Lift Me

When I was young and under the influence of the nuns, I was told to keep silence on this day, at least from noon until 3 when tradition says Jesus suffered that death-by-strangulation that crucifixion is. I couldn't do it then or for many years after, even though I knew how silence concentrates the mind.  I always thought the Jews had the better idea at the Seder, having the youngest ask that great starting-point of a question, “How is this night different from all other nights?”  which kind of translates to “Who are we and how did we get to this place?” This is a question I ask myself every morning on waking from the kind of deep sleep I always sleep, so all-forgetting I sometime wake and calmly think  'Soon some kind person will come and lift me from this crib!'  For Christians today is  Good Friday . I remember the Good Friday they played "We Are the World" on practically every radio station all over the country at exactly the same hour. I was driving through beautiful western Connecticut calling on newspapers to sell them my column. I had just had my last baby and knew he was my last felt..... I don't know, released into the rest of my life somehow. I spent much of yesterday driving too and just at sunset when I finally stopped the car and sat looking around, three deer crossed the field front of me and it was as if I had been waiting all day for them; as if seeing them proved that there really is this other reality just around the corner and out of our everyday sight, which is pretty much the idea communicated in most of the world's religions.    Here for you now accordingly ,  "We are the World," written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Ritchie, as it was sung at the funeral  of poor Michael not quite two years ago now.  Note the ecumenical symbols above the singers’ heads.[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-ToznKNe6U&feature=related]And to really walk down memory lane, treat yourself to the original version here below. And remember this week to keep holy the Sabbath, whatever form a Sabbath day has for you.[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xy1gp3F5NhY]

Give Me a Boost

I found this youth booster seat for the car for  just 25 bucks and scooped up two of them so fast I practically brought the shelving down with them. They're for our little guys. (YES I'M A GRANDMOTHER: THE HAIR IS A TOTAL DYE JOB.)  The reason I did such a quick grab is that there only were only two of them and in my mind two denotes scarcity and I fear scarcity. I think I’d buy two eyelash curlers if they only had two left, never mind the fact that my eyes are so deep-set I can't reach my eyelashes with them (maybe if I went in through the back of my head.)Also, as you can see, they're bright red and these are little boys for whom red is an excellent and sporty color. I was thrilled to see them among all the hideously ugly other carseats with  big  70s daisies like the wallpaper in the Wonder Years kitchen. These, by contrast, have a spare understated design and the seats are nice cushiony and they have the cute little cup holders.What I wouldn't have given for a carseat when I was the age of this dear-to-me child :- or this one:When I was little there were no car seats. I rode to school each day in my mom's high-hipped 'beachwagon with a view only of sky, the underpants  of birds, and the  trolley wires overhead.Now little people can actually look out the window like the rest of us. Now we can all at least see where we've  been if not always where we're going next.    

Not in Front of the Kids

They cleared out an entire mall this morning because somebody said some guy had a rifle. Turned out an hour and God knows how many taxpayers’ dollars later we find out it was an umbrella.I was at Target some six miles away when the scare was still ‘live’ and heard a little kindergartener exclaiming about it to her father. “Everyone just had to LEAVE! Everyone! Can you believe it?” “Hmmmm,” said her dad who didn’t appear to even hear her.  Anyway he was walking three feet ahead as she trotted fast to keep up.I sure hope he didn’t tell her about the gun scare and the threat of a man committing murder. Maybe he had the radio on in the car and she heard it for herself.The only time I ever thought about murder was the year the Martin Scorsese film Casino came out and I went alone to see it just because some  reviewer raved over it. Casino has Joe Pesci in it so I knew there would be both violence and many examples of the language’s most unimaginative word.The story is about Las Vegas back in Mob times and just as I feared I almost passed out during the scene when someone got his head put in a vise in the early scenes; and I'm still literally haunted by the scene in the desert where the two poor guys are forced to strip to their little underpants before getting shot to death.Still, it was my fault; I went to see the movie of my own accord - unlike the two very young children in the row in front of me, brought by their moron of a father. Once I noticed them three-quarters of the way through the film I could think of nothing else. The little boy, maybe five, was staring silent and dazed at the screen. As for his sister, maybe a year older, she couldn’t even look.  She kept glancing over at the walls and up at the ceiling, her little feet, which did not reach the floor, going back and forth, back and forth in agitated fashion.When the movie ended the father stood to stretch, turning part way around as he did so. That’s when he saw my face. His idiotic remark, delivered in sheepish fashion?  “They’ll sleep tonight!”  I wanted to slap his big dumb face and take away his children . It was rainy that day too as I remember, so I actually had my umbrella. I only wished it was the kind tipped with poison at the point.Here's the trailer for Casino which also stars Robert DeNiro and Sharon Stone. You can find many more violent scenes from it on YouTube if you like.  If you  don't mind having your humanity diminished. Just for Heavens's sake make sure no children come in the room while you're watching. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t09aGcMjnWM]

