Christma$

I am not, by any means, a curmudgeon. I remember many totally enchanted Christmases, particularly my ninth. My parents’ friend Mr. Hammond had, a week before Christmas, delivered to me a hand-crafted, very simple dollhouse. It was one story, and roofless, but for a child who had previously named and played with families of marbles and buttons, it offered endless possibilities. Mr. Hammond also gave me a vial of gold glitter, and instructed me to sprinkle it onto the dollhouse every night and say “Wiffle Dust, Wiffle Dust, make this dollhouse grow!” Although I was old enough to be skeptical, I was still highly susceptible to all things magical. I wanted to believe. Every night up to and including Christmas Eve, I sprinkled the glitter, incanted the appropriate words, and went to bed.

On Christmas morning, in place of the small house was a three-story Victorian dollhouse made by my father. It had brick detailing etched on the dark red exterior walls, shingles on the roof, and trim on the windows. My grandmother had made curtains for every room; bright cotton for the kitchen, red satin for the library, and pink dimity for the childrens’ room. She had also made bedding for all of the beds, and a braided oval rug for the attic floor. The house was full of furniture, all purchased in England the previous summer – a brass bed for the master bedroom, a piano with a music box in it for the living room, and a full set of dishes, silverware, glasses, pots and pans. A chandelier hung from the dining room ceiling. The house came complete with a proper English family, although by the time their coiffures had been destroyed by attempts at styling, and the patriarch had mysteriously lost his left foot, I preferred that the estate be inhabited by a collection of small toy animals who, along with the collection of my best friend Isabel, had marriages, divorces and rivalries worthy of “Dynasty.” I had been completely unaware of the construction or outfitting of the house, and while I now realize the amount of hard work and planning that went into such a gift, at the time, it was just…magic.

I also remember warmly the early Christmases of my own child. I have pictures of him beaming amidst a pile of discarded wrapping paper and ribbon, crawling beneath the tree, and discovering the rideable Jeep he received when he was three. He was too little to beg for anything, delighted with our choices, and constantly in genuine awe as a real tree was brought into the house, Santa was explained, and gifts appeared in his stocking on Christmas morning. Like my parents before me, I set out cookies and milk on Christmas Eve, ate the cookies, and penned a note to Sam from Santa using my left hand to disguise my handwriting. (A hand mysteriously similar to those of the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny). It is corny but true that the real magic of Christmas, apart from its tremendous significance for Christians, is the purely decanted joy of children, untainted by greed or cynicism.

This year, I am afflicted with S.A.D. (Seasonal Apathy Disorder). The seeds were planted years ago, when I spent several Christmas seasons working in retail establishments. Christmas music (particularly Mariah Carey singing “Santa Baby”) was played from open til close in a continuous and grating loop, and customers were stressed, impatient and often unkind. When I managed an elegant store in Boston’s Copley Place in the early 1990s, we were expected to wrap gifts in front of customers, using a complicated method of laying perfect rows of accordion-pleated white tissue under, around and over the purchased object. It made a beautiful presentation, but more than once a customer’s temper flared as he waited through this process, asking repeatedly why we couldn’t just “put it in a box.” My staff, particularly the dreamy and artistic Roxanne, would answer that we were “not allowed” to do such a thing, and continue to pleat and place at her own speed while the person across the counter grew increasingly belligerent and demanding. There was nothing either “silent” or “holy” about the conversations by the time I stepped in to defend our policy and attempt to defuse the escalating Wrapping War.

Given this rocky history, and the fact that I am no longer a child (even my child is no longer a child) it is no wonder that I have trouble getting into the Spirit of the Season. My dour view of the seasonal cash-grab is not enhanced by what is apparently called “Christmas Creep,” the practice of retail establishments to begin pushing Christmas merchandise earlier and earlier. Shortly before Halloween, on an unseasonably warm day, I walked into Target to pick up a prescription, only to be greeted by Christmas decorations. I like Christmas decorations, I really do, but there is a kind of naturally-unfolding anticipation that should take place during the fall. Long before discount tinsel is hanging from hooks, there should be time to enjoy the spookiness of Halloween, and the gratitude and family gatherings that mark Thanksgiving. I am not, and will never be a “Black Friday” shopper; I feel the same way about reducing Thanksgiving to The Day Before Shopping that I do about re-casting Veteran’s Day and President’s Day as days to buy cheap furniture.

I am particularly bothered by the extension of Christmas Cash Grab season this year, because it so clearly pits desperate retailers in a bad economy against families struggling in the same, dark waters. Although we are advised to teach our children not to nag for things, and to understand, in a general way, the realistic gift-giving limitations imposed by family circumstances, it’s a tough battle in the face of ads and store displays that begin, in October, to make all things seem possible. I cannot imagine having to explain to a small child that Santa will probably be less generous than he was last year, because a parent has lost a job. I am also haunted by the specter of families fighting to save their homes from foreclosure, or to pay medical bills, making the necessary decision to cut back on previous Christmas spending. It may be bad parenting to try to create a reasonably bountiful and joyous Christmas for one’s children. I think it is not, and that unless one has raised children in a firm regime of austere simplicity where the family has always given a donation to The Humane Society in place of personal gifts, it is terribly difficult to make the shift from the full-on Christmas seen in every store and television show to the budget Christmas that may be required by a pile of past-due bills.

I am not, frankly, in the mood to decorate the house, buy a tree, haul ornaments and angels and santas down from the attic, buy gifts or sing carols. For the past several years (mostly because of my own sentimentality) I have also trimmed and then taken down my parents’ Christmas tree, baked  their Christmas cookies, and decorated their house. I am having real trouble seeing past the presentation of “The Reason for the Season” not as the birth of Christ, but as a retail bonanza, and an endless source of work. About that: while some aspects of the celebration are undoubtedly Pagan, and the holiday has been commercialized to the point where it might appear completely secular to a Martian, “Christmas” is, by definition, recognition of Christ’s birth. Whether one is or is not a Christian, if Christmas is celebrated, its basic import should be acknowledged. My Jewish mother acknowledged it, and we were always perfectly clear about the fact that while she did not personally believe in the Christian religious tradition, we had family and friends that did (including her mother-in-law) and we were to respect and honor their beliefs. It would, I think, help to counteract the selling out of Christmas if we could all find something genuinely spiritual in the season, whether that “something” is religious faith or recognition that we are blessed to have the family and friends that surround us.

My sermon having concluded, I will confess that I am caught, at the moment, between my serious disenchantment with this whole Christmas thing, and the fact that others in my family, those of sunnier dispositions, will be anxious for decorations, cookies and mysteriously shaped packages. (Not under the tree because the dogs eat them). I have to do this thing, and, as my father says, “anything worth doing is worth doing well.”

I’m going to start slow. I am going to make a choice, right now, that no matter how many news stories I read about dwindling supplies of Scotch tape, or the projected unavailability of silver PS370s after November 28th, I will not begin Christmas until Thanksgiving has been thoroughly and graciously enjoyed. I will, instead of sweating the sending of cards, acknowledge that I have failed to send them for twelve straight years, and forget about the whole thing. I will use the money I would have spent on cards and stamps to buy food for the local Food Bank. I will shop when I want to, at small, local stores that are grateful for my business and have not spent their money on Assault Advertising. I will stop and savor the things that I really love about this time of year, from the first snowfall, to the intoxicating smell of our tree, unreproduceable by Glade’s best scientists. I will stop. When I am overwhelmed, overplanned, and slipping into panic, I will stop and try another day. Or not. No one ever died from having only one kind of Christmas cookie, or a tree from a tree lot instead of the idyllic tree farm in the woods with $3.00 cups of spiced cider.

If we are all together, healthy and able to relax expansively into a break from school and work, we will be fine. I will have to work at shutting out the ads, and take deep breaths when Martha Stewart attempts the Vulcan Mind Meld from her Connecticut farmhouse. If I can focus on relaxing, no, wait, that sounds wrong. If I can relax, and let things be as they are, maybe I can reclaim the joy of this season. It’s worth a try.

A Musical Interlude

Musical taste is a vast and complicated topic; I have always believed that there was a part of the brain (perhaps the Medulla Obligato) that controls the part of an individual’s idiosyncratic preferences, as well as external influences, including family, generation, geography, ethnicity and the recording and broadcasting industries that effect when we change the station and when we are crank it up and sing along.

People tend to define themselves, with serious resolve, based sometimes on the music they like, but just as often on the music they “hate.” For many years I would tell anyone within earshot that I “hated” opera; once I actually listened to some operas all the way through, and saw them performed, I was asking for complete recordings of “Carmen,” “La Boheme” and “The Flying Dutchman” as Christmas gifts. I also “hated” country music for many years, having heard nothing other than corny, twangy and ancient recordings by Tammy Wynette and Conway Twitty. Country music represented to me the polar opposite of my urban, Eastern, cool persona; it was the populist choice of hayseeds who saved up their loose change to visit Gaitlinburg. I was fortunate enough to have a good friend who loved country music (and always had it on in her car), and I came to appreciate the quality of the song writing, the vocal skills, and, honestly, the unabashed sentimentality. The detached and ironic music of the 1980s coolly informed us that we could “dance if we want to;” country music openly hoped we danced. The degree to which people vehemently express their dislike for entire genres is always interesting to me; I always wonder to what extent they are genuinely put off by country twang or head-banging metal, and to what extent they are expressing unexamined attempts to portray themselves in the way in which they desperately hope to be seen.

