Is listen to "Calamity Song" all the way through one time on my stupid cheap iPod dock in my own house, is that too much to ask (yes).
•
•
So Much to Say, All of it About Spring, and I am Lazy at the Very Thought of it
Where to begin? First, my in-laws' neighbors are clearly harboring a fugitive Nazi (hello, Mike Godwin!).
I was driving the Lad to a playdate and got there early, so drove around a little more and saw a cooler with a sign posted reading "organic eggs, $4/doz." A week later, a food-conscious woman who eats with me brought home a dozen of them. They are multicolored and utterly fabulous. I have three books on raising chickens out of the library now.
I had dinner with very talented people in New York City and they made me feel like one of an elite tribe.
Recently we ate at Woody's, an all-natural, grass-fed, mostly local beef, all-local-produce burger joint in a nearby town and boy howdy let me tell you that you should go to Woody's, even if you're a vegeminarian, because they even have a portabello sandwich for which one might opt to die. The burgers themselves you will also offer to die for, but! You don't have to. Just pay.
We went to Florida.
There's much to be said about the books Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and The Omnivore's Dilemma, and I've said a little something about each at Goodreads.com.
At the tail end of a shitty April, in which bad things befell wonderful people and we had a scare of our own, my sister had a son, and he is quite beautiful. So spring gets another chance.
•
I was driving the Lad to a playdate and got there early, so drove around a little more and saw a cooler with a sign posted reading "organic eggs, $4/doz." A week later, a food-conscious woman who eats with me brought home a dozen of them. They are multicolored and utterly fabulous. I have three books on raising chickens out of the library now.
I had dinner with very talented people in New York City and they made me feel like one of an elite tribe.
Recently we ate at Woody's, an all-natural, grass-fed, mostly local beef, all-local-produce burger joint in a nearby town and boy howdy let me tell you that you should go to Woody's, even if you're a vegeminarian, because they even have a portabello sandwich for which one might opt to die. The burgers themselves you will also offer to die for, but! You don't have to. Just pay.
We went to Florida.
There's much to be said about the books Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and The Omnivore's Dilemma, and I've said a little something about each at Goodreads.com.
At the tail end of a shitty April, in which bad things befell wonderful people and we had a scare of our own, my sister had a son, and he is quite beautiful. So spring gets another chance.
•
De Lauf der Dinge (Ad hoc off-the-cuff outtake)
The kid's like, totally into cause and effect. So's the cat, apparently.
The original is partially viewable here. And the Honda commercial it spawned. ("Honda? *call me* ")
•
The original is partially viewable here. And the Honda commercial it spawned. ("Honda? *call me* ")
•
Seasoned
I was washing our cast-iron skillet tonight and noted the surface, which is a little rough. Not sandpaper rough, but it’s not super-smooth. My parents’ two cast-iron skillets—I think they got them for their wedding fifty years ago—have interior surfaces that are the envy of baby’s cheeks, so smooth they are. If you enlarged the cooking surface of one of these pans ten thousand times so that it was 2.36 miles across, the largest imperfection would be the size of a grain of sand. That’s smooth, brother.
Years of cooking for a spouse and five children and uncountable relatives and friends will do that to a pan. Scraping hard steel spatulas across the comparatively softer iron wears slowly away at the dark metal. Mountains of eggs. Continents of tomatoes, zucchini, hamburgers, grilled cheese. How many turns of wrist, how many flips of pancake, to burnish the metal until it becomes that featureless iron plain?
At Weight Watchers we talk about how easy it is to equate food with love and acceptance and how easy it is to make food the shortcut to feeling loved and accepted. And how that’s not the best way to go about things. But look at the evidence of the skillet. How many hours, how many accumulated years spent before that hunk of metal, scraping, scraping, scraping it smooth in order to provide for loved ones? How is that texture not a message of love?
Our pan is new, just four years old or so. The tiny jags in its surface make the steel spatula ring like an old Western Bell telephone when I cook. It’s already incrementally smoother than when I bought it. But I’m in no rush. It’s not about always being able to cook on a perfectly smooth surface. It’s about making the surface smooth.
•
Years of cooking for a spouse and five children and uncountable relatives and friends will do that to a pan. Scraping hard steel spatulas across the comparatively softer iron wears slowly away at the dark metal. Mountains of eggs. Continents of tomatoes, zucchini, hamburgers, grilled cheese. How many turns of wrist, how many flips of pancake, to burnish the metal until it becomes that featureless iron plain?
At Weight Watchers we talk about how easy it is to equate food with love and acceptance and how easy it is to make food the shortcut to feeling loved and accepted. And how that’s not the best way to go about things. But look at the evidence of the skillet. How many hours, how many accumulated years spent before that hunk of metal, scraping, scraping, scraping it smooth in order to provide for loved ones? How is that texture not a message of love?
Our pan is new, just four years old or so. The tiny jags in its surface make the steel spatula ring like an old Western Bell telephone when I cook. It’s already incrementally smoother than when I bought it. But I’m in no rush. It’s not about always being able to cook on a perfectly smooth surface. It’s about making the surface smooth.
•
Haliaeetus can wait
Today the children and I drove this big loop, about forty miles, on the trail of eagles; down one side of the river, across, up the other side, across again. We were the only people outside, and that for just a few foolish minutes at a park in Peekskill near the train station. We stood facing the water, looking upriver in the direction of the Worragut and World's End, into the teeth of a hellacious north wind that drove whitecaps into breakers into the shore a hundred feet before us.
Flickr had told me to look there for eagles. Why do I listen to the Internet?
It was an arctic wind, too, twenty degrees, like Skadi’s own air conditioner. In the first minute the kids mounted an enthusiastic assault on the vast Structure-for-Play that's there beside the water, but the lad was hunching into his coat and the lass was crying before very long. My instincts told me that they were learning valuable life lessons through suffering. Except I was also freezing my ass off, so I let them get back in the car. Eagles be damned.
I'm a desperate tour guide on such excursions, rushing to tell my son everything I can about the world, as though there won't be enough time, as though I want to fill him up and leave none of his knowledge to chance. So I babble. Every stray memory, landmark, historical or scientific fact sparked by the landscape comes out. "You remember there we attended the Shad Fest, and the precision skydivers from West Point came down? You met Robert Kennedy there. You were one." He's thinking about air hockey, and how thirsty he is. "That's Breakneck Ridge. I climbed most of it with Uncle Larry once. I couldn't finish because I was too heavy and out of shape. That's Bannerman's Castle, but the island is also called Pollopel." He knows this, knows it was an ammo dump. He's seen it on Google Earth.
