Sad Baby Monkeys

In my latest column I said that though the Olsen twins looked like sad baby monkeys when they were little, now they look like lemurs. Lemurs or meerkats. 'Course you have to be careful when you characterize people this way not just because it’s mean and you’re revealed as a jerk but because the fans of the made-fun-of will be all over you in a heartbeat.For example a long time ago I was writing about Elizabeth Taylor and had the nerve to say that at least ONE of her chins was still pointy and instantly here came a letter by an outraged lady sent in to me from one of the papers where my column appears.“Where do YOU get off?" she wanted to know. "I see your picture. Your eyes are squinty, your hair is out of style and your teeth look false!” I liked that quote so much I put it on the cover of my first book.But hey, you know what, at least in my picture I’m smiling – AND I have normal amount of body fat. Look at this waif from the same issue of the magazine that has Meerkat Ashley on the cover. Plus is it just me or does she look just a little simple-minded ?

Chow DOWN!

Our English friend Malcolm is a dry fellow, which is one reason we like him so much. His wife  Penny turned from her gardening in late June to see a big momma bear standings some 30 feet away. Here below is a note Malcolm posted, some of which is from a website about bear attacks. He has it on the fridge of their summer cottage where we ate last night and since our summer cottage is just a couple of coves away, I  can tell that it sure put a renewed fear of sleepwalking into THIS little camper!"Black Bears: for the first time in ten years, we’ve seen black bears on our property (as of June 2009).  Multiple sightings of one family, with two cubs, in our driveway, between the house and the tennis court, in the woods, up the street, etc.  So be alert if you’re outside.  You don’t want to find yourself close to the cubs, or come across the bears unexpectedly.  In general, if you’re walking outside, stay alert and make plenty of noise.  These bears are not large ones, and look like big hairy dogs from a distance, but should be left well alone.  They can run 30-40mph for short distances, and climb trees quicker than you.  You don’t want them paying attention to you.

"What to do if you come across a bear:

• If you see it and it is unaware of you, stay quiet and move away in the opposite direction.
• If it is already aware of you, speak calmly and move your arms (this helps them identify you as a human, because they have poor eyesight).  The bear will most likely move away from you.
• If not, walk away from it, keep on talking calmly.
• If the bear charges, it is usually a bluff charge first, just to see if you’ll back off.  Back off in a deliberate fashion.  Don’t run.  Avoid direct eye contact.  Pick up a stick.
• If it actually attacks you, fight ferociously. If you’re losing, curl up on the ground in fetal position, with hands covering the back of your neck, a vulnerable area. And, as the Americans say, enjoy!"

Topless!

Coupla days ago someone left a giant Homer Simpson doll on my steps with an anonymous note reading “Has anyone seen my underwear?” I guess because when not going on and on about Ted Kennedy here last week I also wrote about how I had to cheat and lie my way back into Weight Watcher’s because I was starting to look like Simpson in my underpants.

This week my column is on Fall Fashions and Shopping and all, a rich vein for satire if ever there was one and between the  fun I had researching that and playing with my new doll I got the idea to dig out the ugliest pair of panties I own Victoria Secret or not, and put them on old Homer. Then too the guy at the hardware store and I were talking bras the other day and he asked me what they cost. “I grit my teeth and lay down 80 bucks a pop, “ I told him. “If you need a bra you need a good bra."Now I don’t know if you’d say Homer needs a BRA exactly... Anyway here he is, my alter ego pal a few hours ago, braless still but otherwise armed with his Vicki-Secret bikinis and ready take on the day!

The Left Behind

A final posting on Teddy, next to this picture I took in Hyannis, 48 hours before his passing