The external influences on my musical taste were led off by my parents, who had a wide selection of music in the house. Classical was preferred, but they also had a lot of hippie-liberal-folk music like Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, Arlo Guthrie and Peter, Paul & Mary. My father had Clancy Brothers records, my mother had some Theodore Bikel, and they had musicals – “Finian’s Rainbow,” “Westside Story,” and “Fiddler on the Roof,” to name a few. There was a small smattering of pop music, a Beatles album or two, Simon and Garfunkel and Roger Miller, but mostly it was classical. Most popular music was quickly dismissed as garbage; my grandmother described the entire body of music on the radio during the 70s as being capable of reduction to “baby, baby, wah, wah, wah.” My brother and I were not permitted to play “pop” music in the car with either parent, or in the main part of the house when they were home. What we did with our own radios, stereos and headphones was our own business.

As I grew older, my friends provided me with new music to consider. The most notable of these was my friend Tammy, who introduced me to James Taylor, Carly Simon, Carol King, Don McLean, Joni Mitchell, and the “B” side of the Beatles “Yellow Submarine.” Her influence can be seen to this day; I still listen to all of the things she played for me, or spoke of enthusiastically, and I have a strong predilection for the singer-songwriter from Leonard Cohen to Rufus Wainright.  I also have, in a dresser drawer, three mix tapes made in the 1980s (although I haven’t had a cassette player for at least 10 years).  Two of them were made for me by my college friend Lisa, who mixed everything from The Everly Brothers to The Cramps with great finesse. The other mix was made by someone I never met, for someone I barely knew, but I heard it once and begged for a copy. Those ancient tapes were played and replayed on Walkmen and car stereos for years, and I’ve never found some of the songs in any other form.

More recently, my husband has taught me to appreciate Metallica and Rush, and clued me in that “All the Young Dudes” was not, as I had always believed, the Beatles, but Mott the Hoople, thus opening a new musical door.  My son listens to a lot of hip hop and contemporary R & B, and has led me to The Black-Eyed Peas, Beyonce and various other artists whose names I mix up due to my advanced age. Suffice it to say that he can turn on “his music” in the car, and I give it a try. (Unless I’m in a Very Bad Mood, in which case I control the playlist to ensure the safety of all passengers). I continue to seek out music recommended by friends , magazine reviews and NPR stories; sometimes I don’t love it, but sometimes I do, and there is always a certain sense that life has gotten a better flavor when I find something new to add to my rotation.

Since we are offered music not only by family and friends, but by a steady stream of music on radios, commercials and in the grocery store, it’s impossible to evaluate preferences without giving some consideration to the Music of the Times.  Although I have bought, and listened to the music “everybody” was loving, I find that a lot of it was chosen out of peer pressure and habit rather than real love. I do not really like The Eagles or Bob Seger (heresy for a suburban child of the 70s) and although I liked Billy Joel for a long time (and still think he has a beautiful voice) it wasn’t a real relationship. I really love old Bruce Springsteen, but feel complete indifference towards everything from “Born to Run” to the present.  I also admire U2, and will sing along to “Sunday, Bloody Sunday” on the radio, but it is not, honestly, the music of my heart. There is nothing objectively “bad” about any of those artists or their work; I just found that I was increasingly not choosing to listen to them. I have also accepted and then rejected Styx, Sarah Mc Lachlan,  Gary Numan and the Tubeway Army, Meatloaf, The Dixie Chicks, and En Vogue. I will even admit to having purchased recordings by Jennifer Lopez, Mariah Carey, Christina Aguilera and Creed. Nothing remains but vestigial shame, but every one of those choices seemed predestined by the aura of acclaim and popularity surrounding the artist. A person just had to love them. (But I didn’t).

Finally, there is the matter of internal wiring, of what music trips a trigger and what leaves us cold or anxious or just kind of jangled. There are genres, and specific songs that just plain bother me in ways that cannot be explained away by my history or vital statistics. I have tried, and tried to like jazz, and many earnest young men have spent hours playing me one thing after another, urging me to pay attention, and to hear what they heard. The spark did not ignite, and apart from a vague appreciation for Thelonius Monk and a fondness for the New Orleans/Preservation Hall style of jazz, it all makes me feel an unpleasant combination of irritation, boredom and sensory overload. I am also not a great fan of drippy ballads (“Islands in the Stream), modern R & B with one of those lengthy, loopy roller coaster a capella rides at the end (Christina Aguilera), or hard-core rap. All of these things make me feel agitation, discomfort, boredom, or some other menacing and negative emotion.

Since I am old enough to stop pretending that I like things I don’t actually like, I am perfectly comfortable looking back over the musical landscape of my life and choosing to listen only to what I want to hear, with frequent assays into undiscovered territory. In closing, I will leave you with a list of my favorite songs, and a list of the songs that make me cringe and spin the dial; I am secretly hoping that this post will generate a little controversy, and that you’ll stand up for whatever floats your boat, even if I have “disappeared” it from my own aural life.  If you tell me, tell me why; that’s the best part.

Annie’s Favorites

1. Hallelujah , performed by Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley, Rufus Wainright or k.d. Lang. There is no more perfect song when you are feeling torn apart. I am in awe of the fact that a human being could write it.
2. More Than This by Bryan Ferry/Roxy Music. It’s lush, melodic, melancholy, and I loved it the first time I heard it. It moves me, and I cry every time Bill Murray sings the karaoke version in “Lost in Translation.”
3. Nightswimming, be REM. Beautiful, evocative lyrics and the loveliest use of acoustic strings.
4. Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk, by Rufus Wainright. It makes me smile, it makes me think, and I love his voice.
5. I’m Sticking with You by The Velvet Underground. I love all VU that I have ever heard, but this is perfect – child-like innocence, no accompaniment but a piano, dramatic interludes, and a love song at the end. Who could ask for anything more?
6. Both Sides Now by Joni Mitchell. If you’re a thinking person with a tendency towards melancholy (which I am) this is the theme song for life. I’m still not sure what it all means, but it makes more sense every year.
7. Piece of my Heart by Janis Joplin. (NOT by Faith Hill). Ah, Janis, you spoke for every broken-hearted, shell-shocked, obsessed and constant lover ever burned by an infidel. Nothing is held back, and everything is real.
8. You Are My World by the Communards. Sometimes, you need to celebrate.
9. If I had a Hammer by Peter Paul and Mary. This got me through law school, which may, in retrospect, may not be a compliment. I may not be making much use of my “hammer of justice” these days, but I still believe in the cause.
10. Werewolves of London, by Warren Zevon. Could he have been any smarter or funnier? All that, and a hummable tune.
11. Twelve Thirty by The Mamas and the Papas. I don’t want to think  about what John Phillips may have done. It’s a beautiful song.
12. Let it Be by the Beatles. I have spent more time than you will ever know picking just one Beatles song. This song is my ring tone, and my mantra.
13. Imagine by John Lennon. Because I do.
14. Feel Flows by The Beach Boys. No one else seems to know this song, but I think it’s worth all of the better-known Beach Boys songs put together (although I like them, too). This is something completely different from the earnest goodwill of “Barbara Ann” and “California Girls;” atmospheric, psychedelic…intriguing.
15. End of the Line by The Traveling Wilburys. George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty and Bob Dylan. Seriously? Better than “alright.”

Annie’sList of Icky Songs

1. “Muskrat Love” by The Captain and Tenille. They were so damned cute, and I love “Love Will Keep Us Together,” but this song is creepy and it just doesn’t make any sense. Why not moles or possums?
2. “A Horse with No Name” by America. I know lots of people like this, but I find it dull and pretentious. Symbolism should be subtle.
3. “Afternoon Delight” by The Starland Vocal Band. Okay, so we were in 8th grade, singing along to this song about people having sex in the afternoon? Eeeeeew.
4. “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers” by Barbra Streisand and Neil Diamond. So leave, already.
5. “Angel of the Morning” by Juice Newton. I don’t get it.
6. “Let ‘Em In” by Paul McCartney & Wings. This man wrote and sang some of my favorite songs in the history of music; I guess anyone can have a bad day.
7. “Baby I’m a Want You” by Bread. Perhaps he needs her to give him some instruction in grammar.
8. “Precious and Few” by Climax. Why?! Is she far away? Married? In quarantine?
   