Hallowed

Passover started last night, we’re in Holy Week, and we just passed the 150^th anniversary of the Civil War’s start. And, for the last few days around here we’ve had scads of re-enactments of the battle that kicked off our Revolution.Almost every day I drive by houses that Paul Revere galloped past on his famous ride. This pretty house in the picture is one such. It was owned by one Jason Russell, who was there on April 19th when angry British soldiers returning from Concord and Lexington swarmed from the woods to kill him and ten other men. These days it stands just down the street from the Turning Point Career Counseling Center and the Arlington House of Pizza.  I feel lucky to be born in this part of the country, as I imagine the people near that gorgeous national park at Valley Forge feel, and the people living near the battlefield at Gettysburg  where the hair stands up on your arms when you see where they fought: how closely they fought, with such desperation.Memories transform a place. Go find the house you were a child in and knock on the door. If they let you in and you get to walk around you won’t even see ‘what they’ve done with the place’  so busy you'll be remembering how it used to look, How it used to smell  when you were a child clattering down the stairs and banging out the door on your way to after-school fun. Memory transforms. Another kind of transformation is taking place every minute these days. Here is how some local waters looked just three weeks ago.And here is how they look now, wearing a swan for a corsage.

We’re still waiting for the real green around here but it will come very soon now, that lush carpet of true spring. I speak of the grass, which Walt Whitman called the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

Color My World

A white lampshade is all well and good but if it proves to be TOO blindingly white then what do you?  Bad enough they’re coming after all our nice incandescent bulbs. Bad enough they’re all but forcing us to use that ugly new kind that’s shaped an alien’s antennae. Add to that a lampshade whiter than like the inside of your grocer’s dairy case and where are you? Where do you go then to get the mellow feeling you want in the sanctuary of your home?

Here’s what I do when I find myself with lighting that has me reaching for my sunglasses. I take that lampshade and I dye it, a nice shade of Dusty Rose generally. It’s a tricky thing to do, sure it is. If you submerge it for too long in your near-boiling bath of dye, the glue will loosen and the whole silky thing will start delicately dropping to the floor quicker than the gossamer raiment of a romance novel’s heroine.

You’ve got to just dip it in quick and pull it right out again and … But wait. Remember that old saying “I give you a fish and you’ll eat for a day. I teach you to fish and you’ll eat forever?” Let’s fix our sights on forever. Here’s a step-by-step tutorial so that you too can feel as empowered as that newly minted fisherman. Ready?

• OK, Step One: Have a bunch of newspapers spread out on the floor with a flattened trash bag underneath it to receive the lampshade after you’ve dipped it.
• Step Two: Pull on a pair of plastic gloves.
• Steps Three: Fill your bathtub with about a foot-and-a-half scalding water.
• Step Four:  Pour in your dye and stir the whole witch’s cauldron with a broomstick.  
• Step Five: Take off your clothes (yep) do a deep-knee bend holding the shade sideways and quick reach down into the water, steadily spinning it to achieve an evenness of hue. Remember! Keep it in the water for no more than 30 seconds!
• Step Six: Then, with one motion, hoist it out and onto your newspapers where it will dry in no time at all.
• Step Seven: Contemplating that colorful rectangle of water, now ask yourself if you wouldn’t also like some underpants in this nice soft shade like the blush on a dogwood’s petals. Of course you would!
• Step Eight: Go get a few pair and throw them in too.
• Step Nine: Also a few pairs of your spouse’s if you have a spouse, to keep fun in the marriage.
• Step Ten: Also any nighties of an uninspiring hue or and any white towels that have gone grey with time.

