Somewhere on the masthead

Nonperishable Items

2011-06-13T19:29:00.004-04:00

“Oh man, that’s a tough break, kid. Blaze was an awesome dog,” my Big Brother lamented when I called him with the news that our dog had died. I had just picked up Blaze’s ashes and was feeling pretty low, not to mention at a loss for what to do with my dog’s remains. We have yet to buy a house here, and I couldn't see scattering or burying his ashes here, in a place my dog barely knew. Strange, I know. It's just ashes, and Blaze is comfortably past caring, but there you are.

“You know,” BB said after a moment, “why don't you guys bring him when you come here this summer. There’s always a spot for him up on the hill. I know he had a blast when he was up there last time.”

And this was absolutely true. Two years ago, Blaze and I stayed with BB for a month. I spent my mornings writing at the house, but in the afternoons, Blaze and I went up on the 100 or so acres of land that have been in our family for generations, and of which my brother and I are now stewards. Some days I just wandered around, reacquainting myself with landmarks I’d remembered from childhood. Other days, I went up armed with a chainsaw and an industrial-grade weed whacker and worked on reopening the logging road that led to an old campsite.

While my routine varied, Blaze’s was the same. The moment we crossed onto the property, I unhooked him from his leash and let him explore to his doggy heart’s content. Having lived in the suburbs, he had never enjoyed this kind of freedom and it rather went to his head. He’d vanish for hours at a time. Occasionally, I’d hear him yipping joyfully in some distant part of the forest, hot on the trail of a new and diverting scent. Other times, he’d be so far away I couldn’t hear him at all. And just as I’d worry that he had gotten lost, or fallen into a pit or something, he’d turn up, interestingly spackled with twigs and mud (and once, memorably, with a dead snake in his jaws). Blaze had a good life at the Magazine Mansion and was always happy to be with us in our cozy suburban life, but on the hill, it was different. He was different. He seemed to sense that this moment in June of 2009 was a special time for him, and it made him positively radiant.

Blaze had even been to the secret spot on the hill that BB had been referring to: the sun-dappled glade that served as a cemetery to our family’s many pets. Here was where I had buried Pilgrim and Mayflower, the two dogs I had grown up with. I had put them in a place of honor, on a small rise, near a massive boulder of milky white quartz. Lower down on the hill were lesser dogs (the one who dined regularly out of the litter box, for example) and at the bottom of the rise was a flat place given over entirely to cats, more than a dozen of them, all members of the colony my mom acquired over the years. And that particular summer of two years ago, we added a few mounds to the graveyard, and Blaze was part of it.

Our funerary fun started the day after we arrived. As was my habit when I’d been away from the house for a while, I was poking around various rooms and closets, not really snooping, just nosing about. The last time I had been here was just after my parents’ death, when BB officially took ownership of the house. He had moved a few things around to suit his lifestyle. The room I normally stayed in had been converted into some kind of in-home gun repair shop. The pie cabinet where Mom had kept her collection of cookbooks was now filled with videogames and DVDs. The annex off the kitchen--a room Dad had been renovating singlehandedly at the time of his death--was now a massive storage facility for tools, dirty laundry, and palette after palette of nonperishable food and drink. BB appeared to be developing a survivalist streak, and I teased him about it mercilessly.

“Hey ass wipe,” he said, peering owlishly at me over the top of a five-foot high pyramid of Bush’s Baked Beans. “You’ve been living in civilization too long. I get snowed in here, I’m screwed. I gotta have some backup!”

“You live right on a main road,” I said. “You have a truck with a snow-plow attachment. You’ve lived in New Hampshire your entire life and never been snowed in anywhere longer than a couple of days.”

“So far!” he said shortly, and somewhat inadequately.

But I wasn’t there to fight, and presently, I found my attention diverted to a loose piece of plywood in a corner of the room which, when lifted, revealed a dark hole in the floor. When Dad started rebuilding this room, he had done it from the ground up, having a new foundation dug and poured. On the work order, it was listed as a “basement excavation” but my people don’t go in for basements. This was a cellar, dank, cobwebby and wonderful. I hadn’t been down there before, so I grabbed a flashlight and hopped down for a look. Blaze yipped when I did. He wanted to come with me. It probably smelled good to him. But evidently Dad hadn’t got around to building stairs, so the only way down was a straight drop into darkness. Or, as I discovered a second later, a crotch-traumatizing fall onto the top of a too-short step ladder.

After some fumbling about, I discovered a switch which, when thrown, illuminated the cellar in a feeble light. Like the upstairs, it too was full of tools, as well as food. But most of the floorspace under the lights seemed to be given over to a giant, humming freezer (however did Dad get that down here?).

“I see Dad bought himself a new freezer,” I called up, remembering the pride the old man had shone when he bought his first freezer, a real extravagance for him. He loved it so much, he used to have anxiety dreams about people stealing it.

“Oh!” BB cried. “That reminds me. Open it up, will you?” I did as asked, and as the frigid air hit me in the face, I saw that it was stacked to the top with assorted round objects wrapped in plastic bags or butcher paper.

“Look for a big one marked ‘R.B.,’” my brother called down. “Do you see it?”

I certainly did. It wasn’t a particularly large parcel, but it was weirdly shaped--round on one side and sort of bumpy on the other, all wrapped in freezer tape. It was awkward to handle and took whole minutes to wrestle it up out of there.

“What the hell is this?” I asked.

“Oh, that’s Rocky Balboa. One of mom’s cats,” he said.

I gave a squawk and lost control of the parcel. It fell on the floor and almost broke my toes. Above, I could hear my brother cackling.

“I’m kidding. It’s a roast. I thought I’d thaw it and cook it up. We can have it for dinner, slice it for sandwich meat. I know Blaze likes roast beef, right?” And up above I heard the excited clicking of the dog’s paws as he started dancing around at the sound of those two magic words.

It took some effort to heft the thing up to the top of the ladder and, with an awkward clean-and-jerk motion, get it up to the floor above, where BB and Blaze were waiting.

“You had me going there for a second,” I said. “I almost believed you when you said it was a cat.”

BB looked offended. “Please!” he cried. “As if Dad would ever let Mom stow a dead cat in his new freezer.” He paused a beat. “We always put the dead cats in the old freezer.”

And then there came the long pause during which I realized that BB wasn’t kidding.

I went back down the ladder and peered around before I noticed it. There, in the furthest corner of the cellar, just beyond the faint glow of the overhead lights, was Dad’s original pride and joy, his first freezer (how did he get that down here too?).

Well, of course I had to have a look. Now BB sounded alarmed. Or annoyed. Or both. “I was kidding!” he cried, too quickly and shrilly. I waded through a curtain of cobwebs, flashlight bobbing on the scuffed surface of the old freezer which, after the briefest hesitation, I opened.

In years past, whenever my mother had reported the death of one of her beloved cats, especially if that death had occurred in winter, when the ground was too hard to dig, I had jokingly (and, upon reflection, insensitively) suggested she pop the bodies in the freezer until the spring thaw. I didn’t seriously believe that she would ever do that. But I was wrong.

“There’s a dead cat in here!” I cried.

Now, for the cat lovers among you (of which, I hasten to assure you, I am one. And so was my mother) I wish to point out that I didn’t open the freezer to see an actual kitty cat, frozen stiff, whiskers rigid, paws out straight, fur covered in frost. It wasn’t like that.

Instead, there was simply a plastic bag. Actually, it looked a lot like the roast I had just conveyed upstairs. It was wrapped in freezer tape. And it had a label on it. The label read “Sparky.” Sparky had died in January, living to the ripe age of 20 before his kidneys failed and my brother had him put to sleep. And then apparently tucked him away in the freezer.

“What. The. Fuck?!?” I shrilled.

“Oh shut up!” BB called back. “He died in the winter. You can’t dig a grave up here at that time of year! Not without dynamite!”

"But- but-" I sputtered.

“It’s the same with people, you know! You’ve had grandparents die in the winter and they had to go into cold storage til the ground thawed. It was good enough for them!”

I stood there in the dark with my mouth open. For one thing, I was pretty sure the funeral parlor down in town didn’t stick people in a 1970s model Kenmore chest freezer in their cellar. For another, it was the middle of June. What had my brother been waiting for? But I just couldn’t see the argument going anywhere useful. Besides, I was too distracted by what I found when I hefted Sparky out of the freezer: the cat had been laid to rest on top of a box of popsicles. This was too much for me. I lifted that out, intending to throw the box away.

And that’s when I found two more parcels wrapped in plastic and sealed with freezer tape.

“Smokey and Tigger are in here too, you know,” I said in a normal tone of voice. Already, I was desensitized to the surreal quality of this day.

There was a strangled cry of vulgarity from above, followed by a heavy thunk as BB tripped over the frozen roast, then there was some frantic scrabbling and extravagant grunting as my brother lowered himself down the ladder and made his way over to the freezer.

“The fuck there is. Dad buried them just before ohhhhhh, shit, there they are!” he said, now standing next to me. He looked aghast. As well he should. I couldn’t be certain as to the exact time of death, but I knew Smokey and Tigger died sometime in the frigid depths of late 2006, early 2007, well over two years prior to this increasingly odd interlude in the summer of 2009.

“Dad said he was going to bury them,” BB hissed. “I thought he did.”

“You mean you didn’t notice them when you dropped the popsicles in on top?” I asked.

But BB didn’t seem to be hearing me anymore.

“Oh man. I’m going to be on CNN,” he said, in a scarily sober and sensible voice that sounded quite unlike his normal one. “One of those crazy hicks they haul out in a strait jacket.”

“Right. Because having just one dead cat in your freezer is okay. But three, well, that’s really crazy.”

BB was in a place beyond my reach now.

“They’ll probably use tear-gas. Afterwards, they’ll bring cameras in and see the stacks of food and the guns everywhere and I’ll be that nutjob hoarder who lives in his dead parents house with their dead cats in the freezer. I’m a fucking Alfred Hitchcock movie waiting to happen!”

“Okay, okay, don’t hurt yourself,” I said. “You’re on your own with the nutjob part, but we can fix this.” I reached into the freezer. “Here, grab a cat.”

I don’t know what Blaze made of the spectacle that followed, watching two grown men pulling heavy plastic bags out of a hole in the floor and hauling them (with, I might add, a certain dignity and solemnity) out to the pickup, then running around, frantically looking for shovels, but he commendably kept his silence. I think he was happy just to be included, since we popped him in the cab with us and drove straight for the hill. He didn’t run off when I unleashed him this time, but followed us to the secret glade. When we got busy with the shovels, he even pitched in, digging a little with his forepaws.

We worked with a will, BB digging furiously, as though he expected a CNN truck to roll into the clearing at any minute. But after a while, we had everyone, you know, settled in. I found a few nice rocks to roll on top of the mounds. Then we stood there in the woods, listening to the wind, the chittering of the birds, drinking in the sudden, unexpected peace of the moment.

Having attended a couple of the ceremonies on this spot, I remembered it was customary for us to say a few words. Blaze seemed to think it was proper too. He came over and sat next to us, looking up at us expectantly.

BB spoke up. "Well, Smokey was a pretty crazy cat. She lived under the bed, but she liked Mom pretty well. Tigger was a great mouser, and he sure could climb trees. Sorry you guys were in cold storage for so long. The old man never got around to planting you, and then he went off and died with Mom and never got around to it. Sparky was a good cat. He was Tigger’s littermate and after Mom and Dad died, he always used to follow me around the house. Geez, I hated putting you down. You—"

BB went silent then. It had been quite a speech for him anyway, and I figured he was getting emotional, so I didn’t interrupt. But after a moment, I hazarded a glance at my brother, thinking he might be a little choked up about things, and not just the three cats we’d laid to rest. I was wondering what I might say to cheer him.

But BB wasn’t crying. He was scowling at the graves in front of us.

All four of them.

“What the fuck,” he said quietly. “Did we just bury the roast, too?”

And we had, of course. But you know what? By then we’d pretty much lost our appetite.

***

“Well, at least Blaze will already have some roast beef waiting for him on his way to the happy hunting ground,” BB said philosophically. Then, despite himself, he started laughing. Which, incidentally, is one of my Big Brother's radiant virtues: the ability to find humor in the most unlikely places. Which is probably why I called him in the first place. Suddenly I was laughing too, the first time I’ve been able to do it in almost two weeks. But it felt right. So did BB’s suggestion to bury my dog on the hill where he enjoyed that special and all-too-brief summer.

And no disrespect to the family cats who rest on our hill, but Blaze won’t be with them (or the roast). He’ll be up on that sun-dappled rise.

With the good dogs.

Blaze of Glory

2011-06-02T12:58:00.002-04:00

You know, I never meant to be away this long, and I certainly didn’t mean for my first post in months to be such a painful one to write, but it can’t be helped.

You see, Blaze died last night.

I wish there was a better way to tell you this, to ease you into the awful moment. Nearly everyone who has ever been a friend of the blog was a devoted admirer of my dog. And with good reason, if you check any of the links in the sidebar about him.

It all happened very quickly. I came home from work last night to find out Blaze had been throwing up a little. He’s a dog, of course, and barf-production is part of the job description. Plus he has always been prone to springtime allergies, which also leads down the path to vom, so his being sick was in no way unusual.

As he came to the door to greet me, it did seem to me he was walking a little slowly. I chalked it up to some arthritis issues he’d developed over the winter. We never did know Blaze’s true age, but he had to be at least 10. Most days, he was his usual manic self and once in awhile he’d have an off day and totter around for a bit. This too was par for the course.

He laid around the living room with the kids for a little while last night. The Brownie spent time with him, stroking his head while he wagged his tail. The Éclair put some food in his bowl and brought it over to him. “Blazey’s tired,” she said. But Blaze didn’t want to eat. He got up, walked slowly over to me and nudged his head under my hand. I was in the middle of something and gave him a perfunctory pat. Then he went to Thomas’ room, where we put his kennel and dog bed, and laid down, keeping Thomas company while my son did his homework. After putting the Éclair to bed, I went to check on the guys a short while later. Blaze seemed to be sleeping peacefully. But in fact, he was already gone.

Thomas was beside himself--he’d been in the room the whole time and hadn’t heard or seen any signs of a problem. Screaming and crying, he begged me to help him get Blaze out of his kennel. Things got a little blurry after that, a jumble of images. Her Lovely Self is holding a door for us, her face streaming with tears. The Brownie is standing in the hall, head turned, unable even to look at her dog. Next thing I know, I’m speeding down the highway to the veterinary ER, Thomas in back holding Blaze. But we both know it’s too late.

It turned out Blaze had some kind of fluidic cyst near his heart, a defect he was probably born with, and which never gave him any trouble. Until it ruptured last night, and the excess fluid pressed on his heart, stopping it with crushing swiftness.

“Even if you’d brought him in earlier, there was probably nothing we could have done,” the vet on call told Thomas kindly. I wasn’t so sure about that--all I could think was why didn’t I pay closer attention to my dog? I would have seen something was wrong. I could have saved him--but I kept my mouth shut. I have never seen Thomas in such a state. But I wasn't surprised. Twelve is a hard age to lose your dog. He was beyond hysterical, howling like a dog himself. But it was a busy night at the ER and there was nothing more to be done and soon it was time to say our goodbyes.

Thomas mastered himself, wiped his eyes on his sleeve, put a hand on Blaze’s cold head. “Sorry I lost my shit, Blaze,” he said, a little breathless. Then he drew a deep breath and took his hand away, some kind of realization dawning. “He’s not there anymore, is he, Dad?” he asked. “The real Blaze is somewhere better, right?”

I was stunned to discover that I couldn’t speak. I had no words. All I could do was nod. And then I lost my shit. I cried for Blaze harder than I have cried for any pet, harder than I have cried for quite a few humans, to be honest. I don’t know what that says about me. A good thing, I hope. When a dog loves you, he loves you entirely, nothing is withheld. His love is undaunted by pettiness, by emotional baggage, by anything. So I guess it’s only right to repay that love with copious, uncontrollable grief, nothing held back.

And still I have no words, none that seem remotely adequate to express our sorrow. And stark surprise. Blaze didn’t die as I sometimes imagined he might--he didn’t fall defending his children from a mean dog, or protecting us from a home invader. He didn’t die chasing a rabbit into the street, or in any one of a number of moments of foolishness of which he was all too capable.

In the end, he went quietly, asleep on his bed, not in a sterile office after a long decline, but in a place of warmth and good smells and family and love. And if anyone deserved what grace or peace such an end might give you, Blaze surely did.

But he left too suddenly for me to say a proper goodbye. And to thank him.

For his unflagging enthusiasm in everything but baths and shots. For his rock-steadiness in what has been too many years of upheaval and change. For his unceasing devotion and attention to my children. And not least for his ever-ready willingness to go along with me in indulging whatever stupid idea I ever got into my head.

He was my companion, good and true, through many adventures--and many more misadventures. And he was that very best kind of friend, the kind who stands by you even when he knows you’re wrong. Sometimes even when he was the one you wronged.

Hopefully, though, we gave Blaze more rights than wrongs. In 2003, he was an abandoned stray doomed to a slow death, staked out in an empty yard. We lifted him out of that bad story, and wrote him a new one, one where he was the hero, valiant and loyal and smart and even a little handsome. For eight years, we loved him as well as we knew how, and counted ourselves lucky to have him. He was ours. And we were his, utterly and completely. I hope he knew that. I think he did.

Goodbye, Blaze. You were, first, last, always, a good dog.

In Which I Stand Naked (well, semi-clothed) Before You...

2010-12-09T23:19:00.001-05:00

Well, that was quick, wasn’t it?

Seems like it was October just a minute ago and we were celebrating first Art Lad’s 12th birthday and then Halloween (although it’s a toss-up as to which event was scarier. I mean, my son is 12. Twelve! How did that happen?).

