Well, it was bound to happen. Yesterday was the first day I actually forgot to write on this blog. And I almost just did it again.
This is a busy week for me. I will be brief, at least for now. Brief, I feel, is better than nonexistent.
This past weekend I saw someone I love singing a song I heard this person last sing twenty years ago and had this thought: For so many people growing older seems to be a process of adding layers to the self, some translucent, some ragged, some waterproof and even airtight. By the time a person reaches, say, my age, he or she is so buried beneath these layers that it's virtually impossible to find the original self. And then, in glimpses, or flashes, or bursts, it reveals itself, and the revelation is somehow both terribly sad and incredibly joyful. Sad, in its temporary nature, joyful in its truth. I would like to try to peel off some of the layers I have built up myself, keep from adding unnecessary ones as I age.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Saturday, November 8, 2008
Rough Spell
I am an excellent speller. I say this not as a particular point of pride, as good spelling is primarily a function of one's visual memory, meaning that being a good speller is like having an acute sense of hearing or being able to sniff wines and distinguish them from one another, neither of which, incidentally, are also true of me. But spelling: yes. I have an almost robotic ability to detect spelling mistakes in everything from menus and subtitles to actual manuscript copy, which has served me well in a professional capacity but--as my mother is prone to saying--"That and a dime will buy me a coke." I can count on the fingers of one hand the times I remember learning I had spelled a word incorrectly over the course of my life. The most galling occurred twenty-eight years ago this fall.
When I was in fifth grade, my entire school was given a spelling test, a long one, with over a hundred words. The student who spelled the most words correctly in each class was invited to participate in a school-wide spelling bee, to be held in front of the entire school and the participants' parents. The winner of the spelling bee would get not individual prizes but glory and treasure for his or her class, in the form of a pizza and ice cream sundae party to be attended by the principal, new books and dictionaries, and some privilege I can't remember but seemed monumental at the time: first to the cafeteria at lunch or something like that.
As per usual, I knew all of the words on the test. I spelled them all correctly. My teacher made a smiley face at the top of my test and wrote, "Can't wait for our pizza!" On the day of the spelling bee, however, I was nervous. I was going through a self-conscious phase, and I was not thrilled by the prospect of sitting on a stage in front of the whole school. My parents were coming. Fifth graders don't like seeing their parents in public. But there was nothing I could do. The writing, as it were, was on the wall.
When the gymnasium full of kids had finally been silenced, we were a row of fidgety middle schoolers facing the crowd. We had been instructed to write our word each round on a strip of paper given to us for the purpose, then hold it up facing out, so the other kids, teachers and parents could see it. The first few rounds went smoothly. A few kids were eliminated, then a few more. And then it was my turn again. The words had been easy; I had forgotten about the crowd; I was feeling much more confident now. I looked out and made eye contact with each of my parents. I smiled.
When the MC read my word, I smiled. I started writing immediately, so quickly, in fact, that I was asked if I'd like to have my word repeated. No, I shook my head. P-O-S-I-T-I-O-N, I wrote, then turned my strip out, held it up above the desk as we'd been instructed. The room fell quiet, and my classmates, who had been cheering for me each round, looked crestfallen. I met fifty-five pairs of disappointed eyes. But I knew there was a mistake. Anybody could spell "position." It shouldn't have been in the bee.
Next thing I knew, as my face grew hotter and my stomach tighter, the word P-H-Y-S-I-C-I-A-N was being spelled by the MC, and I somehow made it off the stage. Later, back in our classroom, nobody mentioned the spelling bee. "Tough break," the teacher murmured, patting me on the shoulder. But her heart wasn't in it. I could tell.
I was never in another spelling bee. But I am always very careful when I spell the word "physician."
