a quiet evening in middle age

     We share a driveway with our beloved neighbors, Roy and Arlene. Both in their 60s, they are like ants: constantly moving, carrying around things that are ten times their weight. We cannot keep up with them. Laura and I are more like beetles. Beetles just kind of walk around. You can pick them up and carry them outside; they wiggle their legs a bit, but otherwise don't protest. And once you toss them outside, they flip themselves over and keep walking like that's where they meant to be anyway.
     We had a quiet evening last night. Did you? Or were you out dancing, like Roy and Arlene were. Most weekend nights, while we clean up after supper we look out the kitchen window and see them heading out to dinner in New Haven or to go dancing who knows where. I would not know where to go dancing other than in the kitchen.
     Last night, after Roy and Arlene drove away in black tie outfits, we, in blue jean outfits, got to work on trying to find a movie. Laura wanted something funny. My two suggestions, "In Search of the Perfect Human Diet," and "Escape Fire: the fight to rescue American Healthcare" were not her top choices, but she agreed to let me try to find them.
     Gradually, we got lost in the dark space between the television and the remote(s). You've had that happen, I'm sure. It's like getting one number wrong, early on, in Sudoku. The situation gets worse and worse as you go on, and at a certain point you might as well erase the whole puzzle and start again.
     We do not generally watch TV, in the sense of watching something that is "on," like one used to do with, say, The Mary Tyler Moore Show. On those occasions when we do turn on the television machine, things we want to see are either on "my DVR" or "On Demand" or on another machine entirely -- the DVD player -- which talks to Netflix, something called Vudu, and a couple of other cyber libraries we've never ventured into.
     Last night we were ambitious, though, and wandered deep into the dark, electronic forest. We could not find our way to a good movie. A couple of times I found myself at a place where I could begin "typing," painstakingly, with the remote, "in space search space of space the space perfect space human space diet." Do you know how long that takes with a remote? Long enough for Laura, who is chewing and watching the letters appear, one by one, on the screen, to finish her salad and go get seconds. I try this on Netflix, On Demand, and, in wholly uncharted territory, the aptly named Vudu. Each time I am told that "There are 0 matches to your request," I have to find my way out of the forest and then go back in again, struggling for the secret path that takes you to the secret cave that leads to the place where you can begin typing again. Each time, this: There are 0 matches to your request.
     Periodically, Laura asks for the remote. "Let me try," she'll say. Though this is never a successful move, I occasionally comply and pass it to her so that I can take some more bites of food. Each time she quickly reaches the end of her rope and passes back the remote. We begin to find this pattern increasingly funny, but march on. The final time she asks for the remote, I tell her "No, La. Not once have we made any progress when you've had the remote." She accepts this and goes back to her salad.
     Exhausted with bushwhacking through the forest, we see among the "JUST IN!" selections a Bette Midler and Billy Crystal movie that we had never heard of. This is not a good thing, when choosing a movie to watch on a quiet Saturday night. We actually pay $3.99 (so desperate are we at this point) to watch the first 15 minutes of a very bad movie. If I could remember the name of it, I would advise you to steer clear.
     At 9:00, we head to bed with our books. This is where we should have gone in the first place. Yes, we were ambitious: salads on Saturday night in front of a movie. This does not seem too much to ask, but it was.

     I'm sorry -- I know I'm going on a bit, but the story of last night's evening in middle age is not over yet.
     As I am getting ready for bed, Laura actually points at me and laughs. She is laughing at the new underwear she bought a couple of weeks ago. One of those 3 packs of Jockeys. You know them.
     "What." I say. "I told you these were weird."
     "But they were 'French Cut'! I thought we wore 'French Cut'! Maybe we wear 'bikini."
     "No, hon," I tell her. "We wear 'French Cut.'"
     "But that can't be right!" She points at me again.
     "I know! That's what I was telling you!"
     "What happened to 'French Cut'? Like these guys." And here she points to her own underwear.
     "Jockey doesn't make them like that anymore, La. The French have changed their cut."
     "What do you mean? How can they do that?"

     Suddenly, I feel like I am channeling my parents. So many conversations they'd have like this while ending their day. Everyone in the family has memories of overhearing their sweet conversations after they'd gone into their bedroom.
     "I think the problem is," my mom would say, "that they don't make things like that anymore."
     "Unh?" says Pop.
     "No, honey. They're all something called digital now, I think."
     "Digital. How you spell?"
     "D.i.g.i.t.a.l."
     "Oh! Digital. I know this word."
     "Yes."
     "All record and tape like this?"
     "I'm not sure. I think so. We can ask the kids in the morning."
     "A good day, Mama. So lucky."
     "A wonderful day, honey. We are so lucky."

landslides on our shared path

     As the human family trudges and dances and runs along our shared path, thunderous landslides occasionally crash down onto that path. Even if we as individuals happen not to be trudging or dancing or running in the very spot where a giant rock face lets go and tumbles with unthinkable power and weight onto the path, even if we were nowhere near the rock when it fell, it sometimes feels like a narrow, frightening miss, and our hearts thump hard for a long while.
     But these metaphorical landslides slam onto the human path, and so they hit the family. Some people who were right next to us just a second ago were plowed under by the slide, and are gone or terribly hurt. For awhile, we are stunned. We stand and look at the massive pile of rock, trying to take in the power, take in the loss. We look for where the rock came from; it's a natural response, but it doesn't repair what has been done, and it doesn't stop other landslides from happening.