Now here I am, closer to Christmas than Halloween, sitting snowed in at an extended-stay hotel full of consultants and salesmen, and two guys I’m not sure about, but who might be drug dealers. And me, 16 days into my new job.

Which is going well, thanks for asking. There’s a lot to learn, a whole production process to figure out, many system passwords to juggle (and, for the most part, forget). I’m busy, but I’m happy. Just need to find a house so I can bring my family here to live and the picture will be complete.

And I have much to tell you, but for the moment, this will have to serve as a postcard confirming that I’m alive and well.

But I hate to send you out the door empty-handed, so instead I will direct you to a little piece of writing I did. I was of two minds--okay, three--to tell you about this, but the story wouldn’t have existed without this blog, so you deserve to know.

Some months ago, a long-time reader of the blog reached out to me to see if I wanted to write something for a new magazine he was in charge of. Kevin and I had traded emails a few years back--he's a magazine man himself and it’s always nice when such folks drop by to talk a little shop. But now he had an assignment to offer me, and as someone who remembered well what unemployment felt like, it was a hard thing to turn down paying work. More importantly, I liked the sound of the magazine he was working on, and it was a chance to write an essay about my life as a Dad, something I seldom get to do outside of the confines of the blog, so I jumped at it.

The story I wrote began as a couple of sentences of a post I had once tried to write for the blog, but never quite got around to fleshing out, I don’t know why. That’s how it is sometimes. You head out the door with a specific destination in mind, but you’re not quite sure which road will take you there. So I put those first few sentences away. But when I revisited that brief starting point, I realized I now knew the route, and writing the whole thing took only a few days.

The story appears in this magazine, which just hit the stands and which I’m told you can find on the rack at Borders and Barnes and Noble, although I haven’t seen a copy yet. Have a look at the Web site, though, and see if you can find an excerpt of the story I wrote. I bet it will take you, oh, about this long.

I was of three minds to mention this because one, Kevin is no longer the editor of the magazine. That’s also how it is sometimes. Editors come and go, and everyone has his reasons for staying or leaving. But even though I now don’t know anyone involved in the magazine, I figured that was no reason to keep silent. Kevin did good work while he was there, and he deserves as wide an audience as possible to see his efforts.

Two, I was hesitant to mention this because I don’t like making anyone feel that they have to go out and buy something in order to read what I wrote. But you’re big people and can make up your own minds about that. And if you want free stories, well, there are still plenty here.

Third, I’m also featured in the magazine’s contributor page which, for the first time in print, reveals my authorship of the blog. Of course, anyone who has read this thing in the past three years can figure out who I am fairly quickly, but the idea of having full disclosure on the printed page seems weird, almost contradictory to the spirit in which this place was launched. Also, it makes me feel oddly undressed before you. And trust me, the last thing anyone wants is to see me walking around in my underwear.

But what the hell. We’re all friends here. And anyway, you might like the story.

So enjoy. And try not to hold it against me that I’ve been gone so long. I’ll be back soon.

Yours,
From Somewhere on the Masthead

An October Moment...

2010-10-29T01:01:00.000-04:00

October 14, 1992

I don’t care how rational and level-headed you are, once you get a crazy thought in your head, it’s hard to keep it to yourself. So it was only a matter of time before Tammy shared with her best friend at work her growing concern that she, or possibly her apartment, or possibly both, were possessed. The voices, the smells, the disappearing objects—heck, even the vomiting of blood that everyone attributed to the ulcer that hospitalized her—it all pointed in her mind to this one crazy idea.

I think if she’d been sleeping better, had not been so loopy on whatever medication the doctors had given her, Tammy might have thought it through a bit more. Or might at least have remembered that her work pal, while a genuinely sweet person, also had a big mouth. So it was that by the time Tam returned to work half-days, everyone in our office knew Tammy’s secret. Most folks did what most folks do, chalked it up to confusion and fatigue and illness and let it go. But more than a few had a lot of fun at her expense.

“So I hear your apartment is the Amityville Horror now,” brayed Z, our boss. And then he laughed his terrible “Hyuh-hyuh-hyuhhhhh” laugh. “Should we call a priest and get an exorcism going? Or will that work, since you’re Jewish? Hyuh-hyuhhhhh!”

Still others were overly fascinated, trying to pump Tammy for specifics, which she had been silent about. She had really only gotten as far as telling her friend that she was seeing and hearing and smelling strange things in her apartment. She hadn’t gone into the details of what she’d seen or heard or smelled. Her big-mouthed friend hadn’t given her the chance before she told Tammy she needed to go back to the doctor and get tests, that maybe this was some multi-sensory side effect of her medication, or the result of blood loss to her brain from when she passed out. Oh, and then she blabbed to everyone else that Tammy was under the delusion that she was in the grip of demonic possession.

“I’m not saying another word about it!” she said shrilly to me, late her first morning back to work, when I poked my head into her office during a quiet moment. “I’m not telling anyone anything else!”

“Okay,” I said, turning to go. “But I just wanted to apologize.”

She looked sharply at me. “For what?”

“For not asking you about the old lady. The one I saw in your living room when I stopped by that day.”

Weak though she was, Tam’s grip was viselike when she caught my sleeve. “You saw her!”

I nodded. “Smelled her too.” Tam motioned for me to kick her door shut, and we had a little catch-up.

---

It was a little after 12 when I arrived at Tam’s apartment, a second-floor walk-up over a hairdresser’s establishment. I rang the bell and, after a long moment, she buzzed me in. I walked up the stairs to her apartment door on the second floor.

“It’s open,” a voice called from deep within her apartment. So I opened the door.

My eyes immediately began watering as I was hit by an amazingly strong perfume-y smell. It smelled like Tammy had broken a gallon jug of lilac toilet water just inside her front door. Tammy’s apartment door opened on a main room that contained a few bookshelves, a TV, and a sofa, sitting directly across the room, facing the door. Next to the sofa was the open doorway to the kitchen. And behind that sofa, I could see someone. Not clearly—my eyes really were streaming, I’ve always been ridiculously sensitive to fragrance—but I could definitely make out a woman in a dress, one hand held up in a kind of tentative wave. As my eyes began to clear, I realized pretty quickly that this wasn’t my ailing workmate Tammy, but another woman altogether, an older woman, it seemed. I couldn’t see her face, but I could see that she had white hair, not the long black hair my friend had. I pulled off my glasses and mopped my eyes on my sleeve.

“Hi,” I spluttered, still choking on the lilac fumes. “Are you—?”

I was about to ask the old woman if she was a relative, possibly Tammy’s mother or grandmother or something. But when I looked up, I noticed a funny thing about the woman I was addressing.

She was gone.

I set the container of soup down on the floor, put my glasses back on, blinked, looked around, turned a full circle to see where the old lady went. Not a sign.

“Hello?” I whispered tentatively. Nothing. Feeling a little foolish, I stepped over to the couch and peered behind it to make sure the old woman hadn’t ducked down behind the furniture. She hadn’t. I was completely alone in that room, except for the overwhelming scent of lilacs, although now I realized that even that was dissipating.

I looked around furtively again, in the manner of one afraid of being caught doing something childish. Tam was a practical, level-headed sort—what would she have made of me if she saw me now? All the same, I was just 23, still a kid, and not so far removed from the weirdness of my childhood in New Jersey. Whatever compass needle that had become attuned to things unseen when I was a teenager was still spinning somewhere in my head. I took a deep breath and extended my hand into the empty air behind the couch, tensed in the manner of one expecting to dip his hand into ice water.

Nothing happened.

I relaxed after a moment, confused, then waved my hand around some more, feeling for something, but not finding it. Beginning to doubt what I’d just seen (although my eyes were still smarting a little from the lilac smell) I went back, grabbed the soup, set it on the counter in the kitchen, then made my way down the hall to a closed door I assumed was Tammy’s room.

I tapped on the door. Tammy screamed in surprise. “Who’s there?” she yelled.

“It’s MM!” I answered. “Who were you expecting?”

Tammy got up and opened the door.

“Are you okay?” I asked, wiping my eyes one more time to clear them. Tammy gave me a funny look before she turned and shuffled back to her bed.

“Sure!” she said, in a forced way that suggested she was anything but. “Sure. I’m just not sleeping well. Must be a side effect of the meds they’ve given me.”

“Well, are you hungry? I can find my way around the kitchen and find a bowl for the soup I brought,” I offered, and began stepping out the door.

Tammy sat up again. “O-okay. But, do you mind if I eat in here?” she asked, her face showing the slightest pink as she blushed. “I don’t usually entertain in my bedroom, but I’d rather—well, I’m just so tired--"

“Sure,” I said, as I backed into the hall and turned to head back toward the kitchen. “I’ll see if I can find a tray or—" As I turned fully down the hall, I saw a head peeking around the corner at the far end, near the kitchen. But the moment I was turned fully to face it, the head ducked away.

“What?!?” Tam asked as I hopped back into the room.

Okay, now you’re just freaking her out. Get a grip! I thought. “Never mind,” I said. “Be right back.”

I walked, quietly, gingerly, almost on tip-toe, down the hall, bracing myself to see something around the corner. Again, nothing and no one was in sight. I thought I could smell the lilacs again, but I may have been kidding myself. I peered around into the galley kitchen. The soup was sitting there where I’d left it, in a Styrofoam container on the counter. Right next to a large bowl. Was that bowl there before? I wondered.

I looked around, now feeling somewhat peeved, more at myself than anything else. I had forgotten some of the tips I’d learned as a teenager from Ruth, the daughter of the Witch Man, my name for the local psychic/crazy guy who had freaked me out when I went looking for him one summer to try and get to the bottom of the weird shit that had been going on at my own house. He had been of no help in the end, but Ruth turned out to be awesome. She had been a font of all manner of tips and strategies for dealing with this stuff. And one of her tips had been Don’t be afraid to talk to them. As a corollary to this, she probably should have added Don’t be afraid to feel stupid when you do it either because I did feel stupid, especially with my sensible, level-headed colleague just down the hall.

Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

“Anyone there?” I asked, then kicked myself. Ruth had often said you shouldn’t ask a question unless you want to get an answer, and in this situation, that answer was likely to get me suffocating on that overwhelming lilac smell again. I tried a different tack. “It’s okay,” I said. “I’m just a friend bringing some food.” Oddly, just talking like this almost immediately put me at ease, made me feel less stupid. I might have been talking to my plants, or a dog, or just muttering to myself. Okay, yes, that still felt stupid, but on another level, it felt right, too.

I jabbered on. “Just gonna heat this soup up—thanks if you put the bowl out, although I really don’t know if you did or not—and bring it to her. She needs to keep up her strength and get her rest and I’m running out of things to say. Please don’t jump out at me as I carry this hot bowl of soup on this tray down the hall. I like to hum “Pomp and Circumstance” when I carry hot liquids. I don’t know why, it’s just my way. Dahhh dah-dah-dah dahhhhh-duhhhh, dahhh dah-dah-dah duhhhhh-duhhhhh...”

---

“Oh, my God!” Tammy cried as I related this (even, God help me, humming "Pomp and Circumstance") in her office. “Why didn’t you say something? I thought I was going crazy!”

“Well,” I said, “you’re no crazier than me, if that’s any comfort.”

“You really saw her?” she asked, practically giddy with relief. “I’ve been freaked out for days. It’s like a horror movie. I’m gone for a week and come back and my apartment is possessed! I told my boyfriend—he said he could smell the perfume, but I think he was humoring me because then he wanted me to call the doctor and see if I had brain damage or something. Oh my God! I’m always hearing someone puttering around out there in the living room and I’m too scared even to go to the bathroom. This is just not something that really happens, you know? What am I going to do, MM? Is Z right? Am I going to have to call a priest? I’m Jewish! I don’t think my mother’s rabbi would go in for that sort of thing. I’m totally talking a lot, aren’t I? You really saw her?”

“Saw her, smelled her, the works,” I said. “It’s not something I talk about much, but I have a little experience with this stuff. I mean, not exactly like this. It’s weird that there’s no cold spot. That’s usually how I know—well, never mind. But I don’t think your apartment is possessed. Not the way you think it is. So nothing like this happened before you were sick?”

Tam shook her head. “Nothing like this has ever happened to me in my life! First night by myself and I could smell that lilac stuff everywhere. Then in the morning, I went to the kitchen to get some water and heard someone say, ‘Well, hello!’ Like they were right there in the living room. I almost called the cops until I saw no one was there! I really thought I was losing my marbles. I had my boyfriend sleep out there until he got fed up and left.” She grabbed my sleeve again. “You really saw her.” It wasn’t a question, but a hopeful statement of confirmation.

“Oh yeah,” I said, nodding. “And it’s not the devil. You don’t need an exorcism, I don’t think.” I paused a minute, wondering how much of a discussion the level-headed Tammy was willing to entertain on this subject. “Have you ever gotten a good look at her? I mean, does she seem familiar to you?”

Tam just stared blankly. “I don’t understand. I told you nothing like this has ever happened to me before. I don’t believe in this stuff! So no, I’ve never seen or heard anything—"

“No, no,” I said, a bit sheepishly. “I meant, did she remind you of anyone you’ve ever known in your life, like a grandmother or—"

Tam was shaking her head. “No, no, no. My grandmothers both died before I was born,” she said, a little irritably now. “You’re not trying to tell me some dead grandmother came back from the grave to take care of me, are you? Because that is just crazy!”

“Tam, having some strange old lady stinking up your living room with lilac perfume is crazy too, but it’s happening, right? So let’s just try to embrace this for a minute.”

“Ok. Sorry. No, I guess I get what you’re asking. She doesn’t seem familiar. At all.”

I thought about this. “Maybe...maybe she latched onto you at the hospital. I had a friend, Ruth, who used to say that sometimes people—you know, spirits—get confused. They don’t quite get that they’re dead. I’ve read cases where sometimes they see a person who reminds them of someone they knew and they latch onto them. Maybe she thinks you’re her daughter or granddaughter or something—"

Tammy threw her hands up. “Great! So I AM possessed!” I could sense that I was fast exhausting my coworker’s patience.

“No! Believe me, that’s a whole other thing. And if that were the case, I think you’d know it. I don’t think you’d have spent one night in your place, no matter how sick you felt. Look...you said you could hear her talking. Maybe you should try talking back.”

“What? No! I should go back there tonight and talk to thin air and tell her she’s in the wrong apartment and is freaking me out and needs to beat it? Are you serious?” And she gave me a guarded look that I had seen once or twice, the look I got when somebody began to wonder if maybe I was the one who wasn’t getting so much blood to his brain. The look that made me stay quiet about this stuff for years—until I met all of you, in fact.

“Well, I’d be a little nicer than that, but basically, yes,” I said, perhaps a bit stiffly. Then I left pretty quickly.

The next day, Tammy was back at work. She looked better, more rested anyway. But when she poked her head into my cubicle, she had that guarded look about her. “I just wanted to say thanks. I know you’re trying to help me, but I think maybe we’re both a little crazy, and I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

“Okay,” I said. And that was that. I felt a little sad, closed off, I guess. And I itched to know what happened, but could never bring myself to ask her. I really liked and respected Tammy, and I wanted us to get along and work well together, so I shoved the whole thing aside.

Within a few months, I left that job anyway, and lost touch with Tammy, so it became a moot point. Sure, I sometimes wondered how she was doing, if she ever resolved the situation with her unwanted roommate, but I figured I’d never find out.

And then, this past spring, out of nowhere, completely unlooked for, this message popped into my work email inbox:

Dear MM,

I just saw the press release—a few months old—about your new job as editor-in-chief. Congratulations! I was so happy to find you—I’ve been out of magazines for years, but I think of you often and am so glad to see you’re doing well.

[redacted boring paragraphs about life, love, marriage, moving around, finding new careers, etc.]

While I would love to hear from you and catch up on everything, I feel as though I should take a few lines now to thank you for your advice way back when I was sick, and had that little “problem” I refused to talk about. It really weirded me out, and I was mortified that people at work were talking about it. But you were really trying to help me and I shut you down and I’m sorry about that.

So...I thought you’d like to know that I really did take your advice and started talking to my unexpected "friend." It took a long time, but I did it. I mean, we never had a conversation or anything. I just talked out loud in the apartment and acknowledged that "Grammy"—that’s what I started calling her—was there. All the weird stuff stopped mostly (things stopped disappearing, anyway, which was a relief because that was the thing that bothered me the most) and it actually became kind of nice to have her around, if that makes sense.

I lived in that apartment for a long time, but when I was getting ready to get married, and preparing to move out of that place, one of my bridesmaids came over to help pack. She'd never been to my place before. She was like you—she’d grown up in an old house where all sorts of stuff happened—and she knew right away that Grammy was lurking around. She’s really into parapsychology and she called up a friend whose mother is a psychic and she insisted on coming over. I hadn’t talked to anyone about this in years—and never told anyone about our conversation.

So, the psychic came in and immediately said that whoever was in my apartment had been sick in the hospital for a long time, years and years ago, and just stayed there. When she saw me (when I was in the hospital), I reminded her of her daughter and she followed me home. I got chills down my spine when she said this. Do you remember how you said pretty much the same thing?!?

Anyway, the psychic did a “cleansing” right there in my living room. Can you picture me sitting in my apartment with lit candles (lilac scented candles!) while this psychic lady talked to my little “problem”? It sounds hokey—the whole guiding a lost spirit toward the light—but it was kind of cool. Afterward, the psychic said that Grammy had moved on, and I should feel blessed that I helped her do that.

Well, I just thought you should know. Please call or write when you have a chance (but I’ll understand if you don’t. I must sound crazy to you now, but who cares?) I’d love to catch up.

PS: You should feel blessed too.

I do, Tammy. I really do.

Yours,
From Somewhere on the Masthead

An October Moment...