We pull over in Cold Spring, looking north through the Wind-Gate between Storm King and Breakneck. Route 218 cuts across Storm King's face. It's the northernmost of the Highland peaks on the west side of the Hudson, to our far right as we face the river from a parking lot near some condos. Strung out to the south are similarly rocky, majestic peaks, directly across the narrow fjord. There are no eagles, but they'd look right against those icy cliffs. We sit there a minute. The little one is sucking her thumb, eyelids heavy.
"What's that, like, path across Storm King?" the boy asks from the back seat. I tell him it's a road. There's a pause. "It looks like a lizard," he says.
"What does?" I turn to see what he's talking about.
He's talking about the entire ten-mile swath of the visible Highlands on the west bank of the river. He explains, starting with the head, Storm King, and its slash of a mouth, then the Crow's Nest forming the back, Target Point a forelimb. The ridge declining southward is a tail where it descends toward West Point. Of course it's obvious, once he points it out. Lizard, check.
We have different frames of reference, different senses of scale. He has no problem with a ten-mile-wide canvas. There's nothing so giant that it can't be made into something familiar and small. He's unspoiled by any notion of his own insignificance. On that we agree; he and his sister are the central objects in our landscape. Their small forms bear Jupiter's gravity and the encoded wisdom of generations. How can I possibly teach them anything?
Later, at home, he asks me if a crocodile is as big as a school bus. "No," I lie, knowing that some salt-water crocodiles are longer than the bus he takes to kindergarten. He clarifies. "No," he says. "Not end to end. I mean, could a crocodile eat a schoolbus."
Ah. "No," I tell him. "Absolutely not."
•
Flickr had told me to look there for eagles. Why do I listen to the Internet?
It was an arctic wind, too, twenty degrees, like Skadi’s own air conditioner. In the first minute the kids mounted an enthusiastic assault on the vast Structure-for-Play that's there beside the water, but the lad was hunching into his coat and the lass was crying before very long. My instincts told me that they were learning valuable life lessons through suffering. Except I was also freezing my ass off, so I let them get back in the car. Eagles be damned.
I'm a desperate tour guide on such excursions, rushing to tell my son everything I can about the world, as though there won't be enough time, as though I want to fill him up and leave none of his knowledge to chance. So I babble. Every stray memory, landmark, historical or scientific fact sparked by the landscape comes out. "You remember there we attended the Shad Fest, and the precision skydivers from West Point came down? You met Robert Kennedy there. You were one." He's thinking about air hockey, and how thirsty he is. "That's Breakneck Ridge. I climbed most of it with Uncle Larry once. I couldn't finish because I was too heavy and out of shape. That's Bannerman's Castle, but the island is also called Pollopel." He knows this, knows it was an ammo dump. He's seen it on Google Earth.
We pull over in Cold Spring, looking north through the Wind-Gate between Storm King and Breakneck. Route 218 cuts across Storm King's face. It's the northernmost of the Highland peaks on the west side of the Hudson, to our far right as we face the river from a parking lot near some condos. Strung out to the south are similarly rocky, majestic peaks, directly across the narrow fjord. There are no eagles, but they'd look right against those icy cliffs. We sit there a minute. The little one is sucking her thumb, eyelids heavy.
"What's that, like, path across Storm King?" the boy asks from the back seat. I tell him it's a road. There's a pause. "It looks like a lizard," he says.
"What does?" I turn to see what he's talking about.
He's talking about the entire ten-mile swath of the visible Highlands on the west bank of the river. He explains, starting with the head, Storm King, and its slash of a mouth, then the Crow's Nest forming the back, Target Point a forelimb. The ridge declining southward is a tail where it descends toward West Point. Of course it's obvious, once he points it out. Lizard, check.
We have different frames of reference, different senses of scale. He has no problem with a ten-mile-wide canvas. There's nothing so giant that it can't be made into something familiar and small. He's unspoiled by any notion of his own insignificance. On that we agree; he and his sister are the central objects in our landscape. Their small forms bear Jupiter's gravity and the encoded wisdom of generations. How can I possibly teach them anything?
Later, at home, he asks me if a crocodile is as big as a school bus. "No," I lie, knowing that some salt-water crocodiles are longer than the bus he takes to kindergarten. He clarifies. "No," he says. "Not end to end. I mean, could a crocodile eat a schoolbus."
Ah. "No," I tell him. "Absolutely not."
•
How I Envy Those with Certitude, and the Wealthy; also, Otters
I often find myself believing that doubt makes people more interesting; that those interesting people who are interesting because they display no doubt (not that everyone who displays no doubt is interesting, are you following me, but that some people are interesting because they engage in doubt-worthy enterprises but display no doubt, outwardly) are, in fact, hiding vast reservoirs of doubt and that is what actually makes them interesting.
In case that’s true, I hang on to doubt the way my parents hang on to old newspapers and magazines, and you’d be hard-put to get me to sell it off or, worst of all, throw it away.
Which is why it’s so very very strange that I envy those who are certain. Certain of anything, really, I don’t care what, although I feel most envious of those who are certain about things I disagree with. Because those things would have to be really really hard to believe in the first place. Can you imagine how rock-solid one’s certainty would have to be to be so very very convinced of such things?