By the time I’m done with this process, those lampshades are just plain gorgeous. They look like they came straight out of a funeral-parlor-decorating catalog.

In fact everything around here has this lovely soft glow to it now, since I’ve pretty much dyed every lampshade in the place. If you walk by my house you’ll notice right away. If you come in you’ll see at once how flatteringly the light plays on your face. Instant makeover! Here look at this picture of the lamp in our bedroom, that'll give you the idea. (Ignore the naked lady propped up in front of the TV; that's something I set up to get a laugh our of David.)

Of course, the place looks cool not JUST on account of the dye-job lamp shades.  If they run low on pink light bulbs at my favorite hardware store I do another thing. I paint all my 100-watters pink.

But that’s a how-to story for another day....

Heck of a Nerve

On a flight I took last week I was just settling into my seat when this big guy presented his wide belt at the level of my eyes and asked if he could sit on the aisle instead of beside me in the middle. I told him I needed the aisle seat myself since I get up to go to the bathroom about every 30 minutes. Oh he said bit he didn’t like to be squished in the middle.  I told him "Neither do I which is why I book early and always get the aisle."Then the flight attendant came along and very nicely asked him to sit the hell down (though not in so many words.)He resisted, saying couldn’t possibly and why didn't she put him someplace else. Still she very politely said she said she was sorry but the flight was fully booked and could he please sit down now.He ignored her completely; just stood there and stared at the other passengers, hoping that  maybe six or eight of them would spontaneously stand and offer him their seats and he'd have a choice.When nobody did, the flight attendant told him he was holding up the whole flight. Still he stood his ground until – darned if some poor soul didn't rise and gave him her seat - which he sat right down in.  Then he pulled out his cell phone and yelled into it “We’re leaving! Be there in three hours. Leave now. Do NOT fall back asleep! Oh and don't bring the dog.” A short pause. “I said ‘DO NOT BRING THE DOG!’” Then he hung up and the plane took off.He worked his bottom into the seat, threw back his head and fell into a deep sleep – until suddenly up there at 35,000 feet his phone rang. His phone! and here he was yelling  “ What's wrong with you? I told you not to call me!"  and hung it up once more.And that man did not even look sheepish about the fact that in defiance of every rule in the book he had chosen to simply leave his cell phone on for the whole first hour of our  flight.Nervy people Jeesh. I sometimes think they’re the ones who’ll inherit the earth – by driving the rest of us meek ones clean out of the galaxy. 

Button it Babe

In thinking about teeth yesterday I tried to  come up with elebrities who have NOT gone the caps-’n-veneers route and in doing so thought of one of our best actresses ever: Susan Sarandon who was born in 1946. believe it or not.  I looked at a dozen pictures of her and still couldn’t tell if those were still the original surfaces of her teeth we were seeing or if she’s now wearing some kind of siding on them.Of course I actually didn’t get too FAR in my research before realizing that probably she doesn’t care all that much about her teeth since her major assets lie elsewhere, as you can see.To this I can only say Good for you Susan. You’re a braver woman than I am.And I’m sorry if I hurt Robert Redford fans by remarking on his big fake teeth. Certainly I'm no one to be talking about teeth with my two front ones leaning hard to the left the way they do. And teeth just darken with age, what can we say? Look in the mirror. Open your cat’s mouth. It’s true.It’s true and it’s sad. since we have little enough left to us as we age.Once I was a big midriff person. No more. Now the only parts of my body I expose are my knees and my shoulders, and only those because the nice round bones underneath keep the skin looking at least somewhat taut.I was once a great one for low-cut clothes, God help me. No more o' that either - which makes life hard since it seems like all women’s tops these days come with these deeply scooped necks. It used to annoy me to no end - until I started wearing them backwards . People keep coming up to me in the Post Office to say “Uh, do you know you have your sweater on backwards?” I know. Believe me I know.This is me at a Come As You are Party I went to at our best pals' house with my poofy 80s hair. I had been sitting on the back porch writing when the call came. And here just for fun is another shot of that fun time. That’s David on whose lap I'm sitting. He gets why I've buttoned up finally but I think the backwards dressing makes him a little nervous. :-) 

