Missed Manners

I grew up in a family in which manners extended well beyond “please” and “thank you,” and the placement of one’s napkin on one’s lap. I answered the phone “Graham residence, Ann speaking” and said “excuse me” before I interrupted adult conversation. I was also expected to recognize adult conversation, and to refrain from interjecting my own opinions or anecdotes unless they were requested. I was never encouraged to believe that I had the same rights as adults in the household, and consistently taught to consider “the other person” in matters which ranged from sitting through dull stories told by old people to expressing great joy upon receiving a(nother) knitted hat for Christmas.

My brother and I were not allowed to chew gum, yell or play loud music in the house, or to thump up and down the stairs. We wrote thank-you notes, ate what we were served as guests and held doors for people. My mother disapproved of containers (milk, catsup, salsa, soda bottles) on the table, and required that condiments be decanted, and that we knew which forks and spoons were used for what purpose. We could sit through a concert or lecture without getting up or rattling wrappers, and we could eat at a nice restaurant without disturbing other diners. If we had to, we could sit still while the adults drank (endless) cups of coffee after dinner  and discussed people we didn’t know. We were not allowed to use the words “fart” or “butt” or to comment in any way about the passing of gas.

We were well-loved, thoroughly supported and doted upon; we were simply expected to behave well in most circumstances. The basic premise of our upbringing was that the opinions and activities of children are interesting mainly to those children and their immediate families, and that adults outside of that circle should not be discomfited in any way by their presence. Charmed and entertained, absolutely, but not disturbed or annoyed.  Under the guise of “manners” we were being taught to be civil, compassionate members of society – to listen patiently, think of others and be grateful, gracious  and helpful.

In my present family, the rules of my childhood are largely dismissed as archaic, artificial and repressive. My husband was raised on a rural farm with five other children, and while his parents both have lovely manners, they were lucky to keep napkins on laps and elbows off the table without concerning themselves with the vulgarity of gum chewing or inquiries about who had “cut the cheese.” I believe we have taught my son to behave well in public and to consider the feelings of others, but his manners at home are sometimes appalling. He has the questionable gift of being able to adhere to all of my parents’ rules at their house, and then to slip back into ill-mannered sloth at home.

While some of the rules have fallen away at my house for reasons of expedience (my life is too short to decant catsup)  others are rejected on the basis that the rules were just plain weird to begin with. Gum was made to be chewed! Who wants bored kids sitting around fidgeting while adults try to talk? In addition, there is the ever-popular refrain “no one does that!” Apparently I am living in a door-slamming, gum-chewing universe where children are encouraged to recite the complete play-by-play of favorite Disney movies in the middle of adult conversations and announce every ingested bean and every resulting emission with great relish.

I have also been advised by both professional and lay analysts that the rules of my upbringing were a way of squelching my natural impulses and denying my true self, and that children must be free to express themselves, and simply “be.” If that means throwing a football in the house, or interrupting grandma’s monologue about her walking tour in Denmark, so be it.

In the context of my house, I am suffering from battle fatigue. I am told so often that my inclinations are snobbish and outdated, that I tend to save myself for egregious behavior. My son chews gum, plays loud music, and thumps on the stairs with impunity. For now, I am trying to be satisfied with the fact that his manners in the Great World are decent (aside from a baffling inability to move a napkin from table to lap), and he is an essentially a kind human being. That should mean that the important lessons are being learned, and that we can work on refinements.

Secretly, though, I delight in accounts of well-mannered children carrying the torch of etiquette. I devour stories in the New York Times about children who are sent to special schools to learn how to behave at the dinner table, how to meet and speak with adults, and how to behave at the theater. I nearly wept tears of joy when I called an old friend and her daughter answered with the familiar “Smith residence, Alice speaking.” Call me repressive, old-fashioned, or simply “weird,” but I believe that manners are an embodiment of civilized society. I would hate to think that there is no longer any place for them in the world in which I live.



Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk

“Cigarettes And Chocolate Milk

Cigarettes and chocolate milk
these are just a couple of my cravings
everything it seems I like’s a little bit stronger
a little bit thicker
a little bit harmful for me…”

-Rufus Wainright

I am thoroughly familiar with The Golden Mean, “all things in moderation,” and blah, blah, blah. As a student of Buddhism, I am repeatedly confronted with the basic tenet that cravings are the root of all suffering, and that being in the present moment, not longing for something different, is the path to enlightenment.

The problem is that moderation takes huge discipline, and that when I am tired, or hungry, or celebratory, or breathing, I tend to want something, and it is very rarely “just enough.” Back in the days when I was not eating a low-carb diet, I would be drawn into the kitchen by the inexorable pull of the remains of the triple layer carrot cake, or the virgin carton of “Moose Tracks” in the freezer. I wasn’t after a “bite,” or a “taste;” I wanted enough to create the culinary equivalent of Blotto. I could eat four slices of pizza, seven cookies, or half a bowl of leftover Halloween candy without thinking, after which I would be placid and satisfied (until the next time). I don’t do that anymore, not because I have become more disciplined, but because I don’t want to die before the next season of “The Rachel Zoe Project” begins.

Even about diet and excercise I have been immoderate; two years ago when I “went on a diet” and began working out at the local YMCA, I was obsessed with calories ingested, calories burned, and the logging and tracking thereof. Since I couldn’t actually eat what I wanted to eat, and made myself burn calories in ways that I truly hated, my cravings were displaced into data-gathering, rule-following, and petty triumphs over shin splints and metabolism. Of course it didn’t work, and I gained it all back (with extra). This time around, there has to be a balance of pleasure and pain so that there is no room for the feeling that I want, I need, I have to have something dramatic to make me feel better. If I am craving the solace of an inappropriate snack, I have two hands full of peanuts instead of one. Extra calories, certainly, but no carbs and no damage. If I don’t want to go for a walk, I go anyway, but I walk slower, or for a shorter distance; my Id is pleased that we have gotten away with something, and I still burn some calories and get my heart rate up.

Food being off the table, so to speak, there are other things that pull me towards the tipping point. During a recent bout of sciatica, I was given giant, economy-sized bottles of Vicodin, Flexeril and Valium. I was in a tremendous amount of pain, and there was no “high” involved, merely a cessation of the feeling that I would amputate my left leg if I could get up off the couch and find my chef’s knife. I do recall, though, that a “sciatica cocktail” left me feeling mellow and made me forget everything unpleasant that might previously have been lurking in my addled mind. I was also a more benevolent creature, unruffled by things that would ordinarily cause me to snap at loved ones or begin to stew about ways to express my unhappiness at the loudness of the television or the shoes in the middle of the living room floor.

I wondered, more than once, how it would feel to take those pills, even just one Vicodin, when I was not in pain. Would I be a kinder, happier, generally smoother person? Would I be more relaxed and charming in social situations? The fact that I even think these things is a flashing red indicator that I am lacking in some fundamental kind of equanimity. Do other people think things like that? Is that how addicts get started? I have not, of course, tested the Better Living Through Chemistry idea, but what does it say about me that I even let the thoughts form in my head without stabbing them with my piercing understanding of all things rational and moderate?