I imagine that the Certain Person’s day goes something like this: upon waking in a comfortable bed he or she richly deserves under a roof that could belong to no other, the Certain Person puts on clothes that look terrific and heads downstairs to greet the smartest kids in their class and to eat a perfectly normal breakfast after taking a shower using the infinite supply of hot water. Picking up the keys to the exact right car, he or she leaves his or her hard-won and well-deserved house—a house that fits his or her personality and makes him or her feel a rich sense of achievement—to drive to work at a job that pays the bills and offers a dose of personal pride; this is no fly-by-night outfit, either, but a trusted, benevolent employer where he or she pictures him- or herself advancing into the golden glow of a fulfilling career. Driving to work listening to the news, knowing that we’re fighting for freedom someplace where our enemies live, he or she is comforted by the knowledge that our leaders know best what’s safest for all Americans and will do their utmost to see our lives made even better. And that the Lord is looking out for those leaders, and for the troops, and for each and every one of us. And that criminals are bad bad people, worse than him or her, and deserving of punishment of all kinds. After working really hard at that fulfilling job and doing the best work of anyone in the whole department, he or she heads home with the expectation that the nutritious, prion-free dinner he or she is going to eat will be one of many in an uninterrupted string of healthy meals of great deliciousness. And after the dinner and a dose of very funny and realistic medical television, he or she will go to bed and enjoy the hottest marital relations anyone is having anywhere with his or her immortal spouse, then drift off into what is sure to be a sound sleep, knowing that the next day will be more or less the same, a beautiful necklace of sunrises and sunsets stretching into a restful retirement and a secure old age, followed at last by the eternal reward of the afterlife.
Ahh, the Certain. What a joy it must be to be you.
And then there are the wealthy, who, it is well known, can purchase happiness. And otters are extremely good swimmers and very cute.
•
In case that’s true, I hang on to doubt the way my parents hang on to old newspapers and magazines, and you’d be hard-put to get me to sell it off or, worst of all, throw it away.
Which is why it’s so very very strange that I envy those who are certain. Certain of anything, really, I don’t care what, although I feel most envious of those who are certain about things I disagree with. Because those things would have to be really really hard to believe in the first place. Can you imagine how rock-solid one’s certainty would have to be to be so very very convinced of such things?
I imagine that the Certain Person’s day goes something like this: upon waking in a comfortable bed he or she richly deserves under a roof that could belong to no other, the Certain Person puts on clothes that look terrific and heads downstairs to greet the smartest kids in their class and to eat a perfectly normal breakfast after taking a shower using the infinite supply of hot water. Picking up the keys to the exact right car, he or she leaves his or her hard-won and well-deserved house—a house that fits his or her personality and makes him or her feel a rich sense of achievement—to drive to work at a job that pays the bills and offers a dose of personal pride; this is no fly-by-night outfit, either, but a trusted, benevolent employer where he or she pictures him- or herself advancing into the golden glow of a fulfilling career. Driving to work listening to the news, knowing that we’re fighting for freedom someplace where our enemies live, he or she is comforted by the knowledge that our leaders know best what’s safest for all Americans and will do their utmost to see our lives made even better. And that the Lord is looking out for those leaders, and for the troops, and for each and every one of us. And that criminals are bad bad people, worse than him or her, and deserving of punishment of all kinds. After working really hard at that fulfilling job and doing the best work of anyone in the whole department, he or she heads home with the expectation that the nutritious, prion-free dinner he or she is going to eat will be one of many in an uninterrupted string of healthy meals of great deliciousness. And after the dinner and a dose of very funny and realistic medical television, he or she will go to bed and enjoy the hottest marital relations anyone is having anywhere with his or her immortal spouse, then drift off into what is sure to be a sound sleep, knowing that the next day will be more or less the same, a beautiful necklace of sunrises and sunsets stretching into a restful retirement and a secure old age, followed at last by the eternal reward of the afterlife.
Ahh, the Certain. What a joy it must be to be you.
And then there are the wealthy, who, it is well known, can purchase happiness. And otters are extremely good swimmers and very cute.
•
Where It All Goes
(Start from the bottom)
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•
Ding-a-Clang-a-Lang-Ling Ding
It's possible we had the only cowbell in the neighborhood, growing up, but I wouldn't swear to it. This was a brown old thing, copper or brass, I suppose, that had the look of actually having been worn by a cow. Perhaps a cow in Queens, from whence my People came to this tree-lined swath of suburbia.
There were five of us kids, and at dusk (if we were lucky, and she was home from work), Mom would lean out the door and shake the thing vigorously. Its clapper would sound the country call. Chowtime! Grub's rustled! Come n' git it! There's nothing quite like a cowbell in the hands of a cook. Certainly not on a cow, where it has an almost elegant restraint, a single melodic donk every once in a while. Or in a country-rock song, where it introduces itself most bodaciously to set a certain formal tone and then departs until the next break. No, a cook has a deadline and needs to communicate urgency over distance. Git it while it's hot! I don't care where y'are, get on home! This thing would pop and clang and hit wooden notes and create a sort of Appalachian jazz chaos. You could hear it a good way off. And not just you. But your neighbors. Your friends. Your enemies. The ones who Wouldn't Understand.
I don't know if we were the only family with a cowbell, but I do know that we were the only ones to get summoned for supper by one, like ranch hands or farm laborers, maybe loggers up in a forested camp. Play would cease (although to be honest, we ate later than everyone else, so we might have been loitering out there kicking a ball around just waiting for the bell) and we would rush back to the house from five different points, salivary glands firing madly, Pavlovian cues as deep-seated as those instilled in any laboratory.
So we were mildly embarrassed by the cowbell, but it meant something else, as well. It was Mom calling us home to get some good food and to bask in the family. It was kind of like the opening bell in a boxing match, too; five kids don't switch from running around outside to sitting down to table without punching one another a few times. I know it's seared into my memory, and I'm sure it is for the other four. One lasting effect, interestingly, is that I get hungry during marathons and at your more commercial country shows.
I like to think now that the other kids envied us. THEIR Moms would lean out, sure, but they'd just yell in Brooklynese for "all a yiz" to "get in heeh."
We had a BELL.
•
There were five of us kids, and at dusk (if we were lucky, and she was home from work), Mom would lean out the door and shake the thing vigorously. Its clapper would sound the country call. Chowtime! Grub's rustled! Come n' git it! There's nothing quite like a cowbell in the hands of a cook. Certainly not on a cow, where it has an almost elegant restraint, a single melodic donk every once in a while. Or in a country-rock song, where it introduces itself most bodaciously to set a certain formal tone and then departs until the next break. No, a cook has a deadline and needs to communicate urgency over distance. Git it while it's hot! I don't care where y'are, get on home! This thing would pop and clang and hit wooden notes and create a sort of Appalachian jazz chaos. You could hear it a good way off. And not just you. But your neighbors. Your friends. Your enemies. The ones who Wouldn't Understand.