9. “Delta Dawn” by Helen Reddy. Another case of “great artist, unfortunate song.” (I do kind of like the Tanya Tucker version, for some reason). This kind of maudlin, Miss Havesham theme seems to have been very popular around this time. (“Drusilla Penny,” “Eleanor Rigby,” et al).
   
10. “Touch Me in the Morning” by Diana Ross. Amazing, amazing voice, but again, who are we kidding. “Touch me in the morning/then just walk away” and its fine with her? See #5,above.
11. “Wildfire” by Michael Murphy. See #2, above.
    
12. “Reunited” by Peaches & Herb.
    
13. “You Light Up My Life” by Debby Boone.I will readily admit that this is a song that appeals to the weepy, crush-prone soul of an adolescent girl.  Apparently, though, the song was about God not Robbie Benson. I personally think God prefers it sung by Patti Smith.
14. “Sometimes When We Touch” by Dan Hill. This has a kind of creepy, intense, unhealthy relationship vibe. Is he saying that he loves her, or that he doesn’t? Don’t they ever just read the paper and eat bagels?
15. “Midnight at the Oasis” by Maria Muldaur. I don’t get it. It’s basically “Afternoon Delight” in the desert.
16. “Loving You” by Minnie Ripperton. Beautiful voice, but then she, well, she screams like she’s falling down a mine shaft, and keeps on singing like nothing happened. Wierd.

Not a Happy Camper

“To put it rather bluntly, I am not the type who wants to go back to the land; I am the type who wants to go back to the hotel.”

-Fran Lebowitz

During the seven years in which I lived in Boston, I was completely safe from the specter of camping. My friends and acquaintances went to the Cape or Nantucket in the summer, but no one talked about camping. I was also blissfully unaware of all camping-related issues during my childhood years; we spent many summers in a cabin in Maine which was in the woods, had no television or telephone, and required the hauling of drinking water in jugs, because the taps were supplied by the lake. It was rustic, to be sure, but I slept on a mattress, had a dresser and a lamp, and saw a bright-line distinction between being “indoors” and being “outdoors.” If I wanted to use the small, but clean and regularly accoutred bathroom, for example, I could go “indoors,” and close the door behind me. If I chose to be among the trees or swim in the lake, I could go “outdoors.” There was no confusion between the two locations, particularly relative to bathroom usage.

When I became a parent, and met all kinds of other interesting parents, it became clear that people around here camp with great relish, and that they feel that others should enjoy the experience. They speak with great love about being surrounded by nature, getting closer to family, and the fun of cooking over an open fire. Early on, I deflected all attempts to bring me into the Cult of Camping with a polite smile, a shake of my head, and a speech along the general lines of “I would not, could not, in a tent/I would not if you paid my rent/I do not like dirt, Sir or Ma’am/a stolid urbanite, I am!”

This approach worked until we befriended a very nice family, and the camping conversations expanded to include my husband and children. It was fun! We could all go together! We could be right near the sand dunes and the lake! We bought a tent. We bought air mattresses, lanterns, compasses, stake-pounders, air pumps, and coolers. We made a reservation at a campsite. We planned menus and bought hot dogs, ground beef, potato chips, dry pancake batter in a shaker bottle, marshmallows, Hershey bars, Graham crackers, beer, soda, and Jiffy Pop. We loaded the car with everything necessary for camping near a lake, including tent, sleeping bags, mattresses, air pumps, coolers, bags of clothes, folding chairs, water bottles, flashlights, water toys, bug spray, sunscreen and a first aid kit. This took several hours, after which, with great foreboding on my part, we drove the four hours to the campground.

Objectively, it was a beautiful place. Like an idyllic village of tents and trailers, it had roads, addresses, and folks sitting out in lawn chairs shooting the proverbial breeze. We found our plot, which looked to me suspiciously like an uneven patch of dirt with gravel on it and a included metal ring with blacker dirt in it, and began to set up camp. After an hour spent forcing stakes into hard ground and turning 27 pieces of tan nylon around and around to see where they fit, I went to find a bathroom. Although I knew that there was a perfectly reasonable bathroom near the entrance to the campground, we had been told that there was another facility located mere feet from our plot. As I closed in on it, I became keenly aware that the “other facility” was basically a Porta Potty on permanent loan, otherwise known as a “hole.” I would not go in, I would not go near, and the elevation of my blood pressure began as I imagined hiking to the real bathroom in the night, and having to take children there every 5-10 minutes for the better part of two days.

Our friends came, the children played, and we had a lovely time walking down to the lake, blowing up air mattresses, and preparing and serving a dinner of hamburgers and potato chips, followed by the requisite S’mores.  It turned out that Sam was already a pyromaniac at the age of four, and it was completely absorbing to work to perfect the art of torching marshmallows in such a way that there was no unyielding mallow lump, but also no complete sacrifice of confection to flame. Families walked by, kids rode by on bikes, and for a while I lapsed into a Little House on the Prairie fantasy; we were living the Natural Life in the open air, cooking over fire and joined to the community of fellow campers by the common bond of willingness to leave civilization and “strike out for the territories.”

As the sun sank gloriously over Lake Michigan, and I went in and out of the tent to fetch sweatshirts, bug spray and tissues, I began to notice that a huge amount of dirt was being tracked into the tent. The central “room” of our temporary housing had already become a dump for all briefly worn and discarded shorts, flip-flops and toys, and was also covered with a thin layer of sand, pine needles and other miscellaneous flora. I now knew that, not only would I have to ask constantly about who needed to hike to the bathroom in order to stave off An Emergency; I would also be sleeping in close proximity to both dirt and clutter about which it would be very unsporting to complain. Part of camping, I was discovering, is that (like cheap granola bars that contain three flakes of oatmeal,  huge amounts of sugar and a dollop trans fats) “it’s all good” and natural and wholesome, and that complaining about the ways in which it is not like staying at the Marriott is beyond uncool.

After multiple bathroom trips, we put the children to “bed” on their mattresses and sleeping bags, and after some adult conversation by the fire, we crawled, hunch-backed, into our own nylon pocket. First there was the matter of changing into sleeping clothes in the tent, with literally of hundreds of people surrounding my flimsy enclosure. I could not stand up fully, and the fact that I could hear strangers walking by and chatting as I stood, bent over, in my underwear, nearly paralyzed me. I could hear everything going on outside, and would honestly have welcomed the footfall of a Grizzly Bear or a Yeti in place of the conversations, radios and engines that surrounded us and promised the collapse of the tent and the public “reveal” of my unmentionables. This was no “Blair Witch Project;” it was like being dropped into the living room of a garrulous insomniac entertaining 50 friends while watching NASCAR  at full volume.

On top of the sensory overload, I discovered as soon as I joined Rob on our air mattress (not the uber-perfect Aerobed kind of thing, but a large version of a pool float which was inflated by means of a separate air pump) that our relative volume caused me to roll, immediately, downhill and into him. I do not, of course, mind being close to my husband, but I am a “space” person, and I could not stretch out without kicking or hitting him. Furiously, I tried again and again to roll myself up to my side of the mattress, which rose jauntily from the “floor” and into the air; every time I succeeded in gaining two inches I rolled back down, gravity and the slipperiness of my sleeping bag triumphing over my rapidly weakening will.

I am quite sure that I never fell asleep, and maybe an hour after I gave up on trying to have a “side” of the mattress, I started to worry about going to the bathroom. Our friends, with support from Rob, had told me that if I didn’t want to use the “hole,” and didn’t want to walk past an acre of fellow campers in my jammies, I could Just Do It Outside. Apparently, this is common practice among campers, not just the male campers, who are commonly known to enjoy a good fresh air experience, but women. The more I thought about having to go to the bathroom, the more I actually needed to execute; I managed to exit the bounce house of my temporary bed, slide on flip-flops, unzip the “door” and walk into the night. It was dark and quiet, and although I could still see people sitting around glowing fires in the distance, it seemed that everyone in our immediate vicinity had gone to sleep. I could not use that filthy bathroom. I could not walk to the real bathroom in a T-shirt and pajama pants. I walked a little away from the tent, looked around to make sure no one was around, dropped trou, and immediately saw a little girl on a bicycle heading right towards me. Our eyes met, I entered a previously unimagined state of total mortification, and she rode on, no doubt to tell her family about the woman exposing herself at the other end of the campground. This episode remains a source of great mirth in my household, which (I think) says something very telling about the character of my husband and son.

I did not recover, and I did not become a good sport. Although I genuinely enjoyed spending time with our friends, and loved the beach and the walks in the woods, the negatives outweighed the positives. The air mattress eventually deflated enough that I didn’t roll quite so precipitously, but the decrease in separation between my refined self and the ground meant that I could feel rocks under me when I “slept.” I did not take a shower the second day, because nobody else did, and I worried about my hair being dirty and hideous. I became, gradually, totally overwhelmed by the constant presence of other people, the constant roar of dune buggies, and the accumulating dirt, laundry and necessity of drinking no more than absolutely necessary to minimize bathroom trips. I perked up on the last day, after a shower, a blow-dry and the application of makeup, only to discover that it took another several hours to deconstruct the origami tent, put all belongings and leftover food into appropriate containers, and roll around on the air mattresses which deflated at the approximate speed of a truculent child dressing for school. It was Father’s Day, on the day of our leave-taking, and on our way out of town we discovered an adorable little restaurant that served an abundant and Mexican-influenced breakfast menu that filled us up, and filled me with joy at a return to civilization.