I am also every marketer’s dream. When I see ads for lipstick that plumps, moistens, glosses and refines, I am galvanized to act. I want the perfume that no man can resist, the jeans that will make me look like Twiggy, and the rings that cost as much as our house. There is nothing wrong with identifying a product that one can afford, and that is useful, but this is not that. This is belief in the transformative power of merchandise, belief that, despite objective evidence to the contrary, the presence of that object in this life will make it better. It is materialistic, un-spiritual, banal and generally unattractive, but it happens. As with food, and my stash of potential mood-elevators, I am able to control my actions;  it is very rare that I actually buy anything that I covet unless it is a particularly zippy new kind of Kashi bar that also happens to be on sale. The issue is not the doing, but the wanting to, which takes up precious energy and cheapens the life around me by comparison.

Wainright  goes on, in “Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk,” to say that, in addition to cigarettes, chocolate milk and jelly beans “there’s those other things /Which for several reasons we won’t mention.” I have craved other things, far darker than anything I’m willing to discuss in a blog post that my mother will read. There was a time in my life when it seemed very romantic, artistic and edgy to switch off the controls and let myself pursue whatever I craved. Maturity, marriage and motherhood have all contributed to the end of that kind of thing, but it still worries me that there was a time when I would drive to a man’s house in the dead of night to leave a note on his windshield, begging him to come back. Fortunately, as long as my husband is alive and well, it seems unlikely that I will revert to stalking unkind and inappropriate men because of my deep belief that we are soul mates, and that the “having” of him would make me whole.

The harsh truth is that I am very bad at “being here now.” No matter how hard I try (which may, in itself, be the problem) I seem, much of the time, to be craving something that part of me believes will make be prettier, happier, calmer and generally better. If I stop cold and send myself a memo concerning the failure of all previous food, perfume, CDs and handbags  to make my life better, I can come back to a place where I need nothing more than to be who I am and where I am. Maybe I just solved my own problem. I can make a Post-It note with a reminder. A really beautiful Post-It note from of those cool, exclusive and expensive online stationery stores with unusual and interesting designs that would inspire me every time I looked at my desk….

I Love You Just the Way You Are….

I recently encountered an article about something called “Gender Disappointment,” a label for women who are so traumatized by failing to produce a child of the desired gender that they become deeply depressed, and go to great lengths to produce the “right” flavor on future attempts. One of these Prize Narcissists was so unhappy about the fact that she had not yet given birth to a daughter that she posted the following in an internet forum: “‘I hate my life. My family is complete in reality but not in my heart.’” According to the article, “[s]he is considering giving all three of her boys up for adoption,” because she “‘wants to give them to someone who can actually love them.’”

As the mother of a healthy 12-year-old child, the piece shocked and sickened me. I thought about the women I know who struggle or struggled with infertility, and about the psychological impact on a child whose mother wishes that he or she were something completely different. As I thought, I tried to lower my blood pressure by finding a way to feel compassion towards those women; there had to be an “in,” some way that I could identify with their sorrow based on common bonds of motherhood, womanhood, or even humanity. In the end, I couldn’t do it. I have argued passionately in favor of showing compassion towards everybody from Andrea Yates to Sarah Palin, because in my universe there is no more important concept than the notion that we are all human, and are neither superior nor alien to other humans with failings. These legions of “gender disappointed” women, weeping while fondling pink dresses at Macy’s while their male children look on,  are also human, and deserving of compassion. Clearly, I am not sufficiently evolved.

There are other kinds of “disappointment” in one’s children, though, which are entirely sanctioned by society and viewed not only as benign but as commendable. Although I haven’t participated as a parent, it seems to go like this: a child is a fungible commodity, albeit a beloved one, and regardless of the actual nature, inclinations or abilities of that child, it is the role of the parents to shape whatever they got into whatever they really wanted.

The desirable outcome varies, but I grew up a child musician with peers who were being pushed hard to be professional musicians from the time they were three or four years old. In my community, future prodigies were started early in “Suzuki Strings,” based on a program devised by Shin’ichi Suzuki to develop not only technical facility, but “beautiful character” in children. Although the goals of the program are not only admirable but quite lovely, the parents of my compatriots used it as the first step towards World Music Domination in a school district with a first class string program. The competition was so fierce that by the time I was in high school, one mother became so unhinged over her sons’ inability to get and hold “first chair” positions in the orchestra, that she began a campaign of using various poisons placed in cars, lockers, and homes to exact revenge from those who stood in the way of her dream. Since I was often competing for first chair with one of her sons, I can tell you that we had chemicals in the air vents of the family car, and mercury in the air vents in my bedroom, the effects of the latter eventually killing our beloved Airedale.

This perversion of an opportunity for enrichment into a desperate pursuit of success produced only one chemical poisoner (to the best of my knowledge) but it produced many, many parents who glossed over or completely denied the fact that music was not the passion of their respective children, but their own interest.Among my fellow musicians in middle and high school were those who were clearly “born to it,” those who played with heart, and willingly immersed themselves in all things musical because it was a welcome gift. There were also student musicians who played with great technical facility, practiced their daily hours, and generally hit all the right marks, but who were not in love with it. We could all make ourselves do anything; we were tremendously disciplined and competitive, but it was an entirely different process when the pressure came from without rather than within. I often wonder what happened to some of the “unwilling prodigies,” what they might have chosen to do had they been permitted, and whether they were ever able to find their own gifts and facilities after fifteen-plus years of striving to meet an artificial external standard.

In the less rarified parts of the world, this parental pushing is most often seen in the arenas of sports and academic excellence. What starts as kindergarten rec league soccer becomes, by sixth grade, an obsession with making the try-out team, and getting enough time on the field during games. When the child’s interest flags, or changes, there is insidious but heavy pressure not to “give up.” Instead of serving as a beloved form of play, and a way to get regular exercise, sports become a “job” for the budding Pele, with all of the pressure, deadlines and examination of performance that adult work generally entails. There is also a pattern of pushing children to excel in academics, particularly math, with a rush to enroll young students in after school programs, summer programs, and tutoring sessions. What happens to these children who are denied the chance to see play as play, or to be praised for doing good schoolwork at an age-appropriate level of skill? How would we feel, as adults, if we were required to focus vast amounts of time and psychic energy on hobbies in which we had lost interest, or abilities which gave us no real satisfaction?

My own child has facilities and interests completely alien to my own. I honestly expected, to some degree, a child version of myself, or at least some of myself; a young person with a great love of reading, and art, with some musical aptitude. Instead, I have a son who is a technology wizard focused passionately on wires, mother boards and “glitching” XBox games. He hates all things related to English class, from reading to writing, and after a year of playing the cello, decided that he would rather be in choir because “they don’t get yelled at if they don’t practice.” I have caught myself pushing, reading him “The Phantom Tollbooth” in the hopes that it would ignite a torch for literature, or insisting that we listen to classical music in the car despite the siren song of 50 Cent on 96.5. None of it worked; he will read the books required by his English teacher, he will grudgingly tolerate the intoxicating strains of Tchaikovsky long enough to get to Target, but he is just not that kid. He is a person who loves what he loves, just as I am. He might be a better cocktail party companion for me if he developed an interest in Beat poetry or the sonata form, and we could probably force him to learn about those things, but we would then be creating a different person altogether, and not a natural one.