I don't know if we were the only family with a cowbell, but I do know that we were the only ones to get summoned for supper by one, like ranch hands or farm laborers, maybe loggers up in a forested camp. Play would cease (although to be honest, we ate later than everyone else, so we might have been loitering out there kicking a ball around just waiting for the bell) and we would rush back to the house from five different points, salivary glands firing madly, Pavlovian cues as deep-seated as those instilled in any laboratory.
So we were mildly embarrassed by the cowbell, but it meant something else, as well. It was Mom calling us home to get some good food and to bask in the family. It was kind of like the opening bell in a boxing match, too; five kids don't switch from running around outside to sitting down to table without punching one another a few times. I know it's seared into my memory, and I'm sure it is for the other four. One lasting effect, interestingly, is that I get hungry during marathons and at your more commercial country shows.
I like to think now that the other kids envied us. THEIR Moms would lean out, sure, but they'd just yell in Brooklynese for "all a yiz" to "get in heeh."
We had a BELL.
•
Same As It Ever Was
The nostalgia of place is in full force this weekend. I'm sixteen again, and twenty-two, minus the weight, reading the same comic books and hanging out at the same local pub with the same friend. My family goes up to Sagamore Hill on Saturday morning, stopping at the Jericho Cider Mill on the way up (the same old large-scale print is on the wall behind the counter—a vaguely feral-looking boy with a devlish look, cheek full of apple, slick of juice around his mouth, exposed white flesh in the red globe in his hand—but the old down-home customer service is non-existent), and the house is there as I remember amid its fields and outbuildings.
When I was a kid we had our totemic places at Sagamore Hill—the Pond, the Windmill, the Cannon Into Which You Could Pour Gravel. They're there today (well, not the cannon), as are the memory-worn objets inside the house. Old tired animal carcasses and parts thereof, looking if possible more resigned and bored with the passing time. A rhino's foot, ignominious as an inkwell. A chair made out of horns that I remember being more intricate, or bigger, somehow, when I was young.
But I'd wanted the Lad to come, because this was The Place. It had hooked us, all of us, from Mom on down. First, it was a rich person's house we were allowed into. Second, ANIMALS, as if I need to tell you. Third, presidents were still just barely important then, before their currency became devalued. And it had nice lawns. In returning I expected a certain erosion of awe, but like any good parent I wanted to also relive the wonder of my youth by forcing my kid to experience it.
Somehow, it worked. I guess you get a kid up close to those beech trees, like monuments to trees made from stone and gold, carved with dates that go visibly back to the mid-70s and whose earlier markings have blurred through the tree's slow healing, and something primal takes over. Not that he was reluctant to go, but I didn't want acceptance, I wanted him to acknowledge magic. And watching him clamber through the intricate multiple trunks of that ancient monster I, at least, felt its presence.
We ran around the tree a lot, and in the house we saw tusks and dead bison and beach-ball-sized bear heads openmouthed at the ends of their furred skins. We viewed the Victorian technology of the kitchen and the baths, trod on the old carpets under glass eyes in dim light. And then we ran again, outside, through drifts of leaves covering gem-green grass on broad sweeping lawns.
The night before, we'd taken out the Tapes, the Classic from 1971 ("Billy, stay away from the crib"), plus its sequel from New Year's Day 1976 ("this is Nancy Dickerson reporting.") I'm on there, both a year and a half younger and two years older than this kid. My piercing screams on the earlier recording and my husky trying-to-sound-older voice on the later one are brackets to his current perfection; his new memories of placing feet upon that smooth treebark, of looking up the Cape Buffalo's nose, are both outside and inside of my own memory.
On that later tape, my youngest sister takes on the reporting role of Nancy Dickerson, veteran journalist and interviewer of family members. When she's not doing that ("I think our audience would like to know, do you live in a house or in an apartment?") she's desperately clutching the microphone to herself while whining "I don't want to!" as we exhort her to speak. Well she's in for it now, herself, coming home to tell us that she's expecting. We all have tape recorders.
Speaking of nostalgia both real and imagined, and tape recordings, what better Saturday to such a weekend than attending a taping of A Prairie Home Companion? If there's a nostalgia gland and it hasn't already exploded from the red light filtering into my parents' library through the leaves of the Japanese maple just outside, A Prairie Home Companion ought to finish it off.
I'll let you know.
UPDATE: After the show we went to the old Greek place, said hello to the same waiter, then stopped at her old apartment stoop, where she pulled me in for another first kiss, as it was twelve years ago. Nostalgia satisfied.
•
When I was a kid we had our totemic places at Sagamore Hill—the Pond, the Windmill, the Cannon Into Which You Could Pour Gravel. They're there today (well, not the cannon), as are the memory-worn objets inside the house. Old tired animal carcasses and parts thereof, looking if possible more resigned and bored with the passing time. A rhino's foot, ignominious as an inkwell. A chair made out of horns that I remember being more intricate, or bigger, somehow, when I was young.
But I'd wanted the Lad to come, because this was The Place. It had hooked us, all of us, from Mom on down. First, it was a rich person's house we were allowed into. Second, ANIMALS, as if I need to tell you. Third, presidents were still just barely important then, before their currency became devalued. And it had nice lawns. In returning I expected a certain erosion of awe, but like any good parent I wanted to also relive the wonder of my youth by forcing my kid to experience it.
Somehow, it worked. I guess you get a kid up close to those beech trees, like monuments to trees made from stone and gold, carved with dates that go visibly back to the mid-70s and whose earlier markings have blurred through the tree's slow healing, and something primal takes over. Not that he was reluctant to go, but I didn't want acceptance, I wanted him to acknowledge magic. And watching him clamber through the intricate multiple trunks of that ancient monster I, at least, felt its presence.
We ran around the tree a lot, and in the house we saw tusks and dead bison and beach-ball-sized bear heads openmouthed at the ends of their furred skins. We viewed the Victorian technology of the kitchen and the baths, trod on the old carpets under glass eyes in dim light. And then we ran again, outside, through drifts of leaves covering gem-green grass on broad sweeping lawns.
The night before, we'd taken out the Tapes, the Classic from 1971 ("Billy, stay away from the crib"), plus its sequel from New Year's Day 1976 ("this is Nancy Dickerson reporting.") I'm on there, both a year and a half younger and two years older than this kid. My piercing screams on the earlier recording and my husky trying-to-sound-older voice on the later one are brackets to his current perfection; his new memories of placing feet upon that smooth treebark, of looking up the Cape Buffalo's nose, are both outside and inside of my own memory.