When I was in fifth grade, my entire school was given a spelling test, a long one, with over a hundred words. The student who spelled the most words correctly in each class was invited to participate in a school-wide spelling bee, to be held in front of the entire school and the participants' parents. The winner of the spelling bee would get not individual prizes but glory and treasure for his or her class, in the form of a pizza and ice cream sundae party to be attended by the principal, new books and dictionaries, and some privilege I can't remember but seemed monumental at the time: first to the cafeteria at lunch or something like that.
As per usual, I knew all of the words on the test. I spelled them all correctly. My teacher made a smiley face at the top of my test and wrote, "Can't wait for our pizza!" On the day of the spelling bee, however, I was nervous. I was going through a self-conscious phase, and I was not thrilled by the prospect of sitting on a stage in front of the whole school. My parents were coming. Fifth graders don't like seeing their parents in public. But there was nothing I could do. The writing, as it were, was on the wall.
When the gymnasium full of kids had finally been silenced, we were a row of fidgety middle schoolers facing the crowd. We had been instructed to write our word each round on a strip of paper given to us for the purpose, then hold it up facing out, so the other kids, teachers and parents could see it. The first few rounds went smoothly. A few kids were eliminated, then a few more. And then it was my turn again. The words had been easy; I had forgotten about the crowd; I was feeling much more confident now. I looked out and made eye contact with each of my parents. I smiled.
When the MC read my word, I smiled. I started writing immediately, so quickly, in fact, that I was asked if I'd like to have my word repeated. No, I shook my head. P-O-S-I-T-I-O-N, I wrote, then turned my strip out, held it up above the desk as we'd been instructed. The room fell quiet, and my classmates, who had been cheering for me each round, looked crestfallen. I met fifty-five pairs of disappointed eyes. But I knew there was a mistake. Anybody could spell "position." It shouldn't have been in the bee.
Next thing I knew, as my face grew hotter and my stomach tighter, the word P-H-Y-S-I-C-I-A-N was being spelled by the MC, and I somehow made it off the stage. Later, back in our classroom, nobody mentioned the spelling bee. "Tough break," the teacher murmured, patting me on the shoulder. But her heart wasn't in it. I could tell.
I was never in another spelling bee. But I am always very careful when I spell the word "physician."
Blog Called on Account of Massive Work Deadline (Actually Three, But Who's Counting)
Now that I see there are SEVEN actual followers willing to go on anonymous record (complete with shadowy generic silhouettes), I feel worse than ever doing this. But know that I'm trying as hard as I can.
Oh! I just thought of what I can write about tomorrow: My fifth grade spelling bee.
Oh! I just thought of what I can write about tomorrow: My fifth grade spelling bee.
Friday, November 7, 2008
Crafty
For some reason, although I have not devoted one iota of thought to holiday shopping, and I break out in hives every time a relative asks me about plans for my daughter's December birthday, I have found myself thinking about the gifts my sister and I started making around this time of year in our basement craft room.
My mother turned half of our large basement into a craft room for us when we were around seven and eight. She cleared the space, put a large, old, oak table in the middle of it, and lined the walls with shelves that held every imaginable type of craft material: art supplies, fabric, beads, clay, Styrofoam, rocks, shells, doilies, pipe cleaners and much, much more. My sister and I would spend hours down there, "working." She gave us a big cardboard, under-the-bed storage box and we turned it into Boston's Colonial Theater, complete with stage set with a scene from the production of "Annie" that had recently hypnotized us. There were rows of tiny seats with little pipe cleaner people sitting in them. It had curtains. I have rarely been as proud of a creation.
But each year, what we really looked forward to about the craft room was the holiday gift-making bonanza. Like many children with socially conscious parents we had been raised to believe that there was nothing better, more special, than a homemade gift. We took this with a grain of salt, while understanding the principle. We believed that it was more appropriately, should we say, applied to the gifts we made for others, not so necessarily those that we received.
