Baby Steps

It's always the second act that gives one pause, a pause that all too often becomes a grinding to a full-on halt. This is my way of acknowledging that yet again I took an unexplained, probably unearned, certainly uninteresting break from this, my essential outlet and yet my bete noire too. And that yesterday, in honor of my father, my most vigilant reader, I returned, like the fog, on "little cat feet," and that tonight I find myself, as I have so many times over the last however many nights, sitting at my desk thinking: Why am I doing this again? What on earth could I possibly have to say?

I just took a long break and pretended for a while I was not going to make myself keep writing, but all along I knew that I would. I always know when I am going to do something and when I am not, which seems to be a useless gift, as so often the things I know I am going to do are wholly unimportant, and the things I know I am not going to do are the things that must get done. And besides, we all know that at heart, I do believe I have a lot to say, and will keep saying it, even if I occasionally wander off into a void for a period, a void filled with small child obligations, vaccinations against already mutated viruses and some really atrocious TV.

One reason I started this blog was to have a place where I would be able to work through pieces intended for publication, and I have been stalling quite impressively, and I am quite a staller on my worst days, on writing so much as a line. So I think I will start here, and perhaps work it through in this capacity, as the bad TV is not proving conducive to productivity.

What I am working on, in my head, anyway, is a sort of a manifesto, inspired, in part, by Orwell's brilliant "Why I Write;" it will be called: Why I Read. I am both in love with my as yet nonexistent manifesto (always a bad sign) and overwhelmed by it, even in concept. I have been asked to write a piece for which this essay would suit, so it is, therefore, one of those things I must do, but as explained above, that fact alone is a speck of dust trapped in a light shaft: nothing, or very little more.

Pondering why I read, I guess would be, in the words of the immortal Maria, "a very good place to start." Except there is no pondering, really; I have mostly thought this through. I read because there have been more moments in my life consumed by reading than by any other thing, and because so many of these moments have made me aware, either consciously or subconsciously (which I realize later), that there is a reason for my existence on this earth--to read the words I am reading in that moment, and in the other moments, too.

Although it is neither the first nor the best example that comes to mind, I remember reading these lines from Orwell's essay entitled "Reflections on Gandhi." Such an innocuous little throw-away of a title; such a knife plunged into the clueless heart of what people had thought before Orwell raised the knife. He wrote: No doubt alcohol, tobacco, and so forth, are things that a saint must avoid, but sainthood is also a thing that human beings must avoid. Not the most devastating or reprinted line in the essay, but the one that, when I read it, stopped my breath in my chest, made me then read almost everything else the man had ever written.

It is the last part, the part about sainthood, that makes me want to raise that knife skyward, letting the blood flow off it and around my feet. Had faint praise ever damned so much as when Orwell referred to Gandhi's "clean smell?" Gandhi, to get back to the "Why I Write" essay, wrote because of his political beliefs, but his political beliefs were his muscles and organs and bones; they were him, boiled down to who he actually was. I read because it makes me know Orwell, and I read because it makes me know almost everything I know, including how to live, and think. Reading is the only way I know to connect myself to every mind that ever wrote, every idea that has ever been written, every picture that has ever been painted, and more: to all the thoughts that haven't yet been written down in words. I read because to read is everything.

See? Working it through. Bear with me!

Happy, Happy Birthday, Baby...

Tomorrow, on November 24th, my father will turn 67. A few weeks down the road, my birthday will arrive in the wake of his for the 40th time. But in honor of my dad, a man who keeps the greeting card industry in business but rarely receives any birthday recognition of his own, I would like to revisit a different birthday: his of 27 years ago.

When my father turned 40, my mother threw him a surprise party with a 1950s theme. There was a live band playing all of my father's favorite songs, and hours upon hours of dancing, and everybody got all dressed up. My dad, who had arrived in his regular clothes, was given the proverbial white sport coat and, I believe, a pink carnation by way of transformation. I remember my parents' friends in matching leather motorcycle jackets, my aunts in poodle skirts, cousins in sweater sets and rolled up jeans and my own outfit: a turquoise taffeta circle skirt and a white cotton blouse tied at the waist, a black velvet ribbon in my high ponytail. I was twelve, but thirteen was just around the bend, and I felt very glamorous to be at an adult party with dancing and live music and so many grown-ups, grown-ups who seem to me in my mind's eye like sophisticated creatures from another planet, eons older than I am now, will ever be.

How is it possible that all of those grown-ups were only forty years old? If I close my eyes I can see my father calling requests out to the band, doing the Twist in the middle of the dance floor, his hair still mostly black, the room surrounded by his friends and loved ones. The event itself was a perfect incarnation of my dad, a man who doesn't actually seem much older now than he did then, who still can twist as though American Bandstand were filming, would still cut a dashing figure in a white sport coat and who has raised two daughters with perfectly imperfect unconditional love that has given them a foundation on which all else is built and without which nothing much would stand.

The funny thing is that I felt that way at twelve. I remember leaning against a wall with a cup of soda, admiring the way my skirt glinted under the lights, and then watching my father dancing with my mother to a "slow dance," the kind I still, at nearly thirteen, avoided whenever I could. "They look so young," I really do remember thinking, swishing my skirt to make the taffeta rustle, watching the couples swaying to the mellow sounds of the music I had been taught to love by my dad.

If we are lucky, life is long and complicated. We celebrate and commemorate, we suffer and agonize, we triumph and fail, we persevere. I don't mind turning forty. In spite of all those corny greeting cards, it doesn't really seem that old; it never did. And as I always tell my grandmother, who will soon be 94, growing old seems, if not a walk in the park each day, certainly preferable to the alternative.

I think of my father's 40th birthday not just because my own is impending but because in so many ways he cannot see, my father is still that same man dancing, the last man on the dance floor for the love of the music, the man the band stays late for just because they like him, the man who again and again makes me feel like I am loved, and appreciated, and admired, and loved.

Happy birthday, Dad. This one--and all of them, really--is for you. Thank you for teaching me that every day is a possibility. I love you. And don't forget, ever, ever: This is the first day of the rest of your life.