I choose to remember the glow of the fire, the good conversations with dear friends, the beach scape of Lake Michigan on a beautiful day, and the discovery of all manner of footprints, crawly things and flowers in the forest. The rest and residue of my camping experiences I willfully block from consciousness, except during the writing of this confession. Although I agreed to try camping one more time, at a more remote and quieter site, I remained unconverted. I think that I could enjoy camping in a trailer (preferably an adorable vintage airstream with real curtains and a string of lights for the pop-out awning), or at a real “wilderness” site where there would be no sounds but our own, where I could be alone with my thoughts or a book, and where no one outside of my immediate family would be party to my dirtiness or my private biological moments. I am far less bothered by the idea of bears, raccoons or other creatures than by the constant presence of strange humans, regardless of their manifest and folksy friendliness.  I have promised Rob that, if he asks me about a camping trip next summer, I will say “yes” with conviction and move forward without bias; I still have hope in the transformative power of electronics-free time spent in nature to bring families closer and restore peace of mind.  I’ll let you know how it goes.

My Yiddeshe Thanksgivings

Until I was sixteen, Thanksgiving was spent at my maternal grandparents’ house in Ashtabula, Ohio. Often prefaced by a blizzard, and by my father worrying about making the five hour drive with 5% visibility and black ice on the Interstate, these holidays really began when we arrived, cold and tired, to find a House Full O’ Jews at 5105 Chestnut Street. We put our bags in our assigned bedrooms (I preferred the front bedroom, which still had a partially removed 1940s  Cleveland Indian stuck to the mirror, courtesy of one of my uncles), and found our way to the living room, where there was always chopped liver with crackers, and probably also homemade fudge, candy, and nuts.

My grandmother’s chopped liver, a miracle never repeated in my lifetime, was smooth, addictive and so delicious that I could completely disregard the fact that it was made largely of chicken livers and rendered chicken fat, along with some egg and onion. If you have never had good chopped liver, I fully understand that you may find the idea repellant, and that you are possibly imagining liver and fried onions, raw liver, or some other equally unredeemable and noxious substance. This was not that; this was intoxicatingly rich, bore no resemblance to liver in its original state, and could have been classified by the DEA as Hungarian Crack. The fact that my brother and I loved it from the time we were small (notwithstanding the fact that we both hated liver) and would have eaten until we foundered, should give you an idea of its universal and supernatural appeal. Now, of course, no one has my grandmother’s  recipe and we are all doomed to wander the kosher delis of the universe, trying in vain to get just one more bite of what we can only have in our dreams. (There’s probably a joke in there somewhere, about “wandering jews,” but it’s just too easy).

The arrival snacks and Wednesday night dinner being only the warm-ups,  Thanksgiving day started early with turkey(s)  in the oven, and every surface in the kitchen covered with bowls, bags of potatoes, stand mixers, thawing bundt cakes and cans of chicken broth.  My two great aunts (the other two “Gabor Sisters”) were at their own homes in Youngstown and Warren,  packing up their contributions to the dinner, and then putting on beautiful suits, silky blouses, and Ferragamo shoes with a one-inch heel and a bow on the top before being driven to Ashtabula. (Neither of them ever drove, and they were astonished not only that I could later drive a car, but that I knew how to put gas into it without the assistance of my father or brother).  We were not a family that came to a holiday table “comfortable;” men wore suits and ties, women wore skirts or dresses, and I liked it that way, even though it was complicated to get ten people clean and dressed in a house with only one bathroom. When the group expanded to include my paternal grandmother, a petite and quiet Catholic woman of pure New England stock, she fit right in among the Hebrew Herd with her customary pleated plaid skirt and sweater set. Years later, I was first shocked, and then disappointed to find myself a Thanksgiving guest in a home where sweats and jeans were the order of the day.

My brother says that if you think of Barry Levinson’s “Avalon,” make the Jews Hungarian and Russian, rather than Polish, remove the heavy Eastern European accents  (we were born long after the immigrant ancestors had died), and situate them in Ohio instead of Baltimore, you have our Thanksgivings. With as many as 30 people in attendance some years, there were card tables added to the long table in the dining room, and run through the living room,  nearly to the front door. All of the tables were covered with starched white linen cloths, the china, silver and crystal were real, and the food seemed endless. There were always the American classics: turkey, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, white potatoes, gravy and pie, but The Tribe cannot be limited to the pallid and the Puritanical. In addition to the Anglo classics, there was always a magyar culinary presence, including a kuchen or two filled with chopped nuts, cinnamon and sugar, and at least one noodle pudding (Dorothy’s without apricots, or Harriet’s, with). Any remaining Puritanical influences were obliterated by the noise level, the bursts of laughter, and the annual photographing of my mother’s fastidious, slender and elegant Aunt Anne captured mid-bite, one hand raised to ward off the camera. Squanto and company might have felt at home around our table, but I am fairly certain that Governor Bradford and his austere and God-fearing  colleagues would have run as fast as their buckled shoes would allow.

After dinner, there were hours spent just sitting at the table, talking, and picking at leftovers. When I was very young, my grandmother would pat the seat next to her, and I would sit with her sipping “kashi” (a tablespoon of coffee, a cup of cream and five spoons full of sugar) and listening to what was, actually, the oral history of my mother’s family. As my grandmother and her sisters ate “slivers” of the cakes and pies on the table (all three of them earnestly believed that 10 “slivers” added up to less caloric damage than one actual “slice”), I heard about Great Uncle Allen making the sandwich with peanut butter and petroleum jelly for my mother and uncle, about my paternal great-grandfather keeping kosher upstairs but cooking bacon for himself in the basement, and about kind-to-a-fault Sam, the other Great Grandfather who was a lawyer and represented the downtrodden in exchange for chickens and kindling. Eventually, the out of town relatives would pack up and leave in a cloud of Jungle Gardenia and hot pink lipstick kisses, and my grandmother would collapse on the couch as her housekeeper Mildred cleaned up the kitchen.

There was, of course, football on TV (although Jews do not, as a rule, play football, they do watch football), and over the course of the evening, dress clothes would be put away in favor of casual (and loose) clothing. Often, we would walk the short distance to Ashtabula’s main drag to watch the Thanksgiving Parade, including (in a cultural twist that made perfect sense in the context of my immediate family) the arrival of Santa in his sleigh.In later years, my father and I would take long walks after dinner, both of us quiet types who were a little jangled after the hours of sound, high-intensity interaction and rich food. We talked about all kinds of things on those walks, and for an adolescent girl there is no better thing than a private hour with an intelligent, attentive father in the cold air and solitude of a winter walk. We returned to the crowded house refreshed, calmed, and ready to rejoin the political arguments, the football watching, or the debate about what really happened to the samovar.

Eventually, we would get hungry again and make a plate of whatever we liked best, arriving at and departing from the dining room table alone or in groups like some time-lapse documentary about The Life of a Table. Only my grandfather was exempt from the traditional post-potlatch culinary diaspora; my grandmother always made him a Nice Brisket Sandwich from some mysterious and never-ending source of perfectly cooked brisket. He was not a fan of turkey.

Those Thanksgivings were the celebrations of a family with real immigrants only a generation away from them, demonstrating their gratitude for this country in ways unimagined by the Pilgrims. They were big, and warm and delicious celebrations  in every possible way, and there is not a Thanksgiving that I don’t remember those people, most of them gone, and that house, still standing but no longer open to me. Our group is much smaller these days, and the party has moved to my parents’ house; I am now the cook, and Rob has largely replaced Mildred as the clean-up crew. I’m thinking that this year we need a noodle pudding on the table, and to tell some of the old stories after dinner, so that Sam can learn them osmotically, as we did. I am thankful for all of those people, living and dead, who made me what I am, and who live on in vivid memory.  I think they’d all agree that a rugged band of Hungarians and Russians whose children and grandchildren have married every possible variety of Not Jewish can permit a little Chinese Ancestor Worship.

I take that back; they wouldn’t “all agree” about anything. It was against their religion.

Tattling

“There’s rats in the street, and rats in the jail
In the feds, rats wear wires in they cell
S**t Steven Seagal, I used to love his karate
But even he snitched, he told on Peter Gotti…”

-Tony Yayo, “Tattle Teller”

“Ruthless” is not my middle name. Although I cop to episodes of selfishness and inchoate rage, I am also a person who swerves to avoid hitting squirrels in the road, gives money to the person in the checkout line who is short $3.50, and believes that everyone should, on most occasions, be given a second chance (and sometimes a fifth). I have always been utterly baffled by the “players” of the world, from Machiavelli to modern-day politicians and ex-boyfriends who lied, cheated and manipulated to get what they wanted. I can’t imagine spending five minutes of my life plotting anything, or deciding consciously to say one thing while meaning something entirely different in order to achieve a desired outcome; this may explain my complete and utter failure as a player of chess and poker.