It didn't start on such a large scale, but after a few years, our gift-making operation had grown out of control. We were making gifts for our immediate family, grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles, great aunts and uncles, second cousins and first cousins once removed. I kid you not. As the gifts were finished, they were accounted for and filed on a shelf or in the drawers of the table. There were lots of rock paperweights, painted or with alphabet noodle messages or names glued on. There were paintings, and pencil holder cups, and lipstick holders, and doll clothes and pots with lids--if someone had told us we had to make gifts for all of Middlesex County, I feel as though we would have looked at each other, stood straight, and asked: By when?
I'm not sure why I'm thinking about this now. It may be because the holidays, although I am fighting them away with a stick, are looming. It may be because I am dissatisfied with the play room I set up for my girls and know it needs more creative oomph. Or it may be neither, just that I am remember wistfully, fondly, the days when my sense of industry could be so easily and purposefully fulfilled.
My mother turned half of our large basement into a craft room for us when we were around seven and eight. She cleared the space, put a large, old, oak table in the middle of it, and lined the walls with shelves that held every imaginable type of craft material: art supplies, fabric, beads, clay, Styrofoam, rocks, shells, doilies, pipe cleaners and much, much more. My sister and I would spend hours down there, "working." She gave us a big cardboard, under-the-bed storage box and we turned it into Boston's Colonial Theater, complete with stage set with a scene from the production of "Annie" that had recently hypnotized us. There were rows of tiny seats with little pipe cleaner people sitting in them. It had curtains. I have rarely been as proud of a creation.
But each year, what we really looked forward to about the craft room was the holiday gift-making bonanza. Like many children with socially conscious parents we had been raised to believe that there was nothing better, more special, than a homemade gift. We took this with a grain of salt, while understanding the principle. We believed that it was more appropriately, should we say, applied to the gifts we made for others, not so necessarily those that we received.
It didn't start on such a large scale, but after a few years, our gift-making operation had grown out of control. We were making gifts for our immediate family, grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles, great aunts and uncles, second cousins and first cousins once removed. I kid you not. As the gifts were finished, they were accounted for and filed on a shelf or in the drawers of the table. There were lots of rock paperweights, painted or with alphabet noodle messages or names glued on. There were paintings, and pencil holder cups, and lipstick holders, and doll clothes and pots with lids--if someone had told us we had to make gifts for all of Middlesex County, I feel as though we would have looked at each other, stood straight, and asked: By when?
I'm not sure why I'm thinking about this now. It may be because the holidays, although I am fighting them away with a stick, are looming. It may be because I am dissatisfied with the play room I set up for my girls and know it needs more creative oomph. Or it may be neither, just that I am remember wistfully, fondly, the days when my sense of industry could be so easily and purposefully fulfilled.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
It's Almost All Out of My System, I Promise
From Barack Obama's Boston convention speech four years ago:
"Well, I say to them tonight, there's not a liberal America and a conservative America; there's the United States of America.
There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America.
The pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue States: red states for Republicans, blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the red states.
We coach little league in the blue states and, yes, we've got some gay friends in the red states.
There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq, and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq.
We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America."
Today, my fellow Americans, I am burnt out. I am burnt out on Halloween candy and work for hire. I am burnt out on feeling angry and feeling tired. I am burnt out on cutting food into tiny pieces and to-do lists that never get smaller. I am burnt out on coffee and emails and arguing with people less than 3 feet high. And yes, I am a weency bit burnt out on politics.
I overdosed, and now I'm feeling hungover. Our elections are weird that way--you make history and then sit around for a couple of months twiddling your thumbs. But that's fine. I'd just not like to see electoral maps behind my eyelids every time I close my eyes.
But I did want to print this excerpt from the speech that brought Obama into the national spotlight because it was the part of the speech that lingered for me, and because I heard echoes of it in his acceptance speech, and because although I go around saying that I don't care if we are divided as long as my side is on top, the truth is I hate that the United States thinks of itself as these two groups with nothing in common except citizenship, and I love that Obama seems to agree this is worth not being glib about.