There are things that we probably should “push” our children to do no matter who they are or where their interests lie. They should be taught to be decent, compassionate human beings, to clean up their messes, and to take responsibility for their actions. In my opinion (and my house) they should also be expected to respect their teachers, have nice table manners, say “please” and “thank you,” and try new things from tofu stir-fry to playing soccer or the violin. Beyond that, our children are neither possessions nor craft projects; they come into this world as human beings in their own right, and with whatever gender, talents or aptitudes occur in nature. Although he is not, strictly speaking, what I expected, I could not be more pleased with what I got, and I look forward to finding out who he grows up to be. If we’ve done our job right, he’ll be himself.

Hard Times? The New “Poverty Chic”

I am now receiving “Town & Country” in the mail because, on a tip from a clever friend, I went to fatwallet.com, and told a few casual lies.  (I could be practicing entertainment law and making $150,000 a year). Based on my fictitiously rarified self, I became a free recipient of the self-described “luxury lifestyle magazine.”

If you are not a regular “Town & Country” reader, I will help you to understand the nature of the publication by telling you that most of the advertising is for diamonds (and not the kind that come from Zales in the mall), with a few luxury cars and exclusive resorts hawked along the way. Society weddings are featured in the back of the magazine. The focus is not on celebrity glitz, but on the homes, clothing and entertainment of the kind of Old Money that owns a summer-house on Nantucket, orders curtain fabric from Braunschwig & Fils and stays at The Connaught when in London.

In this issue, the Editor’s Letter focuses on the effect the recent economic downturn has had on the halcyon days of the, well, the right-up-until-a-year-ago era. She calls 2009 “the year of ‘no mores’- no more lavish spending, no more whimsical investments, no more doing things just for the hell of it.” On the following page, she comes to her senses and recommends that we consider purchasing as a Christmas gift a $325.00 chinoiserie enamel ring box. This would, I imagine, be a stocking stuffer along with a 2 carat diamond ring from Cartier (to put in the box) , a perfect black truffle, a cashmere dog sweater, and a pair of airline tickets to Anguilla.

During my recent magazine addiction (from which I recovered completely in the Conde Nast wing of the Betty Ford Clinic), I saw this “Poverty Chic” idea again and again.  I have been reading fashion magazines for a long, long, time, and while one might find articles about “Six Outfits Under $100″ in media targeted towards suburban moms, teenagers or the socially disenfranchised, the push in high-end publications has always been to buy what was new, regardless of cost, or at least want it enough that it hurt. You might have had to figure out on your own that Payless was selling a pleather version of the Jimmy Choos that blew you away in “Vogue,” and make your own, less “luxe” version of Marc Jacobs latest ensemble, but the mission of the magazines was to get you to buy the real deal, from $40.00 lip balm to $10,000.00 necklaces made of raw aquamarines mined by Indonesian virgins. To my astonishment, in my most recent reading I found articles about “shopping your closet” rather than buying new, fashion spreads that included at least one item from Target or H &M, and articles about how to go longer between highlights, blowouts, manicures and other essential personal maintenance.

Although I am not happy that many at the tippy top of the socioeconomic pyramid have lost jobs or taken a bath on investment returns, it is interesting to me to watch the process by which the realities of my daily life have become “chic.” We have a more than adequate roof over our heads, and are sufficiently fed and clothed, but we do not eat out regularly, take vacations, buy hardcover books, buy expensive theater or concert tickets, or spend lavishly on holiday gifts. If I need a pair of black flats, I go to Target. My diamonds were inherited, and I buy my hair color in a box at the grocery store, blow out my own hair, and do my own nails. We are completely entertained through a combination of Netflix, free local concerts and tickets to theater performed at local high schools and theaters. I love beautiful things, and admit to having cravings for everything from a Kate Spade bag to a Cooper Mini, but those desires are filed in a brain compartment far away from the realities of my actual life. They are in the toile-covered, expensively scented “if I had a million dollars” compartment, right under paying off all of our debt and giving a huge donation to the local food bank.

We have been, and continue to be, the recipients miraculous generosity from a wide variety of people – my parents, who outfit Sam in Abercrombie before school starts and take us to Florida every year, my mother-in-law who sends me St. John suits and bags, Rob’s former employer who sent us on annual vacations to beautiful resorts in the Caribbean in the dead of winter, and friends and family who take us to amazing restaurants and pick up the tab in such a way that we never feel like “poor relations” but like essential and valued company. Those things, for us, are breathtaking breaks from penny-pinching pragmatism. They are not “business as usual,” but treasures. Four months ago, when I bought the first new car I have ever owned in my 31 years of driving, I was as pleased and in love with my tiny Hyundai as I would have been had we bought a Mclaren coupe. I still get a little rush every time I see my own tiny, shiny, stubby  wheels, parked in the driveway.

We have made some choices about what we value in this family, some of which mean that I have to consider every purchase from an expensive spice I can only use in one recipe, to a whole album (!) on iTunes.  I worry about the cost of potential orthodontia, prescription medicines,  failing washing machines, and lurking old-house disasters. The fact that this life, which we have lived for many years, is now considered novel and maybe even fashionable, is somewhat surreal. It is, I believe, how many Americans live, and compared to billions of people in this country and in the greater world, we are fabulously wealthy. For families living in real poverty, our big (heated) house with running water, our full refrigerator and our medical insurance would be luxuries. Shopping at Target and coloring one’s own hair are not novelties discovered by the editors at “Elle;” they are the realities of average American lives.

I am genuinely not happy that the mighty have fallen; I am not happy when anyone falls. I might wish, though, that there was less media focus on the getting and spending aspects of hard times, and more on the silver linings. This focus on what can be “bought” skews incorrectly the image of what it means to focus less on the material world, whether by choice or necessity. My books come from the library, my toilet paper is generic, and my cashmere used to be my mother’s, but despite my inability (and unwillingness) to spend $325.00 on a ring box, I have a sound marriage, a circle of friends and family who could only possibly love me for who I am (since I have nothing else to give them), and a great kid who is already learning how to work and plan to get what we can’t easily afford. Our family, and not what we buy, or where we go, is the center of our lives. There isn’t a job loss or investment disaster that can change that; long after the market has righted itself, and Biarritz and haute couture  are bullish again, we will continue to have the most luxurious things of all.

Fiat Lux

So I’m learning, by sampling the offerings of other NaBloPoMo participants, that many of them do not write about Major Issues on a daily basis. They write about the little things in life, like what they watch on TV, where they had lunch, or other fascinating quotidian tidbits. I’m pretty sure I read a line yesterday about a “preggers spider” in one of them.  I have really enjoyed some of these posts; it is very relaxing to catch a glimpse into someone else’s life, to compare a little, and to admire the deft use of a metaphor or a beautiful photograph. This kind of browsing also helps me remember that, while I have been asked by a valued reader to refrain from padding my 30 days with “fluff,” I am also not Anna Quindlen on steroids, required to write thought-provoking essays thirty days in a row.