Losing Battle Department

The picture of Robert Redford here is from the online version of the  Q & ATime Magazine recently  did, tying it to his latest directorial work  The Conspirator which comes out today. I look at his face and suppose that even the Pope would recognize it. I guess by most standards he looks great - for the fact that he’s still wearing his hair like it’s 1969 and oh those giant white teeth.It’s mostly the teeth I find jarring because teeth actually get less white the longer you trot them around in the world, not more white. Sure, lots of celebrities try to fight that fact what with veneers and all but to me they just end up looking silly.In this Time interview, the person posing the questions asks Redford if it was limiting during his early years in Hollywood to be perceived as so good-looking. He said yes.  “because when I started [in TV], that's not the way I was seen. I played all kinds of parts - killers, psychos. They were fun, real character roles. Then, when I went into film, it suddenly shifted. You're not given freedom to move out of that.”Well if he REALLY wants to ‘move out of that’ he could be more like Clint Eastwood and just let nature take its course? As it is, with that mop of Sundance Kid hair and those teeth like bathroom tiles you look at him and think only along Young vs. Old lines which is never the best way to think about  people. The way I like to think about them is "Are they still in the world  where I can write them a letter or are they gone beyond to where zip codes just can’t reach?""Are they dead or are they alive?"  is all I ask myself. And the paradox is that even with his slight stoop and his no-longer super-white teeth, Clint strikes me as a more 'alive' than Bob.and now because it's so nice to see a great director act, a clip of Clint as Walt Kowalski  in Gran Torino[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVYWxEF49PQ]

Ya Got a Little Something

Humbling: I gave a talk yesterday at a library luncheon which  I knew was the real draw for the folks  who came; I was just the after-dinner mints, just that anonymous somebody there to offer the entertainment. Nobody really knew me in other words, which turned out to be a very good thing since it meant I could scoot quickly past the toothsome wraps and salads, slide right by the acre of sheet cake on my way to the lectern. I got there fast enough so that the kind woman who came up to me did so before any one else could notice:“Hiiii!  Terry, right? Listen if this were me I’d want to know so let me just tell you: you’re not zipped.”I looked down at the front of my pants. Sure enough!Then after my talk, which involved many merry tales, the occasional wiping of eyes and a short pause when I forgot what I was saying in the middle of a story -  another kind soul approached me.“I know you weren’t aware of this but you have frosting all over the front of your suit."I looked down again. Yup. Frosting from that giant sheet cake. It was like the time I stood on a stage looking down at an audience of 800, croaked out an opening sentence, reached for the glass of water thoughtfully provided – and poured it right down the front of my dress.It’s a hard thing when as a speaker you falter or simply stops dead in a fugue state of confusion, since the last thing you want an audience to have to do is worry about you. While I don’t think anyone worried about me exactly at least a few of them sure pitied me.And I guess I’m OK with that. I used to worry so about people’s opinion of me and practically apologized to my blind dates for not being better looking. Self-consciousness ruled my world then.I‘m happy to say I am through with all that now. I’ll bet I make a dozen mistakes a day and find it not SO bad to be the recipient of people’s pity.Pity’s OK. There are days when I pity practically everyone I see, from the cold and lonely stars above to that little ant I watched on my windowsill, dragging his dead comrade home for burial.

The Triumph of Hope

Whoever said that the second marriages was the triumph of hope over experience could just as well have  been talking about our northern springs:  We're sure the good weather's here and then, well... It was in the high 70s here yesterday, so druggily warm you slowed to  a crawl on walking out of the grocery store. You didn't care if you never got across that parking lot. Today by contrast? Temps in the mid-40s and rain like cat’s teeth driven into your skin. Anyway, it's a picture of the pond I visit almost daily and in it you will see the man I watched for 20 minutes, completely perplexed as to what he was doing, bent over and holding something to his mouth with both hands. Was he ... flossing? Playing the harmonica? Working to blow up one of those impossibly skinny balloons? It didn’t come to me for the longest time that he was tying a fly to go fishing.And this scene to the right says it all about the weather today, from the dead tree to the still-sere grass to the bright-green of the mallard's head that somehow fails to shine forth in the usual way. It’s the triumph of hope over experience to believe things will be green within the week but this man lives by hope. as I watched from my car he finally finished tying his fly and then he began flicking his line. I closed my eyes and remembered this clip from 1992’s A River Runs Through it,  made from a book that a Montana boy once made me read and that I will never forget.Watch it here and it's 1992 again and Brad Pitt is but a lad.  Watch it there and it's 1908 when both an author and a century were young and unscarred.  

