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

the Bronx is up and the Battery's down

     It had to happen. Laura is slowly morphing into a New Yorker.
     Like an Escher drawing, things in an environment shape each other and in the process it's hard to tell where the fish ends and the bird begins. New Yorkers are like that; they've come from all over the place and they all kind of shape each other. I know there isn't a New York accent per se, but there is a something. Laura's "A" is getting as flat as a dime or mebbe a quata, for example. Last night as we were going to bed she said, "I wanna read some more, but I just key-ant."
     Not long ago I heard her talking on the phone to a student's therapist. The kid was acting out in ways I would love to describe here, but while I am on this blog fairly cavalier with self-disclosure, it is not mine to other-disclose. Suffice it to say that the student was behaving in ways that will make her grandchildren clap their hands and beg her to tell another story about when she was a kid back at the turn of the century. Laura needed to consult the therapist, as one does in such situations, fifty years before the grandchildren of a rascal adolescent appear on the scene.
     When you're ten feet away from a phone conversation, cooking up lunch, the voice on the other end is a high-pitched gurgle, if it's your average female -- a little bit like if a robin could talk. If it's your average man, you hear a low wuzzah wuzzah, like if a bear could talk. Many good cartoons have actually already nailed these sounds. This particular phone call I can hear the rapid-fire, friendly-sounding gurgle. It goes on for a very long time. This is how New Yorkers talk -- they've been trained from a very young age in competitive conversation. It's like double-dutch, where the ropes are moving fast and you have to jump in at just the right moment. I can see Laura holding the phone doing that rocking motion with just her head, looking for the right moment to jump in.
     The therapist is on the beach somewhere in the Caribbean, taking the call from her danged client's danged high school principal. "Ach," I imagine she says to her main squeeze, who is reclining on an adjacent chaise. "Hon, I have to take this cawl. Could you grab me another margarita?" She is a good egg about it. So is Laura. They're the Adults in This Situation, and you can hear them both doing their best adult voices.
     Laura swings through the kitchen as she talks. She passes me a little sticky note. It says, "She's faking it!" I smile but make sure not to laugh audibly. Laura is playing her own role of School Official. "Well, I'm concerned about the attendance issue. She's going to have a hard time catching up if this goes on much longer." Then a long stream of birdsong, waxing psychological and sincere, no doubt, about this kid and whatever she's going through. Laura jumps in again, beginning to mirror the cadence of her double-dutch partner -- which is what you have to do, right? Otherwise you get tripped up by the ropes. It's like conversing in English with native Chinese speakers; you have to use all kinds of shortcuts through sentences, which they get to do in Chinese, grammatically. If you use all the words you normally use, you're like someone who lugs a picnic table to the picnic, while everyone else has already eaten lunch off the nice blanket on the ground and moved on to frisbee.
     Both the principal and the sunbathing therapist are reassured and reassuring as the conversation draws to a close. They've conveyed to each other that they are concerned but not worried about this kid who will, gawd willin', live a lawng life and go on to tell wild stories to her rapt grandchildren. They can both say to the parents that they've spoken to each other, that they've done their jobs as responsible members of their kid's team.
     I can tell things are wrapping up because Laura has turned to counselor herself, empathizing with some story the therapist is telling: "Oy," she says, with feeling, in response.
     I shake my head. Right there; the fish ends and the bird begins, right there.