There are a few people I love whose politics are very different than mine. Many people I love have loved ones whose politics are even more different than mine. And the truth is, when I look close up at these people who come to mind easily, it's not fair or right or helpful to simply condemn their wrong-headedness. I don't ever want to be a one-issue American, even if I'd like to punch California in the gut right now, and send Arkansas off to Rikers for 15 to life.
I have tried over the course of my lifetime to bring people around to my way of thinking by arguing, pontificating, cajoling, pleading, mocking and commanding. Not so successfully. A few times in my life, however, I have changed people's minds, and that has always been by action, not words. I think this is Barack Obama's plan. I hope so.
"Well, I say to them tonight, there's not a liberal America and a conservative America; there's the United States of America.
There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America.
The pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue States: red states for Republicans, blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the red states.
We coach little league in the blue states and, yes, we've got some gay friends in the red states.
There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq, and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq.
We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America."
Today, my fellow Americans, I am burnt out. I am burnt out on Halloween candy and work for hire. I am burnt out on feeling angry and feeling tired. I am burnt out on cutting food into tiny pieces and to-do lists that never get smaller. I am burnt out on coffee and emails and arguing with people less than 3 feet high. And yes, I am a weency bit burnt out on politics.
I overdosed, and now I'm feeling hungover. Our elections are weird that way--you make history and then sit around for a couple of months twiddling your thumbs. But that's fine. I'd just not like to see electoral maps behind my eyelids every time I close my eyes.
But I did want to print this excerpt from the speech that brought Obama into the national spotlight because it was the part of the speech that lingered for me, and because I heard echoes of it in his acceptance speech, and because although I go around saying that I don't care if we are divided as long as my side is on top, the truth is I hate that the United States thinks of itself as these two groups with nothing in common except citizenship, and I love that Obama seems to agree this is worth not being glib about.
There are a few people I love whose politics are very different than mine. Many people I love have loved ones whose politics are even more different than mine. And the truth is, when I look close up at these people who come to mind easily, it's not fair or right or helpful to simply condemn their wrong-headedness. I don't ever want to be a one-issue American, even if I'd like to punch California in the gut right now, and send Arkansas off to Rikers for 15 to life.
I have tried over the course of my lifetime to bring people around to my way of thinking by arguing, pontificating, cajoling, pleading, mocking and commanding. Not so successfully. A few times in my life, however, I have changed people's minds, and that has always been by action, not words. I think this is Barack Obama's plan. I hope so.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Awakening
I spent the day with my friend in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, walking the streets of a lower, lower middle class neighborhood, making sure that every self-professed Democrat had voted or had a way and a plan to get to the polls. We were warned at Campaign Headquarters that the neighborhood we were headed to was full of "rednecks" who might "harass" us with racial invective. I have always hated the word "redneck," had a visceral reaction to it as ugly and classist and mean. However, after hearing a few choice epithets today, I decided that if used to describe a raging bigot, it's perfectly okay.
And as we walked, we encountered some rednecks, some lost souls, some raised middle fingers from behind lace curtains, and some very angry, teeth-baring guard dogs. We saw NRA stickers and posters, several men in military garb, the by now familiar plastic children's pails full of cigarette butts on porches and lawns. But at each house we approached, we encountered citizens, Democrats and Republicans and Independents, who had exercised their right to vote and voted for Barack Obama.
Most people we met had already voted. I couldn't wait, was a common sentiment. We were there before the polls opened, another. You folks again? another still. To my shock, at many of the homes we'd been assigned to stop at, there was evidence of one or two or even three previous visits by Obama campaign workers over the previous days. When I heard this evening on ABC that 59% of Pennsylvania voters were contacted by the Obama campaign IN PERSON--not over the phone or by mail or email but by an actual human being--I was both blown away and somehow not surprised. There were a lot of familiar faces out there on the streets today.
I will never forget this election cycle. I feel awakened as a citizen, as a member of society, as an American. I have always considered myself politically active and patriotic, I have always voted, followed politics, local and national, spoken out on behalf of what I believe. But never before have I left my comfort zone and taken to the streets. This, this is a world in which I want to raise my children. I can never go back. I won't.