I couldn’t sleep last night thinking about the ones left behind, sister and wife and children. I was thinking too of Ted himself missing the handsome oldest brother Joe, and those sisters,  and especially  Jack and Bobby, just  missing them all, that youngest brother, decade after lonely decade.I thought too of my own family, my grandfather Michael so young when his first wife died at 31 and still young when his second wife died at 42. He gave up on love then and turned inward toward his five children, who so adored him they could hardly bear to marry and start their own lives, knowing it meant leaving e him.In 1921 he built a summer home in the Berkshires, a place he loved above all others and saw again in hallucination hours before he died. At some point – after the first bereavement? the second? -  he put a piece of verse over the living room fireplace where it stayed for more than 40 years. I was present when our mother and aunt took it down the day we turned the place over  to new owners.This verse is by Longfellow who knew something about what it feels like to be left behind as his young wife burned to death one summer day trying to seal  locks of her children’s hair in wax . He  himself was burned so severely in his effort to smother the flames that he could not attend her funeral and ever after wore a beard to hide the facial scarring.I memorized the lines in childhood and don't they cone back to me still with the force of a blow almost, every time I think of the sad and sorrowing ones left behind. It goes like this:

Good-night! good-night! as we so oft have saidBeneath this roof at midnight, in the daysThat are no more, and shall no more return.Thou hast but taken up thy lamp and gone to bed;I stay a little longer, as one staysTo cover up the embers that still burn.

May You Rest Now, Ted; You Felt Like My Brother

I wanted to go last might but it was 9:00 before I got free and could I do it really? Stand in the dark for hours with the temps down in the 50s and the wind off the water the way it always is?I wanted to go so badly because I had just realized for the first time that the same number of years separate Ted Kennedy and me as once separated him and his oldest brother.We could have been siblings, Teddy and I.In a way I felt that we were:I mean, his people are buried in the same cemetery as my people. As I recently wrote his sister, the slow one, attended the summer  camp my  family owned and ran. His dad came through Boston Latin School, same as my mom. His grandfather was Mayor of Boston and my grandfather ran for that office, though the other Irish called him Yankee-on-the-inside and a traitor to his race, just because he was upright and bold and fought the abuses of that famous old scoundrel James Michael Curley. For years my grandfather was Chairman of the Boston FinCom and of the Boston School Committee too and a first-generation American with roots in County Kerry, born of a woman who could not read or write English. And yet he studied and he learned and he studied some more and before he was 35 he was not only a Boston lawyer of note but a judge too, and the individual whose honorary degree from Harvard then-President Lowell said had given him the most pleasure to confer.My sister Nan and I grew up in this grandfather’s house. I thought he was our father until Nan set me straight. (He can't be our dad! He has white hair, stupid!" Certainly he acted as a father to us – that is until the day he fell and was taken away and showed up eight weeks later in a polished box looking thin and wholly unrecognizable with a nose like a plow-blade. “That’s not him,” Nan snorted before turning away from the casket and scooping up a pile of prayer cards which she used to invent elaborate games for us in the far-back rooms of that grand old funeral home in Kenmore Square.I last saw Ted Kennedy in person on a fall day when I met Bill Clinton who had flown into Logan. He stood off to one side looking like his back hurt. I first saw him in 1960 at a political rally addressed by then-Speaker-of-the-House John McCormack. I was just nine years old at the time but I still remember old McCormack pointing his bony finger at Nan and me in the front row. “THESE young ladies down front!” he thundered in some future-invoking burst of rhetoric. That same fall, our Uncle Jack drove us to Manchester NH the night before Teddy’s big brother was elected President. I got to touch the great man’s shirtfront; Nan got to shake the great man's hand.Forty years later my girl Annie worked in Ted’s office in spring semester of her junior year at Smith. One day she was sent downstairs to get him his lunch and when she was just boarding the elevator back up, here came Massachusetts' other Senator John Kerry, with a large retinue of aids and assistants.They crowded in, almost crushing her in the corner. She cleared her throat. “Excuse me!” she said,  fixing Kerry with a look of mock-outrage. “What I have here is the SENIOR  Senator’s lunch!”  (She’s always been like that, this Annie of ours: breezy and funny and joking around with the cops and custodians and all.)“The Senior Senator’s lunch eh?” said Kerry, catching the spirit of the banter. Well I HOPE IT'S A SALAD!"Annie’s impression of the man lying in state today? That he was universally respected on Capitol Hill; that he was universally loved.Part of me wishes Ted would be buried in Holyhood Cemetery near my mother and grand-father; near his own mom and his rascally dad and his poor sad sister Rosemary whom he never abandoned.But he will lie beneath the sod at Arlington National.He will be near his real brothers, this pretend big brother of mine. And when you recall the catch in his throat every time he spoke of them you have no doubt that there is where he should lie.Requiescat in pacem, as we all so often in a world now vanished forever.  Et lux perpetua luceat eum.