I particularly enjoy posts in which the writer “rants” about something that happened in the course of daily life (as long as the semicolons are in the right place and the misspellings don’t make me wince). A rant of that variety is a perfect marriage of recognizable dailiness and a certain passion. We can all sympathize with the person waiting all day for the cable guy, the person served a piece of sushi with a fingernail in the salmon, or the person who rode all the way from work on the subway pinned next to a gum snapper.

So I have a rant, and while it does not involve any particular depth of sentiment or clarity of insight, I will feel better if I tell someone, and my husband and my parents have opted out of further rehashing of my issue. You’re it; bear with me, and I’ll try to make it good.

This morning at 9:03AM as I was editing on my computer, I heard a terrible grinding sound outside the dining room window, and then the power went out. I went to the front window in time to see a Board of Water & Light employee get into his van and drive away. I knew I had paid them, albeit a little later than one might have wished, and I was pretty sure that when they work on power lines they do not appear unannounced and shut off power to individual houses.

So I called The Board of Water and Light (on my cell phone, since the house phones were dead), where I was helped by a charming woman named Diane, and I do mean that. I told her that I was looking at a confirmation code from our credit union that the bill had been paid 5 days ago. Diane had a good idea: we should conference in the credit union and get confirmation that the bill had been paid on their end. After hold music and 7 possible routes to human conversation, we reached a young woman who took my account number. “Are you on the account?” She asked. I had seen this one coming.

“I’m not, but you should have a release in your records signed by my husband, permitting you to speak to me about this account.”

“Just a sec,” she said, and she was gone. I did not, by the way, make up the business about the release. I really am a lawyer, I really had prepared one, and we really had submitted it to the credit union years ago in case of just such an occasion. There was a long pause, during which papers rattled. “I’m sorry ma’am, there’s no release, and I can’t discuss this account with you. Your husband has to call.”

“There is a release,” I said, marvelling at my Zen-like composure, “maybe you just can’t find it. Can you work with me here? Our power has been shut off, it’s cold, I can’t work without my computer, and I can tell you anything you want to know to prove who I am. I have my husband’s Social Security number, and I’m looking at a screen with a confirmation code for this payment. What are the odds that if I had stolen his identity I would have his wallet and his computer and be trying to get his power turned back on?” She did not laugh. Not even a little bit, although I think I’m pretty amusing.

“I can’t discuss this account with you, ma’am, Your husband has to call in” she said, standing her ground. She was not a woman to be trifled with, regardless of our credit union’s protestations of friendly, home-town service that distinguished it from the Big Bad Banks. It was unfortunate, but couldn’t be helped if this particular hometown neighbor and her child froze to death because she would not make an exception when anyone with an IQ higher than “tepid” could see that I would have no motivation for doing what I was doing if I was not who I claimed to be.  So, after being reminded by Diane that the clock was ticking, and that after a certain point we would have to wait until tomorrow to have the power restored, I bit my lip and called my husband out of a meeting with people at his company’s head office in Indianapolis.

He was not thrilled, but he called the credit union to authorize them (again) to speak to me. He then called me back to report that, while they were not willing to speak to me, because he “could be anybody,” they were willing to fax to the Board of Water & Light proof that the payment had been made. As a fairly logical person with more than passing familiarity with the law, I see absolutely no difference between releasing a customer’s information by saying it (to a woman reachable at the home phone number listed on his account) vs. printing it out and faxing it. This begs the question of why, if he “could be anybody” they were willing even to fax the information. Clearly, nothing would do but for him to drive home from Indianapolis, visit the Customer Service Desk at the friendly, hometown credit union, show them his driver’s license and the mole behind his left knee, and beg them to tell the Board of Water & Light that we had paid our bill.

In the end, although I was terrifically bothered by the logistical inconsistency, we went with the fax plan. The women representing the Board of Water & Light were both compassionate and kind, and were good as gold about sending someone out to turn the power back on as soon as they received the fax. Five hours after the turn off, the van returned, the grinding was heard again, and then, fiat lux, and heat, and computer, and cellphone charger.

A particular gem named Tammi also talked to her supervisor and made sure that we would not be charged a security deposit, or any of the other fees that are usually charged after a turn-off. [Strictly speaking, the delay in payment was my bad; I was already late, and didn't realize that if I made a payment on October 29th, the credit union then sent it to a third-party service that sent a physical check that still hadn't reached its destination five days after clearing our account].  Interesting that folks working for a much larger business than the credit union could find it in themselves to help a fellow human in a tight spot.

I am probably too lazy to do anything dramatic like closing our account, but I would like to communicate to the management of the credit union that the inflexible enforcement of rules in ways that defy common sense is not a feather in their cap. I have worked in various customer service positions, and have made exceptions in cases where I could do a great deal of good, and no foreseeable harm. I have been rewarded for making those exceptions, and I have been lambasted; I have never regretted sticking my neck out to help someone in trouble.When I really, truly had to say “no” to a customer or client, I found that it was better received if I sounded sorry about turning them down, as opposed to taking a tone of indifference, or faint triumph. These are not gems of customer service wisdom developed and patented by yours truly; they should be second nature to any human paid to assist other humans.

Also, I do not feel safer from identity theft after learning that our financial institution would send personal information to a fax number that could be an online identity-theft information clearing house run by two escaped convicts from Paraguay, but would not speak to me. I feel, in fact, that we may have deposited our worldly goods in an institution run by soulless robots created and trained by various luminaries of the Third Reich.

Spent; I am completely over this and ready to move on. At one time I would, by now, have sent a detailed letter to the credit union, cc’d everywhere that it might hurt. These days, It feels right to let it go and try to understand that such experiences are just part of modern life. I can walk away (now that the heat is back on and I don’t have to lie under a pile of blankets) and watch the credit union recede in my rear view mirror, its harried martinets marching in lockstep and reciting unbreakabale rules….

Fag Hag Mag

This morning, as I contemplate the very poor decision made by voters in the state of Maine, I am wondering how differently people might have voted if they actually had friends or family who were openly gay. My life has been so much better, so infinitely much better because of the gay men I’ve known, who have been my friends, and supporters, and soul mates, that I can’t imagine anyone meeting any one of them and deciding consciously that it would be dangerous to society if they were allowed to be legally married. I also have at least three gay friends who have been married longer than I have, and in none of those relationships do I see anything substantively different from what I see in my own marriage. Well, other than the fact that in most cases they have fewer than half the rights I enjoy relative to inheritance, health insurance and end of life directives.

While I am politically liberal (perhaps one step to the left of the left-most point on the spectrum), this issue for me is personal, and not political. There is a kind of hard-wiring in me that has always led me to gay men like a divining rod. I have been, for most of my life, a “fag hag,” and although I am now a middle-aged fag hag married to, and in love with a decidedly heterosexual man, you can take the girl out of the fag hag life, but you can’t take the fag hag out of her psyche.

