his shoulders, curling around his legs, "speaking" to him in squirrel, or chipmunk, or owl. My family would rent a vacation home in an unfamiliar place, and my grandfather would disappear from the dinner table, only to be discovered in the side yard surrounded by equally unfamiliar neighborhood dogs, gazing at him adoringly, turning up their noses at us.

He had a dog himself, pretty much always. When I was little, his dog was a shepherd mix, black and tan, named Vaughn. I think I was told once that his dogs were always named Vaughn, which seems oddly fitting. He was not of the school of modern pet owners who fetishize their pets and treat them as surrogate children. There was something much more raw and natural about his connection to animals. I know this sounds crazy, but it was as though he met them on equal footing. It was, I guess you might say, animalistic. He could, quite literally, communicate with animals.

My father, who started this train of thought for me, did not come from dog people, as far as I know. His mother was a neatnik housekeeper who covered her couches in plastic when I was a child, although it must be said that she didn't flinch when we made forts with the cushions or crayoned at the coffee table. I didn't know my paternal grandfather, and I guess I may be selling him short as a possible dog lover. But what I do know is that when my father was a boy, he wanted a dog. He really wanted a dog, in the way some children really, really want a dog, and at some point, for some reason, he got one.

This is where the mythologizing, if not the myth, comes in. The dog he got was Curly. I knew, even as a very small child, that the way my father talked about Curly was different than the way he talked about even his parents, his childhood friends. His eyes would get sort of misty, in the way they do now when certain of his later pets' names are mentioned, and soon, too soon, the story of Curly would reach its tragic end. Curly got--or maybe had all along--some incurable disease and died very young, before my father had been a real dog owner for long. Although this was never the subtext of the Curly story, and I only just thought of it now, Curly's premature departure from my father's life--the mythology of his childhood, in which he wanted to be a boy with a dog and was, for a brief shining moment--certainly informed his adult attachment to animals, the importance he places on being the kind of pet owner, animal lover, his hero, my mother's father, was all his life.

Families are strange, and complicated, and sometimes very beautiful. Bad things are passed on, but good things are too, and in my best moments I believe we can teach--be taught--how to love. My dad didn't tell the Curly story that often. Every once in a while my sister or I would ask him about it, and he would tell it, and we would listen, in the way Lily does now when I describe the night Alison and I went swimming under the stars in my grandparents' pool, the time we had a real restaurant and people actually came. That is to say, silently, fully absorbed, and with something like awe. But I have no doubt that Curly is, in some indefinable way, behind Grapes, and Midnight, and Max, and all of the pets I have loved over my lifetime, including the ones I live with now, the ones still to come.

I suspect my dad never thinks about Curly these days. There are no small children forcing him to reminisce. But there are two small dog lovers on the horizon, and I think it might be nice for them to know about--and be thankful for--the little dog who will change--has already changed--their lives, too.

Once Upon a Time...

I got a voicemail from my father today telling me he had just turned out of the grocery store parking lot and had remembered a time when I was learning to drive and had--in his words--recklessly "spun out onto Route 20." I can't say I remember the particular incident to which he was referring, but that is because to this day, when either of my parents are in a car with me behind the wheel, they become white-faced and start clutching the armrest the instant the speedometer creeps over 30 miles per hour.

I do remember pulling out of the parking lot in question many times with my father in the passenger seat, during those early driving days, and wincing as he gasped when the car crossed the necessary lane to turn left. I remember the gasps collectively because they happened every single time, not just once, contrary to the impression left by my father's message today. I wonder if he remembers the conversation he had, in front of me and my sister, with our driving instructor, a kindly middle-aged man who wore the perils of his profession lightly. The one in which he asked if it would be possible to order an emergency brake for the passenger side floor like the ones that came in the driving school car.

My primary memory of learning how to drive involves my father, but in a good way, sufficiently pleasant to cast into shadow the untold annoying ones. It is a sliver of a memory, with no plot, no real story, but it is vivid, enhanced by its auditory component. The year was 1986, and my father drove a dark blue Audi, a sleek, classy car with a bit of an edge, or so I thought as I drove it jerkingly around town on meaningless errands and endless trips to the local Friendly's.

My memory, though, has no destination. It takes place on the strip of Dutton Road between my parents' house and my grandmother's house, the strip of road I have driven, walked, ridden my bike down, more than any other strip of road in the world. I actually think if forced, I could drive this two-mile stretch blindfolded. Sometimes still I find I have arrived at my grandmother's house without remembering getting there.

I am driving, although I should probably put "driving" in quotes. It is one of the first times, maybe even the first time, I have been behind the wheel by myself, in control (quotes again for "control") of a car. My father is in the passenger seat, my sister in the backseat, behind me, which was always her side of the car. On the radio a song is playing, a song I loved at the time, played over and over again. It was quite popular on the radio, if I am not mistaken, but not the thing at all at my high school, where alternative rock and edgier pop were favored, so in the privacy of our family car, with my family, it feels liberating to belt out the familiar lyrics. The song is called "In Your Wildest Dreams" by the Moody Blues and has a shallow catchiness to it that occasionally reels me in to music recorded past 1970, although very occasionally and somewhat unpredictably. The lyrics are bad. I know this but don't care. It is the era of "Lucky Star" and not of the poet lyricist a la Steve Earle or Lucinda Williams.