I took this on Kalmus Beach  Hyannis just the other day

Packin'

I went back to Weight Watcher’s because I started looking like Homer Simpson in my underpants but here was the problem: The last time I'd tried going back they turned me away. They said given my height I wasn’t overweight enough.  “A person would have to have a weight someplace within this range to qualify, CAROLINE” they said, using my real name  which always makes me feel like, Help it’s the nuns again. I couldn’t take the chance of being turned away again so  I started lying the second I walked in the door. I said I was two inches shorter than I really am in the hope that I would seem heavier in relation to height, and I also did another thing: I stuck a couple of five-pound weights into my pants and went to the weigh-in like that; stepped onto the scales and boom, I was in.

Every week after that I slid those dense little packets into my pants and sure they made me walk a little funny but they worked. The 1st week I lost some actual weight through careful eating. The 2nd week I plateau'd.  The 3rd week I overate a tad, so just took one of the weights out  before going there. “Down five pounds!” the lady sang. And the 4th week I ate everything in sight and so took out the other one. “Another five!” she rejoiced and pasted a little gold star into my booklet.

Sadly, when I stopped 'carrying' I also stopped 'losing.'  Some weeks I even gained, and the nice lady would try to comfort me: “But look how much weight you’ve lost since you began here! A whole ten pounds!” Sigh. So I guess I feel better confessing here but if doing so in such a public forum gets me kicked out, well then what will I do, if they bar the door and take away my Points Tracker?

Well. Recovery is over-rated I can always tell myself - and couldn’t I just pack my car full of Ding Dings and Ho-Ho's quicker than you could say Jack Robinson! Plus hey there's always alcohol. And anyway think about it: Who wants to be a skinny grandma ?

I'm Stahvin' Heah!

So I been goin' to Weight Watcha for 12 weeks now and guess how much I’ve lost? A pound and a half.I blame my husband.I blame him because in the beginning when I had actually HAD lost 4 ½ whole pounds I put on this awesome tiny-waisted skirt I bought ten years ago and said “Dave! Look how skinny!” -  which OK was a bit of an exaggeration but do you know what he says, not even looking up from his fiendish Sudoku addiction? “It’s a start.” I mean, Jeesh!I also blame the other lifeguard my senior year in high school who told me at the City pool where we both worked that no matter what I did I would always be ‘a big woman.’ He disappeared the following year - was never heard from again - and I’ve often wondered if it had anything to do with my grandmother’s hat pins and that nice old Ken doll o' mine.Weight Watchers is always saying that the real secret to dropping the LBs is to  record every single thing you ingest in the little food journals they give you and OK I’ll admit it: I haven’t actually done much of that. But I haven’t written in my real diary for almost three months either and there’s no punishment there! In fact, what I find is that your entries take on a far jauntier tone if you do make 'em a few weeks or months later. You get to compress events, tighten up your descriptions, make the jokers around you sound a lot hipper and funnier than they really are - whereas with the food diary it turns out even if you don’t write down that you’ve begun pouring heavy cream all over your Mint Chocolate Chip your hips seem to hear about it anyway and shame you by billowing.But the latest in shaming for me? The ‘smart’ pedometer I gave the Weight Watcher gang a hefty 35 bucks for, which when I first strapped it on it mornings USED to say I weigh 138 ½. Now for some reason it has me at 297 and counting.I'm tellin' ya: machines and males: they just won’t DO what we women do every day of our lives: make people feel better by simply telling ‘em what they want to hear.