My belief in myself as a fundamentally kind creature is, and has long been, complicated by the spectre of “tattling.” In general, it is an unnatractive characteristic in children; everyone remembers the perpetual carrier of tales who reported every playground infraction and instance of excess crayon consumption to The Authorities. Mostly, we all hated that kid. From that early fear and loathing, most of us come to accept a standard and unspoken “No Ratting” rule which we carry into adulthood. One does not, as a rule, “tell” on friends who leave the high school grounds to smoke, on colleagues who punch in late, or on family members who call in sick to attend the opening day of baseball season. It’s not that there’s nothing to report; it’s just that everybody hates a rat, and our response to behavior that is, strictly speaking, “wrong,” but which appears to do no serious harm, is to look the other way. If tattling were a positive behavior, we would call it “fluffy bunnying,” or “kittening,” rather than “ratting.”

One can argue endlessly with oneself about how much harm is caused by various kinds of bad behavior, and get all Kant-y about “if everybody did it…,” but most of the time we just don’t “tell” unless there is a serious infraction like the abuse of a child or a bloody hammer behind the basement furnace following the mysterious disappearance of a heavily-insured spouse. If one is basically “nice,” and generally adheres to the “no-tattling” rules, how is it clear when one has come upon a situation in which one has an obligation to tattle, and to become the far nobler “Whistleblower” rather than just a rotten snitch? Where, between stealing paperclips and embezzling cash, does the behavior of another person rise to the level where it is right and possibly necessary to blow the whistle? In a case where the infraction is some shade of gray, how do you know whether you are really a pure-hearted whistle blower, or throwing someone under the bus to make yourself look good? To be sure, there is an element of common sense for a sane person making such decisions, but how do we even begin to assess “common” in this context? Just because taking 20 sugar packets from a restaurant sets off my Spidey Sense does not mean that it’s even on the radar for the person at the next table.

I have tattled on a co-worker three times in my life, the most recent occasion being…recent. In the first two cases the infraction involved theft, and although I did not personally like either of the tattlees, it was clear to me that their behavior rose to the level where I was a) morally bankrupt and b) legally at risk if I didn’t disclose what I knew. I felt bad about reporting on them because I knew that they would lose their jobs, not to mention that they would figure out who snitched, and hate me forever. On the other hand, I knew that I would have reported even a close friend for stealing (after a concerted effort to persuade them to come clean on their own), and that I gained absolutely nothing from my actions. I could sleep at night, still “nice.”

About my more recent snitchery, I haven’t yet cleared my conscience. The other person was not doing anything dangerous or illegal; the transgressions were merely disorganization and fairly shocking unkindness directed towards people about whom I care a great deal.  I do not particularly enjoy the person, and admit that I would not have reported on the behavior if the guilty party was a  friend (although I would certainly have tried to mitigate the damage in a private conversation). I also admit that it was cowardly of me to turn the situation over to a third-party rather than trying to resolve it on my own. It would have been painful, messy and miserable to have handled things on my own, but I could have made the effort. In my favor, I can state with some certainty that the behavior in question was harmful to the business of the workplace, and that I had nothing to gain, personally, by bringing it into the light of day. Based on this calculus, I can clear myself of throwing my coworker under the bus, which, by definition requires some element of personal enhancement, but I was definitely tattling, based on my own moral conviction that the Wrong should be Punished.

I still don’t think I’m ruthless. I think I am guilty of judging, and of a certain smug self-satisfaction about the fact that I am a lily white pillar of virtue, above reproach in comparison to the other person involved. That is neither ruthlessness nor Machiavellian behavior; it is merely self-centered, flawed and possibly regrettable.  There will be no job loss or demotion, but there will likely be a “schooling” which may serve merely to make another person conform more neatly to my personal standards of conduct. Until I can decide whether I was “blowing the whistle” to make the world a better place, or simply tattling to get a quick fix for a personal annoyance, I don’t feel  all that “nice,”  and my sleep will continue to be troubled. Somewhere, on the scale between spotless virtue and childish pettiness, is…human. It’s a tough gig.

Running with the Shadows of the Night

In the suburban neighborhood of my youth, a hush fell with the darkness. Aside from summer nights when we were all allowed to stay out playing Statues or Kick the Can, children were safely home by the time the streetlights went on, and most houses gradually went dark by 11:30 or 12:00. As a teenager, I remember feeling that it was a great act of rebellion to slam a car door or even cough loudly when returning home late on a Saturday night. It was a respectable neighborhood; people were sleeping.

I now live in a college town, and not the kind of college where students are studying on Friday nights, or huddling in their dorm room with a few close friends to pass a wizened joint and talk about “Brideshead Revisited.” This school is a big, brawling, land-grant university with 40,000 students, a downtown full of bars, and a steady revenue for purveyors of kegs. The drinking begins after class on Thursday (there are very few Friday classes), and ends some time Sunday evening, unless it is Finals Week. Drinking is not a private and local matter; bands of students roam the streets en route to bars and parties, and on the day of a 12:00 home football game the revelry begins before 7:00 AM with stereos on “stun” and Beer Pong tournaments played in front yards. There are other sports in the Alcohol X Games as well, including one involving dunking one’s head in a wading pool full of ice-cold water, drinking an entire can of beer, being turned around to the point of vertigo, and, finally, being handed a bat, tennis racket or golf club with which one must try to hit the beer can after it is pitched. I have not yet seen this on ESPN, even ESPN15 where paintball is considered a sport, but I’m telling you, it’s cutting edge.

In the middle of all this, lives my family. We are one of only two owner-occupied houses on a street of student rentals, a street of beautiful houses built by the original Pillars of the Community at the turn of the last century, and presided over by towering trees on both sides of the narrow street. During the 1970s, due to a combination of urban flight and improvident licensing laws, all of the houses around us were snapped up by landlords, turned into duplexes, and gutted, or otherwise violated on the inside, while the exteriors remain largely as they were. The average age of our neighbors is 20, there are no other families on the street, and, for the most part, there is complete turnover once a year. There is an annual period of rapprochement, during which I bake cookies or brownies, we deliver them to our new neighbors as they carry in furniture and high-end electronics, and we are then treated with great respect when we have to deliver the news that the bass on their stereos is causing our house to shift on its foundation.

Last night, as I went out to call the last cat in at 11:30, Forest Street was roaring to life. It was a Saturday night, our teams had won a rare football-basketball-hockey trifecta, and it was unseasonably warm. Lights were on, people were in their yards, and it looked like a (literally) “noir” version of Sunday afternoon in the suburbs, with neighbors greeting neighbors, beers in hand. Although there was a time, shortly after moving into our house, when I was horrified by the nightlife of the local creatures, I have come to view my situation as the best of all possible worlds. I was very happy during the years I spent living in a “real” city, and I have, here, the bustle, noise and vitality of that crowded, busy existence. I love it that if I choose to be immersed, I can sit on my porch and speak to a parade of people on their way to and from campus, work or recreation. There are other times, when there is a heavy blanket of snow, and the students have all gone home for winter break, that I can look out from my porch at a car-less row of houses freshened by the snow, and imagine that I am seeing what I would have seen from the same vantage point in 1912. I have not, for a moment of the past 9 years, wished that we had bought a house in a suburb, in the country, or really, anywhere but here. (In the interest of full disclosure, I should admit that we have lived here for 11 years).

As I waited for the cat last night, I had a front-row, center seat for Life’s Rich Pageant. Next door, a birthday was being celebrated. This involved a trip to the bar, and a young woman who was wearing a typical outfit for such an outing: a tight, strapless black dress which began just below the cleft of her cleavage, and ended just south of her posterior, and stiletto heels at least 3 inches high. Dresses and skirts short enough to make it potentially illegal to do anything other than stand still or walk (slowly) are legion in these parts, as are the stilettos; we have witnessed more than one artificially heightened beauty wiping out on the climb up our hill, engaging in a frantic and hopeless scramble to prevent the ace bandage micro mini from revealing too much. (I should also note that we frequently see these outfits in their Walk of Shame incarnation the morning after, covered by a mans’ sweatshirt but still glaringly inappropriate in the harsh light of day.  Assuming that one is sufficiently charitable to believe they were ever “appropriate”). The men in the group were far more casually dressed, in expensively shredded jeans and collared shirts, making it look rather as if Miss Michigan were being escorted out for the evening by the models from an Abercombie ad.

Wine and Song being inadequate for the Abercrombie boys, I came in at the point where they were discussing the procuring of Women for those not attached to Miss Michigan. “Dude,” one of them said, “they live across the street. This girl named Sheila made me dinner and I think we hooked up.”

