Why DIDN'T Cheney Sing? Inauguration Day 2001

This is my Inauguration Day column from eight years ago. Ah the benefit of hindsight!"I hope you had fun watching the Inauguration yesterday. I know I did. I always watch Inaugurations, partly because I love seeing people in hats: Nancy Reagan in her signature reda; Jacquie way back, in her poofy pillbox. Hilary in ’93, in that deep-blue number that matched the coat. I was sorry Laura chose to go hatless, but I understand. We’d be lying if we didn’t admit that Hillary looked a lot like Smurfette in that deep-blue hat-and-coat ensemble, and a little like QE 2 as well, not meaning the luxury liner, of course, but the Queen herself, whose curse it is to live in a country where the female regent is just EXPECTED to wear a matching hat for every coat, and a matching purse to boot."Anyway, I loveall  Inaugurations, mostly for the surprises they furnish us. I think of that blizzard that blew in January 19 of 1960, wrought havoc and blew back out again, blinding poor Robert Frost, who couldn’t see to read his poem, and ended up reciting a diffferent one, from memory. I think of the sight, eight years ago, of Emotional Bill, leaking tears like some Miss Congeniality all during the prayer service he attended the morning he took office."Of course there were small surprises this time too, the way Laura looked in her hatlessness being just one example. There was also:" The way Hillary looked, in what seemed to be a black Johnny Cash-style leather coat, with hair slicked back like Johnny Cash’s too. (Wait! Is Hillary actually turning into Johnny Cash? Is she becoming… TRANSGENDERED, as a final poke in the eye to Cheating Bill?"The way the new president gamely if quietly sang the words to the National Anthem, when that giant soldier-boy belted it out in his plummy voice."The way his Vice President Dick Cheney DIDN’T sing along but looked somberly straight ahead."All this time after catching such glimpses, I still look back at them, parsing them for the insights they might provide into the nature of the regime, and its new boss especially."Because we wonder: will this man be open, affable and good-natured, or will he tend more toward caution and calculation? Will he hold grudges and fence himself about with them, a man in a stockade, or can he let go of grievance, seeing people as he sees himself, filled to the brim with every sort of impulse, from high to low?"Someone said his success will depend on whether or not he enjoys wielding all the power inherent in the office. After all, power on that scale and the nation looking to YOU day and night have been known to turn men from spring-in-their-step bright-eyed warriors to haggard and scooped-out shells (see Jimmy Carter, Franklin Roosevelt, Dave Letterman.)"I HOPE Bush enjoys it. God knows he’s better at communicating joy than poor Al Gore, his opponent in this recent sorry election, and I admit here hat I voted for Gore."I wish the guy the best, as he and his wife Laura take up residence in that satin-pillowed jail, as former Bush and Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan once described the White House, and she ought to know since she worked there for three years."I wish him luck, and I liked my Inauguration Day surprises, but still, I have to wonder: Why DIDN’T Cheney sing along?

And so they leave the stage my friends, and so they leave the stage...

 and at long last it really IS Morning in America!

 

 

Frozen Pees

It's been so cold here the flashers are describing themselves, ha-ha old joke but man it's been cold. 17 below zero at the lake yesterday where we foolishly went thinking 'Oh we’ll just take a spin up to our summer place and check on things.' FLED IN FEAR 24 hours later, not just because of the cold but because of this brand new snowstorm bearing down on us. Packed up the cats and the cooler and drove home fast as we could last night, the storm’s wet breath cold upon our necks.

When I was a high school teacher on study hall duty, a kid taking Latin sat right in front of my big desk and I'd look at his book sometimes - to see how much I remembered of that knuckly old language and admire the prints of Roman statues with their noses all rubbed off.

Once though, he came in with a book called Voyage to the Top of the World or some such name about this dogsled bunch up by the North Pole trying to carry on in all that cold. It was kind of a babyish book but I loved it,  especially the parts where they’d pee into the air, and their pee would freeze into sticks which they’d then use to repair broken parts of the sleds.

Just kinda gets you thinkin’ huh? Weatherman gives ya lemons, make lemonade. Or at least some novelty swizzle sticks to serve in the drinks of your enemies. :-)

It's Winter - What Can We Say?

It's snowing again and everyone’s sick. This time it seems to be the Green Death as we call it in our family. In one friend’s household a college-age child fell ill last Sunday and within 36 hours all four of his family members were also clenching and writhing - drivin’ the porcelain bus as they say.

My friend’s body must’ve thought it would be funny to add fainting to the mix too. Anyway, it shut the lights out inside his head just as he was making his midnight way toward the john so that THERE HE WAS in a heap on the floor trying to regain consciousness when one of the other kids, en route to the bathroom himself, stepped right on him. Then they BOTH screamed, which made me picture that scene when the very young Drew Barrymore comes upon ET in her brother’s closet. Aaaaaah! AAAAAHHH!

The January I was in 6^th grade a whole shelf-full of books fell on my head in the school library. Then the next day I broke out in cold sores, my specialty that year as my school picture eternally attests. The day after that we had to go to my cousin’s in Brockton and on the ride back I got so sick, so truly limp-as-a-skinned-bunny-sick I couldn’t even put my legs down on the ground once home. My mom carried me up the stairs and put me in my new red pajamas and I knew I looked small and scared and skinny-necked - a lot like ET in the closet myself, come to think of it.