Losing - Gaining? - My Religion

On nights like this last one when I’m lying in bed like a steamed clam unable to sleep, I take a hot bath which sounds crazy I know but it really does push the old ‘reset’ button. After about 20 minutes my muscles all relax and when I get out,I barely dry off.  Then I  wrap a towel around myself and just sit there reading old Newsweeks while my body cools and  sometimes, sometimes with this thermal hot-and-cold combo, I enter an altered state of consciousness  which is a good thing right, like that fine day comin’ when people can have all the medical marijuana they need.In this altered state I see things as I lie there, turning myself into Terry Fricassee. The bathroom tiles, for example, start to look like as Sesame Street Segment featuring the letter ‘S’, and last night... Well last night the folds of my cast-off camisole there on the bathmat began looking like an orangutan face. A lot like an orangutan face. So very much like an orangutan face that I went downstairs and got my camera.Of course it was 3am by this time and I was so sleepy and dopey I stupidly kicked the garment when I came back in the room and spoiled the effect-Which is a shame. because it really did look like an ape face. Or the face of somebody anyway. And mighty l-o-o-o-o-o-ng  lines of miracle-seekers get started over less. You put a sleepless guy out on a barren cliff in the desert and next thing you know, boom! A new religion.So what do you see here, hmmm? (Dr. Rorschach called! He says Careful what you answer :-)

Rosemary Kennedy

She was a beautiful girl: some say the prettiest of the bunch.Here's what she looked like in the summer of 1940 when she came to our camp for three weeks and papa Joe Kennedy was off in England  as the Ambassador to the Court of St. James and mama Rose was dividing her time between their winter home in New York and their summer place on the Cape.This was a scant 18 months before her lobotomy. It was a 'groundbreaking' procedure that we now know was badly botched. It broke her family's hearts, 'losing' her this way. Her siblings certainly you can see that in everything you read .Her second letter to my mom after having had to leave camp appears in the post under this one.  It was a different era and not a better one.  Today she'd be working at the Stop and Shop and going to dances with her pals on weekends.

Eunice and the 'Other Sister'

I could look at pictures of Eunice all day, hero that she was for trying to do for others what she couldn’t do at home. She was just 19 when sister Rosemary was lobotomized according to their father's wishes. He didn’t even tell Rose he had ordered it done 'til the surgery was over and they realized to their horror that she would never again stand erect, never again write the kind of letter that appears below here. My mother and aunt owned and ran a girls’ camp called Fernwood and in the spring of 1940, Rose Kennedy asked to meet them in New York to talk about her 22-year-old ‘working’ there as a Junior Counselor. Mom used to say she should have known the minute Mrs. Kennedy arrived without her daughter that the girl was not as 'able' as Rose was leading them to believe and sure enough, her care proved to be too much for everyone and her time at Camp Fernwood ended early, something the vacationing Mrs. Kennedy was most unhappy about.Rosemary was unhappy too as  you can tell reading this letter she sent to my mom and aunt. See the wistfulness in it, the brave good cheer. Now imagine that within a few short months all this liveliness would be erased. Unlucky for Rose and Joe’s handsome oldest girl! Lucky for us to have had her little sister to raise our consciousness around all issues of the differently abled!

"The Dead Beatle"

It seems I’m not through with Paul yet. I’ve been thinking of him so much I  dug out the interview he gave to The New Yorker in ’07, just before the debut of Memory Almost Full in which he spoke about the amazement he feels when he looks back on his life:"There were four people in the Beatles and I was one of them. There were two people in the Lennon-McCartney songwriting team and I was one of them. I mean right there that’s enough for anyone’s life.  There was one guy who wrote ‘Yesterday’ and I was him. One guy who wrote ‘Let it Be,’  ‘Fool on the Hill,” ‘Lady Madonna' – and I was him too. all of these things would be enough for anyone’s life so to be involved in all of them is pretty surprising. And you have to pinch yourself."Well I have to pinch myself too, but more to keep back the tears as I read and listen. They were so gifted, all of them, such wonderful songwriters, Paul and John, though neither could read or write music. They were each just 15 when they met and George was even younger when Paul noticed him on the school bus with his Presley-like hairdo. Turned out the kid could play the guitar like nobody’s business. And then came Ringo and the rest was history.It’s six days now since I saw him in Boston. He’ll be in Atlanta soon. But he’s right here now in this song “The End of the End” about the day he dies. It comes with more great photos and also his best mate’s tune “Isolation.” Words below the clip this time too. Once again, get out your hankies.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dczjgl-Vus8]

At the end of the endIt's the start of a journeyTo a much better placeAnd this wasn't badSo a much better placewould have to be specialNo need to be sad

On the day that I die I'd like jokes to be toldAnd stories of old to be rolled out like carpetsThat children have played onAnd laid on while listening to stories of old

At the end of the endIt's the start of a journeyTo a much better placeAnd a much better placeWould have to be specialNo reason to cry