The first boy I ever fell in love with was gay, although I didn’t actually know that until we were in college. He was smart, and handsome, and funny, and he would dance with me at 7th Grade Activity Night because he was my friend. I was not exactly a hot commodity (about which, more another day) and I remember dancing to “My Eyes Adored You” in the cafeteria, face buried in his Shetland sweater, imagining that he was my real boyfriend. I have known him since we were in elementary school, he is still my friend, and although we haven’t danced together recently, I still love him. It turns out that nearly every boy I fell in love with between the ages of 9 and 18 was gay, which may explain why I didn’t have many dates. Over the years I have learned in various ways that these men were gay. Sometimes I heard the news from a third-party, but more than once I sat in a bar, a “family room,” or a parked car and listened to coming out stories that were a mixture of triumph, pain, fear and pride. In one case, the man was so raw, and so defensive that he misread the surprise on my face as judgment, told me he didn’t need people in his life who couldn’t accept him, and left me sitting on a bar stool before I could even explain that he’d misunderstood my reaction. I never saw him again.  I don’t know that I would have the courage to tell old friends that I was not what they thought I was, and to risk the rejection and judgment that might follow.

I kept falling for gay men in college, by which time I clearly understood that the men in question were gay, but harbored a belief that they could maybe change, or that we could make some kind of “arrangement” so we could be together forever. I knew a lot of that kind of thing had gone on in Lytton Strachey-Virginia Woolf circles, and believed that if they really, really wanted to, they could choose me. I fell in love with Larry, who was talented, and adorable, and dedicated to me a song based on a poem by Sylvia Plath. I fell in love with Andrew, with whom I performed scenes from “Much Ado About Nothing” in Shakespeare 203. I fell in love with Jeff, who made me laugh, and was beautiful, and had, at one time, dated Larry. At some point in this series of alliances, I began to identify myself as a fag hag, and announced on some occasion that I was going to start a magazine called “Fag Hag Mag.” It never happened, of course, but it was a culture that I knew, and where I felt comfortable. I was a not very pretty, not very confident  girl who had an escort for every occasion, an escort who opened doors for me, knew how to dance, and generally made me feel like maybe I really  was pretty and confident.

For a long time, as I got older and remained single, I wondered what was the matter with me. I dissected, I debated with myself, I tried desperately to figure out what signal was coming to me from gay men that scrambled my brain so that I fell in love with them more often than with suitably heterosexual specimens. I had experienced several “real” relationships, and certainly enjoyed the sexual dynamic that was (obviously) missing from my Faux Boyfriends, but even in a happy pairing with a straight man I missed the ease of being with my gay friends. I missed the easy inside jokes, the shared love of beautiful things, the lack of arguments over petty things, and the deep discussions that lasted for hours and covered everything. As a person of more advanced age and experience, I see that there is a de facto difference between the ease of a friendship and the heavier tension and responsibility of a romantic relationship, but the relative lightness of friendship can’t explain it all.

There is, of course, the kind of gay male friend made famous on “Sex and the City” who will go shoe shopping and give good advice (as opposed to my husband, who tries to help, but mostly just likes the idea of really, really high stilettos and corset lacing detail), but I have always had girlfriends with whom I did that kind of thing. There was something else about those boys and men that I needed, and it’s not an easy “thing” to pin down, because they are all very different from each other. Some march in Pride parades and have rainbow stickers on their cars, and others live lives indistinguishable in any way from my own, including being married, having children and working. They are as diverse as any other group of people I know; one of them was even a Republican for a while. It’s not patent “gaiety” that I love, it’s something else about those men.

I am past the point of needing a gay man to be with me so that I have a man in my life; I have one, and he is working out quite nicely.  I don’t believe I am drawn to gay men because they are just a different kind of “girlfriend,” or because they are handsome and charming escorts; I don’t think it’s a gender-related thing at all. I think I love them because no matter what they do with their lives, or how they grew up, or how introspective they are as a general rule, every one of them has had to struggle with being different, and afraid of rejection and judgment. That kind of mental work almost necessarily creates some level of compassion for others who suffer, and  that compassion is very attractive to me. I know gay men who are not particularly nice, and who are just as personally uninteresting to me as heterosexuals who behave badly, but my boys, my boys all have souls that shine like beacons to anyone who has been broken, rejected or misunderstood. I no longer need gay male friends to prop me up or make me feel better about myself and my life; I just love them because they are fabulous human beings who make the world a better place.

I will add that the whole business of comparing straight men to gay men and criticizing straight men for their failure to enjoy poetry, or Jimmy Choos or going to the theater is, in my opinion, an unnecessary and unfair business.  Not all gay men are flamers with boas in their closets, and not all straight men are insensitive clods who’d rather be watching football. Many of the finest straight men I know are wonderful precisely because they have some qualities or preferences that read as stereotypically “gay;” my brother claims that in college people thought he was gay because he had a beautiful collection of neatly folded sweaters, and listened to Judy Garland. Not gay; just evolved. My husband has been known to cry a little at the end of a sad movie or after a particularly moving story. Not gay; just the hottest kind of thing a straight man can do.

I won’t have changed anyone’s mind here, and I didn’t intend to present any kind of logical argument for gay rights. This really isn’t about gay rights at all, except to the extent that gay people are human and should have rights based on their humanity and not on who they fall in love with. I also don’t mean to dismiss or undermine the goodness of straight men, who offer a whole other kind of rich, complicated wonder to my life. This is just a love song to all of those boys and men who were so kind, and so loving and accepting of a not pretty, not confident girl, long enough for her to grow into herself and leave that girl behind.

Free-Range Children

My 12-year-old son has just walked out the door to the bus stop with a Nos Energy Drink in one hand and a pocket full of Halloween candy for  breakfast. He also falls asleep with the TV on, a TV which is IN HIS BEDROOM, does not willingly read books, and sometimes gets to steer the car on a quiet, suburban drive. He rides his bike around with a band of friends after school and on weekends, and sometimes they end up at the H & H Mobile Gas Station, on a busy corner, where they buy drinks and plan the filming of thrillingly viral YouTube videos.  He is allowed to attend “all-nighters” at the F.R.A.G. Center, a local hangout for computer gaming geeks, and frequently trades on Craig’s list, where he has made some bad trades, but also gotten himself a bike and a better cellphone. He has seen “R” rated movies, and sometimes listens to music with lyrics that would send his grandmother into apoplexy.

He has grown up in a neighborhood of undergraduate student renters, and as a little boy, used to ride his motorized Jeep around, meeting and greeting, and often being invited in for some ice cream or a little Nintendo. We always knew where he was, and we received apologies for everything from the bong being out when he came into the house (“but we hid it right away!”) to treats given at dinner time. His student friends bought him Christmas gifts, giant bags of candy for Halloween, and, on one memorable occasion, a group of leggy, stunning party girls made him an amazing trick-or-treat bag which is used to this day. Some of them, all grown up and married, still come by to see him.

Before you judge (and I can hear the indrawn breaths from here), I will tell you that there is a balance in this life. Just yesterday I took him for a dental cleaning. His shots are up to date, and he is required to do his homework before playing XBox Live. He has good grades, good friends, and is kind to animals, grandparents and small children. He often fixes himself a plate of celery, carrots and ranch dip as a snack, loves broccoli, and is generally fairly charming and polite. He is, to quote one of his teachers recently, “a hard kid not to like,” and I attribute a great deal of his ease in the world to his breadth of experience, positive and negative.