“No way,” said the one with his cap on backwards, “there’s nobody over there named Sheila.”

“Yeah, well, I know I slept on this street. Or Evergreen or Park.” Miss Michigan, understandably chilly in her miniature costume, stamped her exaggerated heel and hugged herself.

“Can we just go?” she asked plaintively. Looks passed among the boys; mutinous on the part of the dateless, and imploring on the part of the boyfriend.

“Whatever” one of them mumbled. They started down the street, past our house where Rob and I now stood together on the porch. They greeted us kindly, genuinely and with appreciable warmth. Miss Michigan noted as they walked away that she “saw [our] kitty on the porch every morning.” We allowed ourselves a warm glow, as we do when the boy across the street rakes our entire yard unprompted and uncompensated, when a nervous interviewee asks Rob to help him with his necktie, or when a houseful of boys (!) brings over a plate of cookies that they sliced and baked themselves. It’s not conventional, it’s not suburban, and it’s not always easy, but it’s truly neighborly, and never dull. I wouldn’t trade it for all the driveway-sweeping, lawn-manicuring neighbors in the world.

Wife Swap

From their earliest incarnations, I was sucked in by the “reality” series genre in which two families trade mothers for a couple of weeks. In order to heighten the drama, the selected families must be not mere diametric opposites, but so different as to defy the laws of probability.We have seen rock and roll families v. fundamentalist Christian families, orthodox Jewish family v. redneck hillbilly families, vegetarian v. carnivorous families, and (most frequently) disciplined/ultra-neat/rigid families v. laissez-faire/messy/bohemian parents. In the end, regardless of the bitter arguments, the weeping and the threats of abandoning the experiment, both families are somehow better for having Seen A Different Perspective, and we are all reassured that however we live, even if we are circus clowns or orthodox jews, it’s all good.

An early episode featured a wealthy suburban family in which the father was a Japanese-American plastic surgeon and the wife a pretty blonde socialite type who appeared to have benefited from her husband’s professional expertise. This family “swapped” with an African-American family in which both parents worked long hours at hard jobs, and the kids”talked back,” ate junk food and listened to rap music. Rich family lived in a sprawling dream house with a pool, owned a second home by a lake, and ate out frequently and expensively. Poor family occupied a modest, single story home, and had clearly become adept at stretching a dollar. As the hour drew to a close, it became apparent that the producers had indulged themselves in a heavy editorial slant focused on the self-centered and vacuous nature of “rich mom” and the earthy, humble goodness of “poor mom.”

Even with my husband groaning “could it be any more obvious?” every few minutes, I was absorbed. I smiled when “poor mom” walked into “rich mom’s” room-sized closet and contemplated at least forty pairs of shoes neatly lined up on shelves, and I winced when “rich mom” attempted to bully her daughter-for-the-week into eating fewer carbs because she was overweight. Although I did not find “rich mom” particularly sympathetic, I confess that I felt for her when she discovered, on her first morning in her alternative universe, that there was no coffee in the house. I myself am capable of committing serious crimes when my first cup is denied or even seriously delayed. I could see it all coming, but it was still fascinating. I was also interested to note that no matter what surface differences there were, both families had essentially the same goals of health, happiness and success for their children, and both families were working, in their own way, towards reaching those goals.

I am now considering the discoveries that would be made during a less dramatic swap. If there were no cameras, no dramatic music to make sure we headed in the correct emotional direction, and no need to hook the interest of the average channel surfer, what would it look like if women traded families and households? Another woman coming into my house would probably find my husband charming and helpful, and my son basically well-mannered and appealing.  On the plus side, my house is big and comfortable, there is a theoretical routine of cleaning, cooking and laundry, and I have built a schedule that allows periods of “mommy downtime” that I can use to write, read or work.  On the minus side of the balance sheet, we have three cats and two dogs. It’s necessary to “cover” the door when coming in or going out of the house, because the dogs and one of the cats will almost always be waiting to escape, and the dogs don’t come when called. They have, unfortunately, been known to roam the city for twelve hours at a time before deciding to return home filthy and limping. Some of the animals are also accustomed to sleeping in beds with people, and insist on doing so; one dog sleeps under the covers in our bed.

Furthermore, my house always smells vaguely of animal, and there is always a thin layer of hair covering the carpet and furniture no matter how often I vacuum. There is no real floor on our bedroom because three summers ago in a fit of Bob the Builder enthusiasm I ripped up all the yucky carpet, planning to reveal the beautiful old floor underneath. There was nothing but particle board underneath, and until we can afford new flooring, we have particle board with rugs over it. We live in the midst of student renters who “party like its 1999″ almost every night except during finals and when they are passed out or home for the weekend. On the whole, I would classify our lifestyle as a complex blend bohemian, laissez-faire, and carnivorous, with notes of rigidity, neurosis, and spirituality, and faint hints of oak, leather and star anise.

While I am able to tolerate the chaotic elements of my own home life, there are many things that might make it difficult for me to survive two weeks in someone else’s house. I am not particularly fond of noise, and would become quickly psychotic in a household full of loud children, particularly if they were given to verbal or physical fighting. I would also fail to thrive in a home with more than one electronic noise source at a time. It is a well established rule in my house that if a stereo goes on upstairs, the television goes off downstairs. I am only good for about an hour of cartoon noise wafting from any part of the house, and become increasingly hostile in the presence of a child sitting dumbly in front of the television set for any length of time. I hate chewing gum, most processed foods, humorlessness, and apathy. I require morning coffee, periods of total silence, and gracious acknowledgement of my home cooked dinners regardless of quality. In fact, the more experimental and unappealing the meal, the more likely I am to sulk until someone thanks me for my efforts.

It now occurs to me that, in the unlikely event of a mommy swap, my family might be happier and better off with their new, probably more tolerant and relaxed mommy. They would be free to watch TV around the clock, snap their gum, eat canned hash, and generally disport themselves in ways that would lead to my swift and complete breakdown. They could have an orgy of noise any time they wanted to: the TV on in the living room, a CD playing upstairs, one computer roaring with synthesized race car engines and maybe that horrible tweedly Gameboy music to top it all off. No one would be bustling around picking up dirty socks, turning down the volume, or insisting that everyone come to the table for a meal with two servings from the fruit and vegetable food group. If the “new mommy” could stand the noise and the animals, she’d be on Easy Street, and no one would miss me for a while.

I could be persuaded to enjoy two weeks in the home of a family in which the parents were artists. Deep in the woods, with walls of glass, a pot-bellied stove and constant classical music, the house would be equipt with a vegetarian family, a well-stocked library, and no television set. I might miss watching “House” for a while, but I could get over it while lying on a well-worn leather sofa reading “Paris Match” in French and drinking espresso fresh from the machine on the counter. Besides a little Schubert, he only sound in the house would be the crackling of the fire, and the whisper of pages turning as I read, the (handsome and generous) father painted in his studio, and the (quiet, intelligent) children drew clever pictures at the kitchen table and fixed their own healthy snacks.

I’d miss my life, though. After a week or so, I’d be itching to jump up and fix a bowl of ramen noodles for Sam. I’d miss the comforting lump of beagle next to my leg under the covers,  the rap music and engine noise of “Need for Speed” on the computer and especially the sound of my husband and son laughing as they played. I’d like to think that after a little anarchy (or martial law)  my family would miss me too. We all want good things for our spouses and our children, but the little differences in how we make life “good” can add up to an infinite number of different lifestyles, tastes and choices. Like snowflakes, no two households are really alike, and I think there really is “no place like home….”

What’s Your Vector, Victor?

I may possibly be the only living college-track student ever to graduate from my high school without taking either chemistry or physics classes. I did complete the required Freshman year of something called “CP Science,” a physics and chemistry mashup from which I remember only that there are protons, neutrons and electrons, and that…there are protons, neutrons and electrons. I think that’s chemistry; physics was about arrows.

I did not always avoid science. I loved biology in 7th grade, mostly because I had a teacher named Walt Van Dien, a small, spry, and gentle chain smoker with tobacco-stained fingers and a quick wit who loved teaching, loved us all, and really couldn’t rest until we were as excited about chlorophyll as he was. He kept Mourning Doves and other creatures in the classroom, and when I found a Ribbon Snake in our yard and carried it to school on the bus to show him (don’t ask), he was thrilled, suggesting that we keep “Delphi,” as I called him, to study for the year, before releasing him into the fields behind the school.

That year, I could have become a Science Student, a Biology Major, or even a Scientist, but that potential was dealt crushing blows first by the incredible tedium of CP Science, and then by an unimaginative martinet of a high school biology teacher whose main skill in the teacherly arts seemed to be the use of the “ditto” machine to make endless worksheets, pale blue on white, and redeemable only because I liked the way they smelled when they were fresh from the machine. The excitement of learning about how the Mourning Doves digested, reproduced and flew was replaced by “mitochondria is the ____________ of the cell.” (The answer, by the way, is “powerhouse”).