I knew I wouldn’t be going to school the next day either but would have one, maybe two days in bed with hourly Room Service and a little bell to ring if I thought I might throw up.

My bed was right up against the window and I turned on my side to look out it at the old elm tree I looked at every night of those little girl years and felt empty.... lucky....safe. And it was snowing then too.

(the tree died the next year - The men who took it down said it dated back to Revolutionary days. I still see it in my mind.)

Not a Mile Down the Road

My most recent newspaper piece is David’s Uncle Ed - you’ll find it right up at the top where it says “This Week’s column” - and it occurred to me that maybe people would like to see what he looks like. Here he is on his honeymoon, pretending to be exhausted by his husbandly demands. He was 33 when Auntie Fran set her sights on him and she was 40 and a real ‘looker’ as they used to say.Here she is seeming to point in merry fashion at the bed in the little New Hampshire cabin where they had their honeymoon:Two people on their honeymoon have only each other to take pictures of so here’s Ed with the drinks at sundown and then savoring one of his first breakfasts as a married man.They had 45 years together though for the last ten of them Fran was like a bird trapped in a cage: perplexed, sometimes cross and finally so resigned to the her state that she stopped talking altogether – even let the food you put in her mouth dribble right on out again the second you looked away.Fran isn't even a mile down the road now, over in Oak Grove, in the lot which was bought for David’s young dad, dead so tragically at just 45 and now also holding David’s mom his wife Ruthie so that Ruth and Francis Payne sleep together as they slept as children in the little house in Manchester, New Hampshire, two girls born when the century was in its teens.Ed was born in 1920. He wrote poems in the War - also profiles essays and funny songs, all while stationed in the jungles of the South Pacific with the bodies rotting on the beach. Then he came home and took care of everyone: his darling Fran, his mom til she died in the bathtub, a heavy old lady weary with the years. He takes care of me now. though he thinks it’s the other way around.Here he is two springs ago holding our newest family member. Not your wispy old man with a jawbone thin tin as an axe-blade. He’s as substantial as they come in every way. He will leave a very large void when at last he goes to join the Payne girls over in Oak Grove not even a mile down the road.

Happy 2009! May You Too Get Dragged in a Sack

Happy New Year! I’m going up to the attic to pound the treadmill, make up the crib for our baby and the bed for our pre-schooler, both coming here to sleep and eat and tear the place apart next weekend while their parents do the same in New Orleans.Right now Old Dave is putting away Christmas and there’s the upside in having a control freak for a husband:I don't have to so much as place one ornament into a box because I could do it wrong and then what? - so little elderly Charlotte the cat and I are sitting on our plump pin-cushion bottoms, she licking her paws and I writing to you.Sad to say, my boy Mike was no happier about the picture of him on our Christmas card when he finally saw it than he thought he might be. (See last post.) He read it silently a few times, then put it down on my desk and said only one word - “Shame” - which for an old recovery girl like me lit up about six danger signals in my brain and caused me shortness of breath for over an hour..... Luckily, it turned out he wasn’t THAT mad - said later “I shamed you and now I’m past it” – after which we all played Celebrity, a ridiculously fun game involving fast-paced charades, which I rock at since I have no dignity.New Years Eve is the birthday of our oldest girl Carrie so the night before last we celebrated by going to the wee house-in-the-woods she keeps with her own true love Chris and the above-mentioned little ones. We were all there, and also our girl Annie’s tall, much-muscled firefighter/paramedic boyfriend who manhandled the pre-schooler and dragged him around the floor inside a silken sack, much to the child’s delight. The rest of us sucked down a special rice the girls made using an actual Japanese fan, along with pot stickers, baby scallops and FINE wines and vodkas and sat by the fire.I've been keeping a diary for 50 years and last year I wrote in it only about 40% of the time. This of course is because I had you talk to. Though this ephemeral medium might not last as long as paper and ink, still it was worth it:You kept me company in my lonely writer’s job for which I say thanks; thanks for clicking through every time and may this day and all your future days be as lively and full for you as they have been for us!

Come on Baby Light My Fire

Some things about this season I KNOW I won’t miss. Couldn’t think straight the whole time. Made mistake after mistake:+ Sent out 300 letters about my new book, forgetting to write what the darn thing cost with the result that 300 people shrugged and tossed it, whimsical sample chapter and all.+ Lost car keys. Lost treasured piece of jewelry. Lost credit card (briefly: turned out it was inside my bra.)+ Made holiday card at very last minute using software definitely not yet mastered with jarring result that the many photos in it are so small family members look like wee homunculi, tiny-headed leering gremlins.On this card included one highly comical picture of youngest kid, scored from one of his friend’s Facebook page. “This is why I won’t ‘friend’ you!” kid cried in exasperation when he heard. (He still has not seen the thing.) Feel hot shame as a result; realize I’ve been exposing this kid to the public gaze for 24 long years.+ Let sole cheap candle in whole house burn down to the cheesy wood-sleigh candle-holder cradling it. Look up to see small conflagration on living room table, yelp, "There’s a fire!", thus waking dormant mate who jumps up, blows on it (which even I know is wrong.) Run to kitchen, get bowl to smother it, success! On second thought should have grabbed handful of flour, my fave tool for quenching kitchen fires because you get done and hey! there’s your gravy!Yep, one thing you learn over the holidays is how to save time.Quick last thought maybe not a bad one:+ Take candle-lighting kitchen matches and set fire to the all 250 holiday cards, thus killing two birds, one stone.So Joy to the world y'all. Now where did I put that that EGG NOG?