My friend Will, with whom I grew up, recently used the term “Free Range Children” to describe the way he and I were raised in the 70s; there were certainly rules, but we were also encouraged to be “out of the house” and to find things to do on our own. There were no play dates; I honestly cannot remember my parents arranging my social activity once I had hit second grade. We rode our bikes all over town, played games in the backyards until after dark in warm weather, and spent hours in the woods near my house, sledding in winter, building forts and finding troves of decaying pornography in summer. There were very clear boundaries and expectations at my house regarding manners, kindness, and the value of intellect, but no one ever supervised my homework, suggested social alliances, or enrolled me in programs to “improve”me academically. We were a mixed-faith household, and it was always clear to us that we had our options open as far as choosing or not choosing to practice religion. I have to say that my atheist father is one of the most moral and compassionate men I have ever encountered, and that he and my Jewish mother raised two children with strong moral compasses despite the absence of organized religion.

I was required to brush my teeth, take piano lessons until fifth grade and write thank-you notes, and I was discouraged from having Barbies (which my parents found moronic), but in general, I was “free-range.”

There is, of course, tremendous pressure on contemporary parents to “helicopter;” to protect children from all possible harm, to shape their experiences, friendships and education in a way that increases the probability of future happiness and success. At its lowest levels (and I can agree to disagree with you about this) it involves sheltering children from “inappropriate” content in movies, games and music. My own experience was that, as a voracious reader, I had read all kinds of things (including the incredibly explicit sexual exploits of Frank Harris in a book someone had left at my grandparents’ house) by the time I was in the fifth grade, and that I did not, as a result, become a nymphomaniac who uttered strings of expletives that would make a sailor blush.  I also spent a fair amount of time trying to tune in a porn channel that occasionally presented its grainy self on our downstairs TV set, squinting to figure out whether I was looking at a breast or, perhaps, an elbow.

Sam has become neither a potty mouth nor an axe murderer as the result of his exposure to violence in games and movies, or to “bad” language in rap and hip-hop songs , although I often take the opportunity to explain to him my own personal objection to the way women are objectified in certain music, or to the casualness of killing in games and movies. I have to trust that we have raised him well enough that his brain is not, at this point, merely a malleable puddle of mush to be shaped by whatever blows down the cultural pike. (He is actually more likely to be damaged by that particularly tortured metaphor than by listening to Fifty Cent). My husband and I are watching, we are available, and I know we  both value those “teachable moments.” I vividly recall the “Preachers’ Kids” of my youth who went absolutely wild in high school, and the people who were not allowed to have sugar growing up, and subsequently ate nothing but Captain Crunch in the college dining hall; it is our choice to allow our child to have some exposure to the worst of pop culture now, while we can talk about it and maybe provide a parental inoculation against the worst effects.

A level up from media control is academic and social micromanagement. I am less flexible on this topic. I do not believe that children have to have certain teachers, be with certain friends in classes, or have specific curriculum, without which they will fall behind and find themselves doomed to work as grocery store baggers. I also believe that part of learning to function in the world is being allowed to fail while the parental net is still there; better to find out what happens when you don’t do your homework when you’re in fifth grade than when you are in college.  My parents intervened precisely twice in my 13 year public school career, provoked once by the second grade teacher who believed I was dyslexic and told me that I should stop writing imaginary stories and “write about something real, like dolphins.” We would always intervene to protect Sam from a situation that was damaging to him academically or personally, but having to make new friends in the classroom or deal with a cranky teacher is a part of life, like meeting new co-workers or roommates,  or working for a difficult boss.

The highest level of parental control involves physical freedom, and it’s complicated. There are places where children are not safe outside, and, sadly, their parents do right to keep them close to home and under watchful eyes. We don’t live in one of those places, and although there are busy streets to cross, and probably the average amount of stranger-danger, Sam is now completely free-range. There were streets he wasn’t allowed to cross until he was a certain age, we have to be able to get in touch with by cell at all times, and he has to wear a helmet, but he can go. I have seen in my own childhood, and among Sam’s friends, the effects of the restrictions imposed by fearful parents, and while I fully (!) understand the impulse to protect what you love most in the world, there is no way to accident-proof life. Bad teachers, bad influences, bad words, and bad accidents happen, and one chooses either to insulate one’s offspring for the longest possible time to keep them safe and happy, or to let life unfold, running behind the two-wheeler with a hand ready for a fall, but clinging to neither bike nor child.

The summer after Sam was in first grade, he and his friend John rode down the big hill we live on, into the intersection below; Sam on his bike and John on a scooter. At the foot of the hill, John rode into a moving car, and was killed. When John’s father, who I admire beyond words, came over the next day to tell Sam what a good job he had done to run for help, he said to me that John had probably known he was doing something dumb, but that he had “died being a boy, and having a great ride.” I haven’t heard anything wiser since.

Just Say “No.”

My father used to say that our chores should be “done graciously or not done at all.” I did not have the choice, as a child, to decline his invitation to empty the dishwasher simply because I felt unable to do the job cheerfully and with intention. (Although my brother, always more savvy about the workings of the universe, sometimes announced that he could not do the job graciously, so he wasn’t going to do it at all). At forty-seven,  I am allowed to exercise my option. I’m just not awfully good at it, yet.

This saying “no” business is a work in progress, but I believe I am getting better at including my own psyche when balancing the pros and cons of a project or social obligation. Three years ago this fall,  I ended up as a soccer coach despite the fact that I, personally, had never played a team sport in my life. When I heard that there would be no 4th grade boys rec league team unless someone agreed to coach, I said “yes” to a year of twice weekly practices, a car full of flags and balls, indulging underachievers and over-whiners, and picking up empty plastic water bottles. The same year, I also oversaw the 4th grade Spaghetti Dinner, a major fund-raiser which involved coordinating parents and students to prepare and serve spaghetti and meatballs to 500 people. I honestly don’t remember signing up for that, but apparently when someone asked, I said “yes.” The following year, I agreed to be the Vice President of the PTA because I was told that the Vice President “didn’t really have to do anything;” a month into the school year the President quit, and I became President for two years in a row. I agreed to put together the employee Christmas party at Church despite the fact that it was someone else’s job, and that I was not even a category of persons who would have been invited to the event, because the person whose job it actually was called and said she was too busy, and besides, I was so good at it….

If I try to be objective, I can see a certain needy desperation about all this agreeableness. Maybe I saw myself as The Savior of the Fourth Grade and The Church, the literal sine qua non who made it possible for the little children of the village to play soccer, go on their bus trip to Mackinac Island, and have a well-run PTA, and for the hard-working Church employees to have a festive Christmas celebration. Regardless of whether my motivation was selflessness or narcissism, I frankly ended up hating every job I took on, dreading practices, dreading meetings, sighing at every e-mail, list and hitch,  feeling that my true self, who requires a great deal of quiet and solitude, was being killed in a perverse kind of Professional Busy-ness Suicide. There is also a Martyr Gene, passed down from  my father, which escaped my brother entirely. He can say “no” when he means it without hesitation, while I, the Carrier, wrestle and suffer over every request.