where UPS guys go to the bathroom

     As I take my body for a walk, my mind always takes its own stroll.
     The other day I was nearing home, picking up my pace as the prospect of a bathroom became more and more compelling. A UPS truck whizzed by.
     "Where do UPS guys go when they need to pee?" I wondered. I'm sure there are times when our bathroom on Main Street, Farmington would bring great relief to the man in brown tossing a box onto the porch. But after lots and lots of UPS drop offs, no one in a delivery truck has ever asked to use our facilities.
     What if they have to pee in the truck? It looks like they're rearranging the boxes back there, but at some point they must go behind the boxes and do what must be done. Maybe the trucks are equipped with a little potty. Maybe just a wide-necked bottle. Poor guys!
     Maybe I should put up a little sign near our back porch. "Public restroom inside: please knock." What harm could there be in that? Who else is going to ask to use our bathroom? It's not like "if you build it, they will come." No one comes up our driveway looking for a bathroom.
     What did Ray Kinsella and his family do about bathrooms, out there in the "Field of Dreams"? Remember that line of cars, driving toward the baseball field at the end? Each one of those people is going to have to pee at some point. They should have thought this through! I love the idea of "if you build it, they will come," but let's not forget they will come with appetites and bladders. There must be kids in the back seats of those cars, too. When they've gotta go, they've gotta go.
     Maybe I should just ask the UPS guy if he needs to pee, on those occasions when I'm in the kitchen to actually take the package. "Thanks! Would you like to use our bathroom?" Ach, that would be too weird.
     I feel bad for them, though -- they have to hold it for so long. Maybe UPS has certain criteria for hiring drivers. You'd have to be able to go 8 straight hours without peeing. Guys can do that, though. Maybe that's why all the UPS and FedEx drivers are men. That and the size of the packages. Oh! That's funny. Except that's a penis joke, and I'm really wondering about bladders, so it doesn't work.
     I smile to myself as I walk along. I've yet to be bored on a walk, for reasons that should be apparent.
     I turn the last corner before home. There's that UPS truck, parked right here! And a guy in it! The world was made to be free in, the world was made to be free in. Just ask your question, p.
     "Excuse me, sir!" [he looks up] "Hello!"
     "Hlo." [he smiles, but continues to "rearrange the boxes"]
     "I'm so sorry to...interrupt. Do you mind if I ask a question?"
     "What's up."
     "Where do you guys go when you need to go to the bathroom?"
     "Offices."
     Ohhhhhhh. Offices! Right. How small is my world, for god's sake?
     That's good, though. I don't have to worry about them anymore. Saves me the trouble of making that sign.

follow the feelings, probably part 1

     Most of the time, the quiet of my life suits me fine. Guilty fine, though: I constantly feel like I'm getting away with something. Is it okay that I'm not as busy as everyone else? Shouldn't I be making more of a contribution to the world? Is how I'm living okay? I feel kind of bad about liking my quiet life. Everyone else, including the beloved spouse, is working around the clock. Not me.

     Oh, I would not say I am idle. I get things done. Last week I made a menorah for some friends who are getting married. This small project involved a long walk on the cold beach, searching for a piece of driftwood with a flat bottom and an upraised knot that could hold the shamash, a trip to the arts and crafts store to find that they don't carry candle cups, a search on the internet for candle cups (this could be a blog entry in itself, but I'm too busy, as you can see), research on what makes a kosher menorah and what gets the observant eye-roll, extensive study of the Martha Stewart photo example of a driftwood menorah, measuring out the holes and remembering that 9 candles doesn't mean you divide the length by 9 so you measure again, finding your largest drill bit just won't work and that it's hard to hold a piece of driftwood steady while you drill into it. Shall I start a new sentence? Let's do. Tracking down someone who might be willing to loan you a gigunda drill bit, getting ahold of that, drilling the holes, making sure they're as level as possible so the candle cups aren't tilted, realizing that now the holes are too big for the candle cups, cleaning up sawdust and bits of driftwood throughout the kitchen, which is just a way of stalling since you've just drilled holes that are too big, which is so much worse than too small. Going to Lowe's to ask for advice, buying screws and washers and screwing them into the bottom of the cups, which is a perfect and clever solution for which you thank the Lowe's guy so warmly he seems startled, putting a few coats of paint on the finished product, and then dropping off the drill bits with a thank-you note attached. Oh, yes. I get things done.

But then there is this:

     Laura's school has a driver service. In New York City, United States, this is not amazing. It makes more sense for the School to pay for a service than to reimburse people for parking and travel between campuses. Right? So of course you have a shiny car and friendly driver that's waiting for you just like your assistant set up for you. And of course you get out of the car and don't ever have to pay. I get that.
     Hm? My day? Normal. A few clients. Oh, Juni had her vet appointment. Yep. She's fine. There's a little tartar on her teeth. They're going to send an estimate.
     CEO of what? She did? You said that? Did she laugh? That's so great, hon. Wow.
     I had a new client no show today. I know, right?
     You guys ate there? I read a review of that in the Times. Supposed to be great. Oh, that sounds fabulous!
     Hey, hope it's okay that I'm roasting the last of the frozen butternut squash tonight. I'm kind of glad to put all that past us.
     Sure, I remember that movie. That guy? Is he nice? Yeah, it seems like he would be, you know? What grade is his kid in?
     You wouldn't believe the line at the post office today. I was mailing Yani her belt. I saw that Porter's parent from down the road who's always so nice; remember her? Can't remember her name. Right; her. She said to say hi. Her cousin went to Fieldston.