Happy Holidays! Say Ahhh!

JUST IN CASE you were running out of gift ideas there’s a camera for blind people. Maybe this seems funny when you think about the of young Billy Johnson’s visit to his blind dentist but it’s a real thing, even listed in Time Magazine as a nice gift idea for the holidays: “The photographer holds the camera up to his or her forehead and a Braille-like screen on the back makes a raised image of whatever the lens sees,” Time says to which I say WHY NOT? We need all the creative gift-giving we can muster with the malls all getting converted to giant roller skating rinks because nobody's in them.Anyway who doesn’t love a gift that just takes you as it finds you this way? That doesn’t for once assume you’re a whiz at jigsaw puzzles, or force you to pore over 45 minutes of instructions just so you can play some super-hard game of strategy especially designed to lower your self esteem?I received the perfect present two years ago when one my kids gave me this kit so that the National Geographic Society and I could map the genes of all of humanity. Imagine! ME and the National Geographic Society! I would LEARN who my forbears really were - and after of a lifetime of mocking the stuck-up English ancestors on David’s side might find out that instead of being all Irish as my own family so ceaselessly asserted, I am actually part English! Or else maybe a Hapsburg! Or a descendant of Cleopatra, which would explain the bangs!‘Course when someone hands me something while saying the words 'kit' and 'swab' I make it a policy to run in the other direction - which is why the oldest of my kids did it for me after I’d let an entire year go by. She tore open the kit, strode over to me, said, “Mum: Open your mouth,” and sent what she collected from the inside of my cheek to the Geographic Project Lab, which, within three short months came the stunning news that(1) I’m related to every single person Europe and Africa; and2) I’m a girl.So say “Ahhhh!” everyone. Then brush the snow off your car and head for the mall I mean the big old rink. Cue the canned organ music and EV’rybody skate!

Blind Girl, Usin' the Touch Sight Special

Never Leave

Well that was dumb: I knew I’d made a mistake when I found out two of my dearest friends were practically drawing straws to see which one would call to find out if David really left me. Then I got a note from a guy I haven’t seen in 15 years who said he was sorry to read that my husband and I were having problems.That’s what you get for making jokes about marriage!David and I have been together since he was the only guy in a crewcut and every other young male in the western hemisphere had hair like Jesus of Nazareth. He was purposely out of it fashion-wise and I think that’s why I fell for him.Today I can’t TELL you all the ways he helps me, picks up after me, holds his tongue when I spill things, lose things, break things but instead let me copy here what I said about him in one of my books. I'll just say for background that he had no money at all in college, not a nickel. I didn't either. He was fatherless. So was I. He came from a houseful of many brothers and I came from a houseful of old folks and this meant that both of us were used to having lots of people around. When, at age 29, I was whining about whether or not I could manage to have any MORE babies after that first baby with all the WORK babies entailed and on and on he quietly said he had just kind of hoped to fill up all those spaces around the Christmas tree.We filled 'em all right.There are eight young people out there whom we have loved, fed, taught to drive, helped with the security deposit for that first apartment and lain awake nights worrying over.Now on to what I said in that second book of mine, back when David and I were just 'kids' in our 40s and our sweet youngest boy Michael was a 12-year-old away at summer camp. This chapter has another name in the book but in my mind it's always been "Hop on Pop" And it goes like this:+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++I don’t write much about the father of my children.I used to - jokey pieces, mostly - in which I revealed my own petty nature, enviously describing the way he was permitted to sleep late Saturdays by the same small children who wouldn’t leave me alone for three minutes together. Him they treated like a combination lounge chair and entertainment center, watching cartoons in our bed while balancing bits of toast on the shelf of his sleeping flank, leaning against his broad and gently-breathing back.It was after describing such a scene that a man came up to my husband. “You’re David Marotta!” he said with mystified look. “I don’t know how you stand it!” He meant being the subject of intimate revelation. He meant being described in the paper.Well, I had no wish to embarrass my husband, so after that I pretty much stopped writing about him. But he has always been there in the background.He was there the time a strange woman approached and began attacking me for a light piece I once wrote about Christmas cards filled with endless bragging. That lady went after me like a pit-bull. I tried everything I could think of to win back her good opinion.David saw how rattled I was. “You should just say, ‘Look, it’s my job. It’s what I write; it’s not who I am.’” Ah, but what I write IS who I am, which is why it means so much to me that the papers I write for print my address. I have learned so much over the years from my readers’ reactions.One thing I have learned is how much folks prize certain qualities in their fellow citizens.This husband of mine owned one suit when we got married, bought for his Middle School graduation. He was a scholarship kid, and has always identified with those who by virtue of birth or circumstance found themselves excluded from the great American bazaar of getting and spending.He never boasts. You can hardly get him to tell where he went to school or what his work is. Before his last college reunion, I had a terrible time getting him to fill out the class questionnaire. I finally said “I’ll read the questions and write down your responses.”It asked for your special achievements.“Leave it blank,” he said. “Or else put ‘My family’”It asked if you’d served on the Board of Directors of any companies.He does. “You do!” I said.“Leave it blank.”He doesn’t care if the world thinks him successful. It just doesn’t matter to him.What does matter to him, what he has saved the best of himself for, are those same untidy children who lean on him still. He plays golf, but mostly with clients. He never plays on the weekend. I asked him yesterday how many suits he has now. “One,” he said. “One that I can wear.” I like that. I can’t say how much I like that.This year, for the first time, one of our kids is spending all eight weeks at a summer camp. On Visiting Day, we noticed that most of the other campers are New Yorkers, with parents in fancy cars. At one point, we found ourselves at the basketball court where a lone father in Louis Vuitton loafers and a Versace shirt was shooting baskets.David had on shorts and his Dr. Seuss T-shirt with “Hop on Pop” stenciled on the front. I knew he wanted to shoot with our son, but was holding back, not wishing to interrupt this well-dressed dad.“Go on out there!” I whispered. “He’s just some cardiologist!”He laughed. He knew what I meant.I meant. Some rich guy in fancy clothes? Some rich guy is no match at all for a man with just one suit.Now these little stories will embarrass him, I know. But he said it himself: It’s my job.