These three years later, I am not coaching anything, and my son would be so horrified if I showed up at his school to do anything other than pick him up for a dental appointment that I have divested myself of all school-related volunteering. I have refused all invitations to serve at Church (which is a whole other post altogether), and I am down to two volunteer positions. I said “yes” to serving as a board member for the Community Relations Coalition,  and “yes” to being the Co-President of the Neighborhood Association (although I somehow ended up as the only President). As I write, I have skipped nearly every Community Relations Coalition meeting this year, which suggests a passive-aggressive form of rejection better replaced by a crisp letter of resignation. I am willing to continue to serve as Neighborhood Association President, mainly because we have no actual meetings, and my duties are limited to sending mass e-mails about potlucks and the danger of leaving one’s house unlocked.

If I have learned nothing else in 47 years (and its entirely possible that I haven’t) it is that saying “yes” with no discernment leads to about 24 hours of feeling beneficent, followed by an exponentially longer period of resentment, frustration and self-loathing. I do not need another list of people to call, another set of dates for my planner, or another folder of messages under my e-mail Inbox. I need time to write, putter, work, think, reflect, dream, read, dust my stairs, wash my dogs and gather what’s left of my wits. Maybe I’m lazy, maybe I lack ambition, but I know myself to be a better person when I carve out great, glorious chunks of uninterrupted time to do whatever I need to do without the sense that the next meeting or round of e-mails is haunting me.

Unfortunately, my instinct for self-preservation conflicts with a deeply ingrained sense of duty and the need to be “unselfish.” What if Martin Luther King had decided that he was tired, and that someone else could run things for a while? What if Mother Theresa had decided that lepers were annoying and that her real interest lay in decorating crypts in Europe? If I don’t say “yes” to the endless stream of boards, projects and coalitions, maybe no one will. There could be anarchy, and the schools, the Church and the City could all come to a grinding halt. Also, I would be Setting a Bad Example, which is always the case when one is selfish.

If things would fall apart without me, though, maybe all of those things do not actually need to get done. Maybe if all of us who routinely say “yes” play a game of chicken with those who are content to watch us from the sidelines, the passive beneficiaries of our efforts will be motivated to run a committee or serve on a board. Maybe not.

Either way, I can’t keep saying “yes” without thinking about the consequences. I will say “no,” or at least not say “yes” when I really have no interest in or excitement about a given proposal, and save enough of myself to do some real good when something comes along that inspires me to give generously of my time and energy.

Or maybe I’ll say “yes.”

[Note: for some reason, WordPress wouldn't let me add pictures to this post. Perhaps they are disappointed by my negative attitude].



Oh, Why Not?

My first really serious boyfriend fancied himself a writer.  He did, in fact, write massive novels which I edited for him, suppressing my knowledge that they were truly terrible because the guy was really, really hot. They had plots, I’ll give him that, but the dialogue was stilted, cliches grew like mushrooms after a soaking rain…you get the picture.

Even my pathological desire to be the girlfriend of this moron didn’t prevent me from  arguing over and over with him about whether writers were born writers, or whether, in fact, anyone (him, for example) could just buckle down, apply himself and produce a novel. The key phrase in this argument was always “marketable.” He believed (and may still believe) that if you write some formulaic novel that people will read in order to distract themselves from actual thinking, it is “writing” and “marketable” and “good enough.” I believe that there is a place for romance novels, “Sweet Valley High” and certain kinds of mysteries, and that while they are technically “written” they are not “created,” and are not “art” of any kind. This was a total cultural and personal impasse; I do believe that “anybody can write a book,” but I also believe that I do not want to read something written for a check and not because of a need to communicate something, and to be heard.

The clear, objective truth, however, is that while Beautiful but Dumb did, in fact, write several entire novels, I have never gotten past page 162. I have been writing novels since I was in the third grade, at which time I produced a hand-written, hand-illustrated work entitled “Lacy Comstock;” a vague bastardization of the Laura Ingalls Wilder books with a little Caddie Woodlawn thrown in for good measure. In fourth grade I received for Christmas a beautiful, red Olivetti “Valentine” typewriter which I used to write a variety of short stories, and the start of numerous novels which tended to be largely autobiographical with an overlay of fantasy. Not fantasy like “Lilith;” fantasy like I was a famous girl hockey player, lived in Rhode Island and had long auburn hair and flashing green eyes. My alter ego was almost always named Sarah or Abigail. I continued to write various Unfinished Novels until I was out of college.

In college, I chose to be an English Major rather than a Creative Writing major mainly because I was totally mystified by what went on in the Creative Writing Department. I understood how to read, discuss and write about literature; I did not understand the highly expressive, raw, in-your-face, and often abstract kind of writing that I read in the school’s literary magazine. My personal taste ran to the extremely subtle and restrained variety of fiction and poetry (Wharton, Austin, James, Yeats, cummings), and although I had a long flirtation with Sylvia Plath, and wrote a great deal of my own wretched poetry about the general crap sandwich of teenage life, it was really Plath’s formality that made me love her writing. The process of laying out life-altering, heart-rending events and emotions so elegantly that the emotion is heightened by the very sense of repression inspired me. The wild, emotive, chaotic poems that were held up as golden exemplars in the Creative Writing program were total anathema to me, and (being a competitive type) I knew that what I would and could write was going to be judged as derivative and uninspired. I wrote papers about light and dark imagery in Shakespeare, and kept writing short fiction and poetry “on the side.”

The other problem with my life is a writer was my belief that one became a good, professional writer by means of some sort of magic, and that there was very little of it to go around. Being a professional novelist is in the same category as becoming a professional basketball player or the next Britney Spears; one has a greater chance of being struck by lightening. At a cocktail party, if you bring up writing as a profession, you will meet at least five people who believe that “they have a novel in them.” Everybody can write, right? Not everyone believes that they can perform brain surgery, or create cold fusion in a glass, but everybody can write. Self-deprecating young cynic that I was, I convinced myself that the fact that I loved to write, and that I was good at it meant that I was a merely higher order of Deluded Idiot. I read accounts of novelists submitting their novels to 18 editors without success, only to be “discovered” and become famous. I read accounts of writers who actually died unread and unloved, only to have their works appreciated after they were able to celebrate only in the spirit world. My assessment was that every moron out there, including my own Beautiful but Dumb boyfriend had read the same accounts and had the same dreams, and that the market was so glutted with their submissions (along with those that were magic, and infinitely better than my own) that there was no reason to enter the fray.

Law school  sounded the complete death knell of creativity. Without going into tedious details, I will explain that I went into law school in the fall of 1987 a creative type, and came out unable to write anything that was not fact-based until I started writing this blog in 2003. In a world in which no sentence may be written that is unsupported by fact, and in which the greatest weight is given to arguments which logically follow arguments already made and accepted, there is no room for the creative flourish or the personal expression. Law school was a mistake for so many reasons that I could probably write for thirty days straight about that, and that alone; suffice it to say that the worst thing, the very worst thing about that particularly bad choice was that it made writing into a form of verbal algebra instead of a creative act.

So this morning I was reminded that today begins not only National Blog Post Month (NaBloPoMo) but National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). Ridiculous names aside, these two challenges mean that I will be blogging daily, and also writing about 5 pages of a novel every day. The “finish line” of NaNoWriMo is reached on completion of a 175 page novel. It will not be Wharton; it may be pure, unmitigated garbage, but it will be a way for me to be better informed and less cynical about my direction as a writer. Maybe I “have a novel in me.” Maybe I don’t. We’ll know at the end of the month, and I’ll know whether I can really communicate on the page and create art, or whether I would be better off attending classes on Writing Romance Novels for Beginners.