On the day that I die I'd like bells to be rungAnd songs that were sung to be hung out like blanketsThat lovers have played onAnd laid on while listening to songs that were sung

At the end of the endIt's the start of a journeyTo a much better placeAnd a much better placeWould have to be specialNo reason to cryNo need to be sadAt the end of the end

McCartney at Fenway Park

He walked out on the stage and the crowd roared. The guy on my left said “I paid $240 for my ticket but what is he, like 70? I mean this could be it!” The guy on my right said “My God he’s playing that same Hofner bass he played with the Beatles in those clubs in Hamburg in the early 60's!” Then I think I lost hold of normal day-to-day consciousness as the man began to play - over 30 songs right in a row, no break, hardly any sweat especially after he took of his sleek snug jacket to play in his white Oxford style shirt with the red suspenders.

Paul McCartney isn’t 70 of course, though he isn't 28 like in this picture. He’s only 67, with a perfectly flat stomach and no love handles whatsoever. His hair is the color of a fine Canadian whiskey and just a wee bit thin at the crown which you can see when he bows deep. Only his jowls and pouches at the mouth show the years. “Wonder why he doesn’t get a face lift,” said the guy on my right but if he did I think he'd look SO young that his tributes to his two dead mates might not have the same effect: his tribute to George with the photo montage of Harrison as a boy, as a handsome bearded man, as the talented elder still making music until his recent death; and of course his tribute to John, his writing partner, who he loved and was furious with and split from and loved just the same until that bullet in 1980 took him at only 40. The song he wrote his first best friend says it all. It’s called 'Here Today' and let me stop here and we can see him sing it with the the lyrics under it, a testimony if ever there was one:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3anmTfa5OPw]

And if I say I really knew you wellWhat would your answer be.If you were here today.Ooh- ooh- ooh- here to - day.Well knowing you,You’d probably laugh and say that we were worlds apart.If you were here today.Ooh- ooh- ooh- here to - day.But as for me,I still remember how it was before.And I am holding back the tears no more.Ooh- ooh- ooh- I love you, ooh-What about the time we met,Well I suppose that you could say that we were playing hard to get.Didn’t understand a thing.But we could always sing.What about the night we cried,Because there wasn’t any reason left to keep it all inside.Never understood a word.But you were always there with a smile.And if I say I really loved youAnd was glad you came along.If you were here today.Ooh- ooh- ooh- for you were in my song. Ooh- ooh- ooh- here today.

Dead Dog Drinking

I don’t care if it’s raining again or if this is the coldest summer since 1881, I’m reading and answering letters from kind strangers and getting ready to watch four whole episodes of The Wire back to back while ironing. (I don’t mind the ironing: as Jesus said, the ironing you will have with you always.)  The breeze has freshened with the incoming rain and those big old wind chimes that cost my family 200 whole bucks to get me for Christmas are mooing away in their deep voices and I have so far had two breakfasts, two lunches, one supper and eight cups of coffee. Today I’ve been an engine of busy-ness but yesterday I lay like a dead dog on the deck and did not go to the dump, nor foodshopped nor even shaved my legs but instead wore my bathing suit all day and sat looking out at the lake; then calculated the calories for the stern taskmasters at Weight Watchers and opened some nice cheap Meridian which, you ask me, just never disappoints.

Finders Keepers

People come and stay at our weekend place all the time. Last weekend 23 whole people stayed here and reports are the laundry was staggering. My middle girl Annie who hosted the weekend was here until 10 o'clock Sunday night doing load upon load of sheets and towels. Even so, when I drove up just now to get the jump on this weekend  I saw a few more things: Saw that one guest had gathered all my hair elastics into a nice bouquet. Saw that  n order to have a giant inferno on the little beach another guest had taken out a fire permit by pretending to BE the homeowner, leaving said permit posted on our fridge, edges charred for comic effect. And saw that two other guests had left their underwear. So if any of you folks out there are missing a pair of sexy black boxers and an even sexier Body by Victoria bra, both freshly laundered, then COME ON BY and stake your claim. ‘Til then, could be the lady of the house herself may be using ‘em to jazz up my look a little!