I am a Saint and He is a Jackass

Last Sunday I bought the Christmas tree and dragged it onto the porch by myself. I was mad at Old Dave I’m not sure why and thought THIS’ll show him. I’ll buy the tree alone. In 11 degree weather. With winds gusting to 40 mph.All it did of course was bring frostbite to my ears and further injury to my crooked little spine when, once home, I cut the ropes that held it to my car roof, tugged it free and then tried to catch it. Boom! I went, right down on the ground under the 8-foot thing, but since playing martyr gives you super-human strength I toiled on, dragging it by its hair clear up the front steps and onto the porch.He did help me put it up - minus the lights and ornaments of course because Come ON! I’m watchin' the GAME here! – but now he’s gone all week on business.Luckily, I have this nice fake lights-attached tree that I’ve just now pulled from its cardboard coffin and set up in the kitchen.All I really want for Christmas this year by the way is to get rid of the old kitchen window which is etched with these chemical stains like permanent frost-blossoms so you can’t even SEE out it practically. All I want is a nice new little window to look out at the world from.Because I am a saint and he is a bastard. A Sudoku-doing, crossword-puzzle-addicted, sports junkie bastard but still, he should really come home now. Even the cats miss him, and all this time they thought he was a piece of furniture- but wait! What’s that noise coming from out back? You don’t suppose he’s been hiding in the garage all this time to get away from me!Da-a-a-ave?? Come in now Dave! This kitchen tree is so pretty we don’t even HAVE to decorate the real one. I’ll cook and you can just go on drowning in newsprint in front of your games - and the cats can sit on you, same as always.:-)

we all miss you. look, even the cats are crying!

Happy Drooltide

This holiday stuff has us all nuts. The nightly news says people are shoplifting to beat the band and now even the guys behind the counter are punching out the very stick-up artists who come to rob them. So I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised to see what they’ve done at my supermarket.I was about 100 feet away from the place last night when I passed these kids coming out, just a coupla sixth grade boys with their giant clown-sized feet and their backpacks and their hair flopping over their eyes – but then there was this SMELL that was wafting after them.“Patchouli?" I thought. But they were young to be wearing Patchouli, which Wikipedia says enjoyed a ‘surge in popularity in the 1960s and 1970s, mostly among devotees of free love and the hippie lifestyle (with hypertext just like that so that people born in what - the 1880s? - can click on the words and see what they mean.)I even turned around to watch after them I was so flummoxed – right up until I myself had stepped inside the store, to discover that some national gang in Management had set off a sneaky little stink bomb to stimulate happy buying. The whole place had been “scented,” maybe through the air conditioning ducts and there were my plain old pals, the white-haired butcher with his bloody apron, the cheery retirees manning the registers, all forced to work in this strange lab-concocted snowdome of eau de cinnamon, nutmeg and pine boughs with just a subliminal whiff of, was that, WHISKEY for the cooking? CANNIBIS for the cook? Something smoky, anyway.It’s supposed to smell as though Pappy’s apple cider is just steamin’ away on the fire, over by those poor naked chickens riding the rotisserie broomstick i guess; as though the purtiest pies you ever did see are cooling’ on the shelves over there by Women’s Needs.It was a little disturbing to say the least. But hey if that’s what they want to do, fine. You can imbue me with so much of the stuff that angry birds peck me death when I go outside, like they did in the Weekly world News to that guy with the bad B.O. Just for heaven’s sake HOLD THE CHRISTMAS MUSIC or else I am hunting down the very descendants of Johnny Mathis AND Mr. Bingity-Bong Little Drummer-Boy Crosby, and even sweet tiny Brenda Lee with her Jingle Bell Rock and tying them to chairs and playing Sleigh Ride at them til they grind all their teeth unto tiny stumps.There. I feel better. Happy Drooltide y’all. I'll try to write again tomorrow, just let me find my holiday headband.