Eating Like Animals

“So is your husband still eating like a farm animal?” This was my sister Nan last week referring to the strange fact that David now eats only standing up. He’s reverting to his childhood I think, to the days when he wolfed his food before running off to the night game or the practice or the meeting of the class officers or whatever.But it’s  just the two of us here now so what can I say? He also sometimes cooks - sort of , if it counts as cooking when you take every leftover in the fridge and fry it in soy sauce. Mostly I cook but then he cleans, as you can see here.Nan’s a character all right. When I was visiting her last week in Florida she came into the kitchen one morning in a T-shirt that said “My Fantasy: To Have TWO Men” and, on the following line, “One Cooking, One Cleaning.”Yet Chuck grills better than anyone I know and he wipes down the entire bathroom sink area every time he finishes using it. I mean she HAS  her fantasy man, right?But it isn’t really about Chuck anyway; it’s more about Nan. This tough guy routine is just her outward pose is all; I’m onto her. That day she came into the kitchen she found me was chopping onions with a knife she’d been praising the night before. “Ah the new knife!” she said. “Yeah Chuck ordered that a few weeks ago. He’s buying stuff online now. I have to watch him like a hawk.”"But it’s a great knife! You said it yourself.”“Yeah it’s a great knife but what’s next? I come home and there’s a pipe organ in the living room?”You have to know her. Reading this you might get the impression that she’s as tough as nails. Nah. Chuck does what he likes and so does she. If there’s a better way to grow old together I sure don’t know it.

Old Dave and Me: Together Since Before There Was Faxing

The President's Ear

All last month I was jet-lagged from a vacation spent many time-zones away. Relaxed as I was in one place and sleepy as I’ve been in the other, I've now spent two full weeks moving like a turtle and I have to say: it’s not a bad way to move.We’re so quick to react these days, pulling out our cell phones the minute something happens - to take pictures, or tell our friends via the many electronic avenues now available that we’re no longer in the moment, no longer really ‘with’ the people we are with.Two examples from my own life:Bill Clinton came to my region early in his Presidency and when I heard he was due I dropped everything, grabbed as many of my kids as I could lay hands on and tore into the city where we found ourselves standing watching 30 feet from where he arrived.First he said hello to Ted Kennedy, then John Kerry and a lineup of local dignitaries. Then he headed straight for us, likely because we made such a dandy photo-op: a tiny teen female on crutches, a handsome African-American youth, and me, the weary-looking mom in one of those shiny puffed-out warm-up suits folks wore in the early 90s.He greeted our boy warmly and asked kind knee-surgery-related questions of our girl.  nd I’m sure he would have said something to me too if I had not had a camera so plastered to the front of my head that he couldn’t see my face.I do have a nice shot of his left ear.Then six years later, my good sense again failed me again just before George Bush announced his run for the White House. I met him at a Republican fund-raiser I was at under what I can only call special circumstances, since I am a Democrat, largely thanks to endless dinner-table rants by my mother on topics ranging from the good Woodrow Wilson to the sainted FDR to Emma Goldman, that friend of the working man. (How poor Dick Nixon got through 81 years of life with Mom’s  many hexes on him I’ll never know.)Anyway, there I was at this event. The future President gave his talk, then waded into the crowd to greet his many admirers “Go over!” urged David, way too shy to go over himself. “Get his autograph for the kids! What if he really becomes President? You’ll kick yourself if you don’t!” he said, and gave me a little push.The next thing I knew there I stood, right next to “W” who was saying something I didn’t agree with at all: He was saying he didn’t think children could be properly raised without a mother AND a father, a remark that I thought both dismissed and discounted a very large number of American families most of whom function just fine.I felt my face go red. “Do you mean you don’t think any other kind of family can do a good job raising a child?”“No I don’t!” His face went red too.“You don’t think two loving adults of the same gender, or of different generations, can do a good job bringing a child to adulthood?”“Maybe a good job but not AS GOOD a job!” he exclaimed and that’s where it ended:In an angry standoff, with no common ground achieved, all because I could not stop long enough to feel for the humanity of the person before me. All because I had once again left my turtle self behind.