Science having become dead to me (math expired some time in elementary school), I was delighted when it became apparent that, since I was planning to attend a conservatory of music rather than “regular” college, I really didn’t need to take chemistry in my junior year, or physics in my senior year. (Actually, I just didn’t take chemistry in my junior year, so both classes were on the table by the time I was a senior). I knew, in the same vague, second-hand way that people know that you can’t swim after eating or trust a man with a limp handshake, that both physics and chemistry involved math, lots of math, strange symbols and hard tests, and in a feat unrepeatable in this day and age, I convinced my parents and my principal that instead of taking more science, I really needed the two hours a day to practice my cello, to study music theory, and to help my orchestra teacher work with the students at the middle school. Many days, I actually did one or all of those things.

I would love to say that I am often troubled by the resulting hole in my scientific education, and that I really, really wish I knew more about how things work in the universe. The truth is, that I admire the Periodic Table as an example of Cubism, and that I am grateful for the existence of gravity, but beyond that…I rarely give it a thought. This is (or should be) embarrassing because I am married to a man who sells math and science curricula. While I am impressed with the “Inquiry” method of science instruction on which his company bases their texts, I have not, thus far, felt an unquenchable need to pick up any one of the 70,000 books currently filling an upstairs room and spend some time learning about what I missed. It’s not that I don’t think it’s important, it’s just that there are so many books I want to read, and so many things I want to learn, (and, honestly, “House” and “The Office), and I just don’t feel willing to spare the time necessary to become intimate with physics. It’s probably also important to note that law school was (for me anyway) a period of three years during which I read nothing of any personal interest to me, and I do not feel that I have another brain cell or breath to sacrifice to anything that is neither necessary for my survival nor scintillating to my psyche.

Yesterday, sitting in a restaurant with my husband and my parents, I happened to mention that I didn’t know anything about physics, except that there was something called a “vector.” My father, a teacher by nature and profession, took the twin straws from his iced tea and told me that he was going to teach me what a vector actually was. Placing them in a “v” on the table top, he asked me to imagine that they were chains, one attached to an ox, and one to a truck. My questions about the age, gender and size of the ox, and the make, color and model year of the truck were ignored. I was, he instructed, to imagine that the two sources of power were being used to move a large rock, located at the joint of the “v.” I was distracted by the fact that the putative “chains,” were very clearly cocktail straws, and tremendously bothered by the absence of ox, truck or rock, but I focused very hard on following the next part of the story. In order to pull the rock in the desired direction, my father explained, it would be necessary to adjust the “v” in some way, due to the relative force of the ox and the truck. The line in which the rock traveled was The Vector.

While I was still constructing a visual in my head (the velvet-nosed ox with his wooden yoke worn smooth by the years, or could the ox be a “she,” or if it was a she, would she not be an “ox” at all, but something different, like “bulls” and “cows?” Was s/he well-treated? Was the truck one of those really cool vintage models with the cute front-mounted headlights that looked like bug-eyes, maybe in a faded pale blue?) my father and husband had gone on to other examples, one involving my brother flying his small airplane and forming a “v” with the wind, followed by an entirely incomprehensible example related to sailing into which I interjected  my sailing vocabulary (“tack”) and was, again, ignored.

So I kind of get it. I even see a real reason to understand what a vector is. If, for example, one was moving a large rock, flying an airplane or sailing, one would need to have a firm grasp on the use of vectors, on “vectoring,” as it were. I have no plans to move large rocks or to fly an airplane, and I have long ago proven myself an incompetent sailor (in an incident in which my father had to row a boat into the middle of a lake to retrieve me and the boat I was attempting to sail, because I could not…tack). The laws of physics and chemistry are important things to understand, things that are fundamental to comprehending the workings of the world in which we live, but for the most part, I plan to continue being glad that other people understand them and feel willing to dole out tidbits of information to me on an infrequent basis. A very infrequent basis, if you please.

Popular

[Dear Reader: it has been suggested to me by those nearest and dearest that I have been writing a number of gloomy, self-deprecating and Altogether Serious posts which might lead the casual observer to believe that I am living in a darkened room with 50 cats and a bottle of Trazodone. These pieces are, for me, compelling to the point of urgency, and I cannot apologize for the thinking or the writing of them. I can, however, tell you that there are lighter things on the horizon. Don't give up on me, baby].

The most utterly miserable times of my life were in high school.  I was always a fat girl, and later, a fat girl with acne. I never had a date, was never kissed, was picked last for every team in gym, and was called “pizza face,” among other things. To be sure, there were girls fatter than I was who were not teased, and were, in fact popular. There were also many among the Leadership of the Pack who had acne (a common occurrence in the pre-Accutane era).These facts always baffled me, and mostly shored up my notion that there was, for some reason, a target in the middle of my forehead. I recall bands of lithe, silken-haired Popular People roaming the halls of our very upper middle class high school and possessing the power to slay me for an entire day with nothing more than a dismissive look or a word whispered to a friend in my proximity.

I had been teased enough, beginning in elementary school, that I had a rational basis for believing that I was a target. This belief was bolstered by occurrences like The Sweater Incident, in which one gazelle-like beauty in her OHS cheerleader drag figured out that the sweater I was wearing came from the boy’s department of Knapp’s Department Store, because her brother had the same one. (I feel compelled to point out that I was not wearing a boys’ sweater because I was elephantine, which I was not. I picked it out because I liked the pattern). “Hey Ann,” she called from across the classroom, “where’d you get your sweater?” Unsure about whether I was being set up for a compliment or a fall, I answered her. “What department?” she asked, looking at her friends to make sure they wouldn’t miss the punchline.  I was doomed, and sat, face burning, as she announced the Origin of the Sweater;  much hilarity ensued.  I never wore it again, and made up a story for my mother about how it made me itch.

I had good friends, and did well academically, but my school days were spent navigating a minefield. I never relaxed, and I was perpetually scanning vigilantly for the next sneer, judgmental assessment or (worst of all) look of utter contempt from some handsome, athletic boy walking next to a petite, faintly tan girl with the right hair, size 3 hiney-binders, and an expensive ski jacket with lift tickets hanging from the zipper pull. Had I been any number of things other than what I was, I might have fared better. If I had been thick-skinned, oblivious, or even ambitious and optimistic about trying to meet the standards of the Ruling Class, I might have done my own thing, unscathed, or at least had a project to keep me from rehashing every slight. Instead, I was me. I was hyper-sensitive, anxious, and certain on a molecular level that the people at school who echoed what I saw in “Seventeen” magazine were what teenagers should be, and that I was not.

Nearly thirty years since high school, I am far more comfortable with myself, and sometimes even fancy myself  a “cool kid,” at least in my own circles. It would, however, be inaccurate to pass myself off as a “changed person;” nothing has made that clearer than the reappearance of high school in my present-day life courtesy of  facebook. I panicked (no exaggeration) when a cheerleader classmate found and “friended” me, seriously believing that, at the age of 46, she might be planning to tease or embarrass me in some way. She suggested other potential “friends” to me, and into my life came people who I had feared, secretly worshipped, and generally viewed as an entirely different species from Booksmartus Thunderthighica.

As time passed, and I corresponded with and generally kept up with the “popular kids,” the plates began to shift. Many, if not all of them proved to have interests in common with me, to have struggled in various ways, and to be genuinely kind, tolerant adults. Most recently, the original “friend” began organizing a class reunion, and designated me as “chief party planner.” After my initial surprise (and, I’ll admit, vestigial suspicion), I recognized that the gesture was genuine, and based on a belief that I was a person who not only deserved to be included in a party, but who knew enough to make it a good one. Two paths converged in my cliche-ridden mind, and I selected the one that led me to question my identity as a scarred victim of high school cruelty. It now seems plausible, even likely that what I saw as meanness in the high rollers of adolescence was simply the expression of a different kind of insecurity from my own. I am pretty sure that I was as visibly dismissive and contemptuous of people who I believed to be unintelligent, conventional and sheep-like (by which I mean the “popular people”) as they were of the socially disadvantaged (by which I mean “me”), and none of us was particular skillful about challenging our assumptions or prejudices.

Letting go of personal mythology is a difficult thing, particularly when the stories are thirty-five years old, and have been cherished, embellished, and embroidered to the point where the Bayeux Tapestries appear to be mere hand towels in comparison. I’m pretty sure that I responded to cruelty, real and imagined, by developing layers of cynical, suspicious protection that gave out signals of rejection and moral superiority. I can’t, otherwise, explain the fact that girls heavier than I was were popular, had boyfriends, and generally  believed that they were entitled to sit at the table for life’s rich banquet. They didn’t care, they laughed it off, or they were so confident about their intrinsic value that they could take a little teasing in stride, possibly giving back as good as they got. I lacked that confidence, and developed a set of defenses that could have repelled even the most determined teenager. Particularly towards attractive or popular boys, I am now certain that I directed Death Rays of pure, unmitigated contempt. It wasn’t conscious, and I don’t imagine they would have been beating down my door with invitations to Homecoming in any event, but it was a social “Stop” sign. I admit that to this day, when dealing with a particularly handsome man at a car dealership or parent meeting, I still find myself fighting the urge to cut and run because I am certain that I am being assessed and found wanting.