Some Cialis Please - Supersized for the Fat Girl

You know you got fat when your rings, your bikini undies AND ALL YOUR BRAS are suddenly too tight. You know it when you look at yourself in the mirror from the back and think “Michelin Man.”My question is What happened to that SYLPH from five years ago? Plus, where’s my black hair? What’s with this dry-mop the color of battery acid? and what’s with the mustache action all a sudden?If I’m gonna like TURN INTO A MAN all I can say is, I want some Cialis. Now! And oh yeah, a wife to wash my giant clothes and do all my bending over.Failing that, I'm off to Weight Watcher to liberate this poor girl (She's under here somewhere!)

Be Glad of it All

Here’s why I’M thankful on this last day of the long giving-thanks weekend:1. I don’t have to peel anymore slimy flesh off a turkey. The soup's all made and I'm done sifting through gunk to find the tiny bones.2. I’ve decided I’m not going to even TRY doing the dreaded Holiday Card until January since I have new book just published and it'll be all I can do to get the word out about that.3. The book is an audio book so I didn’t have to annoy the socks off my whole family by asking them to read it for errors. I just closed myself up in a back bedroom with some fancy sound equipment last summer and let fly – and amazingly enough it doesn’t seem to embarrass me to listen to it because my old pal Roger Baker out in Albuquerque not only took out all the swallows and lisps and hiccups but also added original music between the ‘cuts’ so it’s all pretty and nice.4. I can actually SORT OF of swing a golf club even though my spine is twisting up like a contortionist with this secret scoliosis I didn’t even know I had, never mind a neck with so much joint-degeneration in it the guy doing the X-rays in at Mass General in October said, “Wo! Whadja, fall out of a tree or something?” I’m taking these lessons and my head hasn’t fallen: amazing.5. I’m not sure but I THINK I’m getting to be less of a workaholic. The whole neck problem comes from being such a wonk all my life, actually hand-writing term papers in fancy Old English script in high school, taking notes on my notes all through college, bringing entire pieces of furniture on ski vacations to strip and refinish them. (Picture it ! Whole SETS of chairs! Entire bureaus!) Last night before supper I was able to spend a whole hour locked in a locked closet with my four-year-old grandson without once feeling like Patty Hearst or panicking about all the emails I wasn’t answering. A little later I asked him if he wanted to hear the world’s greatest tenors and put on a CD which I had thought was Luciano Pavarotti and Placido Domingo but which turned out to be the soundtrack to the Kenneth Branagh movie of Hamlet. “Where’s all the singing?” I said after we'd listened for a good two minutes. “Shhhh! TT” whispered my little friend, putting his finger to his lips. “This is just the part where the curtain is going up!” I liked that. I really liked that, because it reminded me to feel thankful AND glad AND lucky that...6.Yet again this morning whatever shape we find ourselves in, that big old curtain went up for us all.

Serene as a Swan, Robbers or No Robbers

Dateline Phoenix: We flew in last night and drove straight from the airport to the house that had been offered to us for the weekend - only to find it standing open, the kitchen window smashed and shards of glass everywhere, computer gone, printer gone, DVD players gone, and we didn't know what-all else. Plus every drawer and cabinet had been yanked open. and darkness was comin’ on fast.

“I can’t stay here tonight!” I told old Dave.

“It’ll be fine” he told me back, which is what he says even when bits of your busted appendix start coming out your nose.

“Take me out to eat?” I squeaked, which seemed like a good plan to us both since we’d just come off a six-hour plan flight with no food on it. And when we came back a Parking Control truckidled by the house next door. We thought, Why not? so rolled on up and told our story to the cop inside it.

“DO NOT RE-ENTER THE HOUSE, HARM COULD COME TO YOU, REMAIN IN INSIDE YOUR VEHICLE!” she ordered us and quick as a wink called it in on her radio. And in about 20 minutes here came one Officer Kleck, crime-scene kit in hand.

“This must've been recent,” said Officer Kleck, standing between the smashed kitchen window and the open sliding door. “We’ve had some big winds lately and things would be really tossed around here otherwise.”

He let me walk with him him as he went around the house gathering evidence.

“Don’t you think this place is SCARY?” I said, trotting close begin him as David curled up on the couch and started watching sports on the one TV that must have been deemed to huge for them to take. “It’s like the Haunted Mansion! I mean most of the lights are burned out and there are those fliers plastered all over the front door... That’s how the thieves knew the place was empty huh?”

“Yep,” said Officer Kleck.

“Well so I don’t think we should sleep here because what if they COME BACK for what they missed?”

“Looks like they took all the DVDs,” he mused, examining a yanked-out drawer by the entertainment center.

Ah! So then maybe it was just kids, right?”

“Kids or tweekers.”

“Tweekers?”

“You know: druggies; meth addicts,” he said.

“Oh GOD!” I said.

“They did leave this nice little flat screen TV behind," he said,  and that laptop over there so they COULD  come back - but I’m betting they won’t.”

He went on taking pictures of the mess, then brought out his fingerprint kit and left some forms for the owners to fill out. Finally, in a burst of old fashioned chauvinism, he took down DAVID’S information, shook HIS hand and ambled on out to his cruiser.