Fly Day

Heard at the airport yesterday:From a man waiting in the  very long line at Security: “What in thunder kind of system is this?” From the woman beside him, dryly: "They should've put you in charge Earl."From a mother: “In general airports are pretty dirty places.” From her little girl: "But I LIKE lying on the floor!"From a lady in a spangly metallic sweatsuit:  "Frank! I NEED my blue whatsis! Frank!  Did you hear me Frank?” From Frank, in the general direction of the ceiling : “Only about 10 times."From the flight attendant as the passengers swarmed aboard stuffing their things in the  overhead compartment: "Whoa, careful there darlin'! I’ve already had one tooth knocked out on this job!"I also noticed some interesting things:

• A surprising number of people at the airport match, meaning the man and the woman often are wearing shirts of the same color.
• Their body types match often too: this very fit person seems to be coupled up with one correspondingly svelte, while the heftier souls have found each other as well. Is it because they grow hefty to keep each other company or are they eating identical diets?
• Older generations seems to feel more of a need to present a pleasant expression to the world than those younger than they are. I saw this in the 80-year-old woman who sat in the aisle seat while her 50-year-old daughter sat in the middle. The older lady had a look suggesting what I would call a perennial social readiness. It touched me to see how game she looked. Throughout the flight when anyone passed her she composed her features into an incipient smile while her daughter did nothing of the kind. She studied herself in a small mirror. shifted impatiently in her seat and gave the impression that she be gosh darned if she was going to hand out a smile to just anybody.

Small observations but they entertained me - and reminded me that there's payoff for both you AND the world when, like the flight attendant and the 80-year-old, you show it a pleasant face.

Travel Day's Eve

On the eve of every trip-return I’m newly amazed by what feats of compression you can perform to re-pack, since the minute you break the seal on your luggage its contents spill out everywhere. Five days ago I walked into this guest room with a rolling suitcase and a backpack and ten minutes later the place was festooned with my scattered belongings: a diary and an I-Pod on the night stand, a polka dot dress on the chair, another eight or ten articles of clothing in the closet. And more: the pastel corsage of underthings in the bureau and the two books on top of it; three magazines, two silly DVDs bought at the Winn Dixie in case of insomnia and a printout called “When Things Fall Apart” telling how that moment of utter befuddlement is the moment when you’re being given the gift of letting go.Letting go. What if I panic tomorrow at 4am and fail to stuff everything into that suitcase and backpack and thus end up without my nice soft PJs or my bright-blue metal travel mug? What if I get disoriented in these strange pitch-dark mornings and take a wrong turn in my rental car and land in the Gulf of Mexico? Or if my plane goes down like Tom Hanks’s did in Cast Away and I don’t even HAVE a soccer ball to draw a face on and make a friend of?These are things I never think of when I travel but I am thinking of them now.Here, there are palm trees and bright red birds. It was 85 and wild parakeets and butterflies dancing across the bright-green treetops. Tomorrow it will be 85 again here with more bright sunshine spilling on all this plumage. Back home it’s predicted to be in the mid-50s. Dirty mounds of snow loom in the shaded corners of parking lots and our meek robins are still just unpacking their own bags.