I specifically remember singing lines from the beginning of the song, the lines, "I remember skies, reflected in your eyes." I remember that my father, who also occasionally gets drawn in by a certain pop X factor, was singing along too, and that for a few seconds, anyway, as we both looked out the window at the road in front of us, and I marveled to myself that I was actually making the car move forward (and worried secretly that I would have trouble making it stop), there were no grimaces, no arguments, no power struggle. Instead, there was the music, and the road ahead, and the moment. And learning to drive with my dad.

Raspberry Sparkle

I may have written about this before, but I think I've just been thinking about it. I hope so. It would be sad to be repeating myself when I haven't even achieved 365 entries yet.

I remember the first Christmas present I bought for my mother. I was 5, the age Lily is about to turn, which gives me a jolt. I was so...conscious then. I mean, I remember walking up and down the aisles in the Osco drugstore, which used to be in the Star Market on my hometown's main drag. I remember that I had my own money in a little purse, not more than a few dollars, but it was mine, and I was going to buy my own present with it. And I remember the gift itself: wholly unsuitable, a lipstick called Raspberry Sparkle in a royal blue tube, that stuck around in our house for years after that Christmas.

I remember thinking that the lipstick, sold to me by Joanna Lewis, one of the thirteen children who lived next door and worked at Osco, was very glamorous. I remember thinking that my mother, whose blond hair curled at the ends and who had leather sandals and woven belts and laughed with her head tilted back, was glamorous, too. And although her regular lipstick, which she wore only on special occasions, was a natural tannish color, which I knew, having tried it on myself many times, I allowed myself to imagine that Raspberry Sparkle--true to its name, a glittery berry-soaked pink--would become its replacement.

My mother oohed and aahed over her lipstick, and she put it on. And as I remember, it did look glamorous with her light blue eyes and soft blond hair. And I am reminded of the way Lily watches me from the bathroom stepstool on the rare occasions I put on lipstick, shades that are progeny of my mother's neutrals from the seventies, and the way she will sometimes look at me when I am laughing, head cocked ever so slightly, appraisingly, and say, "Mama? You just look so beautiful."

Easing Back In

I am reminded of the tree falling in the forest with nobody around to hear if it's making a sound as I announce my return. Yes, I took an unannounced, not entirely voluntary Thanksgiving hiatus. I don't have a fully functional laptop anymore, let alone one with internet access, and there was no private computer I could use effortlessly on my own time while I was away. So I just ate instead. Seriously, I ate a lot.

But now I am back, and as the end of the year approaches, or will arrive on schedule after the inevitable blind chaos of the next few weeks during which I celebrate two major holidays, Lily's and my birthday, and a whole host of holiday gatherings, school events, work commitments, bookkeeping and other joyful and not so joyful December undertakings, my thoughts turn to the New Year and my annual resolutions regarding writing. They haven't turned there yet, but they will, and I'm just warning you. There may be some soul searching, some promises bound to be broken or stretched out of shape. There may be some grand sweeping statements, some haunting insecurities, a mixture of bravado and fear. But that is still to come. For tonight, as I ease back in, I give you: Flat Coins.

All the fuss these days about "helicopter parenting" and the "overscheduled child" always reminds me of my own childhood, during which I spent hours a day--more--outdoors, exploring the yards and fields of the people and places that created me, allowed me to create myself. On our (eight hour!) drive back from our Thanksgiving trip, I was looking out the window at one point, just letting my mind wander, when all of a sudden I remembered the field behind the First Parish Church, where the train tracks ran. The train didn't stop in Sudbury, but it ran through it, or had once, and on Sunday mornings when the adults had coffee and talked in the big room, we were set free on the lawn outside, free to lie under the chestnut tree, run like banshees through the centuries-old cemetery behind the church, head back through a grove of trees to a vast expanse of land through which the train tracks ran.

We couldn't have been very old: 9 or 10 at the most, I would imagine. We were fearless and filled with a sense of adventure. We were trusted but not overly considered--so much of my childhood was mine, and my sister's and my cousins' and my friends' in a way that seems so very much in the past to me now. We were often a little band, enough to play hide and seek or kick the can tag or Red Rover or have chicken fights between the tombstones. Back by the old train track, though, we put pennies on the track, lined them up in a jaunty copper row, in the hope that a train--were they still running?--would flatten them into paper-thin wafers, the way we knew trains did, could, had.

Funny, I really can't remember if the trains were running then. I think they weren't, can vaguely conjure up a sense of crumbling and decay about the tracks. But a little sense of danger, too, borne of cartoons where someone was always being strapped to a track, or rescued at the very last second, a sense that skipping down a rail in the hot sun of a late May noontime, was just illicit enough, even if the trains had been retired.

I've seen lots of those machines in museums where you can feed in a penny and get the flat wafer back for a rip-off fifty cents. This, I feel, is not the same. Not the same at all.