“I’m pulling these fliers off the door right now so the bad guys will know the house is at least occupied!” I said to David - and saw right away on the smallest one a hand-written note, signed by the pool guy: “Side window broken, back door standing open,” it said, “8am October 30.”

The fliers: the door:

I ran after Our Man Kleck with it, just as he was ready to pull away in his cruiser.

“Well this is great 'cause now we can pinpoint the time of the crime!” he said with a big smile, though he STILL didn’t ask MY name or shake MY hand.

He was one happy public servant, though not half as happy as I was. Because THIS meant the break-in happened almost a month ago! THAT"S why the lights were burned out! They'd broken in and at night and just left them all on! And come to look around a bit, the furniture was dusty as all-get-out from those big old winds he'd referred to!

By then it was full dark but within the next 30 minutes David had patched the window with cardboard, swept away the glass, cleaned up the entire house, and was sitting down again to watch the ballgame.

So what could I do but take my cue from him?  “Oh well” I thought; crawled into the bed, slept like a baby the whole night through and woke feeling safe and grateful to see the sun shining on this pretty little scene out back.

Because it looks as though you can take the electronics and take the DVD’s and make one hell of a mess on the night of your crime besides but you still can’t steal the sunlight or the new morning that it shines on.

Enjoy ALL Da Holidays - BLEAGGHHHH!

Last week at the supermarket I came upon a bin of a half-price Halloween stuff which was exciting for me since I'm always JUST A LITTLE late for every holiday besides which: I do love a skeleton.

I'd just begun examining one bald and clattery dude, thinking maybe THIS is what I can use to explain the pelvis to little Eddie Marotta, four, when suddenly the meat guy heaved out of the back room, bloody apron and all, and hollered “Buy him! The guy is crying out for you to buy him!” - and pressed a button on the top of this dude's plastic noggin and what do you think? - he stuck out a six-inch tongue and said something sort of harsh and smart-aleck-y in the voice of a Rodney-Dangerfield-style comic.

I bought him on the spot and he rode around in my van for six days, his bony feet and his domed skull just peeking out from the top of the shopping bag. Then yesterday he came inside for our uncle’s 88^th birthday party.

Little Eddie was there but he didn’t make much of him – kids are so over these talking toys with their microchips and their scripted remarks. His innocent angel of an 18-month-old brother, however, took one horrified look and practically jumped clear out of his Pampers.

As to the rest of the fam, they just shook their heads and said it was a pity SOME people didn’t understand that these were hard economic times and excuse me but what happened to restraint? TERRY?

They were just jealous, the losers. They're always jealous.

Luckily they were all cleared out by 9 o’clock this morning when I set my buddy up in a coupla different spots and took some pictures. You see him silent at the top and delivering one of his jokes here below.  I'm leaving him around til Christmas Eve I think when I finally put up the tree because, face it, the guy is so suave already; just think how great he’ll look in an ascot and Santa hat, clutching a big old cup of egg nog!

"Hit me!"

"It's Full of... LESBIANS": On Judging Not Lest We Be Judged

I have felt so ecstatically happy since Election Day that I look back at the column I wrote the week before and can’t believe how sorrowful it seems. In fact so very different in tone it is from the way I have been feeling for these last two weeks I couldn’t bring myself to post it here at the top where it says 'This Week’s Column' so let me copy it below where it will live forever as a post and not disappear and be replaced as the column is each week. It’s not that much fun but it had God in it and also my wonderful old friend and fellow blogger Milton. Here it is:I once bumped into an acquaintance who asked me what college my daughter was hoping to attend the following year and so I told her. “Oh, I would never my daughter go there!” she exclaimed with delicate horror. “It’s full of lesbians!”It’s funny but I felt a wave of kindness toward her and so went and put my hand on her arm: “You must know that isn’t true, Sarah.” (I will call her Sarah.) And even if there are lesbians here and there in colleges, they’re our daughters first aren’t they? Our own young people?”I was calm in those days.I was less calm last week after my conversation with the Postal clerk I will call John. I was sending something to one of our honorary sons, a young man we have long loved and a brand-new homeowner. I asked him if the letter would get there fast; I was worried because it held important documents.He read aloud the name of the city and shook his head. “Tough area,” he said unsmilingly.“What do you mean?”“Full of minorities” he answered with lowered voice.“HE’S A MINORITY HIMSELF JOHN,” I said with a voice not at all lowered. I embarrassed him – made an awkward moment - but for the first time in my life as a careful and courteous female I didn’t care.And so a silence hung between us until our transaction was complete and I had thanked him and turned away.But ever since I’ve been wondering: What is wrong with us all? An hour earlier, in another place of business, a man passing the time of day there said to the shop owner and me, “Barack Obama was handed through college, same as that WIFE!” For some reason tears sprang to my eyes and maybe the shop-owner saw them because self-proclaimed McCain man though he is, he led me aside, and put a hand on my shoulder.“Don’t listen to him; he’s not himself today” he murmured, thus showing kindness to us both.And later he told me that he too is troubled by the high feeling we have seen in this political season now just ended.I think of something I just read by Milton Brasher Cunningham, songwriter, ordained minister, student of history and professional chef. He writes a blog called Don’t Eat Alone where he cites the Biblical verse “Be Ye Kind One to Another” as the idea he most needs to keep in mind.“I would love to say I have mastered the art of kindness and moved on, but it is not so,” he writes.His favorite station was having its fundraiser one day and so he turned the dial to hear something other than the appeals for money and landed on the local talk radio station. “I felt as though I had crossed into a parallel universe. That they presented a view farther to the right of NPR for me was not a surprise; the level of volume and vitriol was, however. These are guys who command huge audiences across the country, or at least that’s my perception. How can anger that severe be so popular?”That is his question. Mine is, What can we do about this?Milton says we can remember this: that “regardless of our political preferences, our fundamental allegiances are to God and to one another. “Not to country. Not to party. Not to ideology…. Not to class or race or even religion. “To God,” he repeats “and to one another.” And that’s a truth I mean to remember from this day forward.