I'm Your Girl

I’m a competent person. I arrived at a meeting Monday night with everything I needed; opened my bag to find pencil, paper, meeting agenda - and a pair of potholders.I’m a competent teacher too: I’m at my sister Nan‘s now attempting to teach her what I only partially understand myself: how to master Nuance’s Dragon software that uses your own little voice to navigate the Web, go on Facebook convey your marvelous thoughts to the world etc. Also and more immediately how to use the great new browser Chrome which is different from other browsers in many interesting ways. (I like the 'file folders' look it has when you go to open a new window. File folders we over-50 people understand. Wasn’t my first ‘real’ summer job as a clerk-typist, I who even today can type no better than a blind gerbil? I could file though! Boy could I file!So down we sat at our laptops, Nan at hers me at mine. Me I like the touch pad; I gave up on the mouse long ago. Nan however likes a mouse so we went to Staples and got a wireless one (since it’s no longer 1989)  and we were SET.She took hold of the mouse and tracked it left; the cursor went right. She tracked it right; the cursor went left.  “What the hell is happening? It’s going in the opposite direction of where I tell it to go!”“Really?” “Yes really.” We peered together at the screen.She tried again. She directed it up; the cursor went down. She directed it down; the cursor went up. “@$&@!” said Nan. "Defective?" said I, then “Oh wait!...”Because only then, ten minutes into what I had pictured as Terry’s Excellent Tutorial did I see: we had the mouse upside down. So I'm not reaching any new benchmarks in the Masterful Me department. But I'm having a nice relaxing time.

Where's Waldo?

I never did say the week before last that I was writing from the Mexican border practically. Sometime when I travel I don’t say so here, even though this place is the place  of all places here I try to be utterly honest. Maybe it’s some sneaky thing left over from childhood, some need keep a thing back, keep it for myself, the way I did with that cat’s-eye marble I saved in an old cigar box as a small child and took out to play with when we got sent to our rooms. My sister Nan and I got sent to our rooms quite a lot for some thrilling piece of mischief Nan had thought up for us. We LIKED being sent to our rooms, she would remind me as we were led away to our separate confinements and that was actually true, at least for me. I used the time to blow spit bubbles and play with my secret treasures. I think she used it to think up more mischief.So that's one part of it my holding back about where I am as I write. Another part comes from realizing how dumb it is to tell everybody everything, show your money to strangers so to speak the way an uncle ours did as a child, riding the train all by himself in his short pants and his little wool cap. Why not give out my Social Security number while I’m at it?Finally if I’m honest I’ll admit that part of is it that it’s always slightly wrenching for me to leave home, even for a while. Thus if I don’t say I’m away I can pretend I’m still looking out at the world through my own wiggly window panes, still passing that same bad patch of grass you pass when you circle our corner-lot house to get to the garage. If I don’t say I’m away I can pretend I’m still there in that house I leave from every weekday morning at sun-up to go to the Y. (This is also true: If I don’t say I’m away I can tell myself I’m actually AT that 9am Pilates Class.)Anyway I’m away now, as Wednesday's post indicates, only this time I'm the only one who went away while everyone else stayed home. This means I'm sleeping alone in a giant bed over with a ceiling fan silently paddling the soft air overhead. The sheets are clean and cool, and it's pitch dark  until  almost 7. Yesterday I ate a great meal of salmon, asparagus, rice and a nice glass of wine. I also walked and read and time-traveled with my old partner in crime. No getting sent to our rooms this time. Also for me, no Pilates. :-)

Death Rehearsal

I pity us all when we fly, jammed into our cramped seats, our meager belongings stuffed in around us like the trinkets of the ancient dead as they were sent off to the Underworld.We too are equipped for that long journey, but to where?  A place where we might just need all those I-Pods and laptops?No wonder we’re nervous at takeoff, when every earthbound cell in our bodies is screaming, “You’re wingless, idiot! YOU CAN’T FLY!"Then the plane starts racing faster and faster down the runway and the little TV in the seatback in front of you starts showing some sad girl in too much makeup pole-dancing with the mic-stand while rivulets of blood course down her cheeks. You look at her and think, "This is my last view of life on Earth?"  Then you feel the aircraft crookedly rising, then the whine, then that horrifying THUNK! when the wheels get sucked back into its belly and you're doomed with no way out.I flew 1500 miles yesterday and that dandy live TV that Jet Blue offers kept me current about every catastrophe down below: Cyclones all over the south. A 737 forced to make an emergency landing in Yuma on account of unexplained smoke. And, across the Pacific, radiation at – did they actually say a million times the safe level? - still spilling into the ocean.I snapped it off finally and instead read an actual book and wondered with some irritation how it could be that, with the soft green contours of the whole eastern seaboard beneath us, literally all the people seated by windows had pulled down their shades.Maybe they were as skittish as I was. You never know when you’re flying what others are feeling – unless of course, as happened yesterday, you finally bump down on the tarmac and the whole passenger-list breaks into wild applause. Then the relief . Ah the relief that you're still here to talk and grouse and make friends with the person beside you.