I grew up hearing my father talk about waiting late at night as a boy in the freezing cold on his little town green to shake the hand of John F. Kennedy, a man his Jewish immigrant parents believed could speak for them. I grew up hearing my mother talk about marching on Washington with Martin Luther King in defiance of her parents' wishes, the safe confines of her small hometown. Someday, now, I will be able to tell my girls that on the day America finally redeemed itself, I was meeting the Americans who made it happen. I was one of them myself.
Tomorrow is another day. I will wait, along with the rest of the world, to see what kind of a president Barack Obama will turn out to be. My expectations for him are high, exceptionally so. I think he will change the world. I think he already has.
And as we walked, we encountered some rednecks, some lost souls, some raised middle fingers from behind lace curtains, and some very angry, teeth-baring guard dogs. We saw NRA stickers and posters, several men in military garb, the by now familiar plastic children's pails full of cigarette butts on porches and lawns. But at each house we approached, we encountered citizens, Democrats and Republicans and Independents, who had exercised their right to vote and voted for Barack Obama.
Most people we met had already voted. I couldn't wait, was a common sentiment. We were there before the polls opened, another. You folks again? another still. To my shock, at many of the homes we'd been assigned to stop at, there was evidence of one or two or even three previous visits by Obama campaign workers over the previous days. When I heard this evening on ABC that 59% of Pennsylvania voters were contacted by the Obama campaign IN PERSON--not over the phone or by mail or email but by an actual human being--I was both blown away and somehow not surprised. There were a lot of familiar faces out there on the streets today.
I will never forget this election cycle. I feel awakened as a citizen, as a member of society, as an American. I have always considered myself politically active and patriotic, I have always voted, followed politics, local and national, spoken out on behalf of what I believe. But never before have I left my comfort zone and taken to the streets. This, this is a world in which I want to raise my children. I can never go back. I won't.
I grew up hearing my father talk about waiting late at night as a boy in the freezing cold on his little town green to shake the hand of John F. Kennedy, a man his Jewish immigrant parents believed could speak for them. I grew up hearing my mother talk about marching on Washington with Martin Luther King in defiance of her parents' wishes, the safe confines of her small hometown. Someday, now, I will be able to tell my girls that on the day America finally redeemed itself, I was meeting the Americans who made it happen. I was one of them myself.
Tomorrow is another day. I will wait, along with the rest of the world, to see what kind of a president Barack Obama will turn out to be. My expectations for him are high, exceptionally so. I think he will change the world. I think he already has.
Monday, November 3, 2008
To be totally honest, I started a number of entries today on other subjects, but none of them went anywhere. Usually, if I force myself, I can get somewhere, even if it's not my ideal or imagined destination, but today? Nothing. Bubkes.
I think it is fair to allow myself participation in the first example of collective anxiety I can remember. At least I cannot deny that I am feeling it--not anxiety, exactly, as I am feeling pretty confident that this election will go the way I want it to, but an intense distraction and even edginess, as though I am waiting for life-changing news, which I guess in a way, I am.
The truth is, I am finding this collective emotion thing rather inspiring. After 9/11, I suppose, I felt part of a larger group, connected to the people around me and around my city in a different way. But the event itself was so finite, so awful, so impossible to process in the immediate days after it happened, that I can't say I felt caught up in a collective response, which would have had to be rage? Intense sorrow? At least at first, nothing good. Later, there was a sense I know was shared by others of newfound commitment to the belief system and liberties we take for granted--which actually may have something to do with the way people are responding to this election--but not a movement, a tidal wave of effort and determination and perseverance the likes of which I have never actually seen. Until now.