2010-10-27T23:27:00.000-04:00

October 2, 1992

I’ll call her Tammy. She was a brilliant young woman who worked for a trade magazine in the Chicago area. Tammy was a very even-keeled, deeply practical and rational woman. Not the sort of person given to flights of fancy, but level-headed, the sort of person who is very good at the sort of work a trade magazine demands.

She was also a kind person, particularly to her coworkers, most especially to new ones, who she took under her wing, showing them the ropes with unfailing patience. She especially helped her colleagues, new and old, when it came to coping with the innate craziness of the boss, a fellow we’ll call Z. Suffice it to say, Z had a tendency to create high levels of stress in the office. He had this way of hounding his editors, of making them feel that their work—and their general existence—were so far below par as to warrant an emotional response from him that was somewhere on the underside of contempt.

Tammy had done an admirable job putting up with Z. All told, she had worked for him for going on five years, and seemed more or less immune to his abuse, which he ladled on her at least as often as he dumped on everyone else. Tammy had some resistance to him because she was already a pretty harsh critic of her own work, which was needless, of course. But Tammy was a bit of a perfectionist, tended to set a very high personal standard, and was consequently merciless with herself. That probably made Z’s rants and criticisms sound like just another echo in an already loud chorus.

So it was something of a shock to her coworkers late that summer, when Tam suffered a rather sudden and precipitous decline. First, she started having terrible stomach pains. Her friends and family and coworkers had begged her to see a doctor, but she was getting ready to travel for the magazine and wanted to get ahead of her deadlines a little. If anything, she was pushing herself even harder.

So it was that one day, while eating lunch in the atrium of her office building, Tammy collapsed. Her coworkers managed to revive her, but almost as soon as she was sitting upright, Tam began vomiting blood, so someone called an ambulance and by the time the EMT squad arrived and loaded her onto a stretcher, she was white as a sheet—well, the parts of her that weren’t covered in blood, anyway. The doctors told her she had a perforated ulcer, and was bleeding directly into her digestive tract. Although, it must be said, they were a bit tentative about the diagnosis, especially since she'd had no previous symptoms or signs of trouble before the most dramatic ones manifested themselves.

Tam was in the hospital for a week before she went home, where she was told to rest and avoid strenuous or stressful activity for another two weeks. At her insistence, her parents took her to her apartment, which was just outside the city of Chicago, in the suburb known as Park Ridge. Tammy lived alone, but she insisted on going there, even though her parents wanted her to come home with them. “I really need some peace and quiet,” she had told a friend over the phone. “Staying with my parents would have killed me.”

Having grown up in Chicagoland, Tammy had a lot of friends as well as coworkers who were only too willing to help her. Several of them took turns bringing her meals or running errands for her. Tammy was glad to see them, and often became anxious as they were getting ready to leave. This seemed quite out of character for her. Tammy liked her own space—even her longtime boyfriend kept his own apartment, more at Tammy’s preference than his own.

Toward the end of Tammy’s first week home, it fell to one young coworker, the rookie of the team, to bring her some soup, as well as a few movie rentals from the local Blockbuster. This fellow liked Tammy, but didn’t honestly know her all that well, so he was intrigued to visit her in her apartment and get some sense of what she was like when she wasn’t at work. Before he left to see her, the young editor was taken aside by one of Tammy’s best friends. “Don’t just drop stuff off and go. Stay with her a little bit. Maybe eat lunch with her. She doesn’t seem like herself and the more people spend time with her, the better,” she said.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Well, she just seems jumpy. And she’s definitely not getting much rest. She’s got dark circles under her eyes and she just seems...not herself. Stay with her a bit. Tell her one of your goofy stories,” she suggested. The young editor nodded in understanding. In his short time on staff, he had unaccountably gained a reputation for relating oddball anecdotes about his life and family, which Tammy in particular seemed to enjoy.

Thus it was, a little after 12, that the young coworker arrived at Tam’s apartment, a second-floor walk-up over a hairdresser’s establishment. He rang the bell. Tammy heard it and buzzed him in from the intercom in her bedroom. Ever since her first night alone back at home, she hardly ever left her room. In the distance, she heard the footsteps as he walked up the stairs to her apartment door on the second floor.

“It’s open,” she called from deep within her apartment. She heard him open the front door. Then all was quiet. Too quiet. And for too long.

Suddenly, there was a soft tapping on the door. She screamed in surprise. “Who’s there?” she yelled.

“It’s MM!” he answered. “Who were you expecting?”

Tammy got up and opened the door.

“Are you okay?” he asked, as he removed his glasses and wiped his eyes. Had he been crying? She decided she was too tired to ask and turned and shuffled back to her bed.

“Sure!” she said, in a forced way that suggested she was anything but. “Sure. I’m just not sleeping well. Must be a side effect of the meds they’ve given me.”

“Well, are you hungry? I can find my way around the kitchen and find a bowl for the soup I brought,” he offered, and began stepping out the door.

Tammy sat up again. “O-okay. But, do you mind if I eat in here?” she asked, her face showing the slightest pink as she blushed. “I don’t usually entertain in my bedroom, but I’d rather—well, I’m just so tired--"

“Sure,” he said, as he backed into the hall and turned to head back toward the kitchen. “I’ll see if I can find a tray or—“ As he turned fully down the hall, he froze, then turned and stepped back into the room.

“What?!?” she asked.

The young editor, never known to be at a loss for words, seemed now to be wrestling with something, trying to find the right thing to say, or perhaps wondering if he should say it at all. In the end, he just said, “Never mind. Be right back.” Good as his word, he returned shortly with Tam’s lunch and they had an amiable, if somewhat subdued meal together. Both of them seemed to have a question for the other, but neither one asked it.

Later, after her coworker had left, Tammy wished she had asked him her question. Asked him why he had lingered so long in the main part of her apartment. Asked him why he was wiping his eyes. Asked him about the smell. Asked him if he had seen or heard anything...odd.

Tammy certainly had. Ever since she’d returned home, she knew something was wrong. In fact, she thought she might be going crazy. She heard voices in her living room. Objects—dishes, jewelry, hairbrushes—had disappeared and mysteriously turned up in different places throughout the apartment.

She had tentatively confided in her boyfriend about this, a big mistake. He had commented on the smell, and so she told him about the other things. He even agreed to sleep out in the living room. But after one night of that he was gone. He told her that morning, in a somewhat shaky voice, that maybe it would be a good idea for Tammy to call the doctor and see if she had suffered brain damage from blood loss or something. That would explain all the other stuff.

But Tammy, rational and level-headed though she might be, thought she already knew what the problem was.

She was possessed...

An October Moment...

2010-10-12T13:48:00.003-04:00

Oh, I had such plans for October, and October Moments (and if you're new to the campfire, here's a little background).

This was finally going to be the year that I'd tell the saga of what happened when my Big Brother used the Ouija board in our old haunted farmhouse, of the strange and increasingly disturbing events that followed, of the Witch Man and his daughter, of the Demonologist and his wife.

And maybe by writing that modestly tantalizing paragraph, I'll feel sufficiently guilty (or in fear of my life. I know many of you are frustrated that I have yet to get off my ass and tell this one) to write the thing.

But October has been a busy month, and it's not getting easier. We finally sold the Magazine Mansion, but will be spending the latter half of the month packing and moving all of our crap out of state, then dealing with the bureaucratic beast that is known as Closing.

Oh, and also: I quit my job.

That's a multi-post event in itself, and I swear I'll tell it soon, but suffice it to say I'm at the tail end of my two-week notice period, and I have yet to find a place to live at my new job (editing another magazine, although one very different), never mind figuring out which school to send the kids to, nor all the other details that come with uprooting your family once more and heading off into the great unknown.

So for now, let's just say I have never forgotten the story about the ouija board and it's an October Moment I have every intention of telling.

But for today, this will have to suffice:

Through the Glass

When she was little, the Brownie often demonstrated a sensitivity to—and a more or less total comfort level with—things that most people, children and grown-ups alike, could not see. I’ve recounted a couple of her experiences in previous October Moments, but those moments don’t occur so much any more. Now that she’s pushing 10, she’s morphed into this practical, capable, unsettlingly mature young woman. And while I admire her poise and grace and general levelheadedness (all qualities I lack), I feel at a distance from her. I miss the fanciful little girl who believed utterly in “sugar-plump” fairies, and thought nothing of seeing dead people hanging around on a street corner, nor of having backyard conversations with her great-grandfather, already 30 some years in his grave.

Her little sister, the Éclair, has her own flights of fancy, of course, but aside from a brief period in infancy, when she sometimes appeared to be smiling and cooing at empty hallways and corners, my youngest child seems to have adopted her big sister’s practical, grounded sense of confidence and capability.

So it was something of a surprise this past summer when, at a family reunion just outside of Chicago, the Éclair came tearing down a hallway with a pale face I’d never seen on her before. She didn’t look confident or capable. She looked spooked.

The reunion was held in a partially refurbished old mill, all crumbling stonework and overgrown shrubbery. The mill was one of the oldest buildings for miles around, and had a colorful history. As a working mill, it had closed down in the early 1900s. In the 20s, during Prohibition, it had been a convenient hiding place for illegal liquor and the occasional gangster on the lam. By the end of World War II, it was a locally notorious brothel. For the next few decades, it had been allowed to slide gently into decline, its various sheds and outbuildings slowly sliding down the high bank above the river.

Then a cousin on my wife’s side of the family bought it for a song about 10 years back and had just as slowly been building the place back up. The main building that had once housed the millworks—and several rooms where the mid-century ladies of the night had once plied their trade—were now almost fully restored. But there were still many empty rooms, devoid of heat or intact windows, or sometimes even a floor or wall. In the back, stone pathways and stairs led to precarious falls or balconies that no longer existed. It was not exactly a safe place to let children roam free, and we parents who had brought some along had taken great care to ensure the kids stayed largely in the main house (still massive, with dozens of rooms and stairs and echoing hallways). We had all been assured that the main building was perfectly safe, but here was my daughter, pounding down a hall, looking frightened.

I set down my plate and tried to intercept the Éclair, but she ran by as if she hadn’t even seen me, making a beeline for the front door, the only outdoor space approved as safe, where the Brownie and her cousins were hanging out. They had already explored the house to their satisfaction and were now taking their ease on the porch. In fact, the Brownie had been out there pretty much all day, coming in at only the briefest of intervals to restock on lemonade or cheese doodles.

Over the general hubbub of adults telling family stories and renewing old sibling rivalries, I couldn’t make out everything the Éclair was saying, but the Brownie was hunched over her solicitously. I edged closer. The Éclair had tears standing in her eyes and was gesticulating back behind her to the house.

“…scary lady took my bear. I need my bear!” was all I heard. It was then that I realized the Éclair was indeed not carrying her treasured pink bear, her constant companion, especially when she was at any gathering full of people she didn’t really know.

The Brownie didn’t seem interested in the disposition of the bear. “Where’s the scary lady? In that back room I told you to stay away from?”

The Éclair was silent, then nodded guiltily.

The Brownie stood up now, and she had The Look. This is not one of many Looks her mother has passed on, this is a Look unique to my older daughter. It’s a narrow-eyed, tight-lipped smile of a Look, a Look that says Ass Is About To Be Kicked, and God help you if you are between her leg and that ass. I promptly stepped backward and melted into a wall as the Brownie strode purposefully into the house, the Éclair trotting behind her.

Of course I followed them, sidling down hallways, ducking into alcoves. I couldn’t see my daughters, but I could hear them. Mostly, I could hear the Éclair, whining that she didn’t want to go, that could her big sister just go get the bear for her, please, please, please. The Brownie muttered back words I couldn’t hear, but once I did hear her say, “Elizabeth, you’re coming with me!” The Brownie never uses her sister’s real name unless she’s Very Serious. And it almost always induces obedience in the Eclair. How I wish that tricked worked for her mother and me.

I trailed them on and on, well past the few rooms I’d toured when I first arrived. On we walked, past empty parlors, vacant bedrooms, through a vast and austere ballroom. I ducked under a sheet of hanging plastic, marking the boundary between the mostly refurbished millhouse and the extended network of dilapidated connecting rooms and areas still undergoing restoration. It was a warm summer day, but this part of the complex felt distinctly damp and cold. And growing colder with every step.

Finally I came to a stop in a musty hallway. Broken tiles shifted under my feet. Behind me was a narrow staircase leading up. Off the stairs was an alcove leading to a storage closet and an old phone booth, the ancient hand-crank phone still mounted above the bench inside. To my left and right were two other doorways. I felt like I was in a video game—which route to take? I listened, hoping to hear either daughter, but all I heard was a distant chuckling of the river on the far side of the millworks. I shivered for a second, and it was that shivering that suddenly made me realize what might be going on.

Tentatively, in the half-embarrassed way of a middle-age guy employing a skill he hasn’t used in a long time, I put out my hand, and turned a complete circle in the hallway. It was already cold in this part of the house, but that was just the normal damp and cool of a moldering old stone building settled on a riverbank. Then my hand passed by the left-hand passage and I felt a completely different cold. Ice water mixed with electricity. The hairs on my arms and neck stood up straight. Cold spot, I thought. And I knew exactly which way my daughters went.

I poked my head into the next room, skin prickling, ears ringing, not sure what I was going to find. But there was nothing. It was just another room, a chamber of bare brick walls, glistening slightly with moisture. The window was long gone from this room and I could hear the river more clearly here. To my left, across a floor of more broken tiles and some dirt, I saw another opening—a doorframe missing its door, a tattered and stained flap of plastic wafting partially across the space, making a combined crackling and rasping noise that set my teeth on edge. Nervous now, I crept to the doorway. Just beyond it was another room, a ramshackle foyer leading out to one of the balconies that overlooked the riverbank. This room did have a door, with two stout planks nailed across it, because the balcony beyond it, I found out later, was not merely structurally unsound but entirely absent.

The Brownie and the Éclair were standing in front of it, their backs to me. The Éclair was clutching her big sister’s leg with one hand, while the other hand clasped her bear, a little dusty and cobwebby, as though it had been dragged across the dirty, tile-strewn floor. The Éclair had her face buried in the back of her stuffed animal, something she usually only does if her brother is viewing a scary TV program and she can’t bear to watch, but can’t quite bring herself to leave either.

The Brownie wasn’t averting her eyes. She appeared to be staring straight up at an oval window set in the wall next to the door. The window was cracked and dirty, but it had once been a fine thing of glasswork, all etched around the edges with fussy designs.

Then I saw something outside, something flit by the window—something shadowy and head-shaped—and I forgot all about the fussy edging.

I felt all the muscles in my hands and legs lock up, my lips clamped down across my chattering teeth. I was scared in that moment, and it wasn’t the mundane fear of a 40-something man with children to care for and bills to pay. It was fear shot through with excitement. It was the fear of a child. Well, someone had to be feeling childlike fear at this moment. My nine-year-old daughter certainly didn’t have any.

“Stop that,” she said, speaking to the window—and whatever was beyond it—in the imperious voice of playground authority. You’d have thought she was scolding a playmate who tried to cheat at hopscotch, not a shadowy something standing on a balcony that no longer existed. “Just stop it," she said. "It’s not funny."

And would you believe it? It did stop. Skin prickling, ears ringing, intense cold, it all melted as though someone had just opened a door to the outside and let a gust of summer air in.

“See?” the Brownie said, trying to get her sister to look up. “The scary lady’s gone. It’s not even really a lady, it was just—"

But I’ll never know what the lady really was or was not, because the moment she turned to talk to her sister, the Brownie saw me, cowering in the doorway. She gave me her Look for a moment, and in that moment I thought that maybe she was going to make me go away too. But then the look melted into her usual expression of amused disdain.

“Oh, hi Dad,” she said.

The Éclair did look up at this. “Daddy!” she said in an awed whisper. “The lady took my bear and Anna—“

“Shh,” the Brownie said, and the Éclair was instantly silent, a paranormal event all by itself. Then the Brownie picked the Éclair up and the pair of them nudged by me, back into the party.

I tried, I really did. I looked for quiet moments later that day to quiz my older daughter on what her sister had told her, what she herself saw, what she did, whether this is something she deals with all the time. But she rebuffed all attempts at conversation with the same maddening mixture of silence and offense, as if I were quizzing her about something intensely personal (as I suppose I was). Even the Éclair, who can sometimes be tricked into revealing sisterly secrets, was frustratingly circumspect. The most I ever got out of her was, “The scary lady took my bear. But Anna got it back. Because she is very scarier.” She repeated this last sentence with heartfelt emphasis, and beyond that she would not be drawn further. And why should she? It is the truth.

But it hurts a little to be on the outside of a mystery, a shadowy figure on the wrong side of the glass. I guess I just miss that fanciful little girl who thought nothing of sharing her unusual experiences with me. On the other hand, I am enjoying getting to know the woman she’s becoming.

Even if that woman is indeed very scarier.

Yours,
From Somewhere on the Masthead

In Which We Get A New Lease...

2010-08-26T11:57:00.000-04:00

For the first time since 1996, I have a landlord again.

It’s weird to be a renter once more, especially after so many years of home ownership. Of course, that’s what’s put us back on a lease again: With the Magazine Mansion still unsold, I’m in no position to buy another house. And even when the place does sell, Her Lovely Self and I will probably look long and hard before choosing another property. So an apartment made the best sense no matter how you looked at it.

Still, it is, as I say, weird. And I’m getting to that age where I begin to wonder what my kids must make of the Old Man. Did he let them down, losing his job and forcing them to move from a neighborhood they love to a strange city and a new school? Do they see this as a setback, especially in light of the fact that, since winter, we’ve been housesitting in a truly huge mansion that was awesome in all kinds of ways (except for the roaming attack dogs out on the grounds)? And now, Dad’s making them pack up again and move to a small three-bedroom apartment in some godforsaken suburban cookie-cutter nowhere?