a bumpy flight sure gets your attention

Asses of Us All

For ages people sat and wrote down their thoughts. They wrote and they wrote, and then sometimes they felt writer’s remorse, as  Charles Francis Adams did when he came across his own youthful diaries. “For the first time, I saw myself as others saw me and the revelation was positively shocking,” he wrote in his autobiography. He burned every last volume saying "I humbly thank Fortune that I have  gotten  through most of my life since without making a conspicuous ass of  myself."AS IF anyone could do that! isn't Life’s whole purpose to make asses of us all!? So why live life in a fear-tinged crouch, menaced by doubt and uncertainty and that terrible bully self-consciousness?I say be who you are.  What people make of you they will make of you and you sure can’t control that.I think of the time my sister wrote a paper one the Election of 1928, and did what lots of young scholars have been known to do: looked into a half-dozen books the day before the thing was due, copied a few sentences from each, typed until dawn and handed the sucker in. Sure she had all the basics: the “whispering campaign” against candidate Al Smith as the first-ever Catholic to run for president; the new tension between rural and urban populations; the shining war-record of candidate Herbert Hoover. The only problem? She had Al Smith as the victor. Good old President Smith.But what are you going to do, open a vein? These things happen.I think of our old friend Pat who came to the April 1st party we threw where the guests were told to come as their favorite fool from history or the arts.As a kind of parlor game, everyone had to tell about the dumbest thing they had ever done and Pat cited the time in his senior year in high school when he was asked by his fellow students for help in selecting a deserving graduate to receive an award, accompanied by a sum of money. Humbly – and Pat is nothing if not humble – he suggested himself. “They just looked at me,” he told us that night.So, we do dumb things. What can we do but move on and live life forward?  Think of the great Satchel Paige’s advice: “Don’t look back; something might be gaining on you.”Something sure is and it’s your own flawed human nature. I say you might as well let it catch up. You can’t outrun it. And it sure does provide some DANDY lessons.

Eerie Creatures

Look at the adored kid in the video below getting dragged around by his father in a disposable diapers box (rather NEAR the top of a full flight of stairs too but never mind that.)So what do you think: Is he going to be the class valedictorian or get beat up every day in middle school? Or both?Let’s HOPE he has a happy life. When he utters that perfect English sentence at the start and end of this clip it sure does take you by surprise though.What if the babbling babies on YouTube were really going back and forth reciting amendments to the Constitution?  Eerie Creatures these small humans![youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf0m03eJwvg]

Babbling Babies

This YouTube clip with the babbling babies is all over the Internet lately but when I first watched it all I could think of was what I read about the “quiet” baby in the dozens of infant development books I used to devour.I remember especially what I learned from that huge international best-seller Baby & Child Care by Dr. Benjamin Spock: He used to say that if your baby boy, say, looks away a lot he might be shy and quiet by nature. Don't bear down and drill into him like Joan Rivers does with her red carpet celebrities, I learned. Match your tone to his and give him room to engage with the world his own way.Take this clip: one of these two little gents is much quieter than the other. Most of the time. the one on the right merely chuckles at the other one’s remarks instead of babbling back, and who hasn’t done THAT in social situations when the apt response doesn’t come readily to mind? It’s true that he returns some babbling for babbling but just as often he waves his hand at his brother as if to say “Enough already!”Also, unlike his twin who stands unsupported, he consistently holds onto the handle of the freezer-drawer. Near the video’s finish, he seem seems to be trying to climb on INTO the freezer itself.It’s a cute clip for sure. You gotta love the way the talkative baby’s voice rises at the end of certain sentences as if to pose a question. But it also makes you shake your head and HOPE that when he’ gets older and is out at the clubs or in other social situations he’ll do at least a little better at reading the body language of the people he’s trying to engage with.at reading the body language of the people he’s trying to engage with.[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JmA2ClUvUY&feature=related]