I’ll get back to you on this.

Halloween Madeleines?

I am a person who remembers absolutely everything. I remember being sick when I was two years old and believed (one, hopes, due to fever and not psychopathology) that tiny men were marching out of my laundry hamper. I remember the first day of kindergarten, the exact words in the note from Eric saying he didn’t like me that way in fifth grade, the way the flap of skin looked after I jumped on a clam shell in Maine when I was ten, and the phone numbers of all my friends from high school.  I remember the way the air smelled in Boston on a day when it brought the ocean into the City, and the diesel smell of the streets in Europe. I remember slights and offenses and try hard to forget them, I remember generosities and kindnesses, and I remember to do the things I say I’m going to do, unless I’m under enormous stress. (That’s a whole different issue).

So remembering things about Halloweens past should be easy, right?  All of the pumpkins, and costumes, and cobweb-covered porches should transport me back, like Proust in Rememberance of Things Past:

And suddenly the memory revealed itself: The taste was that of the little piece of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray (because on those mornings I did not go out before mass), when I went to say good morning to her in her bedroom, my aunt Léonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of tea or tisane.

No dice. I love Halloween; in general I prefer the autumn holidays because they don’t happen in summer (which I dislike) and I don’t have to buy gifts, decorate the house or forget to send cards again. I remember all of Sam’s Halloweens, from his first one-house trick-or-treat venture in a little dalmatian suit to the toddler year when he fought me the entire time I was applying his clown makeup, so that he went out looking like a tiny Phyllis Diller with a rainbow afro. Last year I dressed him as Sarah Palin (complete with a skirt suit and a rifle); the year before, I made him an iPod costume; one of my greatest creative accomplishments ever.  I am a veritable encyclopedia on The Halloweens of Sam;  It’s my own Halloween history I can’t remember.

I am sitting here looking out the window at fallen leaves. A pumpkin scented candle is burning, and I am reaching back as if a $250.00 fee for an hour of Freudian analysis depended on my success. If I really strain, I can remember precisely two costumes. When I was in kindergarten, my best friend Leslie’s mother made us pink satin tutus with real tulle skirts. I loved  Leslie’s house because she was the only child of well-to-do, older parents, who were able to provide Leslie (and often, me) with all of the good things in life. Leslie had a bedroom with carpet, a pink canopy bed, and her mother did not work, but stayed home to make us crustless fluffernutters for lunch.  Tragically, my own mother worked, had a one-year-old baby, didn’t sew, and refused either to buy “Fluff” or to cut the crusts off of sandwiches. Leslie’s family moved to New Orleans after that year and I never saw her again, but my tutu lived long enough for me to make my brother wear it when he was four or five. I put a washcloth on his head as a stand-in for longer hair, and called him “Mary.” (His session is right after mine).

The only other costume I can dredge up was related to “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.,” a television show which, like “The Prisoner,” I watched with my parents with not so much as a moment of comprehension. Our highly flammable, non-reflective costumes from that era (maybe 1970?) came in boxes, and included a plastic mask with an elastic string around the back to hold the thing on your head. The eye slits were never where one’s actual eyes were, and even if you used your free hand (the one that was not holding the plastic bucket shaped like a pumpkin) to push it into place, it would return, immediately to its previous location. The one-piece costumes were very thin, and I remember the war about whether I would have to wear a coat OVER MY COSTUME, or just wear lots of layers beneath, so that I looked even rounder than I actually was. I remember trick or treating with my father, glad to have his hand to hold because I was virtually blind, with sweat running down my face behind the plastic mask while the rest of me began the conversion from flesh to ice because I had “won” the argument about wearing warm clothes.

I don’t remember any other costumes, but I remember two other things, both of which concern candy. I remember that my trick-or-treating years coincided with the first (real) episodes of razor blades and poison in candy, and that every piece of our hauls had to be inspected by a parent, with all homemade, loosely wrapped, or otherwise suspicious treats thrown away along with those that had a visible razor entry line or reeked of bitter almond. My parents were generally very low on the overprotection scale, but it would not have looked good in the press had one of us consumed strychnine in a Mars Bar and they had issued a statement that they were, of course, saddened, but that they generally tried to “let us try to make our own decisions.”

The other candy-related issue was the Great Sorting of the Haul. This process didn’t start until my brother was old enough a) to trick or treat without being carried and b) to escape the parental mantle of attention that protects younger siblings from being swindled by their older brothers and sisters.  We had very strict rules developed independent of parental involvement: the candy was dumped in front of its owner (post-parental inspection), and after we each had a chance to examine what we had, the trading began. No one cared about Mary Janes, Bit ‘O Honeys, or those peanut butter things with squirrels on the wrapper. This was about the chocolate (which is complicated, because while I dislike all things chocolate flavored, from cake to ice cream, there are certain types of actual chocolate that I enjoy). Also, it is patently clear to the most clueless of children that there is a Natural Hierarchy of Halloween Candy, and that while Dum Dum suckers may be at the bottom, chocolate is at the top).

When my brother was really little, I could persuade him that he should give me a Snickers bar for a plain Hershey bar, or even (until I was busted and monitored) give me chocolate in exchange for a worthless but deceptively impressive pile of junk like suckers and root beer barrels, but the older and shrewder he got, the more complicated became the trades. I coveted rolls of Spree candy, bags of Sweet Tarts (which my explains why my teeth are now very fragile and prone to breakage), Snickers bars, PayDay bars, Baby Ruth bars, and regular Hershey bars, or the kind with almonds.  I secretly hated Butterfingers (that crunchy stuff gets stuck in my teeth), both Three Musketeers and Milky Way bars (cloyingly sweet), anything with dark chocolate, 10,000 Dollar Bars, or most anything with caramel in it, with individually wrapped Kraft “Milk Made” carmels at the nadir of my list. Well, along with black licorice. The value of a Tootsie roll was also related to size (never let anyone tell you it doesn’t matter); the tiny rolls that came in appalling flavors like vanilla and lime were worthless, but the large version that required the support of a cardboard sheath, and could be broken into pieces along scored lines was a prize. As long as I provided no “tell” to my brother that would alert him to the fact that I was offering him something for which I had no desire, I could, over the course of the process, redistribute the wealth in a way favorable to me, if not my teeth or my physique.

That’s all I’ve got. I just spoke to my mother, who reminded me about witch costumes, a clown costume, and my brief belief in The Great Pumpkin, but those are her memories, not mine. I did ask her whether there had been some Halloween-related assault on my psyche that might have made me repress memories, and she told me that as far as she remembered, I had always loved Halloween. The good news is that despite my unusual amnesia in this area, I am able to look forward, with great anticipation, to the Jack O’Lanterns, costumes and wild October nights of begging that will take place this year, and for many more to come. It may be hard to get Sam to go trick or treating when he’s 27, but I’ve got stuff on that kid that will keep him under my thumb for the rest of my life……