Well, no. Apartment life is turning out to be a welcome novelty for them—after all, it’s not something they’ve ever experienced in their lives. And it must be said, Her Lovely Self found a very nice place in Suburban Cookie Cutter Nowheresville. For our reasonable rent, we’ve landed in a fairly new complex (it’s called The Village, and we’re in building #6, which pleases the Prisoner fan in me). The apartment is actually pretty spacious, when you consider that its square footage is just a little short of the footprint of the first house we ever owned. Plus new carpets, new fixtures, attached garage, and a nifty community pool that the Éclair believes is there for her private enjoyment (and who are we to contradict her?). And I don’t mind it that much myself. When the dryer failed to complete its eponymous function after the first load we tossed into it, it was the work of a phone call—and the work of some guy who wasn’t me—to fix it. I enjoy being mildly handy—I am my father’s son, after all—but it’s nice for the moment to have someone else muckle onto a heavy household appliance and make it work.

Indeed, there’s lots to be said for apartment-dwelling, which may explain why I did so much of it as a young person. I loved apartments when I was in my 20s, although I never lived in any one for more than a year, much to the despair of nearby friends who helped me move, and distant friends who were constantly scratching out addresses for me and writing new ones in. But it suited me. After my college years, I was a long time shaking off the migratory impulse that the life of a full-time student instills in you, the late-summer loading of hatchbacks and moving into dorm rooms, followed by the late-spring process in reverse and heading home.

When I finished graduate school in June of 1991, I walked out with both a diploma and a job in hand. The job didn’t start until July, so I had a few weeks to find a place to live. That was the beginning of my Apartment Era, an era that seemed very long in the living of it, but which lasted just five short years and included six apartments, each distinctive and cherished in my memory. And each equally awful and eccentric in its own way. Especially the four I rented as in my Single Guy years, which will always stand out for me as being particularly, astonishingly, dementedly distinctive and cherished and awful and eccentric.

The Olmsted

I had lived in dorms or rented rooms in houses throughout the college years, but this was my first real place of my own, a first-floor, one-bedroom flat in a massive old brick building on the very border between Park Ridge, Illinois and the city of Chicago in a little neighborhood called Edison Park. The building was called The Olmsted and it was on Olmsted Avenue, a lucky accident of mnemonics, since I was never likely to forget where I lived. No matter how drunk I got (which in those days was quite often), I could always slur to a cabbie “Olmsted on Olmsted!” and expect to find myself more or less on my doorstep (except for the time I found myself deposited in the lobby of the Homestead Hotel in Evanston, but never mind).

The building’s super—a cranky, thick-accented Polish guy straight out of Chicago Central Casting—made a big deal of how special this apartment was as he took me through it. He told me it had once been the home of the owner’s mother and that he had spared no expense in lavish appointments, especially in the kitchen, which included a massive refrigerator, huge multi-burner stove, and even a dishwasher. Which all sounds really impressive, until you actually see the kitchen and realize the appliance set dates from the late 1950s. The dishwasher—an old top-loading model that could have been in the Smithsonian—was rusted shut and didn’t work (although it gave off a constant aroma of decay and water left too long on the stove. Visitors speculated that a corpse—possibly of the mother herself—was hidden away in its porcelain-and-steel confines). The bathroom appeared to have the ceramic equivalent of mange: tiles were forever falling from the walls and ceiling—it was vital to keep the toilet lid down at all times, except when in use. Every humid shower softened the grout further and it fell in clumps—often with sharp bits of tile—whenever I washed. There were only three working electrical outlets in the whole place—that changed to two when the outlet behind the fridge burned out one morning in a spectacular flash of light and smoke. The super’s answer was to run a meager extension cord from the back of the fridge to the other working outlet in the kitchen. That Eisenhower-era fridge sucked a lot of juice through the little straw of that cord, which was often hot to the touch, but never actually managed to cause a fire.

I cringe to think how much of my paycheck I blew on that pit every month, but it was still superior to every dorm room I’d ever lived in. And it was spacious. Aside from my bedroom, I had a massive living room (made all the more so by dint of my having no furniture beyond an old sofa and a milk crate for a TV stand) and a capacious formal dining room, complete with pull-out buffet table. The kitchen was large enough to accommodate a little eat-in table, and the oven at least worked well. I used it to bake my first on-my-own Thanksgiving dinner (served to pals who made a 13-hour road trip to share it with me, there on the dining room buffet table).

That stove was also a valuable ally in my love life. One cold November Sunday, as I was sitting with my feet on the open oven door (the apartment had almost no heat to speak of—no wonder utilities were included in my $525 rent), reading a book, the phone rang, and it was Her Lovely Self. By sheer luck, the Olmsted sat near to the route she took every Sunday from her apartment to her sainted grandmother’s house, a few miles away on Overhill. “So, what are you up to?” she asked.

“Oh, just puttering around the kitchen. I thought you had a date with whatsisname.”

“Yeah, well, he blew me off. So…are you cooking or baking or something?”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said, taking my feet out of the oven. “Just whipping up a batch of cookies.” In my experience, few women could resist fresh-baked cookies of a cold November Sunday.

“Ooh, they’re not chocolate/peanut butter chip are they?”

“How’d you know? Want to come by and try some? Should have the first batch out in about 20 minutes.”

“Okay! See you in a bit.”

And then I hung up and dashed out the back door on smoking feet, headed for the grocery store a block over, hoping I had enough money to buy the ingredients for the cookies I’d said I was making. I always did. I baked cookies for that woman for 10 Sundays in a row and it never once occurred to her I did it only to lure her to my wonderfully crappy first apartment.

The Monticello

By late spring of the next year, Her Lovely Self and I were dating, and so she felt a little more confident revealing to me something I knew all along: the Olmsted was a disaster area, a monument to lack of maintenance, not to mention freezing in the winter and sweltering in the summer (most of the windows were painted shut). Plus it was expensive—she was convinced I could find better, cheaper digs if I moved further into the city. The fact that she also was moving into the city may have figured in her arguments as well.

That very weekend, by happy coincidence, I got a call from my pal Matt, a photographer for the Chicago Tribune. Matt had grown up in and around the city and knew all the great neighborhoods (where “great” is tabulated by the number and proximity of Irish bars that have live music and serve Guinness). He himself lived on the second floor a three-story building between Addison and Irving Park, called the Monticello. It struck me as a lyrical, romantic name, like Jefferson’s home atop a mountain. Except that it was just a basic red brick building on a street populated by cars up on jacks, dirty children playing in the street, and an alley with a Dumpster that was home to a pride of feral cats. But otherwise just like Jefferson’s home.

Matt’s downstairs neighbor was moving out of his one-bedroom apartment, and my friend wondered if I wanted to take a look. I did. The rent was 30 bucks cheaper, plus it had several luxurious touches the Olmsted lacked—windows that opened, working outlets in every room, kitchen appliances that were younger than I was. As a bonus, the former occupant was leaving behind several items of furniture, a carpet, and a color TV. Plus the landlord was willing to go month-to-month on the lease. I already had a girlfriend, so that was enough commitment for me. I had my security deposit in the owner's hand by the end of the day. Her Lovely Self was excited—she was just a couple miles down Addison in Wrigleyville—and I didn’t mind it so much either.

The Monticello was far and away my favorite apartment. I was just starting to freelance for national magazines when I lived there, and the spacious closets and vast hardwood floors seemed purpose-built for much of my work (which at that time involved reviewing sporting and exercise equipment). Matt was a good neighbor, often inviting me up to dinner (by stomping on the floor four times) and I just as often had him down at my place to drink beer and try out whatever toy I was testing. Every other Thursday, we got together with Declan, the crazy Irish guy on the third floor, and had a poker night, playing for laundry money. I loved the convivial, sit-com feel of the whole arrangement. It suited me down to the ground floor.

So it’s ironic that the Monticello was also the apartment where I spent the least amount of time. By that point, things were getting serious with Her Lovely Self and I was over at her apartment most every spare minute, except when she was over at mine (except on Poker Night, of course). Then winter rolled in, and I got a shock. Unlike at the Olmsted, utilities were not included in the rent at the Monticello, and my flat had had its radiators torn out long ago, replaced by electric heat. And with a cold empty basement below, I used a lot of juice to get the apartment to a temperature where I didn’t see my breath in the morning. Suddenly all the money I’d made freelancing was going to pay enormous heating bills. And I needed that money; I had begun to think I might want to save it up for something, something diamond-like and ring-sized.

So it was with some regret—and after just eight months--that I gave my 30-day notice to my landlord and began casting about for new digs, and a roommate. I found both with the aid of Jeff, a grad school classmate who had taken over my lease at the Olmsted and had found it just as crappy as I had. God love him, he did all the legwork and found...

The Eastwood

This was a three-bedroom apartment that occupied the entire second floor of a brownstone over in Lincoln Village, even closer to Her Lovely Self. Rent was $650, split down the middle, with heat included. Since he had found the apartment, Jeff took the big front bedroom with the picture windows and the view of the tree-lined street below. I took the small room—small like a walk-in-closet—off of the kitchen, which itself was little more than a glorified porch that stuck out over the back of the apartment and almost touched the El track platform that ran behind it (so close, in fact, that the train often sounded like it was running through my room). The third bedroom we used as a shared office. I tended to take over this space. My freelance work was booming--I had landed a regular writing gig for a local business magazine, and it paid really well. That money, plus the hundreds I was saving every month in rent and heating bills, I socked away like a madman, saving enough to buy an engagement ring early that spring.

It was also around this time that I got an unexpected job offer back east in Washington, which I took (without consulting my girlfriend, an unwise decision recounted in painful detail here). I only had a weekend—really, just a Saturday afternoon—to find a place to live. The Beltway is a painfully expensive place to live on $27K a year, so my only option was to find an apartment in the vast warrens of those ugly brick postwar constructs that I called…

The Slums of Arlington

The landlord was a criminal. The apartments smelled of fumigant (except for the closet-sized kitchens, which smelled of beans and diapers). The buildings were stuffy and irrepressibly hot well into November, after which they immediately became bone-chillingly cold. The faucets groaned like the ghosts of women in labor, and spewed greenish water. The carpet was thatched with the severed legs of ten million crickets and roaches. But the rent was under 500 clams a month, making it the only thing this side of the East Falls Church Metro station that was within my price range. And I was close to one of the many access points on the extensive system of bike trails that networked across the DC area, so that was nice.

However, I was warned by numerous coworkers and neighbors that the area was notorious for petty crime and break-ins of both the vehicular and the apartment variety, news that I absorbed with keen if dismayed interest, living as I did in a ground-floor flat. Luckily, I had taken the precaution of owning a crappy, cheap old Toyota, which I kept unlocked, a public service much appreciated by the dozen or so career criminals who anonymously rooted through my car and, finding nothing of value inside, left it largely unmolested during the 11 months I lived there.

I did have a bad scare regarding an apartment break-in, in the wee hours of one early spring night. It was growing hot again, and I had fallen asleep with the windows open. At around 2:30, I was awakened by a clattering in the kitchen, the sound of a window shifting squeakily in its aged frame. Instantly, my adrenal glands swelled to the size of footballs and sloshed a bathtub’s worth of adrenalin into my bloodstream. I snatched my trusty cricket bat from underneath the pillow—I had taken all those warnings not just to heart, but to bed—and stepped into the hall.

The kitchen doorway was to my right. After much mental self-talk of the emboldening nature, I finally sprang into the kitchen, bat raised high…and saw nothing, except the window canted slightly in its frame, the dingy, threadbare curtains fluttering listlessly.

He’s behind you, a voice in my head hissed.

I whirled. Opposite the kitchen stood a small coat closet, its door slightly ajar. Trembling, every hair standing on end, I edged to the door, nudged it open with the cricket bat.

There, in the shadows of the closet, I saw the broad shoulders of a man.

I let out an involuntary and embarrassingly effeminate scream, then brought the cricket bat down on the intruder’s shoulder. There was a satisfying visceral crack—as of wood breaking—when I shattered the burglar’s collarbone and he collapsed to the floor. I emitted two more piercing shrieks, just for good measure, at the lifeless form on the carpet. I may also have tinkled a little, but with that carpet, who would have known? I turned on a light.

Only then did it occur to me to wonder why the burglar was wearing my overcoat. And what he was doing without a head. Or body.

As it turned out, an errant gust of wind had merely knocked a glass into the kitchen sink—that was the sound that woke me up. I had attacked my own overcoat, resting innocently on the wooden hanger I’d stolen from a hotel long ago.

Three weeks later, I moved out.

By this time, Her Lovely Self, then known as my fiancée, had found a job in Washington and we were just a few weeks away from getting married. She found us a one-bedroom apartment (on the third floor) at a nice place over in Alexandria. It was, on its small scale, very much like the place she recently found for us—a well-tended community with a pool and various amenities, and none of the, um, character I had managed to find in all the apartments I’d lived in. But that was okay. It was the end of an era for me—the close of my life as a Single Guy—and I welcomed the change this new rental wrought in my domestic life, much as I welcome it now.

So we are settling in to our latest rental. Thomas, ever sensitive to changes in routine, has had some trouble sleeping in his new digs. But the other night, as I was checking on the kids, I noticed he was already fast asleep, but had something sticking out from under the covers—the wooden handle of my trusty cricket bat, almost the last remaining possession of my Single Guy days. He hardly needs it—the biggest crime in our neighborhood is residents failing to sort their recycleables. Plus, we have Blaze now, who prowls the apartment at night and sleeps in the hallway to the kids’ rooms.

Just the same, on the way back to my own room, I took a moment to close the door of the coat closet. Thomas tends to let his imagination run away with him in the middle of the night. I wouldn’t want him to be startled by my overcoat.

And besides, this apartment has all-new carpets.

Yours,
From Somewhere on the Masthead

In Which We Load the Trunk...

2010-08-12T13:14:00.000-04:00

So I’m moving again.

Sadly, that preface must also serve as my four-word apology for being absent from here for so long. When I was a kid, moving--which we did a lot--always struck with the suddenness of an environmental disaster. That’s how it seemed to me anyway. One day you’re sprawled on the blue shag rug in your bedroom, lazily pushing your Batman action figures out onto Lake Shag, where Mike Power, the Atomic Man and GI Joe are stranded in their amphibious vehicle, unable to restart the engine because your Big Brother nibbled off their little kung-fu grip fingers (not that Batman’s any help because he’s got two big blue oven mitts for gloves, but never mind). Next day, you’re standing on a bare wood floor, Lake Shag rolled in a corner, Mike Power and GI Joe are trapped somewhere in a gulag of stacked Mayflower cartons, and your mother is screaming at you in the distance, as though a tornado or a tsunami or killer bees were on the horizon and closing fast.

Actually, mostly Mom yelled at us to “Load Your Trunks!” My brother and I each had a sturdy little metal footlocker, complete with lock and key. Our parents had told us to pack into them only the most special possessions that we couldn’t bear to have lost or broken in a move. It was one of the wiser parenting decisions they made, as it forced us early to take responsibility for our stuff, to make discriminating (and often hard) choices about what was most special to us. And to get us used to the idea of a nomadic lifestyle.

Our parents had given one to my brother. Mine was more special, because we had found it in a crawlspace of the first house I can remember living in. It was a thing of great mystery, hidden way in the back of the eaves, a drab green box, locked tight. Dad had carefully picked the lock with a paper clip and a toothpick (a feat that impressed me then and impresses me still) only to find inside a few pennies, a coverless comic book (Donald Duck) and--you guessed it--the key. But I loved that trunk. Dad cleaned it up, painted it shiny black, and gave me the key on a keyring I still carry in my pocket. When moving time came around, I always packed that trunk with the same things: a short stack of my favorite comics, my Batman action figure (and his Batmobile), my favorite personal accessories (at first, it was usually just a baseball cap or a favorite t-shirt. Later, I would include my fastest tennis shoes, Boy Scout-issue shorts with their awesome pockets and clips, and my Mobile Crime Lab from my Boy Detective days), my lucky arrowhead, and my baseball glove. Packing the trunk was the longest part of any childhood move, and it usually took less than 20 minutes.

Now moves take longer, and heavens are they time-consuming. Especially if you are living in one state, engaged in a prolonged house-sitting situation, while your actual house--the albatross formerly known as the Magazine Mansion--sits hundreds of miles to the west, empty and unloved. Also unsold.

This last little fact has weighed heavily on the mind of Her Lovely Self, whose father is quite possibly the greatest amateur realtor of the 20th century. This is a man who has sold every house he’s ever owned at asking price (or higher, if he got a bidding war started, which apparently he often did), usually within a few weeks of putting it one the market, but sometimes within a few days of just thinking about putting it on the market.

So, economic conditions notwithstanding, it’s come as something of a shock to my wife that our own house has been somewhat slow to move. It hasn’t helped that we had the misfortune of choosing a realtor who appears to have gone into semi-retirement shortly after taking our listing. Some weeks ago, we finally got fed up with his laziness and broke our contract with him. This coincided with the impending end of our sweet housesitting deal, and a lucky break finding a cheap rent in a nice apartment complex, which we will call home until we can sell the old place and buy a new home.

All of this necessitated a return trip to the Magazine Mansion, which we hadn’t seen in six months, not since we closed the place up for the winter. It didn’t look like the same inviting house I remembered leaving back in December. I wouldn’t have wanted to buy the place. The kitchen looked dark and small, the yard looked patchy and woebegone. Mud-encrusted footprints from a long winter of showings were embedded in the carpets. Something bad and leaky had happened to the dishwasher. The sheep were in the meadow, the cows were in the corn.