Today, I will confess, I had a weak moment. I was riding on the subway, and I was late for my next appointment, and hungry, and disgruntled. I had finished my book, so busied myself studying the faces of the other people on the subway car, as surreptitiously as I could. There was a woman seated across from me who looked pretty downtrodden. Not homeless: she had a jacket and a handbag, but bone-tired, with worry lines deep in her brow. Her clothes were shabby, and when she pulled an envelope out of her pocket, I noticed she was sorting coupons, which I don't think I have ever seen anyone do here in New York.
And for a sour, bitter, low, low moment, I thought to myself, and I do feel as though I am confessing here, So what? Why, really, should this woman care? The truth is, this won't change her life at all.
I don't know what changed in me, why when the woman got off the subway and walked away, to a life I actually know nothing about, I didn't feel this anymore. Nothing had happened; it was a thought, it had occurred to me, and then been whisked away for no apparent reason. I didn't even have to talk myself out of it: I simply didn't believe it anymore, or think it true, and I was relieved.
Because at heart, at the very core of the things I believe, is that we must think things are possible, for the people they are actually possible for, and for the people they are most likely not. For when we give up hope for the downtrodden, the struggling, the least fortunate among us, we give up hope for us all.
So tonight, I go to sleep thinking this, and believing it, as profoundly as I have ever believed anything before: Tomorrow, the world is going to change. Not just because we will be electing a new president, and he will be a good president, a brave president, a brilliant and thoughtful and empathetic president, but because for the first time in my life I have felt the power of what we can do when we do it together, part of a groundswell of change. Dare I say it? Part of the very best parts of the human race.
I think it is fair to allow myself participation in the first example of collective anxiety I can remember. At least I cannot deny that I am feeling it--not anxiety, exactly, as I am feeling pretty confident that this election will go the way I want it to, but an intense distraction and even edginess, as though I am waiting for life-changing news, which I guess in a way, I am.
The truth is, I am finding this collective emotion thing rather inspiring. After 9/11, I suppose, I felt part of a larger group, connected to the people around me and around my city in a different way. But the event itself was so finite, so awful, so impossible to process in the immediate days after it happened, that I can't say I felt caught up in a collective response, which would have had to be rage? Intense sorrow? At least at first, nothing good. Later, there was a sense I know was shared by others of newfound commitment to the belief system and liberties we take for granted--which actually may have something to do with the way people are responding to this election--but not a movement, a tidal wave of effort and determination and perseverance the likes of which I have never actually seen. Until now.
Today, I will confess, I had a weak moment. I was riding on the subway, and I was late for my next appointment, and hungry, and disgruntled. I had finished my book, so busied myself studying the faces of the other people on the subway car, as surreptitiously as I could. There was a woman seated across from me who looked pretty downtrodden. Not homeless: she had a jacket and a handbag, but bone-tired, with worry lines deep in her brow. Her clothes were shabby, and when she pulled an envelope out of her pocket, I noticed she was sorting coupons, which I don't think I have ever seen anyone do here in New York.
And for a sour, bitter, low, low moment, I thought to myself, and I do feel as though I am confessing here, So what? Why, really, should this woman care? The truth is, this won't change her life at all.
I don't know what changed in me, why when the woman got off the subway and walked away, to a life I actually know nothing about, I didn't feel this anymore. Nothing had happened; it was a thought, it had occurred to me, and then been whisked away for no apparent reason. I didn't even have to talk myself out of it: I simply didn't believe it anymore, or think it true, and I was relieved.
Because at heart, at the very core of the things I believe, is that we must think things are possible, for the people they are actually possible for, and for the people they are most likely not. For when we give up hope for the downtrodden, the struggling, the least fortunate among us, we give up hope for us all.
So tonight, I go to sleep thinking this, and believing it, as profoundly as I have ever believed anything before: Tomorrow, the world is going to change. Not just because we will be electing a new president, and he will be a good president, a brave president, a brilliant and thoughtful and empathetic president, but because for the first time in my life I have felt the power of what we can do when we do it together, part of a groundswell of change. Dare I say it? Part of the very best parts of the human race.
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