E.T. Phone Home

Not sure what to do with steamy temps and rain due in later but playing dress-up comes to mind. Our little guys had such high fevers yesterday reports are they lay side by side in the parental bed like two strips of raw bacon, too limp for Sesame Street even. They were way better by last night though so might come over here today to complete their recovery at TT’s house. (I’m TT. And when I say 'our little guys' I mean my grandbabies.) If they were my own babies I’d have brought costumes right to their little sickbeds, propped ‘em up and taken pictures of them - or so it strikes me when I look at this old picture, of my own little boy Michael on his bed back in ’87, ably assisted by costume-master/big sister Annie. It’s the Marotta way! File another one under the category Exploiting the Defenseless: Even the Cat Covers His Eyes at the Shame of It!

Just Do What She Tells You

It was sweltering yesterday and I had 25 women coming to my house for the big camp reunion. They came from all over. Even my big sister Nan even came from faraway Florida and when Nan is in town things always take a lively turn: In the morning as we were just leaving the house she quick darted into the bathroom, from behind whose doors there suddenly came a scream and loud exclamations. I rushed right over.  “Nan! What’s happening?”“Nothing. I looked in the mirror.”The outside temps were set on 'Broil' at dawn yesterday and by 10:00 when we went out on that final Party Needs run they had inched up to 'Self Clean.' We had just scored a world of soft drinks when Nan saw another store she wanted to duck into on the chance that it might have the food her 1500-mile-away cat is partial to.“A Pet shop, hey! Stay here," she said, veering inside it. Then, over her shoulder, “Work on your tan.”So what could I do but work on it, as I stood all alone with my brimming shopping cart on the  blistering pavement?  I learned way way way WAY back when I was only a little guy: if you want the fun to keep on coming just do what the older one tells you to. This is not actually Nan and me but the one on the left IS  \Nan's little daughter Gracie, then six, while the one on the right is my first girl Carrie, then five, but that look of delighted admiration? That's exactly what I'm talkin' about !

How to Feel Like a Dork

One good way to feel like a dork is to model for Sky Mall Magazine, that glossy publication found aboard all airplanes these days, each issue sporting on its cover the I Dare-You words “Take It! We'll Replace It!” I take it every time a) because who has to hear THAT twice and also because it often  comes with a cover photo you just can’t forget.Take this image here of the not-entirely-normal foursome relaxing in the Ahh-Qua Bar®, a kind of large inflatable tub decal from the Sock-it-to-Me era only with the nice hammock-y seats built in and the centrally placed ‘ice bucket’ for your off-brand beverages. Mr. Muscles is  OK except he can’t seem to look joyful for one single second more, and really there’s nothing TOO wrong with Chipmunk Cheeks beside him. And the Lady In Red with the slight squint would be fine if she weren’t wearing her bra in the pool, but will you look at the kid beside her?! When they said 'Smile Big!' he DID it by golly and widened his eyes too so you can really see the manic gleam in them!I’ve had this issue of Sky Mall for over a month and I still can’t throw it out I think because of the lesson that it offers: if ever you  get the chance to do any low-budget modeling you should run as fast as you  can in the other direction or this could be you!

Dollar a Pound

When my oldest was 14, she hassled me continually about my nice cheesy clothes with the wonderful shoulder pads so flattering to the hips.  “Get RID of the shoulder pads!" she would cry, and also “Why do you want to wear new stuff when you can just as easily wear used?” This from deep in the flannel and denim rags she had scored from Dollar a Pound, a clothes emporium with a huge scales in the middle that shares space with The Garment District with stuff was a tad pricier, meaning jeans and men’s suit coats might set you back 4 or 5 bucks.I hadn’t been to these two stores since the early 90s but I was there this week with three 16-year-olds, and how they exclaimed over the costume section with its American Flag platform boots! How I exclaimed over the gorgeous wear-‘em-with-nothing-over-'em dress bras with their spangly mesh trailing down over a bare tummy! And then - and THEN - I came upon rack after rack labeled “80s Clothes” and almost lost consciousness. Here were the tops I‘d been so unsuccessfully scouring the department stores for! The filmy long-sleeved blouse done in flowing polyester! The smart short–sleeved one done in faux-linen! The high-necked cinch-waisted black velvet top that flared up and outward like a flower vase! I felt like Daisy Buchanan sobbing into the creamy silk and linen togs of the soldier she wouldn’t wait for and so lost forever. “I’m … I’m crying because they’re such beautiful shirts,” Daisy said, near to hiccups with emotion and, well, now I was crying too. I was crying because they were such beautiful shoulder pads. I bought all three of those tops, PLUS a wonderfully flaring skirt, PLUS two long trailing scarves that smelled only a little like an attic - all for just $45.The kids paid about a third of that on their own whimsical togs.Then we snapped each other’s pictures, took in some learnin' at the Museum of Science and caught “Away We Go,” starring adorable John Krasinski of The Office, that master-of-the-deadpan-look, and all I can say is Talk about your rainy day fun!