So it was a painful, exhausting few days of Extreme Makeover, the MM Edition, as we repainted, shampooed rugs, pruned hedges, and fired realtors. I had to fiddle with the water supply and in the doing of it discovered many impending plumbing problems worse than the dishwasher, although the dishwasher was pretty bad. Here’s a tip: If you think you can remove an old dishwasher and install a new one all by yourself, think again. Especially when it comes to jockeying the thing into position in a space under the kitchen counter that is precisely one-quarter of an inch too small for the new unit. Your fingertips will thank you for it later. Because you will still have all of them. Unlike me. Now I know how Mike Power and GI Joe felt.

And that was really just for openers. We got a new realtor--a real firecracker whom I dearly wish we’d met six months ago. He hit the ground running, showing the house twice within 72 hours of our signing him on. He also brought some realtor tough-love down on us, and made us realize that it was long past time to get our stuff out of the house and into storage or, as it will turn out, into our new rental pad.

In fairness, we managed to empty most of the living space of the house before we closed the place up last Christmas. But we had lagged in emptying our garage and, of course, the Incredible Basement of C.R.A.P. Our new realtor pointed out that when it came to selling points, storage was huge, and the fact that our house is the only one in its price range with a three-car garage was nullified by the fact that we had it partially filled with boxes. So we got a U-Haul and Thomas and I spent the hottest day of the year hauling boxes to an unventilated storage unit. While we were gone, Her Lovely Self divested us of the last of the Basement of C.R.A.P. junk, literally giving it away to neighbors and passersby. I think she went a little crazy that day, because she also started giving away our furniture. As Thomas and I returned, I saw three burly college kids hoisting our beloved sofa onto the back of a truck, along with my favorite LoveSac.

But I didn’t have long to lament their loss. I was too busy reloading the U-Haul with beds and furniture and my Emergency Stash of C.R.A.P., long hidden in the crawlspace over the garage. While Her Lovely Self was engaged in a distant part of the house doing loud things with a carpet shampooer, I smuggled the very last of my C.R.A.P. down into the garage and well into the back of the truck. It was, it must be said, a pretty small collection of stuff, the smallest it’s been in years: Just two Mayflower cartons of old toys, a plastic bin of assorted electronics, a bag containing the belt from the Mobile Crime Lab, and my last 27 boxes of comic books.

When I was done, there was just one thing up in the crawlspace: my old metal trunk, its shiny black finish long since scuffed off. I fished the old key off my keyring and opened it. Inside were a few old newspaper clippings, a handful of spare change, a Red Sox cap and the severed forearm of my old GI Joe, his maimed hand splayed on the floor of the trunk in a sad little five-knuckled wave. I hunched there for a moment under the eaves of the Magazine Mansion, sweat running off the end of my nose. Then I clambered down the ladder and returned with an armful of items such as I thought a young person might like to find. I dumped them all in, tossed in whatever loose bills and spare change I found in my pockets and then--what the hell--flipped the key in too, locked the trunk and shoved it into the deepest, darkest corner under the eaves.

It seemed like an appropriate offering to a house that has been good to me and mine, that had sheltered me after many illnesses and incidents of self-injury, that had welcomed me home after many a misadventure, that had seen the arrival in my family of the Éclair, and of Blaze before her. And that, last but not least, had witnessed the birth of this blog.

So I wish them well, whoever finds that trunk. I wish them many happy and healthy years in that house I once called home.

But mostly, I just wish they’d hurry the hell up and buy the place.

Yours,
From Somewhere on the Masthead

In Which It Goes Away...

2010-06-17T17:12:00.000-04:00

My Dad was a packrat of pithy sayings, an aphid for aphorisms, collected from his own experience and from those of his forebears.

"Do the thing you’re scared of, and you’ll get the courage afterward" is probably the one I repeat most often these days, and it’s usually directed at Thomas, who requires a lot of psyching up to try new and/or scary things.

"God loves to make a man break his promises" is one I recall hearing a lot as a kid, since I was forever promising to perform certain tasks and then forgetting about them.

"It’s a poor man who cheats himself" is also one I heard often, since I had--still have--a tendency to go for quick fixes and short-term solutions when it comes to home improvements and other projects, which of course just creates more work for me in the long run.

But the one I heard most growing up was "It’s only pain, it goes away."

With an accident-prone son like me, and himself being no slouch in the self-injury department, Dad had ample opportunity to utter this one, usually while fashioning a makeshift splint for whatever limb I happened to twist or mutilate, although he just as often offered it up as a form of reassurance, usually muttered as he emerged from a cloud of dust and debris, often while clamping down hard on a spurting artery in his arm or neck.

I probably remember this one most of all, not because I heard it as much as I did, but because it’s a maxim I’ve often felt was not entirely true, and just as often been proven wrong. After I blew out a lumbar disk in my back, during the ensuing six months of sciatic agony, I remember at one point snapping at the old man, in a somewhat accusatory tone, “When is THIS pain going away?” It was a question I asked myself some years later, standing in an Indiana salvage yard, staring at the crumpled wreck in which my parents died. But nine years on, my back twinges no more than one should expect at the age of 42, and three years on, though I still miss my parents terribly, whatever pain I felt has since morphed into a wistful nostalgia.

Still, it’s a gem of wisdom that, for some reason, I’m hesitant to offer to my kids. I said it once to Thomas, after he ran barefooted into a memorably unyielding table and broke his big toe. The poor little guy lay gasping on the floor, eyes wide and teeth clenched. And I helpfully said, “It’s only pain, it goes away” only to have my son fix those wide eyes on me, and part his clenched teeth long enough to shout “That is such bullshit, Daddy!” And in the moment, he was right. I suppose if I asked him now to describe the pain of that broken toe, he’d be hard-pressed to articulate exactly what the pain felt like. But I haven’t asked.

I also didn’t share this maxim with the Brownie, who recently had to deal with two painful events, almost back to back. First, she had to have a plantar wart dug out of her big toe. Then, two days later, she had to go get two cavities filled.

My elder daughter is pretty stoic, but after using up all of her stoical reserves to deal with the removal of the wart, she was somewhat nervous about the dental work. I had refused to take her to the dentist for this--based on the time I had to take Thomas to the dentist to have a tooth pulled, I didn’t think I was the best person for the job. That didn’t stop the Brownie from asking me questions beforehand, mostly revolving around the central theme of How Much Will It Hurt?

“I can’t say that I actually remember,” I told her. She didn’t believe this for a minute, assuming that I was trying to spare her needless worry. But it’s true. For me, pain of the past is almost impossible for me to describe, and maybe that’s just a failure of my skill as a storyteller. Although I’m usually pretty good at describing the circumstances surrounding the injury, especially the ones that hurt (I think) the most. For example (and in descending order):

The Foul Ball, Our Trailer, around 11th grade:
I could always count on my Big Brother to inflict bodily harm on me, but this one night, in our summer trailer in the woods of New Hampshire, he surpassed himself. We were arguing about his portable typewriter, which I used every night, banging out whatever story I was writing. He had a late-night job in a kitchen, and by the time he got home, he was tired and surly and wanted nothing but to sleep. This particular night, he asked me with his usual grace, to knock of the clacking before he strangled me with the typewriter ribbon. I ignored him—it was one of the things I did best—and kept typing. Mom was staying overnight in Boston with her sister and Dad was off working at a construction site in Oregon, so I knew no responsible grown-up was going to force me to comply. Then BB got up and laid hands on the typewriter, crumpling the page I was working on. In retaliation, I swiftly turned the roller, catching BB’s fingers in the inner workings of the machine. Then I stood up, grabbed the hardbound dictionary sitting next to me and thwacked BB good and hard across the face. His glasses went flying, but at such close range, that did nothing to impair his aim. He shoved me back just a few inches, then kicked out at me as hard as he could, stuffing the entirety of his size-14 foot into my crotch.

If I had been a football, BB would have made a 90-yard field goal. Instead, the only ball that got punted was my left one, which shot from its usual dangling position up, up, up into my pelvis. I suddenly became aware of a small and theretofore unknown cavity somewhere in my lower abdomen, a cavity now occupied by that precious little orb. I fell to the floor and almost passed out from the pain of it. Everything at the point of impact swelled up--not in a pleasurable way--and it was three days before my wayward boy descended to its proper place. During that time, I was virtually unable to walk, practically delirious with the visceral discomfort that can only come from having a vital portion of your reproductive equipment relocated to an internal space somewhere in the neighborhood of your liver. But beyond that, I can’t really describe the pain now, except to say, wow, that really hurt. It outmatched even the satisfaction I got later, when I snapped a mousetrap onto BB’s earlobe while he was sleeping.

The Cluster Bomb, Shop Class, 7th grade:
I had shop class once a week with Mr. Simms, who was not the most visibly reassuring of shop teachers. He was a squat, wiry mass of scar tissue, interestingly ripped clothing, and digits unaccounted for. Under his supervision, and, well, me being me, you’d think I’d have many stories of sawing off the tips of my fingers, or gouging my own eyes out with a runaway jigsaw. But the worst pain I felt to that date came not from a power tool, but from my classmate, Morris. He was a portly boy that I had an on-again, off-again friendship with. This particular spring, it was off, way off. We were sitting at a table, gluing birdhouses together when, for reasons I can’t recall, he turned and punched me hard in the stomach, midrange between my belly button and my sternum.

I was completely unprepared for the blow, and so was the nerve cluster that rested there in my torso. He knocked the wind out of me, and as I fell to the sawdust-covered floor, I felt a whole network of pain receptors light up, filling my chest, my head. I thought my eyeballs would explode from the pain of it. I was in such agony, I couldn’t even crawl out the way of Mr. Simms, who, in the excitement of the moment, came running over to check on me without bothering to let go of--or turn off--the screaming circular saw he was holding (thankfully, the saw had a short power cord, which was pulled out of the wall before he got to me). But beyond those details, I can’t really describe the pain now, except to say, wow, that really hurt.

The Bad Tooth, Social Studies, 6th grade:
At lunch that day, I had felt a little tremor of discomfort in an upper molar while eating, but hadn’t given it much thought. An hour later, that tooth was all I could think about. With no warning whatsoever, that molar suddenly sent a pulsewave of pain through every nerve-ending in my body. This was no tremor, it was an earthquake of agony clean off the Richter scale. Before I could catch my breath, another one hit. I dropped my book and cried out in the middle of class. My teacher, the famously unsympathetic Mr. F, spoke sharply to me, but I was beyond hearing. Another wave hit and I began smacking my forehead on the desk. Then another wave. And another.

I’m pretty sure I passed out from the pain, because the next thing I remember, I was on the sofa in the teacher’s lounge, a cold cloth on my neck. I was drenched with sweat and tense as a drawn bow, waiting for the next wave of pain to hit. It didn’t, at least not before my Mom showed up. She drove me straight to the dentist, who determined that the molar had cracked and some kind of infection had seeped in, causing swelling that pushed on the tender nerves deep (but not deep enough!) in my gums. Rather than pulling the tooth--which I would have cheerfully welcomed at that point--the dentist decided to pack some kind of medicated filling in and around the crack, an imperfect procedure that he had to perform three or four times in the space of the next two weeks. Finally, when the infection had subsided, he refilled the tooth, and I spent the next several years chewing on the other side of my mouth (it was still very sensitive). Eventually, another dentist put a gold-and-enamel crown in, but the damage had been done. That incident eclipses all other moments of dental horror in my life (including the time I had to have a bone spur in my jaw sanded down).

That tooth still sends minor tremors of pain whenever I bite down really hard on a nut or a piece of candy. And in the treatment of it, I was injected with so much novocaine that to this day I am largely resistant to any dose of local anesthetic that isn’t sufficient to drop a horse. But beyond that, I still can’t really describe the pain now, except to say, wow, that really hurt.

Still, I didn't, as you can imagine, share this anecdote with the Brownie. I did, however, share the other two on the morning of her dentist appointment.

“So, yeah,” I concluded, “It might be a little uncomfortable, but I can guarantee you it won’t hurt anywhere near as much as getting the wind knocked out of you. Or having your left testicle fired up into your lower intestines.”

“I’m sure I wouldn’t know,” the Brownie said primly, but the stories cheered her to no end. She paused then, thinking. “You did this when I cracked my head open, didn’t you?”

It was almost half my daughter’s life ago when she fell and got stitches in the back of her head. “You remember that?” I asked. The Brownie has an excellent memory.

She nodded. “You told funny stories about getting a nail in your head. Or a hammer. I forget which.” (In fact, it was both.)

“And do you remember how much your head hurt when you hit it back then?”

She shook that head now. “No,” she said, mildly astonished to realize this. “It’s like Papa always said: It’s only pain, it goes away.”

Now I was surprised. After all, this was a nugget of wisdom I had never shared with her. “How do you know that?”

She shrugged. “He told me one time, when he was at our house, nailing a board. Except he nailed his hand to the board too. There was blood everywhere and I got all scared. But he just pulled the nail out and wiggled his hand and told me that.” And off she went to the dentist.

It’s been a few days since the double filling, and at first the Brownie was a little teary when the novocaine wore off. But she kept repeating her little mantra--it’s only pain, it goes away. And by the next day, it had.

She doesn’t remember the pain. But she remembers what my Dad told her.

And so do I.

Yours,
From Somewhere on the Masthead

In Which We Climb to the Topmost Branch...

2010-05-21T16:46:00.001-04:00

The school year is finishing up soon for the kids, and as summer break draws near, it seems to me the teachers are cramming in a lot of last-minute projects that might have served a better educational purpose had they been assigned a few weeks earlier.

For example, last month, the Brownie came to me with a familiar worksheet that had her name in bold on a line at the top, a line that branched out to blank spots labeled “Mother” and “Father” and “Siblings.”

“You’re doing a family tree!” I exclaimed, which was my first mistake. Expressing anything other than bland ambivalence over projects in which my daughter is engaged is a big no-no in my house. The Brownie is at that age where parental enthusiasm is one of life’s greater embarrassments.

“Don’t hurt yourself,” she said tartly. “I just need to know what year you and Mom were born. And stuff about grandparents. And anything you might remember beyond that.”

As it turned out, the Brownie needed very little help from me. I only had to confirm a few birth years. Sadly, I did not have include the death year for my parents—my daughter had it already filled in. And there was space to write in a few illuminating details about each generation. For her maternal grandfather, she wrote “He was a fighter pilot. Then he flew airplanes with people onboard, but didn’t crash any of them.” For my father, who was a welder by trade, but who had made an early impression on the Brownie with his vast handyman skills, she wrote “Builder of houses and cities,” the sweetest piece of loving exaggeration I’ve ever read.

For me, incidentally, she wrote, “Sits around all the time on the computer.”

I tried to maintain an even emotional keel for the duration of this exercise, but I got a little excited—and not in a good way—when I saw that the worksheet didn’t allow my daughter to enter any genealogical information beyond her great-grandparents.

“Well, that’s all most people know,” she said. “Our teacher said you have to be, like, an expert to find out anything older.”

I hoisted myself up in my chair a little at this. “Young lady,” I said. “I’ll have you know you come from a family who can trace its roots back 12 generations—13 in your case. Your great-grandfathers on my side were some of the first settlers in America. The map of New Hampshire is littered with roads and waterways and whole towns that bear our name. And the person who gathered what we know of our family wasn’t an expert. She just cared enough to research and save our history.”

And this is indubitably so. My great-aunt Esther (my grandfather John’s sister), like her mother before her, was the family historian in her time, carefully researching village records, copying information off of far-flung gravesites, and maintaining a network of correspondence with a number of amateur and professional genealogists to fill out the branches in our family tree.

I expected the Brownie to give me a contemptuous eye-roll as I told her this, but to her credit, she seemed genuinely interested. “Really?” she asked. “Can we talk to her?” I didn’t have it in me to tell her Aunt Esther died about 20 years ago, in a car accident (a recent and disturbing trend in my family, alas). Instead, I said, “No. But I have a letter from her that has a good bit of information.”

When I was in 9th grade, I had to research my family tree. It was for history class, and we were required to fill out a lot more than just the names and key dates of our grandparents and great-grandparents. So at my Dad’s suggestion, I gave Aunt Esther a call. She was so excited that someone of my tender years should be interested in our family’s history it brings tears to my eyes to recall the conversation now. She gave me loads of information, then followed it up with a thick envelope full of family information and old letters. I dutifully cribbed from her lifetime of notes, filled out my tree (it took almost two whole pieces of big posterboard to copy down), handed it in, then promptly forgot about the letter.

After her death, other relatives—a cousin or two, and a couple of aunts—took up the cause and I started getting phone calls asking me if I still had Aunt Esther’s letter. Apparently whatever genealogical records Esther kept were lost or mislaid or possibly even thrown out after she died, and the letter she sent me was in all likelihood the most comprehensive family record in existence. Problem was, I couldn’t find the letter. I knew it had to be somewhere in one of my many boxes of papers, or possibly at my parents’ house—neither they nor I ever threw anything away. Eventually, I found one faded photocopy of the letter, but trying to photocopy that produced illegible results, and I didn’t want to send my only copy off. After my parents’ death, I finally found the original and made scans and copies, one of which I hand-delivered to my aunt, while I emailed copies to others.

I found my own copy for the Brownie that night, and I was a little surprised to find out how little information my great-aunt had actually gathered. Don’t get me wrong: her research efforts, considering she had no formal training and worked without benefit of the Web, were nothing short of heroic. But it was dismaying to realize she had only death dates for a lot of my direct-line male descendents, and not a lot in the way of personal information. Oh, she had a few stories—my family is nothing if not a family of storytellers. From her I’d known that her brother (my grandfather) was renowned in town for his feats of physical strength. That the family farm had once served as a hiding place for booze during Prohibition. That one great-grandfather—Samuel—had most probably served in the War of 1812. And she always maintained that great-grandpa Nicholas was the first of our family to come to America. I recall that she had an inkling that Nicholas was the first to come to New Hampshire and to hack out a homestead from the hills around the little village where my family lived (and still does). Esther certainly knew his death-date—1675—and that he’d been buried in Massachusetts, a fact that my Dad, a New Hampshireman through and through, often lamented, appalled at the idea that our great ancestor was interred among flatlanders. But never mind.