On that later tape, my youngest sister takes on the reporting role of Nancy Dickerson, veteran journalist and interviewer of family members. When she's not doing that ("I think our audience would like to know, do you live in a house or in an apartment?") she's desperately clutching the microphone to herself while whining "I don't want to!" as we exhort her to speak. Well she's in for it now, herself, coming home to tell us that she's expecting. We all have tape recorders.
Speaking of nostalgia both real and imagined, and tape recordings, what better Saturday to such a weekend than attending a taping of A Prairie Home Companion? If there's a nostalgia gland and it hasn't already exploded from the red light filtering into my parents' library through the leaves of the Japanese maple just outside, A Prairie Home Companion ought to finish it off.
I'll let you know.
UPDATE: After the show we went to the old Greek place, said hello to the same waiter, then stopped at her old apartment stoop, where she pulled me in for another first kiss, as it was twelve years ago. Nostalgia satisfied.
•
The Raisin Joke
The lad was in the bath the other day. His mother came in and checked his fingertips.
"You're going to turn into a raisin," she told him.
"Dad!" he called. "You better get me out of here or you're going to have to cover me with yogurt!"
•
"You're going to turn into a raisin," she told him.
"Dad!" he called. "You better get me out of here or you're going to have to cover me with yogurt!"
•
The Trouble with Raising a Five-Year-Old Hippie
Last time we went up to New Paltz, a few weeks ago, for the fingerpainting, the Boy got out of the car, filled his lungs with village air, and announced “it smells like granola here.” That’s pretty much what anyone of my generation would say: New Paltz is redolent of crunchy, crunchy granola for certain.
So this past weekend when we took a jaunt up thataway to buy a present for someone at a charming, non-patchouli-scented-but-still-earthy boutique, the Boy got out of the car, took in a big gulp of village air, then froze, pointing across the street like a wide-eyed Gordon setter flushing a covey of rainbow-colored pheasants. “Look at those great shirts!” he yelled.
On the way home, as we sang "Yellow Submarine" for the sixth time and planned his next yoga class, a peace-loving, organic-minded woman in the passenger seat and I agreed: it will be sad/funny when our tie-dye-wearing son goes into class and shoves some other kid during circle time while they’re talking about the seasons.
•
So this past weekend when we took a jaunt up thataway to buy a present for someone at a charming, non-patchouli-scented-but-still-earthy boutique, the Boy got out of the car, took in a big gulp of village air, then froze, pointing across the street like a wide-eyed Gordon setter flushing a covey of rainbow-colored pheasants. “Look at those great shirts!” he yelled.
On the way home, as we sang "Yellow Submarine" for the sixth time and planned his next yoga class, a peace-loving, organic-minded woman in the passenger seat and I agreed: it will be sad/funny when our tie-dye-wearing son goes into class and shoves some other kid during circle time while they’re talking about the seasons.
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"Time passes through our eyes this morning."
It's the first first day of school since Mike Levine passed away; around here, his column on that subject came out as regularly as the buses, button-down shirts, and hastily spit-cleaned faces. It's as perfect a piece of work as was ever written.
Our son starts kindergarten tomorrow; while you can allow in nostalgia and attach significance to every event—or to none at all—a day like this reminds you that nothing is yours to keep.
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Our son starts kindergarten tomorrow; while you can allow in nostalgia and attach significance to every event—or to none at all—a day like this reminds you that nothing is yours to keep.
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They X-Rayed His Puppy, at Least
The other morning when we got to the doctor to have our son examined for a particularly bad case of bronchitis that he had developed following a cold, they gave him a shot of epinephren and called an ambulance, which took him to the hospital for the next three days.
Parents! Do yourselves a favor and read the following two links!
How to Recognize an Asthma Attack
Asthma Basics
He's doing fine now; in fact, dosed four times daily with steroids and albuterol, he's ramped up a little more than usual and helped me dig a shallow twenty-foot drainage ditch in the yard today. We have been serving up our self-castigation with a rich, blamery sauce. But some dark nights of the soul and the support of a lot of people (both with and without asthma, with and without kids) have talked us down from our guilt. And he forgave us as soon as we let him ride in an ambulance.
Now the baby has a fever. At least she waited.
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Parents! Do yourselves a favor and read the following two links!
How to Recognize an Asthma Attack
Asthma Basics
He's doing fine now; in fact, dosed four times daily with steroids and albuterol, he's ramped up a little more than usual and helped me dig a shallow twenty-foot drainage ditch in the yard today. We have been serving up our self-castigation with a rich, blamery sauce. But some dark nights of the soul and the support of a lot of people (both with and without asthma, with and without kids) have talked us down from our guilt. And he forgave us as soon as we let him ride in an ambulance.
Now the baby has a fever. At least she waited.
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How It Went Down (A Father's Perspective)
The parents of a very pregnant woman who lived with me last year had come to visit so as to be on hand for the birth of their third grandchild (sorry I keep pausing, although you can't tell, but I'm eating some fried chicken while I'm writing this and it's hard to get the best fried gristle bits out of the ribcage without using both hands and then wiping down so's not to spoil the pretty Mac keyboard, anyhoo). That was a Thursday evening, I guess, and Friday morning my mother-in-law woke up with a numb leg. We took her over to the hospital down the street (the hospital where my wife was born, incidentally, but which no longer has a birthing center) and they looked her over for a day or two, ruling some things out, but leaving plenty of options on the table.
So it was Wednesday the following week, a year ago today as it happens, and the plan today was to get Mom down to Columbia Presbyterian in New York City, or maybe she was already there? I don't remember, but anyway, my wife was planning to go down there and visit her, with the boy and the belly. We had a backup plan for watching the boy when we had to go to the hospital, which was my sister would come up from the city when we called.
In any case, it was Wednesday and I was down at work, and my wife had gone and bought a cell phone for herself, and she and the boy and the belly were about to mosey on down to the city, and if I don't get some dialogue in here this post is going to fall asleep. So she called me at some point.
"I feel weird," she said.
"Having-a-baby weird or uncomfortable-in-these-clothes weird?"