Flowers for Your Dirt Nap?

Yesterday when I went to buy flowers at the Nursery Where Bargains Don’t Abound the slack-jawed teen behind the register asked me if I’d be using my senior discount again today.

“What?” I yelled. I couldn’t help it.

“Sorry” said this sullen child, only he wasn’t. Sorry, that is. The young never are. “You look like this other lady who comes in all the time,” he said, poker-faced.

“I COME IN ALL THE TIME. THAT’S ME! I said in full Jerry Seinfeld holler.

“Whatever,” he sighed with that infuriating look kids sometimes get when they’re seniors in high school. “You losers are already part of my past,” it means.

We completed our transaction. Then “How old are these seniors with their senior discount?” I asked.

“Sixty,” he said.

"Sixty! Do I seem 60 to you?” I yelped again, still channeling Jerry.

Again the expressionless look.

“BECAUSE I WON’T BE SIXTY FOR THREE MORE MONTHS!”

And then, at last, the sun came out: the darn kid smiled and hallelujah I was free to live another day and not wilt on the stem quite yet..

Locked Out, Rained on, AND I Have a Bad Accent

BOY was it hard to get up and hurry away Wednesday morning with all that post-election excitement in the air. Our babies had slept over so their two mums could watch the returns at our other girl Annie’s house where the food is always so yummy. They had asked and I’d said Sure we’d love to have them only I couldn’t really help much in the morning since I had to leave at 6 for my turtle-crawl out to the Albany Times-Union for a noon appointment. "I mean I won’t be able to make bacon or scramble any eggs or pick them up warm from their beds and kiss their little faces" I told them  But hey they were sleeping HERE, remember? they were coming back HERE after, and they did come back and I could have left at 6 like I was supposed to only, well I just HAD to make them all some bacon and scramble them all a few eggs so it was 8:30 by the time I left and I raced over that Mass Pike and screeched into the Times Union parking lot at five of twelve, shirttails flying.

And two hours after that I had to be at the big Public Radio station to record these little essays for WAMC’s wonderful morning show “The Roundtable.” Co-host Sarah LaDuke set me up and away I went, reading my copy, squeezing all the personality I could manage into the teensy holes of that mic, being so careful - not to ‘pop’ my p’s for one thing but also because I do seem to have a bit of that ol' Marky-Mark Boston accent and it’s embarrassing when you’re talking about a low-carb diet and everyone thinks you’re referring to corn cobs. and really the  whole recording for the radio thing is just this wickedly hard high-wire act for me, a do-or-die, here’s-180-seconds-kid -don't-screw-it-up kind of thing and by the way couple million people are gonna hear it. Whew!

And after all THAT I got lost on my way to the hotel and it was dark and cold when I got there finally and then my key wouldn’t work so they gave me a new key.  No dice. Another new key along with an escort by the maintenance man in case I didn’t know how to slip a plastic card into a slot but STILL no dice. A third new one and my escort and I remained locked out of my room, and this time he swore in Spanish and winged that key clear into the meadow outside my sweet suite of rooms in this nice little Residence Inn.

Finally, totally exasperated after trying yet another key he said, “Look, can you just stay inside tonight and like NOT GO ANYWHERE and I’ll replace the lock in the morning?” And I said I sure could and Management gave me a free Weight Watcher frozen dinner and a free Duraflame log for the cute little fireplace and I did JUST HAPPEN to have a fat 24-ounce Budweiser from the gas station I filled up at 30 minutes before so tell ya what: I crawled into that bed with my food and drink, watched maybe 11 minutes of post-election excitement and was  sound sleep by 8pm, safe, and full, and shut up tight in my room just like it was my baby days again and this was my nap. :-)

Putin, the Little Dickens and More

(the original fun guy this guy) I've been gone WAY too long here, driving a zillion miles the day after the election, talking my face off at a library workshop and then on WAMC Northeast Public Radio…and of course voting like everyone else and speaking of that here’s an Election Day lesson for ya: I promised to hold a sign for our new state rep Jason Lewis but being lame and pathetic said I could only do it for an hour - whereas one of my three fellow Jason Lewis signsters had been at the polls since 6am and said he could stay til suppertime if they needed him. He’d worked on Ted Kennedy’s Presidential run in 1980 and also for the late Gerry Studds, longtime congressman from the Cape. He knew from elections.