To her great credit, the Brownie was fascinated by this information, and even wedged in a note about it at the bottom of her worksheet. But after she handed her homework in she, like her callow 9th-grade father—promptly forgot about it.

But I didn’t.

And so, armed with the letter, I stayed up late that night, and many other nights the past few weeks, forsaking sleep and blogging and other essentials of my personal life in an effort to, I don’t know, honor great-aunt Esther, trying to see what the Information Age could do to build upon the elbow-grease and shoe-leather efforts of my grandfather’s sister. My search took me first, and inevitably, to Ancestry.com, then on ever deeper into various family message boards, and still further into the almost-endless volumes of information available through the Web portal of the National Archives. I added considerably to our family’s history, but I’ll be the first to admit that if it hadn’t been for Esther’s work—and especially some of the key dates she’d acquired--I’d still be online now, lost and squinting, poring over nearly illegible pdfs of Colonial era church and village records.

But thanks to her, I’m pleased to report that she was right. But she was wrong, too. About our earliest traceable ancestor being a New Hampshireman and buried ingloriously in the flatlands of Massachusetts, I mean. Turns out he was a Massachusetts man (or, for the purposes of the blog, we can call him “MM”). And let the record show I’m proud to claim him as such.

Friends, family, I refer you to the venerable History of the Town of Dorchester

Which records the origins of Dorchester, Mass., part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and the arrival of settlers from its sister city of Dorchester, England, who came over between 1614 and 1650. Amongst their number was one Nicholas George (born February 12, 1599) and his wife Elizabeth (born January 16, 1601).

My great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandparents. First of my direct-line descendants in the U.S.

Or, as it was known then, the New World.

Once you know where to look, Nicholas pops up quite a bit in early Colonial histories. Here he is in 1667, getting his liquor license (yep, he’s one of ours!)

An “ordinary” for those of you who don’t know (and are still awake at this point) was a public house, a tavern, which you wouldn’t think was the sort of thing Puritans went in for, but they did (although there was evidently a stigma attached. Nicholas wasn’t admitted into the church until just a few years before his death).

It’s a strange thing to see an ancestor on the printed page like this. And “see” him is the right word. Because even in these spare sentences, I form an image of him, probably no more accurate than the Brownie's image of my father as a builder of cities, but just as well-meant. I feel--I need to feel--that I have a glimpse of the kind of man Nicholas was. And though a dozen generations and nearly 400 years separate us, I feel like that gap isn’t completely unbridgeable. Really, there are some days when I feel like an even greater and more insurmountable distance separates me from, say, my own children.

And I perceive—or at least imagine--that Nicholas and I were probably a lot alike. Tavern owners of that era, in addition to having a likely weakness for intoxicants (genetic, I’m afraid), were at the center of village life, and often the best-informed, if they took the time to speak to their patrons. I used to think that if I didn’t become a journalist, I probably would have owned a bar, just to talk to folks and meet interesting people and hear their stories. Except that I could never run a business—I’m too disorganized, and have no head for numbers.

But then, maybe Nicholas didn’t either, if I correctly read between the lines of this passage:

Nicholas died just as great-aunt Esther had recorded—on April 3, 1675, in colonial Dorchester. Seventy-six years is a pretty respectable lifespan for a man born at the end of the 16th century, but his wife totally outpaced him. And ran a bar while she did it:

Well done, Elizabeth. I wonder what your 21st century namesake, the Éclair, would make of you. And vice versa.

Certainly the Éclair’s big sister was impressed. I presented copies of the above passages to the Brownie the other day and once again, she displayed commendable interest and enthusiasm in the information I’d gathered.

“Whoa,” she said, instantly calculating the distance between Grandma Elizabeth’s birth year (1601) and her own (2001). She reviewed Nicholas' passages, and I had to explain what an "ordinary" was to her.

"He wasn't just a tavern-keeper, you know,“ I said. "He was like your grandfather. He was a builder. They all were. Of houses. Of cities. Of a new world."

The Brownie looked at me with new eyes just then, the distance between us shortened for a moment. “That's pretty cool," she said, then paused a beat. "And you found all this just sitting around on the computer?” she asked.

“Sure,” I answered. “Didn’t you read your own worksheet? It is my job, after all.”

But the truth is, in my own very small way, I'm a builder too.

Like my fathers before me.

Yours,
From Somewhere on the Masthead

In Which We Play Favorites...

2010-04-30T12:40:00.000-04:00

Man, there are a lot of things they never warn you about when you become a parent (in this case, I guess “they” would have to be my own parents, as well as any other well-meaning, child-rearing adult). I either got lots of useless advice, which wasn’t really advice, so much as fortune-cookie sized maxims: “Being a parent changes everything.” “It’s the easiest hard thing you’ll ever do.” Or I got lots of task-specific tips: “Support their heads.” “Don’t shake them.” “Watch out for spraying (for boys).” “Wipe front to back (for girls).”

No one warned me about guilt, for example, which I tend to feel a lot in relation to my kids. For uprooting them to a new place. For being too tired to do much with them when I come home. For snapping at them to quiet down when they get too crazy, or to speak up when they mutter stuff they’re not quite sure they want me to hear. No one warned me how easy it is to get wrapped up in their little lives, to grieve with them over every minor setback, or to overdo my enthusiasm over some daily triumph.

And most especially, no one ever warned me about a parent’s surprising and paradoxical ability to play favorites.

I used to be appalled whenever I heard someone referring to him/herself as their parents’ favorite. It was even worse on those rare occasions when I would hear an actual parent admit that they had a favorite child.

I’m sure my reaction was tied up with some unresolved ball of emotion from my youth. As a kid, I long believed that my Big Brother was my parents’ favorite. Not because my parents were any less affectionate—or any more strict—with me. But it did strike me that BB got a lot of attention, first when we were kids, and then later as we became young adults.

I was in high school by the time I actually voiced this sentiment to my mom. It was in a heated moment and I said it to get a rise out of her. But the joke was on me, because instead of freaking out and vehemently insisting she loved us both equally, my mom simply said I had a point. Not because she favored my brother over me, but because he seemed to require a lot more attention. “You’re very self-sufficient,” she told me. “So I don’t worry about you so much.”

When I first heard this, I took it badly, thinking Mom was only confirming my worst fears. But later it dawned on me that she was paying me a compliment. And over time, I came to realize that, while of course she did love us both equally, there were certain things that she loved about BB more than me, and vice versa.

So as I say, it’s a great parenting paradox, but I’m finally willing to admit to it: It is actually possible to love each of your children in some favorite, special way, and also to love them all with equal fervor.

I wasn’t truly able to embrace this paradox until the Brownie was born, 9 years ago today. When Her Lovely Self was pregnant with our first daughter, we used to have hushed, worried conversations about our impending second child. For two and a half years, Thomas had been the great light of our days, the sun (or son) around which we orbited, the object of more love than either of us would ever have thought possible. We couldn’t imagine how we could divide that love and attention without someone feeling short-changed. What we didn’t realize is that, instead of being halved, your love just spontaneously doubles in a way that borders on the miraculous. The same miracle occurred a third time, when the Éclair came along.

And yet, since I’m being honest, I’m compelled to acknowledge that you do find ways to love each of them in their own special, uniquely favorite manner.

Thomas is my favorite in this manner: I love the way he walks on the razor’s edge of insecurity and confidence. I devote a lot of extra attention to him in trying to help him find courage and self-assuredness. It doesn’t always pay off, but I stick with it, because, as the only other person in the house who has ever been an 11-year-old boy before, I get that this is an ongoing process that may not show any results for years. But what I really love about him is the way he can surprise me with unexpected moments of confidence and even genius, leaving me open-mouthed in admiration and awe. It never gets old.

The Éclair is my favorite in this manner: I love her sense of will. She knows her mind and has no problem articulating this. I love that she simply refuses to accept the fact that she is too young or too little to do whatever the hell she wants. And while this requires a lot of extra attention (especially when it comes to steering her away from deep water, high ledges, and hot surfaces), I can’t imagine having it any other way.

But the Brownie…

She doesn’t seem to require—or desire—any extra attention. There is no razor’s edge for her to walk. She’s all confidence. I’m sure there must be insecurity in there somewhere, but I can’t recall the last time she showed it. Instead, she moves through the world with an attitude that suggests she knows exactly where she’s going and what she’s going to do when she gets there. She exudes complete and total capability, a trait I deeply admire in any person at any age, never mind in a nine-year-old.

This isn’t to suggest that I let the Brownie do whatever she wants. When my sweet angel child of light morphs into Anna, the mouthy harpy, I take her to task for it. The same holds true anytime I find myself in the glare of her Facial Features of Evil, which I get whenever I ask her about her day, or try to understand her interest in iCarly. And don’t even get me started on makeup. Oh hell, too late. I’m already started. We got into an actual argument not long ago when she came downstairs one day wearing lipstick.

“What is that?” I asked.

She gave me the Look of Disdain—narrowed eyes, jutted chin, lower lip stuck slightly out. Which of course accentuated the makeup. “What is what?” she asked. (Speaking in Snarky Italics is also part of the Facial Features of Evil.)

“The lipstick.”

She switched to an Eye Roll. “I’m not wearing lipstick.”

“I can see it. It’s right there. On your lips. Are you telling me your lips are normally as shiny as a candy apple?”

“It’s not lipstick. It’s lip gloss.”

“Your lips are glossy all right. They’re also purple.”

“It’s colored lip gloss.”

Why are they glinting like bike reflectors?”

She threw in a Freighted Sigh. “It’s shimmery colored lip gloss.” Then, to stop me from saying anything else that might be unbearably stupid, she added, “Dad. I'm just trying it out. I'm not wearing it to school. I know what I'm doing. You have to trust me on this.”

And here’s the thing: I totally do trust her on most things (if not on makeup). In fact, I trust her more than most adults, and certainly more than my mother trusted me. For instance, I no longer ask her if she’s finished her homework—it’s usually done before I even get home, freeing me to spend time with Thomas and his homework (which he would otherwise forget to do without someone reminding him). Her Lovely Self and I have begun granting her kitchen privileges--she can cook eggs and flip pancakes with the best of them, while her older brother still has to be reminded not to stick his head all the way into the oven to see if the cookies have baked. And If I’m alone with the kids and something comes up requiring my attention—the toilet starts leaking, the dog runs off, the zombies are closing in—my first reaction is to yell, “Anna, watch your little sister til I get back!” I’ve done it so often that recently, Thomas called me on it. “I’m the older one!" he protested. "I should be the one you tell to watch the baby. You just love Anna more than me!” Which is not true. But it is true that I mark his sister as more responsible.

And more self-sufficient, sometimes to an almost painful degree. When I asked the Brownie what she wanted for her birthday, she made it very clear she didn’t want me to buy her anything. “Money or a gift card would be awesome,” she said. “That way I can just pick out my own gifts and you won’t have to feel bad about getting me something I don’t want.” Then she patted me reassuringly on the shoulder. “It’ll be easier for both of us this way, trust me,” she said.

So I will. Although I do plan to give her one small present. In fact, I’m off to the mall right now to find the latest in shimmery lip gloss.

Happy birthday, Anna. Today, you are my favorite.

Yours,
From Somewhere on the Masthead

In Which We Count to Three...

2010-04-21T10:26:00.002-04:00

Can’t believe I was doing this three years ago today.

Three years! How quick was that?

That fragmentary video from 2007 also celebrates the Eclair’s third birthday—her third hour, I mean. The clip is a favorite of the Eclair’s—right up there with Elmo’s Alphabet Rap and that wedding video on YouTube. She doesn’t quite believe that the little, red, slightly cross-eyed newborn is her, understand. She just likes it because Daddy calls himself “insane.” It’s her new favorite word. Everyday, when I get home, she comes pounding across the floor to greet me, always with a cry of “Dadeeeeeeee!” after which she steps back, looks at me appraisingly and says, “Dad, you’re insane!”

As of course I am, but only in the most delightfully demented way.

You would be too, if you were in the clutches of the planet’s most willful toddler. I don’t think the world quite realizes what a debt it owes to the benevolent influence of Her Lovely Self, and, in particular, my own susceptibility to mental domination. I’m telling you, were it not for me, and the fact that the Eclair seems content (for now) to control my every move, my youngest child would have long since become master of the globe.

This is because the Eclair was born with a natural resistance to discipline. Or to be more accurate, she recognizes her parents’ efforts at discipline as an opportunity to control us. Take potty training. She is, I’m convinced, in complete command of her bladder and intestines, but won’t acknowledge this fact. Instead, it’s another weapon in her arsenal. The other night, we had a disagreement over bedtime. She thought 9 o’clock was a reasonable hour to retire. I crazily believed that 7:30 was more appropriate. So when I overrode her will and physically carried her up to bed, she briefly tried kicking and screaming, but when that failed, she settled down on my hip, hugged me close, and peed on me.

We have also waged a long and bitter battle, the War of the Right Thumb, which she has been sucking since before she could sit up.

It used to be a comfort thing, but now, like her bladder, her right thumb (never the left) is a biological weapon she wields to dominate us. We have tried every preventive measure, short of scissoring the thing off, to break her of this habit, but she will not budge.

She doesn’t even care that, as a result of thumb-sucking, her two front teeth have grown slightly outward. It’s correctible, but in the mean time it has contributed to a not uncommon speech impediment. All her th’s come out as f’s or fr’s. All her k’s come out as t’s. This bothers Her Lovely Self and me more than it does her—and she knows it.

The Eclair also seems to understand something her mother and I have realized too late: We’ve become soft. The iron hand we wielded in raising Thomas and the Brownie has rusted. We go easy on her. We’ve fallen into the trap many unwitting parents step into: On some level, we know that our days of caring for babies are coming to an end. She’s the last and when she’s gone there will be none left, and so we let her get away with murder.

The murder in question would be the murder of my in-laws, whose heads explode at the idea that we’re raising a granddaughter in this fashion. They tell us this at every opportunity and are full of advice, which they seem compelled to give, based on their success rate of having raised three daughters with perfect teeth and tightly wound sphincters (too tightly wound, if you ask me, but never mind). Advice is their specialty. Endless advice. Enforcement, not so much. That falls to us. And we’ve dropped the ball.

But for today anyway, I can’t let myself be bothered by it. This morning, as I was getting dressed for work, I heard the Eclair stir to life in the other room. Most mornings, she calls out simple declarative statements, carefully calculated to let me know she’s got my number. “I might be going potty right now!” she cries. “Dad, I’m sucting my fumb!” she yells. Other days, she just announces her needs. “I need breffast! I need a glass of milt!”

But this morning, she said something different.

“Daddy! Daddy, please come get me!”

The Eclair only ever says “please” to the dog and to her big sister (whom she worships, and occasionally even listens to), and I thought she must be in trouble. I pictured her strangling in her bedclothes, her head stuck in the slats of the crib. In panic moments, I imagine she’s still the teensy little red-faced, slightly cross-eyed infant, and so I ran to her. It’s what I do: I drop what I’m doing to attend her, a middle-aged man, hopelessly trapped, forever under her moist little thumb.

I opened the door to her room and there she was standing, thumb cocked to one side in her mouth, staring at the door, waiting for me to poke my head in.

“Dad!” she cried, as if she hadn’t seen me in a year. “Today is my birfday!” Then she took the thumb out and started clapping. “Yay me!” she cried.

I picked her up and she hugged me close (without peeing on me). Then she held my face in her little hands and stared very seriously into my eyes.

“Know how old I am?” she asked. “Know how old?”

“I know,” I answered. “You’re three today!”

“YES!” She shouted in my face. “I’m free! Free! FREEEEEEEE!” Then she recovered herself and gave me an appraising look. “Dad, you’re insane,” she said.

But as I carried her downstairs, her head nestled on my shoulder, I realized that, while I may indeed be insane, I’m not trapped at all.

In fact, I, too, am free.

Happy birthday, baby.

Yours,
From Somewhere on the Masthead

In Which We Run...

2010-04-15T00:28:00.002-04:00

The starter’s pistol is surprisingly loud as the report echoes across the field, making me jump in my seat. The runners jump too and spurt forward, arms pumping, legs kicking, looking from this distance like colorful grasshoppers, bounding their way to the finish line in front of me.

For spring, it’s hot out. The actual temperature’s probably only in the high 70s, but sitting in it for four hours, no hat on my head, at rest in bleachers made of shiny, reflective aluminum, I feel like a martyr, sentenced to die a slow, baking death.

But it’s a good death. My son is competing in his first track meet—he’s the blue grasshopper, about 75 meters away and coming on fast in this first elimination round for the hundred-meter event. Not for the first time, I’m amazed that I have a runner in the family.

My people have never run for sport. This is not to say we’re not quick on our feet—we are, but only in life-and-death situations, or when our personal motivation is sufficiently high enough. When I was eight years old, my Big Brother saw me out the kitchen window, dashing across the yard with the last Twinkie, a Twinkie he’d been promised. He was a portly child and never known to do more than amble, but that day he moved faster than I knew he could, crashing through the dining room and vaulting an end table in the den in order to make it to the back door of the house and tackle me before I could leave the yard with his Twinkie.

Not too long after that, BB decided to take Dad’s truck for a spin. Dad stood a little better than five feet tall and had an impressive pot-belly. Not a born sprinter, but the sight of his 11-year-old leaving the driveway in his Chevy pick-up was enough to propel him out the front of the house (taking the screen door off one hinge as he did), across the yard and then up along the top of the rough, uneven stone fence that separated our front yard from the road. BB had to be going 20 or 25 miles an hour by then, but Dad caught up to the truck and, in a feat of agility I wouldn’t witness again until I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark, he leapt from the stone fence into the bed of the pick-up, then clambered in through the passenger side of the cab and brought the truck to an abrupt halt.