On My Cat’s Last Day

On the last day we spent together, my cat Charlotte was tending her bad hip, same as always. She used to like to lean it against me as I sat writing in my wide chair, the two of us flank to flank.On our last day, I had come in at dawn from the coast on the red-eye and was already working in my study at 7 a.m. when she emerged from her favorite sleeping-place under the eaves. During that four-day trip, my husband David had cared for her, setting out the individually-wrapped saucers of wet food I'd made up and keeping both the kibble and the water dish freshly filled.I think now of what an engine of nocturnal pep she was a kitten, when she would scale the tall cliff-face of our bed to administer wildly-scrabbling scalp massage to our sleeping noggins.I think of what a sedate lady she later became, in these last years especially when she spent most of her time monitoring joint pain, just like us. And yet she was content; happy to see us always; freshly delighted by every sudden pool of sunlight that opened up on the floor of whatever room she was in.With this grateful nature and David's good care it may be that she never missed me while I was gone. It may be that she took my love and care as givens, the way children do who see their parents as eternal fixtures,ever-sheltering.If she did I'm glad she did, though it never worked the other way: I never took her for granted. We humans don't, with our pets, because we see how much they love us, all undeserving. Because we know how likely it is that we must one day go on without them.At 8 a.m. on the last morning we spent together, I was seated at my laptop with Charlotte curled up against me. But the night-long flight had taken its toll on me and by 9:30 my eyes were closing as I worked.I don't know why I did what I did then, since never before in our 15 Junes together had I tried to move her just because I wanted her with me, but it's what I did that morning. I carried her into the bedroom with me, where, with the lace of the curtains billowing and the softly buzzing sounds of summer wafting up from the street below, the two of us closed our eyes and slept three hours.She died at 6 that night.Within minutes I felt her spirit vanish, which means I do not hear a phantom cry at the door and I do not feel the phantom press of her flank against mine.I do dream of her though and know well what comfort there can be in dreams: Once, about six months after my entirely healthy 80-year-old mother died all unexpected at a celebration in her honor, I dreamed the two of us were trotting down a wide staircase together. When I suddenly looked over at her and said "Mom! You're running!" she replied, "I know, isn't it great? I'm not old anymore!"Maybe it's the most we can say our dead, that age no longer touches them.Neither our much-loved pets nor our mothers who did their best for us every day; neither our once-young dads nor our fierce big sisters; neither our brave brothers nor our babies lost before their time: They get no older.Getting older is what we do. We age, and we remember, and if we’re wise we too show daily thanks for whatever pool of sunshine opens sudden around us.

Kicked 'n Kicked 'n Kicked Again

The time: 5pm at weekend’s edge. The scene: a plane so crowded people’s elbows are deep in eachother’s belly-fat. The hero: a silver-haired man attempting at the end of the long business day to finally study his Wall Street Journal.  The action commenes when the four-year-old child seated directly behind him scootches down and down in his seat til his feet reach the man’s seat back.  Then, with his mommy out cold in the seat beside him, he bends his knees and KICKS, straightens both legs and PUSHES, holds them slightly flexed  and EXECUTES A SMART LITTLE TAP-DANCE, causing the man’s body to jerk and jump and lurch with every blow. The man says nothing, either to the child, or the child’s mother or to the flight attendant. He doesn’t even cast a baleful glance at the people around him who see what is happening. Instead, for the whole of this weary day’s-end flight, just as millions of anxious investors have been doing for nearly a year now, he winces slightly with every blow, hangs on tight and goes for the ride.