"Eventually having-a-baby weird, but not yet. More like, some contractions, but pretty much like Braxton-Hicks ones, but something's definitely in the works. I mean, I lost my mucous plug. But it's definitely not soon."
"Today?"
"Maybe, but not anytime soon. I guess it can't hurt for me to go down to the hospital to visit, right? I mean, at least I'll be at a hospital," she said.
And down they went, and around 1:00 she called and said something like "Hmm. Maybe it would be easier if instead of taking the train home, you just caught a cab up here and drove us home."
"Are you having a baby? Should we stay at Columbia?"
"Oh, heavens no," she said. "Let's just go home. After all, Our Friend Who Is A Nurse is bringing over that really good pasta and chicken dish."
"True dat," I replied, or words to that effect. I called my sister at her office.
"How'd you like to come to Columbia Presbyterian Hospital?"
"Uhhh, sure, I guess. Any particular reason?"
"I think it's today, and That Pregnant Woman Who Lives With Me is there and I figure I'll drive her and the boy home. But don't worry, a nurse is bringing us dinner at home tonight."
"Uhh. Okay."
Two cabs later we were having a nice chat with my Mother in Law (ideopathic transverse myelitis! go figure) and wrapping up the visit and heading home. It was all very relaxing and nice. We got home. Our Friend Who Is A Nurse came over a little while later. She and my sister busied themselves making the chicken and pasta. We made sure we had a bag packed. We hung around.
"How's it going?"
"Oh, you know, little contraction every once in a while," she said.
"Sure," I said. I'm smooth like that. "Little contraction. Roger."
So we sit down to this meal and let me tell you, Our Friend Who Is A Nurse is not just a nurse, she can cook like the dickens (she's also a star athelete and a potter and a baker extraordinaire and you don't want to get into a garden contest with her and she's on the library board a couple of towns over from here and I don't know how she does it but anyway) so we tucked in to that chicken and pasta.
That increasingly pregnant but-about-not-to-be woman came in from the salon with a fluffy bathtowel and sat on it and served herself seconds and said something like "we got water," and then something like "this pasta and chicken is delicious."
At this point, we all stared at her. "Just what the hell is going on here?" I asked.
"Huh?" she said, mouth full of food. "Nothing, I'm just really hungry." She put down her fork. "Think I should call the doctor?"
She called the office and they paged the goofball on duty and he said something like "sure yeah right whatever are you in any pain how far apart are the contractions, you say your water just broke, call me when it hurts" or whatever.
"Hey," I said. "Where IS the hospital anyway?" I pushed my plate away and wiped my hands on a napkin (actually I just did that now because of the chicken, but it's atmospheric, no?). "Do we have a map?" I asked my sister.
She stared at me. No help at all.
My wife was back on the phone with the doctor. "Well, it'll take us a little while to get there," she said. "Oh yeah? Sure, I'll hold."
"Hey, honey," I said. "It ought to take us about forty minutes, I guess. How're you doing?"
She was having cute little contractions, but didn't seem to mind. They still had her on hold.
Then I heard her do a little inadvertant Lamaze breath, and I thought something like holy shit — this feels just like denial! Just then Our Friend Who Is A Nurse walked over and murmured something like "think maybe it's time you guys hit the road?" I nodded.
That's when it sped up. I grabbed the phone out of my wife's hand, she started doing a LOT of Lamaze breathing, we ran outside and bundled her into the car, friend, sister and boy in tow and screeched out of the driveway. The boy yelled from the porch in a sudden panic "WHAT TIME SHOULD I GO TO BED!?"
"8!" We didn't even have time to spell out the word, is how fast we were going!
My car is a, how you say, heap, and I pushed it to 85 the entire way, and sure enough it was a 40-minute drive and we had entertaining conversation as it became apparent that things were Much Further Along than we'd thought. Chat like:
"Don't push!" and
"I'm going to have this fucking baby in the car!"
I got the doctor on the phone -- I was remarkably calm, I thought, driving 85 in a stick on a dark highway with one hand, doing Lamaze coaching out of one side of my mouth, talking to a lackadaisickal doctor on a cell phone out the other. I asked if he thought they ought to alert an ambulance corps on the way, or maybe the police. Calm radiated outward from the phone. He wasn't concerned. Everything was going to be okay, except that I was going to smash the phone hard enough to make his head hurt because dammit, my wife said she's going to HAVE THE BABY NOW and WE'RE NOT AMATEURS, we're DONE THIS BEFORE, she was CONSCIOUS THEN and SHE REMEMBERS WHAT IT'S LIKE.
I'd bought that car on eBay, as previously mentioned, for $2,500. Goooooood car. We pulled into the emergency entrance — practically INTO the emergency entrance — and I hopped out and ran around to get my wife out. Some dude did one of those Hollywood "hey, you can't park he—" deals as I ran inside calling for a wheelchair.
They tried to hand me paperwork while I wheeled my wife along a corridor asking where the maternity ward and Doctor McChill were located and while my wife did the end-stage no-pushing breathing. I tried to explain that I wasn't a panicky first-time dad convinced the baby was coming when it wasn't, but was in fact a panicky second-time dad who had some idea that they were about to have a messy desk area, and that we weren't going to flee without doing paperwork.
We entered the birthing room with nurses in tow. Despite about an hour's warning, they hadn't set anything up yet. Doctor Cool ambled in, chuckling, and had my wife lie down.
"Well now, let's just take a look and see what all the fu---ck!" he said, or something like that. "Okay, don't push!" A stream of commands and the rapid setup of ping-machines followed, my wife pushed for a few minutes and presto.
A girl. Happy birthday, Little.
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So it was Wednesday the following week, a year ago today as it happens, and the plan today was to get Mom down to Columbia Presbyterian in New York City, or maybe she was already there? I don't remember, but anyway, my wife was planning to go down there and visit her, with the boy and the belly. We had a backup plan for watching the boy when we had to go to the hospital, which was my sister would come up from the city when we called.
In any case, it was Wednesday and I was down at work, and my wife had gone and bought a cell phone for herself, and she and the boy and the belly were about to mosey on down to the city, and if I don't get some dialogue in here this post is going to fall asleep. So she called me at some point.
"I feel weird," she said.
"Having-a-baby weird or uncomfortable-in-these-clothes weird?"