Despite my underfed, chicken-legged runner’s physique, I was never fleet of foot. Or even able to run any distance. I wanted to be a runner—especially if the last Twinkie was at stake—but I never seemed able to summon the speed or the lung capacity to go the distance. Although God knows I tried over the years.

I don’t know why, but my body was just not able to run. I had terrible form. I was laughably flat-footed. And I was painfully susceptible to every known running malady. I couldn’t stride a lap without getting nipple chafe. I suffered from legendary side stitches: All it would take would be a run of no more than 25 yards, and I’d collapse to the cinder-strewn track, clutching my ribs as though I’d just been run through with an invisible pitchfork. I suffered leg cramps of such immediacy and severity that one waggish running coach suggested I change my name to Charley Horse. And don’t even get me started on all the weird digestive side effects that can come from hauling your intestines down the track. In those instances, I proved that my body was proficient in only one kind of running.

To top it off, my head was too big.

I’m serious. Every time I ever tried to run, I became almost instantly aware that I had a big head. I could feel it wobbling around on top of my shoulders, this outsized pumpkin on a stick, jiggling me this way and that, throwing me off my stride. There is no other way to describe it—I had a head that was too big to run with.

So it was both thrilling and surreal to watch Thomas. For the last month, he’s been training at practice two days a week and running every night on the walking track near the house. Blaze and I go with him, but it’s understood that we will never keep up. Thomas doesn’t seem to mind, and he sees us often enough as he passes us on lap after lap.

Now we’re at the first meet. Thomas is 50 meters away. He was second to last a moment ago, but he seems to have found an extra gear and kicks into overdrive. My son is full on sprinting, passing competitors, edging into 5th place, then 4th.

It’s very hot out and my head is spinning. I feel out of breath. The sensations mimic perfectly how I’ve felt every time I’ve ever tried seriously to run.

Hurdles, 1978:

Like Thomas, when I was in 5th grade, I tried out for track. Every boy in our class tried out—like playing baseball or making fart noises with our armpits, it was just what we did. There wasn’t much else going on at that age in rural Kansas. My friend Shawn, tall, long-legged, was a natural at it and fast too. He ran just about every event that was on offer and beat all but the oldest of kids. I tended to bring up the rear in every event. So the coach, after watching me jump a fence, decided to try me on hurdles.

If I’d been required to jump only one hurdle, I might have done okay. But there were four on the practice track. I cleared the first one, buffed the second one with my ass and then, attempting the third one, caught both shins on the thing and fell nose-first onto the track. The word “face-plant” was not yet known in our little corner of the world, but I was the living embodiment of the term as I landed with a flat smack that reverberated like the shot of a starter’s pistol across the school grounds. The coach peeled me out of the track—the impression of my open-mouthed face is probably there to this day—and found a towel to mop up my bloody nose. He offered me the job of water boy, pulling a rusting Radio Flyer with two plastic coolers from place to place, and I accepted gratefully.

Relays, 1980:

It’s the school play-day—a sort of micro-Olympics pitting each grade against the other in all manner of physical activity. I won the baseball toss for my class—say what you will about my legs and lungs, but my left arm was a thunderbolt. I was the only kid in little league who could throw a baseball from the outfield fence all the way to the backstop at home plate. In the finals, I placed second, beaten only by a Neanderthal from 8th grade who had the arms of a silverback gorilla.

I was so pumped from this performance that I foolishly agreed to fill in as a last-minute replacement on the relay team (the other boy had twisted his ankle in the long jump). I was third in the relay, expected to hand off the baton to Shawn, the anchor man and our best hope for a win.

Or he would have been, if I hadn’t managed to somehow get the baton caught between my own legs and trip, falling open-mouthed onto the grass and skidding on my tongue. I got up and crawled the remaining few feet to my friend, spitting turf and looking wildly for the baton, which I thought had rolled in front of me. Instead, sometime during my spectacular sprawl, I had managed somehow to kick the baton up through the back of my gym shorts, where it lodged like a hot dog between two buns. With a courage uncommon in someone of his tender years, Shawn reached down the back of my shorts, pulled the baton free, and raced down the track, taking the baton and the torn waistband of my underpants with him. We came in dead last. I bore the pain and shame of the loss—and the accidental wedgie—for the rest of the day.

Finals, 1987:

It was finals week—not for racing, but for college, and I was late to my exam in English 440: Restoration and the 18th Century. I’d been living in London since the fall. I knew my way around the city, but that knowledge only got you so far when you missed the 88 bus and had no money for a cab. So I ran. Samuel Johnson once said, “When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life” and in the 45 minutes it took me to get across the city on foot, I was mighty tired of both. I staggered up the steps to my school and burst into the classroom looking like a crazy man. A crazy sweaty man. A crazy sweaty man panting great plumes of cold December air into the quiet exam room. I staggered to the professor’s desk and sort of collapsed halfway across it as I reached for a couple of blue exam booklets.

The professor was a kindly man, but right now he looked alarmed, as you might look if one of your students had just splayed himself across your desk. “Are you all right?” he asked.

In fact, I was not. My last effort to mount the steps had taken everything I had. The world literally grayed out for me. I was beyond speech—which for me is saying something. I panted heavily onto the desk, feeling the invisible pitchfork in my side, leaving great ropes of drool on the desktop. I was practically insensate, except for the fact that I could hear a strange whistling noise, as if someone had left a door or window open. My professor realized before I did that the whistling was coming from me.

“Do you have asthma?” he asked. The wheezing—and the blue tinge to my dribbling lips—evidently led him to leap to that conclusion.

Of course not, I wanted to say. I just have allergies. I’ve been living in a damp, mildewed, basement flat for months. That’s all. I turned out to be wrong about that. When I got home a month later, my doctor diagnosed me with exercise-induced asthma and I began life as a guy who carried an inhaler with him wherever he went. Back in the classroom, though, I just shook my head (scattering sweat everywhere, like an overheated dog), grabbed my blue books and half-walked, half-crawled to my seat. My chest was tight as an overwound rubber band. I could barely get a sip of breath. I closed my eyes and tried to go to my happy place, but it was too far to walk, even in my own head. The kindly professor offered me a cup of tea (he was a great one for tea and kept a pot on his desk). It was very strong, and very hot, but I was grateful for the infusion of fluids and caffeine. Miraculously, my airways opened after a few sips and my color got better. In a short while, I felt well enough to start working on my exam—just as the kindly professor called, “Fifteen minutes left, class, let’s wrap it up.” All of a sudden, my chest got tight again.

The Marathon, 1995:

Well, I call it “the marathon,” but in reality it was a 10K race.

Okay, a 5K race.

But it was a big deal to me, and a not unambitious goal. Since my asthma diagnosis, many doctors and fitness experts had told me I should try a little running, citing increases in lung capacity and decreases in instances of asthmatic episodes as you became a fitter, more accomplished runner. But by now, the problem wasn’t acknowledging the truth. The problem was getting started.

So I enlisted two coworkers in my resolution and we three signed up for a local 5K run. I deliberately picked two women to run with, reasoning that they’d be more sympathetic and encouraging of me than a couple of guys. Plus, once they pulled ahead of me—as they inevitably would—I figured that at least I could enjoy the scenery as I staggered along behind them.

As it turned out, I managed to keep pace. A friend at a running magazine—a fellow who had once qualified for the Olympics and trained runners of every fitness level—gave me an interval training program that enabled me to slowly build up my endurance. We started by walking for a minute, then running for 30 seconds, then walking a minute, then running 45 seconds, and so on until three weeks later I was walking for 30 seconds and running for as much as five minutes at a time, and without needing to stop and use my asthma inhaler. By the end of our training program, I didn’t need a walking interval at all, although at points my running speed was not much faster than the pace my grandmother set at a brisk stroll.

The day of the race dawned bleak and cold. Cold air had a way of aggravating my asthma, but I’d been practicing breathing through my nose in order to warm the air up before it hit my lungs. When the starter’s pistol went off, my partners and I were in the front of the pack and it took an effort of will to pace ourselves and not try to keep up. By the time we reached the halfway point of the race, we were somewhere in the middle, behind the real runners, but ahead of the grannies and the children. I was losing steam fast, though. No photos of my participation in the event exist, thank God, but I think it’s fair to say I looked a bit frightful. My trackpants were drooping with sweat. My hair was wildly askew. As I plodded on, I became aware that I must have looked and sounded like a bull, head down, snorting out great blasts of steam, my lower face engulfed entirely in mucosal mung.

In the last stretch of the race, my partners at last abandoned me. One of them looked at her watch and realized she could finish the race in under 30 minutes, which had been her goal. My goal was simply to stay upright. I wordlessly waved her on and she and the other woman surged ahead. But as they left, I foolishly began to wonder if I could break the 30-minute mark. Runners out there won’t see this as terribly ambitious, I’m sure, but for a first-time, pumpkin-headed, asthma-addled racer, it sounded like an awesome achievement to me, so I dug deep and with a mighty blast of air and snot, lunged ahead. I fell across the finish line just as the display clock read 29:58, sank to my knees and gave out a scream of triumph. Well, I intended it to be a scream of triumph, but witnesses say it actually sounded like a wounded bull. Then I threw up. I haven’t tried to run since.

Thomas looks regal, like a thoroughbred, head high, back slightly arched. He is neck-and-neck with the boy in second place and it’s an exciting dash to the finish. I’m up on my feet, hopping a bit, trying to scream “Go!” and "Move!" simultaneously (it comes out, of course, as a long “MOOOOOO!”) He crosses the finish just a fraction of a second behind his nearest competitor, but still fast enough to place in the final. I dash down the bleacher steps and across the grounds to greet him as he drapes himself over the fence, panting a bit, but otherwise looking pleased with himself.

Before I can congratulate him, he looks up at me and gasps. “Water,” he says, then throws his head in the direction of his team’s tent. “The cooler over there’s empty.”

“No problem!” I tell him. Back up in the stands, I have a backpack full of bottles. I turn and sprint back the way I came, the perpetual water boy, supporting the team. Despite the heat, despite my flat feet and pumpkin head and asthmatic lungs, I feel great, almost euphoric.

This, I know now, is the kind of running I was always meant to do.

Yours,
From Somewhere on the Masthead

In Which Failure is Always An Option...

2010-04-06T12:36:00.000-04:00

In the wee hours, Thomas, who is regularly up before the sun, awakened me with a terse reminder that today was the day I needed to drive him and his science experiment to school.

“Get up!” he cried from his seated position at my desk. “The exhibit room is going to fill up fast and I want to get a good spot on the floor. Come on, Dad! It’s time to go learn about science!”

“Don’t need,” I muttered. “Know science stuff.” I’m all articulate like that first thing in the morning.

Thomas returned to his work—finishing up his presentation notes on my laptop and fiddling with a flash drive. “You’re in a state of inertia, Dad. Get up and show me some kinetic energy!”

So, heeding the call of science, I somehow got myself out of bed and into clothes while Thomas finished his work on the computer. Then we went downstairs and dismantled the experiment we—mostly he—had so carefully assembled.

At first, Thomas told me we had a lot of options when it came to constructing an experiment, but a careful review of the assignment revealed that students were expected to build some kind of apparatus that involved dropping marbles down a system of tubes or track, and there had to be loops built in too (well, at least one loop. You got extra credit for however many other loops you could build into the thing). There was a suggested parts list (marbles, tubing, support rods for the apparatus) and even a budget—we weren’t supposed to exceed $25.

Well, our 25 bucks got us a few wooden dowels, a honking big roll of tape and Velcro and glue (for securing your experiment to its base and support structure), and about 100 feet of track. Thomas wanted to use clear plastic tubing, but at several dollars per foot it would have put us way beyond our budget. Plus, as I pointed out, if the marbles got stuck, we’d have to take the tubing apart to get at them. The instruction sheet recommended foam pipe insulation, way cheaper, easier to form into loops, and you could cut them lengthwise in half, doubling the amount of track you could use, and creating an experiment that still made it easy to observe the transit of the marbles and retrieve them if they got stuck.

Fully assembled, it looked like this:

“Well,” said Her Lovely Self, as she appraised the work, “at least no one will accuse him of having his parents help him too much.” She didn’t mean it unkindly. We both had made a pact that we would provide minimal help, feeling—naively, as it turned out—that Thomas should do most of the work on his own. So I had largely consigned myself to any work involving sharp tools (mostly for cutting the track), and proofreading his report, which Thomas had first typed up, then put into a presentation on PowerPoint (his computer skills, honed from his early days as Art Lad, are far superior to mine in this regard).

Thomas still needed a platform to put the thing on and there I deviated from the instructions, which suggested plywood. I had visions of trying to hump a heavy sheet of wood into school and suggested instead that we get a big flat sheet of foam insulation. It was lightweight, yet thick and durable enough to support the experiment--although not, as it turned out, durable enough to tie to the roof of your car without it breaking in half and flying across the boulevard once you exceeded speeds of 20 miles an hour.

I felt a little guilty busting our budget with the purchase of a replacement piece, but 32 bucks still didn’t seem too expensive.

But then we arrived at school and it was clear that we hadn’t spent nearly enough.

The parking lot was packed with giant SUVs and pick-up trucks and even--I swear to God--a rented U-Haul, as parents unloaded massive displays. Elaborate displays. Clearly expensive displays. It was as if we’d arrived at a World’s Fair exhibit of futuristic theme-park rides.

“Oh God,” said Thomas, taking a panicked glance in back at his meager contribution to science. “I can’t go in there with this stupid thing! We have to go back to the house and—“

“And what?” I said.

“I don’t know!” he cried. “Can’t you think of something? You always tell these stories where you come up with something awesome! And pull things out of your butt at the last minute and stuff!”

I tried to explain to Thomas that writing a story on deadline or getting the last word in an argument was not a transferable skill in this instance. “This is not my specialty,” I said, a little plaintively. “If you needed me to write a press release about your experiment, I could probably help you. I majored in communications, not in saving our asses at the science fair!”

A profound silence descended there in the car, as we watched the frigging March of Progress unfold in front of us. It’s hardly an original observation to note the unfairness and inadequacy one feels at realizing that some parents help their kids way too much when it comes to science experiments, but it was a new experience for me. And I felt like a total failure. My son had clearly inherited an intellectual bounty from his mother, but what had his father given him? I had no head for science or architecture or aesthetics, or really for much of anything else. So I could write—big whoop. And thanks to a meager store of improvisational skills, I could think on my feet. Neither attribute was going to help Thomas in this circumstance. This was not a situation where he could write or talk his way out of the fact that other kids had let their parents spend two weeks building elaborate stage productions of science, while Her Lovely Self and I foolishly made Thomas do his own work.

But there was nothing for it at this juncture. So, with heavy sighs, we got out of the car and, as beaming parents wheeled in their displays on carts and hand trolleys, Thomas and I straggled behind with our rolls of tape and tubing and pink foam insulation.

The room was already crowded with parents and their kids, as well as spectators—mostly 6th and 7th graders. This was a homeroom for the upper grades and I remembered then that Thomas, despite being a 5th grader, had been moved into a 6th-grade science class. It occurred to me then to remind him of this fact, but one look at the expression on his face—the expression that warned me not to say anything to him—and I decided to keep my mouth shut. We got a small space on the floor of the exhibit room, right next to a skyscraper made of LEGOs and Tinkertoys (with a hand-crank elevator that raised the marbles to maximum height), and an intricate looping spiral tower that appeared to be modeled on the human digestive system. Thomas stared at it longingly.

“Look, Dad. They used the clear pipe, like I wanted to use,” he said. There was a sadness in his voice that was hard to ignore. But I bent to the task of reassembling our pathetic little tripod, while Thomas worked with the tubing to reform the loops of the track. Because our effort was so simplistic, we were up and running in about three minutes. As other parents fiddled with different pieces of their kids’ experiments (One dad was wearing a tool belt and using a socket wrench to adjust the tension on the metal fittings of his display, a scale-model roller coaster built almost entirely of Erector Set parts), Thomas got his marbles out and did a test run. The ball made the first loop of the track, but fell out on the second loop and rolled away. We made a few key adjustments, but the same thing happened with the next three.

“It’s all right,” I said, a trifle desperately. “What is it they say on Mythbusters? ‘Failure is always an option,’ right?” Well, it was the wrong thing to say. Thomas made an impatient noise and stomped his feet as he went off to get his marbles. I was no help in this regard--I had long since lost all of mine.

I couldn’t blame him for being frustrated. In numerous practice runs we had struggled with breaking the Two-Loop Barrier. The problem was we needed a higher starting point for the marbles to have enough speed to make the two loops. But a higher starting point meant longer dowels and we could only fit so much in the back of the car. In the end, we made the second loop smaller and tighter than the first, but it didn’t always work.

While Thomas retrieved his marbles, I readjusted the second loop for him. My workspace was getting crowded though as, coming in behind me came a dad carrying a huge piece of plywood, painted black with lots of starry glitter on it. He heaved it to the floor and in behind him came four other adults, each of them carrying armloads of dowels and brightly colored Styrofoam globes. Together, this crew hemmed me in and began assembling what appeared to be a scale model of the solar system.

Thomas had returned and stood stiffly by me as this exhibit grew (and grew and grew). Then, in came a fleshy boy who was grinning from ear to ear, looking triumphant, as if he had the whole world in his hands. As in fact he did: he was carrying a store-bought globe.

“That’s the kid in my lab group, the one who always copies off me,” Thomas hissed.

“The Dingleberry?” I blurted, before I could stop myself. But Dad Dingleberry and his four-man construction crew didn’t hear me—they were too busy arranging clear plastic tubing into wide elliptical arcs around the diorama, and fishing them through carefully drilled holes in the Styrofoam spheres.