     (There are places in the world where landslides are daily occurrences -- tragedies that happen so far away that we don't hear the thunderous crash, don't notice the rubble or register the missing. I know I have the blessing of being able to dance and run in relative safety. There are those in this family of ours who live in fear, and who mainly trudge and wail.)
     I did not want to blog about the Boston Marathon. But for awhile you just can't write about anything else. It is there, like a giant rock that slid onto the path right next to you, blocking your way. For awhile, things like the Marathon bombings cover with rubble all your ordinary ideas, feelings, thoughts -- everything that might otherwise move about freely. You can't get to those things under the rubble without bowing to a supreme and incomprehensible power, without bowing to those who were right next to you on the path and now are gone.
   

even Obama has a ghostwriter

There are times when Principal Danforth is truly too busy to craft a tricky email. The Letter Composer, as we all know, is not. This is the best way I can help her, and sometimes it is actually fun. Today I had a good time writing this one, for example:

Dear Upper School parents:

I'm writing this brief email to ask your help in augmenting some of the fragments of clothing that are being worn to school. Many of the girls are coming to school in shorts that are simply too short, for one thing. I don't believe I need to elaborate on what "too short" means in detail, or the visual that "too short" foists onto hapless witnesses. Furthermore, exposure of backs, bellies, and breasts are becoming a distracting and annoying norm: Janet Jackson incidents are not rare in the hallways. Many of the boys, meanwhile, are walking underwear commercials; it is not appropriate for school. 

Though we don't have a formal "dress code" at Fieldston, students need to come to school simply wearing more material, and that material needs to cover any underclothing that is also worn. Please help my colleagues and me by more closely checking your son or daughter's wardrobe before it struts out your door in the morning. I am trying to be a good sport in this email, but we are unhappy about this situation and need your assistance. 

Thank you in advance.

I've a long, penniless career in ghostwriting. My best story - have I told you this already? - is of being asked by a committee (on which I did not serve) at my previous school to craft a letter to the Head of School. This was 15 or 20 years ago. The issue was delicate - there was a politically charged personnel crisis brewing, and the matter needed to be approached just so. I wrote a bang up letter and the committee was pleased. The next day, the Head of School called me into her office, showed me the letter from the committee, and said, "Would you be willing to write a response for me?"

Typing back to myself that night, ghost to ghost, was bizarre. Though the crisis was averted,  there was no one to celebrate with, since it remains the ghost's secret to this day.

My thanks to busy, wonderful Principal Danforth for permission to out us both with this post.

longer recesses and pizza every day!

     When Yani was in 5th grade, she ran for president of the class. She prepared a great little speech. In it she made no promises other than to try her best to represent her grade, the student elders of little Harwinton Consolidated School. But in fellow candidate Buster McBuster's (not his real name, though maybe it should be) speech, he said, "When I'm class president, we're going to have longer recesses! When I'm class president, we're gonna have pizza and ice cream at every lunch!" Lots of the 10-year-old voters stood and cheered. Buster won handily, never to be heard from again.
     That experience was actually a real disillusionment for Yani, and it was hard to watch her try to sort it out in her mind. At that age of giant teeth and giant beliefs that people are good and kind, she was stunned that Buster had made a false promise and gotten away with it. Despite her 23 years, despite experiences a-plenty that life is darned complicated and that people are often untethered from principles of kindness and fairness, this early experience remains a tiny smudge on Yani's generally affectionate view of humankind.
    Buster and his high-pitched promise changed in my mind when I read an email Laura received today. I now understand Buster may simply have been naive -- and an optimist -- hoping against hope that that's how things work: you get elected to a leadership position and the adults ask you for guidance on what needs fixing. He may have thought he could inform the school of the pizza scarcity issue...and pizza would appear. Though one might fault him for false promises, and little Yani understood why his campaign speech was not fair play, I can no longer blame him for giving it a shot. Who, I ask you, would not want longer recesses?

     Here is the email that allowed me at last to absolve Buster of all ill will:

Dear Principal Danforth,

We are running for FSG Presidents and one idea we have had is to make "Sleep-in Tuesdays" a more frequent occurrence, perhaps every four to six weeks or so. We are sure we don't need to emphasize with you the importance of sleep for young people, or the fact that we rarely get enough of it, and our hope is that because late starts do occur on Tuesdays with some regularity* to accommodate faculty meetings, accomplishing this agenda item would not be impossible. Our question for you is whether you would view this as something we would be able to explore using the appropriate channels if we are elected?

Thank you very much for your help.

Sincerely,

xx and yy (not their real names)

Sent from my iPhone

I just love that. "Sent from my iPhone." Hope, man. Hope springs eternal.

* FYI: twice a year