"Eventually having-a-baby weird, but not yet. More like, some contractions, but pretty much like Braxton-Hicks ones, but something's definitely in the works. I mean, I lost my mucous plug. But it's definitely not soon."
"Today?"
"Maybe, but not anytime soon. I guess it can't hurt for me to go down to the hospital to visit, right? I mean, at least I'll be at a hospital," she said.
And down they went, and around 1:00 she called and said something like "Hmm. Maybe it would be easier if instead of taking the train home, you just caught a cab up here and drove us home."
"Are you having a baby? Should we stay at Columbia?"
"Oh, heavens no," she said. "Let's just go home. After all, Our Friend Who Is A Nurse is bringing over that really good pasta and chicken dish."
"True dat," I replied, or words to that effect. I called my sister at her office.
"How'd you like to come to Columbia Presbyterian Hospital?"
"Uhhh, sure, I guess. Any particular reason?"
"I think it's today, and That Pregnant Woman Who Lives With Me is there and I figure I'll drive her and the boy home. But don't worry, a nurse is bringing us dinner at home tonight."
"Uhh. Okay."
Two cabs later we were having a nice chat with my Mother in Law (ideopathic transverse myelitis! go figure) and wrapping up the visit and heading home. It was all very relaxing and nice. We got home. Our Friend Who Is A Nurse came over a little while later. She and my sister busied themselves making the chicken and pasta. We made sure we had a bag packed. We hung around.
"How's it going?"
"Oh, you know, little contraction every once in a while," she said.
"Sure," I said. I'm smooth like that. "Little contraction. Roger."
So we sit down to this meal and let me tell you, Our Friend Who Is A Nurse is not just a nurse, she can cook like the dickens (she's also a star athelete and a potter and a baker extraordinaire and you don't want to get into a garden contest with her and she's on the library board a couple of towns over from here and I don't know how she does it but anyway) so we tucked in to that chicken and pasta.
That increasingly pregnant but-about-not-to-be woman came in from the salon with a fluffy bathtowel and sat on it and served herself seconds and said something like "we got water," and then something like "this pasta and chicken is delicious."
At this point, we all stared at her. "Just what the hell is going on here?" I asked.
"Huh?" she said, mouth full of food. "Nothing, I'm just really hungry." She put down her fork. "Think I should call the doctor?"
She called the office and they paged the goofball on duty and he said something like "sure yeah right whatever are you in any pain how far apart are the contractions, you say your water just broke, call me when it hurts" or whatever.
"Hey," I said. "Where IS the hospital anyway?" I pushed my plate away and wiped my hands on a napkin (actually I just did that now because of the chicken, but it's atmospheric, no?). "Do we have a map?" I asked my sister.
She stared at me. No help at all.
My wife was back on the phone with the doctor. "Well, it'll take us a little while to get there," she said. "Oh yeah? Sure, I'll hold."
"Hey, honey," I said. "It ought to take us about forty minutes, I guess. How're you doing?"
She was having cute little contractions, but didn't seem to mind. They still had her on hold.
Then I heard her do a little inadvertant Lamaze breath, and I thought something like holy shit — this feels just like denial! Just then Our Friend Who Is A Nurse walked over and murmured something like "think maybe it's time you guys hit the road?" I nodded.
That's when it sped up. I grabbed the phone out of my wife's hand, she started doing a LOT of Lamaze breathing, we ran outside and bundled her into the car, friend, sister and boy in tow and screeched out of the driveway. The boy yelled from the porch in a sudden panic "WHAT TIME SHOULD I GO TO BED!?"
"8!" We didn't even have time to spell out the word, is how fast we were going!
My car is a, how you say, heap, and I pushed it to 85 the entire way, and sure enough it was a 40-minute drive and we had entertaining conversation as it became apparent that things were Much Further Along than we'd thought. Chat like:
"Don't push!" and
"I'm going to have this fucking baby in the car!"
I got the doctor on the phone -- I was remarkably calm, I thought, driving 85 in a stick on a dark highway with one hand, doing Lamaze coaching out of one side of my mouth, talking to a lackadaisickal doctor on a cell phone out the other. I asked if he thought they ought to alert an ambulance corps on the way, or maybe the police. Calm radiated outward from the phone. He wasn't concerned. Everything was going to be okay, except that I was going to smash the phone hard enough to make his head hurt because dammit, my wife said she's going to HAVE THE BABY NOW and WE'RE NOT AMATEURS, we're DONE THIS BEFORE, she was CONSCIOUS THEN and SHE REMEMBERS WHAT IT'S LIKE.
I'd bought that car on eBay, as previously mentioned, for $2,500. Goooooood car. We pulled into the emergency entrance — practically INTO the emergency entrance — and I hopped out and ran around to get my wife out. Some dude did one of those Hollywood "hey, you can't park he—" deals as I ran inside calling for a wheelchair.
They tried to hand me paperwork while I wheeled my wife along a corridor asking where the maternity ward and Doctor McChill were located and while my wife did the end-stage no-pushing breathing. I tried to explain that I wasn't a panicky first-time dad convinced the baby was coming when it wasn't, but was in fact a panicky second-time dad who had some idea that they were about to have a messy desk area, and that we weren't going to flee without doing paperwork.
We entered the birthing room with nurses in tow. Despite about an hour's warning, they hadn't set anything up yet. Doctor Cool ambled in, chuckling, and had my wife lie down.
"Well now, let's just take a look and see what all the fu---ck!" he said, or something like that. "Okay, don't push!" A stream of commands and the rapid setup of ping-machines followed, my wife pushed for a few minutes and presto.
A girl. Happy birthday, Little.
•
The Hours
"We are continually faced by great opportunities brilliantly disguised as unsolvable problems."
Apparently Lee Iacocca said that. I vaguely remember Lee Iacocca as some kind of 1980s presence, an avuncular but untrustworthy corporate magnate, often confused in my pre-adolescent mind with John DeLorean. In any case, Lee had long been off my mind until he was brought back via Weight Watchers, when my leader recited the quote above. Each meeting has an "inspirational close," you see, and this one came early in my weight loss. Not very long afterwards, we moved upstate and I began commuting to my job in Manhattan.