It seems that I probably got back from the “popular” people what I gave out, missing entirely the part where I was equally nasty in my own way. There was teasing, there was cruelty, and in Tort Law, I would be considered “The Eggshell Victim,” a term used to describe the victim of negligence whose injuries and/or damages far exceed what might normally be expected due to some inherent characteristic like hemophilia or brittle bones. Outside of Tort Law, in the natural rough and tumble of growing up, there is no Eggshell Victim rule. My sensitive, anxious and self-critical self took every blow hard, even those easily deflected by a tougher nature, but the fact that I responded by subconsciously claiming Victim status and lining up my defenses was not the fault of my beautiful and socially adept peers. It was, as a friend of mine says, “a thing;” a no-fault, no-liability mistake that caused years and years of damage.

I am not good at forgetting things, but I am brilliant at “spin.” With my adolescent years re-classified as “mutual misunderstanding” rather than “endless persecution,” I feel a freedom, a lightness that may just allow me to move around the cabin of my life a little more easily. I can choose to see myself now as perfectly adequate, maybe even a little young-looking for someone of my vintage, and capable of navigating in any social waters in which I find myself. I can also see the people who cast long shadows in high school as flawed, human equals who may have suffered in ways I never imagined while I saw them perpetually perfect and in control. I guess I’ll learn more about them when we all see each other at that reunion party I’m planning….

Pick & Roll

I always hated sports. As a child, I played outside, swam all summer, rode my bike, and sledded and skated in winter, but I was not interested in playing or watching organized sporting events. I grew up in a Big Ten town, and was constantly bombarded by games on TV, games on the radio, and the difficulty of driving anywhere on the day of a home football game. I also hated the interpersonal heat and mayhem when my Michigan State University family traveled to Ohio for Thanksgiving with my mother’s Ohio State University uncles and cousins. I was completely horrified that grown men could get that upset because some big idiot dropped a ball or got knocked down. As far as I could see, football involved a bunch of thugs running at each other and falling in a pile. Basketball made more sense, but was still just a bunch of taller thugs with fewer clothes. I attended precisely one football game in four years of high school, and cleverly found a college at which football existed, but was really kind of  a joke in the greater world of college sports; it was the “Anti-Big Ten.”

I had a two brief flirtations with sports that were really about impressing the objects of my affection and not about passion for a game. When I fell in love with hockey-playing Stuart, who lived near my grandmother in Rhode Island the summer after fifth grade, I had a brief obsession that included learning all about Phil Esposito and Bobby Orr, and requesting a puck and stick for Christmas so that I could play street hockey (which was interesting since no one else I knew had a puck or a stick, or played street hockey). I never saw Stuart again, and although I could (and can) follow a game of ice hockey with some interest, I can also walk away without a second thought.  I became a basketball fan when I was in love with John, watching the Detroit Pistons play game after game, and learning to identify a pick & roll, a pivot and a technical foul. My separation from John being more dramatic and disturbing that Stuart’s slow fade from my conscious mind, I rejected basketball along with everything else associated with the relationship.

By the time I was an adult, it was well-known that I had no interest in sports, and wasn’t interested in being led to the Church of ESPN for a conversion experience. When the rest of my family gathered to watch bowl games on New Year’s day, I sat in another room and read, or entertained whatever babies we had at the moment. When my husband, and later my husband and son watched sports on TV, I suffered it by sitting in the same room with them and reading, despite the annoying cheers, whistles, and buzzers. I was kind of proud of my sports-resistant nature; watching people who cared about the outcome of a game was kind of like watching people who are drunk when you are sober. They yelled, they jumped out of their seats, and they said things like “all riiiiiight!” and “come on, come on, come on…YES!” Sometimes, to my great surprise, they cried after the beloved team won a game. I cried about all kinds of things, to be sure, but I could not even remotely imagine caring so much about which group of testosterone-y thugs beat another team of testosterone-y thugs that anyone would weep with joy.

We live, now, in a neighborhood near the Michigan State University campus, and all of the neighboring houses are student rentals. Four years ago, as I engaged in the annual meet and greet with our new undergraduate neighbors, I met a group of male housemates which included what appeared to be a giant. I soon learned that the giant (whose name was Jake) had come all the way from a small town in Wyoming on a full academic scholarship, but that he was also a walk-on for the M.S.U. basketball team. He was a smart kid, and a funny kid, and during that fall we  often saw him leave the house at the crack of dawn in his green and white sweats for a workout before classes began. He came home long after dark, after practice and hours of homework.  As I got to know the boys in his house, I learned that Jake almost never actually got to play, but that he was expected to participate in all workouts, coaching sessions and games on top of a rigorous academic load. He was no thug, he was willing to give up most of the social life associated with his senior year in college just for a chance to walk on with the team. I was intrigued.

When Jake offered us tickets to the first game of the season, I surprised myself by saying we’d love to go. I enjoyed the brisk walk towards the Breslin Center in the midst of a huge throng of fans, I liked going to the window and asking for the tickets that were held for us, and watching the team warm up from our floor bleacher seats, reserved for players’ families and friends. We were so close that I could see sweat fly, and hear the squeak of giant green and white basketball shoes. We saw Jake, not even close to being the tallest giant in comparison to his teammates, and I began to study the program to find out about the other men on the team, studying up on their home towns and majors; all of the kind of personal, “girly” details that made me feel like I was still me, even on the edge of a basketball court with “Havana Gila” blasting through the speakers, and announcements about something called a “fifty-fifty raffle.”

When the game started, I had my conversion experience. That’s really all there was to it; by some alchemical process of being in that place, learning about those boys and watching them run, and weave and shoot, I became a Fan. It felt strange, at first, to yell out loud, or to cheer (I don’t think I had ever cheered in my entire life) but it was impossible to stay poised or quiet after a hoop-grabbing slam dunk, or a beautifully executed steal. A new, true believer, I went on to read about the history of the team, devour newspaper stories about the players and the coach, and watch every televised game that season. When the games weren’t on TV, I sat glued to my computer, watching something called “Game Tracker” which was to basketball what “Pong” was to tennis; a small graphic of a ball moving back and forth across a rectangle, with text updates after a foul or a score. I began to see, in college basketball, not a group of nameless thugs, but My Boys, who trained their bodies to run hard and fast for minutes at a time, understood complicated strategies, and took the beratings and blessings of their coach as one might accept the ministrations of a beloved father. I knew that Coach held the team to high standards academically, and that he expected them to display good character on and off the court.  I came to love him, too. I loved his animated face and barely contained emotions after bad calls and botched plays, and the faint smile he permitted after a three-pointer sailed into the opponent’s basket with a satisfying “swoosh.”

Although I wasn’t sure that I could love another team, especially after Jake graduated, it turned out that I could. I loved Goran, and Raymar, and Marquise, and Travis,  gangly Tommy and each year’s new crop of freshmen. This year, I was bereft when I discovered that I had somehow missed the first game, and rushed to find the schedule and put it on my calendar to assure that nothing comes between me and Spartan basketball. I will snap up proffered game tickets, cheer with the Breslin crowd when I can, cheer from my couch when I can’t, and have conversations with perfect strangers about how we pulled out of a slump the previous night  because the offensive players were “on fire.”

In case you suspect a flash-in-the-pan kind of love, susceptible to evaporation in the cool breeze of time, I will tell you something I have never told a soul. The first year of my basketball fan-hood, Rob participated in a conference in Grand Rapids Michigan, and Sam and I tagged along to stay in the magnificent Amway Grand Hotel with him. After dinner, we dropped Rob at his booth for the evening, and as we started to walk back to our room,  I remembered that we were missing the start of an NCAA playoff game. As Sam and I sped down long, carpeted halls, he noticed that the TV over one of the lobby bars was showing our game; I rationalized that it was okay to sit on a bar stool with my 8-year-old next to me as long as we weren’t sharing a Jagermeister. It was for the sake of our team. As we watched, eating tiny crackers and drinking soda through tiny black straws, the most giant of our giants, a seven-foot Nigerian, fell and injured his elbow with an audible crunch. It was terrible to watch, and his agony was compounded by the fact that it was an important game, and more than one of the high scorers had been benched due to foul trouble. The announcer said that, replacing the injured player was our Jake “Number forty-three, a walk-on from Cody, Wyoming.”

“Jake’s in!” said Sam.

“We know that guy!” I told the bartender. As the three of us watched (the bartender unable to resist our contagious enthusiasm), Jake played real minutes, assisted, shot, and scored. After a year of working out, learning plays, watching tapes,  and spending most of his  minutes on the bench in his sweats, he played in a nationally televised playoff game, and he played well.

Reader, I cried.