So did the second sign holder, at six foot six the tallest member of our cohort, a young guy in a watch cap and shades who I realized only a full minute into things was little Tim Waterbury from my Sixth Grade Sunday School class who back at age 11 liked to be courted to join the discussion but then came into it like gangbusters.

The third sign-holder was a beautiful blonde woman from Russia who told us her uncle had pioneered work on a below-the-radar, tunnel-under-the-earth missile system so scary and top secret that he could never leave Russia as she had done back in ’96.  She gave her name but I know I didn’t catch it - Americans are idiots when it comes to understanding people from other countries even if they are speaking our very language - but I got to work asking her all sorts of questions anyway.

And she gave me lots of answers: About her children, and the free-for-all version of capitalism at play in the former Soviet Union now; about Strongman Putin in whom George Bush said he found such a soul mate; even about fun guy Putin's Driver's Ed pupil current Russian President Medvedev who yesterday’s news said could have that old steering wheel wrested away from him any day now by the little giant in the seat beside him.

It was coming on toward noon and when I said I had to go she also glanced won at her watch and said “probably I should go as well. I have a class at MIT at 1:30.”

"Oh, are you taking a course there?” I asked, thinking Adult ESL maybe, moron that I am.

"I’m teaching it!” she laughed. "My husband and I are geneticists there. And THANK GOD for intellectual property laws in US, because between the two of us we now hold six patents. If we are back in Russia? We hold nothing!” And with a laugh and a merry wave of her hand she was gone.

The Tweedles (Dum and Dee)

All Souls Day

I had a dream last night in which I had just died. I was dashing around - flying actually, over scenes like the one above, recently visited - and so didn’t realize I was dead until I swooped back over my body sitting in my same clothes from that morning, seat belt still on, so to speak.

I didn't look dead - just kind of deflated is all, like our little cat looked in the gutter after that car killed her, and all I could think was "So wait that anxious get-it-done, get-it-done girl wasn't even ME?"?

It wasn’t a sad dream though really, not like the one I had about my mother a couple of months after she died. In that one we were at the cemetery, the whole noisy family. I was scooping dirt from the grave to take home with me and my cousin Carolyn was saying "What are you going to do with THAT?” My husband was shivering in his best suit and Cousin George was just wading over to him: “Ever hear of an OVERCOAT?" he wryly remarked, only all that really happened. The dream was that my mother was there with us.

“Gosh isn't it cold!” she said. “I can’t wait to get back to the house! Do you have somebody there making the coffee and setting out the food?”

“Oh Mom I’m sorry but you... you can’t come. You have to go lie down there,” I said in the dream, pointing to the box, pointing to the open hole, and woke feeling about as desolate as ever I have felt in this life.

The other day I saw my former neighbor in a book store. Her husband was the heart of our town before he died in his sleep in a few summers back. He used to cut his grass in the pitch dark if the sun dared go down, using his headlights so he could see. He'd rive through the downtown in his pickup, yelling jokey hellos to people every 30 feet. He crashed a Halloween party we gave once; appeared in a gorilla suit, joined the dancing briefly, made apelike gestures and, even grabbed a sandwich before leaving without ever opening his mouth to say who he was.

Seeing his widow I suddenly realized something. “You know what I just remembered Joanna? I dreamed about Dave last night!”

“Oh! You did really?” she said with a face of inexpressible longing. “I haven’t dreamed of him in so long! How is he?”

The longer I live the more I think that last remark reveals the larger truth: when we leave here we don’t go lie down in a box. We take off our seatbelts and fly.

A Stinky Fridge and a Car on Fire

May I whine some more? Thank you.

I came home from two weeks away to find the temperature inside the refrigerator a balmy 68 degrees. Who knew cottage cheese could become gun-metal grey?

I came home to find one car screaming like a murdered rabbit when you start her up, then emit a world of white smoke and an acrid we’re-about-to-see flames-here stink.

I came home to find internet takin’ the fifth, saying nada, nothing and my male cat standing nearby looking guilty. “Never mind,” I told him because I am a saint. "It  happened to me once during some ill-advised surfing; a single visit to CelebrityMorgue.com where they’ve got pictures of something that looks like spaghetti coming out of a dead guys’ bottom and the whole thing crashed like a chandelier with its wires cut." I told the cat all this but I do wonder what site the cat went to but I didn’t ask: a man who’s had his penis removed is a man who needs a little room. (see March archives)

You come home from two weeks away and all this is amiss and you’re STILL jet-lagged and now you're fat too and you have to meet the mechanic, bring your 88-year-old uncle to the heart doc, feed the both of you get your hair dyed this wildly improbable color you phony, you pathetic excuse for an all-natural girl, then oh God GO ON TV to talk about your new book probably looking like those newscasters in the original Batman movie who have to go live with all their zits and blotches on display because that crazy Joker has poisoned the city’s whole store of beauty supplies, waaaah.

Really, that last part will probably be the best part of the day because interviewers are always so glad to have a guest that isn’t frozen-mouthed with nerves or else turgid with self-importance that the two of you always have fun  just talking off the tops of your heads so why don't I SHUT UP AND LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE?

OK NOW I’m ready to jump into my pantyhose and take on the day. :-)