Throughout the four years that I commuted via bus and train, two hours at a shot, toting a laptop, I tried to apply Lee's wisdom to that particular problem. Not just Lee's. Anyone's wisdom who would listen. My Twitter bio explains it: "I talk about commuting almost as much as I talk about not commuting." My cell phone was always handy to call a friend and complain. When the bus was too crowded to call, I'd whip open the laptop and write about it. And write letters to friends. And write personal essays. Do a little work. Look through old pictures. Listen to music. Outline novels. Begin humor books. Read. Nod off. Always in search of that elusive "opportunity" presented by an hour and a half trapped in a metal canister moving painfully slowly along New York's motorways or rails. What, oh what, was the hidden treasure inside this soul-sucking disguise?
With my new, shorter commute, I have noticed something: it's hard to write when you have so much more time. Time to sleep, at home, in your bed. Time to play with the kids. Time to help with the chores. Time to go to sleep, at a reasonable time, at home, in your bed.
This time, at least, I'm in no doubt as to my opportunities. They're not very well disguised.
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Apparently Lee Iacocca said that. I vaguely remember Lee Iacocca as some kind of 1980s presence, an avuncular but untrustworthy corporate magnate, often confused in my pre-adolescent mind with John DeLorean. In any case, Lee had long been off my mind until he was brought back via Weight Watchers, when my leader recited the quote above. Each meeting has an "inspirational close," you see, and this one came early in my weight loss. Not very long afterwards, we moved upstate and I began commuting to my job in Manhattan.
Throughout the four years that I commuted via bus and train, two hours at a shot, toting a laptop, I tried to apply Lee's wisdom to that particular problem. Not just Lee's. Anyone's wisdom who would listen. My Twitter bio explains it: "I talk about commuting almost as much as I talk about not commuting." My cell phone was always handy to call a friend and complain. When the bus was too crowded to call, I'd whip open the laptop and write about it. And write letters to friends. And write personal essays. Do a little work. Look through old pictures. Listen to music. Outline novels. Begin humor books. Read. Nod off. Always in search of that elusive "opportunity" presented by an hour and a half trapped in a metal canister moving painfully slowly along New York's motorways or rails. What, oh what, was the hidden treasure inside this soul-sucking disguise?
With my new, shorter commute, I have noticed something: it's hard to write when you have so much more time. Time to sleep, at home, in your bed. Time to play with the kids. Time to help with the chores. Time to go to sleep, at a reasonable time, at home, in your bed.
This time, at least, I'm in no doubt as to my opportunities. They're not very well disguised.
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Jump down. Turn around.
So we saw that Al Gore picture and then we switched to a cloth diaper service. (Although some stats claim that disposables use less energy in total, that's not true.)
And let me tell you. They're harder to use, they stink a LOT once they gang up at the end of the service week, and they're not that much fun individually, as you have to sort of process one at every changing (unless daycare saves 'em for you...then you get to handle them all at once, in a sort of rancid salad with ammonia dressing).
Certainly I'm not the first to write about this -- I understand the mommies have quite the blog thing going -- but the simple fact is that it IS ONE HUNDRED PERCENT WORTH IT. Maybe it's because a very conscientious woman who lives with me does the bulk of the heavy lifting on the diaper front (and back). Or perhaps it's the sense of satisfaction we get from not tossing out dozens of little toxic plastic sausages every week, each loaded with a stank center. As the primary garbage-taker-outer, I can attest that it's better this way.
And that bulky baby butt clad in a cumbersome diaper is considerably more cute.
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And let me tell you. They're harder to use, they stink a LOT once they gang up at the end of the service week, and they're not that much fun individually, as you have to sort of process one at every changing (unless daycare saves 'em for you...then you get to handle them all at once, in a sort of rancid salad with ammonia dressing).
Certainly I'm not the first to write about this -- I understand the mommies have quite the blog thing going -- but the simple fact is that it IS ONE HUNDRED PERCENT WORTH IT. Maybe it's because a very conscientious woman who lives with me does the bulk of the heavy lifting on the diaper front (and back). Or perhaps it's the sense of satisfaction we get from not tossing out dozens of little toxic plastic sausages every week, each loaded with a stank center. As the primary garbage-taker-outer, I can attest that it's better this way.
And that bulky baby butt clad in a cumbersome diaper is considerably more cute.
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Not Quite Getting It
The Boy: Knock, knock.
His mom: Who's there?
B: Poison ivy.
M: Poison ivy who?
B: I just pooped on the ground and used poison ivy leaves to wipe my butt. Hahahahahaha.
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His mom: Who's there?
B: Poison ivy.
M: Poison ivy who?
B: I just pooped on the ground and used poison ivy leaves to wipe my butt. Hahahahahaha.
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In Good Company
In recognition of the responsibilities accruing to my new position as part of the hallowed Finslippy blogroll (thank you, Alice, and that thing we talked about? DONE!), I offer a few tidbits about the zany antics of my children:
Apparently the baby cut a tooth this week. How about that? And the lad had fivecount’emFIVE timeouts yesterday. He was yelling at Matthew. Last week he pushed Billy. But yesterday he was really good with Billy. And this morning? Contrite, well-behaved, introspective even.
Uhh, yeah.
You know, for all the scampering and the holiday magic and the tickling and the being lifted waaaaay up high till you’re all the way at the ceiling and the ice cream and the circuses and stuff….
Hmm. I was gonna say “for all that, being a kid sucks.” But that list kind of convinced me that it’s not so bad. I, for one, could really use a circus right about now.
Oh lordy, if you’re linking from Finslippy, just…just go back. Nothing to see here. Coming soon: more Tales of the Sump Pump.
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Apparently the baby cut a tooth this week. How about that? And the lad had fivecount’emFIVE timeouts yesterday. He was yelling at Matthew. Last week he pushed Billy. But yesterday he was really good with Billy. And this morning? Contrite, well-behaved, introspective even.
Uhh, yeah.
You know, for all the scampering and the holiday magic and the tickling and the being lifted waaaaay up high till you’re all the way at the ceiling and the ice cream and the circuses and stuff….
Hmm. I was gonna say “for all that, being a kid sucks.” But that list kind of convinced me that it’s not so bad. I, for one, could really use a circus right about now.
Oh lordy, if you’re linking from Finslippy, just…just go back. Nothing to see here. Coming soon: more Tales of the Sump Pump.
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