Dingle Junior handed the globe to his dad, then turned to Thomas.

“Pretty cool, huh?” he said in what sounded like a sneering tone to me. “When I launch the ball from the starting point (here he pointed to a ceiling-scraping tower his Dad was putting up) it goes through the tubing and the tubing goes through each planet. That’s eight loops in all (I counted only seven).” He stood beaming as one of the crew began running balls from the top of the tower down into the loops. The boy pointed to the center of the diorama, where the store-bought globe sat. “See?” he said. “The earth’s at the center and when the balls are finished, they plop right into the top of the globe.”

It’s a great failing of mine as a parent that whenever I’m in earshot of my kids being picked-on or embarrassed, I feel compelled to say something. At this early hour, though, the best I could muster was to observe that scientists had long ago established that the earth was not the center of the solar system. But before I could open my mouth to impart this lame bon mot, Thomas simply snorted and pointed at the exhibit.

“Looks like your balls are stuck in Uranus,” he said.

If I had been drinking coffee at that moment, everyone in the room would have been sprayed in a fine, caffeinated mist. The Dingleberry’s mouth dropped open as if he’d been slapped across the face. The bigger kids sitting on the sidelines overheard the exchange and started guffawing—one pretty girl clapped and hooted. “Way to go, Thomas!” she cried, then turned to a friend. “That’s the smart kid from 5th grade,” she said, in a stage whisper. It was hard to tell whose face was redder—Thomas’ or the Dingleberry’s.

Then two science teachers came in and the room got hushed as they picked their way through the exhibits. I fretted a little with that troublesome second loop, then stepped back. Thomas gave a start as though he’d forgotten something and went to the sidelines to find his bookbag (which the pretty 6th grader handed to him). Then he darted out of the room and was gone.

I stood watching the teachers as they looked at the exhibits and asked students to show them how they worked. I have to say, some of them were very impressive (the one modeled on the human digestive system was particularly clever). The teachers made appropriate murmurs of fascination, sometimes turning and nodding to the beaming parents. Then they started quizzing the kids and my estimation of them as teachers went up a notch. With just a few questions, it was clear that many of the students could barely articulate the science behind them, which had been the whole point of the exercise (that’s right. This wasn’t really a science fair, just a classroom exercise. It wasn’t like there was a scholarship or even a blue ribbon at stake). Only a few students could explain the Newtonian laws behind their work (one confused girl kept calling her display a chemistry experiment, not a physics exhibit).

As they made their way around the room, the teachers were looking increasingly dismayed, which is how I would feel in their shoes. Clearly they had intended this to be fun but educational project for their students, and it hadn’t quite turned out that way. Instead, it had become a show of excess and overweening parenting. I began to see the exhibit room with fresh eyes. Many of the more stunning exhibits didn’t work as well as their makers had hoped (lots of parents were helping their kids retrieve marbles stuck deep within inaccessible clear plastic tubing). But I also saw now that there were several simpler, unadorned exhibits as well and their young makers now seemed to shine as the teachers quizzed them, and came away smiling, secure in the knowledge that at least some students—and their parents—got the point.

Then the teachers negotiated their way around the solar system, which was descending into entropy. The elliptical tubing was sagging in places and the launch tower was already listing to one side after being jostled by parents and kids coming and going. One teacher squinted at the whole thing. “It looks like your marbles are stuck in...the, uh, planet here,” he said to the Dingleberry and his dad.

Then they came to me. Or I should say, to us. I had been so engrossed in watching the teachers that I had failed to notice Thomas’ return.

One of the teachers smiled at my son. “Here’s my computer helper,” he said, winking at me. And I remembered how Thomas had told me that he had helped this teacher one day when the school’s science blog had crashed. It turned out that he had accidentally messed up the Blogger template, something that had happened to a certain Art Lad blog many times. Thomas fixed the problem in a trice and had since earned privileges in the computer lab. Which, incidentally, is where Thomas had gone. He was now holding a small laptop that he had signed out and was quickly downloading his presentation from his flash drive.

His presentation was short, but effective (mental note: hire Thomas to do all my A/V work, next time I’m putting together a lecture). He ran through the slide show and gave his report. When he finished, the teachers asked a couple of questions, then turned to regard my son’s exhibit. Thomas shot me a panicked look and I realized he’d been hoping to dazzle them with his mad PowerPoint skills and distract them from his display. Still, he soldiered on, setting the laptop down and fumbling for the marbles. He dropped one down the chute and my heart sank as, despite all our noodling, it still fell out of the second loop and rolled away. It wasn’t really that big a deal—I already knew Thomas was going to be fine, gradewise. But I felt embarrassed for him as kids, especially the Dingleberry, snickered.

“What happened there?” one of the teachers asked.

“Oh,” said Thomas in an unexpected voice of excitement, as if he’d just been asked about a special feature he was dying to show off. “That’s the Failure Loop.”

Everyone within earshot laughed, including the teachers. “The what?” the teacher asked again.

“The Failure Loop,” Thomas continued evenly. “The ball loses energy after the first loop, okay? So it doesn’t make it through the second loop. What the Failure Loop does is show that you have to raise the launch point higher or make the loop tighter so that the marble has enough kinetic energy to get through both loops.” Then he leaned conspiratorially toward the teachers. “In science you can learn a lot more from a failure than from an experiment that works, you know.” The teachers were grinning now—they liked that—and were still chuckling as they moved on.

Thomas came over to me, trembling a little, but smiling.

“The Failure Loop?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he admitted. “I totally pulled that out of my butt. But it worked.”

Tears stood in my eyes as I heard these words. I wanted to say something to him, but just then the pretty 6th grader and her friends surrounded Thomas, asking to see his PowerPoint presentation again, and I was quite forgotten. It was getting late and I really had to get to work, but I stood there a minute longer, imprinting that moment in my memory.

I swear to God, I have never been so proud of my son.

Yours,
From Somewhere on the Masthead

In Which We Defile the Laws of Physics...

2010-03-29T16:56:00.000-04:00

One of my worst parenting fears has finally come to pass.

No, the Brownie is not suffering PMS (although it seems to me she’s been rehearsing for it for years). No, boys have not been sniffing around, pitching whatever passes for woo in the 21st century (although it would be just my luck right now, what with Blaze on the disabled list).

In fact, this particular fear has nothing whatever to do with the girls, but with the boy. Thomas has begun asking me for help with homework that is beyond my comprehension.

I can feel stupid pretty much any time I want to, of course, but there is something special—something that really ramps up the Imbecile Factor—about staring goggle-eyed at a 5th-grade workbook and realizing that you are as clueless, as helpless to aid your son as if you were in a medically induced coma.

Math and science are the big problems, as I always knew they would be. I studied these subjects, of course, even excelled at them. I got (almost) straight A’s in high-school algebra and even passed a beginning calculus class my senior year. In college I took two years’ worth of science classes and did well at those too (although most of those courses were such light fare as History of Science and a Geology lab so basic it was known, even by its professors, as “Rocks for Jocks”).

The problem is that as soon as I passed these courses, everything I learned passed too—right out of my head. I comforted myself with the idea that my brain, having a (very) finite storage capacity, needed to make room for all the swell words and turns of phrase and cutting remarks I’ve felt compelled to store up over the years. Still, it’s embarrassing. From time to time, as I’ve rummaged around in the Lost and Found box of my memory, I’ve only ever been able to pull out a handful of formulae that, sadly, make up the sum total of my scientific and mathematical knowledge base:

Y=mx+b

3x2(9YZ)4a

d=m/v

n2-n1/n1

The worst part is, I don’t quite remember what they’re for. I’m pretty sure one is for calculating percentage change, and another is the equation for a straight line (or maybe a curved line). The only one I’m certain about is the second one, and that’s not even a real mathematical equation: it’s the secret formula that obscure 1940’s super-hero Johnny Quick utters when he wants to run like hell. Which is what I feel like doing every time my son plops his homework in front of me.

Luckily, I have a solution to my math problem (as it were). Any time Thomas presents me with math that’s harder than long division, I send him to his mother. If it’s harder than basic algebra, Her Lovely Self gives him the phone and lets him call his aunt, who taught high-school math and can calculate pi to 20 decimal places without using her fingers and toes.

But for some reason, I get stuck with science. Even Her Lovely Self won’t touch it.

“You were a health reporter for years,” she’ll say. “Of course you know science.”

“No,” I’ll counter. “I know how to copy down what real scientists say to me. And I’m very good at repeating the words, ‘Can you explain that in terms a 5-year-old would understand?’ Not quite the same thing.”

“Well, you can do plumbing. You fixed the upstairs bathroom when it was leaking that one time. And electrical work, like the time you changed the overhead fixture in the Brownie’s room. You have to understand some basic scientific principles to do that stuff, right?”

And I try to explain that being able to switch out the wax ring under the toilet does not automatically mean that I know the first thing about fluid dynamics. And being electrocuted by my daughter’s ceiling fan does not mean I can tell the difference between an amp, a volt, or a watt, no matter how many of them course through my stiffened body. But it doesn’t matter. She called dibs on math, and blindsided me with science.

So it’s been a difficult winter, of me staring over my son’s shoulder, reading instructions, and then shouting things like, “Chemical equations? In fifth grade? Are you shitting me?” or “Bernoulli’s principle? What the f--?”

But this past week, Thomas came to me with a pad of graph paper and an assignment sheet. “Dad,” he said, with just a hint of forecasted doom in his voice. “I have to build a science project. Can you help me?”

Well, as we all know, when it comes to the practical application of science, I’m—well, okay, I suck at that too. On the other hand, I was the only kid in my high school ever to observe and record a case of spontaneous mayermorphosis in science lab, so I had that going for me.

“What’s the project for?” I asked, then braced myself.

“I have to build something that demonstrates the difference between potential and kinetic energy,” he said.

The moment he said this, I all but jumped and screamed “Eureka!” (attributed, apocryphally, to Archimedes, 3rd century BC, when he was sitting in a tub in Syracuse, trying to figure out a way to measure the volume of a crown and determine whether it was made of pure gold. Thank you, History of Science). For in that moment, the Lost and Found box of my memory had tipped on its side, and out from under a bottom flap, shiny like a forgotten coin, was a whole scientific definition.

“I know that one!” I cried. “Potential is the energy something possesses owing to its position or condition. Kinetic is the energy something possesses because it’s in motion. And there’s a formula for it too—KE=1/2mv squared, but I don’t remember so much about that.”

Thomas seemed marginally excited at this news. “You really know about it?” he asked.

“Buddy,” I said, “I am so accident-prone, I am pretty much a slave to potential and kinetic energy. Mostly kinetic energy. But never mind. What do you have to build?”

“Well,” he said. “There are a bunch of things we can build, but I need to write a report about it too, and I’m supposed to explain the change between potential and kinetic, and when something goes from one to the other.”

“Oh, well that’s easy,” I said, hardly daring to believe that such words were coming out of my mouth in connection with a science experiment. “You can do it by example.”

“Okay,” said Thomas. “Give me an example.”

I suppose I could have sent Thomas to any of my previous posts involving me falling, or getting hit by something, but instead I cast about the room, and my eyes fell on our resident canine convalescent. “Okay, Blaze is a good example. When the dogs attacked us last week and he crouched down to get ready to fight, he was in a state of potential energy, right? Then when he lunged for the dogs, that potential energy changed to kinetic energy because he was moving to tear them a new—what’s wrong?”

Thomas had a look on his face, one I recognized because I saw it all too often when I looked in the mirror after any night that I was trying to help him with his homework. I couldn’t blame him for being confused—I didn’t know the first thing about kinetic energy until sophomore science class; in 5th grade, it probably would have fried my little brain.

But now Thomas wants to use Blaze as a kind of living science display, so over the weekend, he spent a lot of time with the dog, making careful observations, and asking lots of questions.

“Why are his ears sticking to the cone? Is that kinetic or potential energy?”

“So when he has an itch, is the itch potential energy, and the leg he scratches with is kinetic?”

“Look! Blaze is squatting to take a dump! So that’s potential energy. But when is it—oh never mind, here comes the kinetic energy.”

In the end, I think we’ll just put together some kind of apparatus involving marbles on a track. We’ll be sure to report our results here. All in the name of science, of course.

Yours,
From Somewhere on the Masthead

Weep not, my lovely pack!

2010-03-23T20:52:00.000-04:00

Oh! Melodramatic monkey has worried you needlessly.

Honestly. Just a scratch. Stings a bit. Less so just now. Lovely veterinarian, free hand with the anesthetics. May yet be feeling their influence. Quite lovely.

At rest upon The Big Bed. In The Girl’s lap. She is scratching The Good Spot Behind the Ears. The Queen Baby here too. Weeping. Shed no tears, my darling puppy. I tell you, I am feeling no pain. None.

Where was I?

Cannot seem to lick myself. Something in the way. Oh. It's a...what is it? No matter.

I am well. I am lovely! The reports of my death, et cetera. Will take more than a little surgery to still this dog’s heart, which is bursting with emotion for you all. I love everyone! And I tell you this: never again shall

Roast Beef! Oh! The Boy has brought. Let me—

Rrr. Dizzy to sit up. Maybe later.

Mm. Big Bed. Good Spot. Roast Beef.

Lovely.

A Long Walk, Shortened...

2010-03-23T13:21:00.000-04:00

Just time for a quick and somewhat sobering update.

It’s been a trying couple of weeks. Some kind of flu bug has swept through the house, striking first the Brownie (who never gets sick), then the Éclair. Thomas is now in the on-deck circle here at the Vomiting All-Star Game. I can only thank God that Her Lovely Self and I have thus far remained immune to the ravages of this inelegant and (I must say) rather explosive virus.

But that’s the least of my worries. Yesterday, I was walking Blaze on the grounds near where we’re staying. With everyone sick, I haven’t had time to give him a good long walk, so I thought I’d make it up to him. But then the two aging German shepherds who patrol the grounds came running over, barking their fool heads off. This happens nearly every time I go out. Usually, it’s enough for them to see me, and then they back off. If they don’t, I shout their names in a declarative voice and they usually turn away.

Not this time. This time they kept charging.

I don’t know what the deal was, whether they were all amped up from chasing squirrels all morning or canine Alzheimer’s kicked in, but these two dogs were on a mission. I dragged Blaze and myself over to the walking path where I was told the Invisible Fence was laid. If it was, it wasn’t working, or the dogs were past caring. They kept coming.

They’re big, too, half a head taller than Blaze, and scary when the pair of them are coming for you at speed. The more aggressive one, referred to as Adolf in the post in which they were introduced, got there first and was crouching to jump on me. But Blaze got between us and they skirmished for a second. In that second, the other dog, Eva, who has to date been sweet and retiring, came around from the side and, snarling, went for my leg.

(Thank God the kids weren’t with us.)

Blaze should have looked after himself. He would have been fine. But when he saw Eva go behind me, he turned and went after her. To protect me. And when he did, Adolf clamped his jaws onto Blaze’s exposed flank and almost tore my dog’s leg off.

I’m a real bleeding heart when it comes to animals, but I’m embarrassed to say, I flipped out. Thanks to Blaze, Eva only got my pant-leg, so my foot was free, and I pushed my boot-heel into her face as hard as I could. She wasn’t injured, but she let go. Then I brought my leg around in wide arc and stepped right down on Adolf’s head. That probably didn’t help matters—he still had Blaze’s leg in his jaws—but he let go quick enough (you would too if I was standing on your head). I’m ashamed to admit it, gentle reader, but I was this close to putting everything I had into driving that dog’s head into the ground, but I let him up and he took off yelping (he was also not injured). I threw Blaze over my shoulder like he was a sack of potatoes and rushed him into the house.

The bite went through to the bone on both sides and by the time we got Blaze to the vet, an infection was already setting in. The vet isn’t too concerned about his ability to repair the damage and save Blaze’s leg (it could have been much worse if Adolf had started shaking him). But, well, Blaze isn’t the dog he used to be—he’s at least nine years old, and almost 20 pounds overweight. The vet’s concerned about how well he’ll do under anesthesia. He’s worried my dog’s heart will give out.

Which, as a pro tip for all you vets-in-training out there, is not the sort of thing I would say in front of children, especially my children, who love Blaze more than anything, including popsicles and chocolate pudding. They’re stricken right now, and who can blame them?

We’ll know more this afternoon, but meanwhile, sitting here at my desk at work, I feel like I’m in the grip of an explosive virus, ready to throw up or feel my heart give out. Blaze and I have been through worse than this—far worse--but I can’t help but worry.

So what do I do? I worry all of you along with me. Sorry.

But I’m a big believer in the power of positive thinking and am convinced your good thoughts and well wishes have helped us before, so please have a thought for Blaze today. How I wish he had just let that dog bite my leg instead.

More as soon as I know it.

But right now, I'm taking a late lunch and going to talk with someone about keeping Adolf and Eva behind something a little stronger than an imaginary fence.

Yours,
From Somewhere on the Masthead

In Which We Establish Our Bona Fides...

2010-03-03T23:25:00.001-05:00

Everyone has some aspect of his or her life that should be easy, but never is, that makes us wonder, Why does this have to be so hard? It’s usually a normal everyday thing, something that the rest of the population deals with almost effortlessly. But for whatever reason, there’s always something, some little thing, that makes Fate point a bony finger in your direction and say, “Him. He’s going to have a harder time dealing with that than anyone else.”

There’s no telling what that thing will be. I have a friend who probably holds the world record for dialing the wrong telephone number. It always takes him at least two tries to connect with whoever he’s trying reach. Even when he got a mobile phone and carefully entered all of his important numbers in the address book, he’d get a wrong number.

My parents, God love them, were fated never to invest their money well. Any time they had an extra bit of money set aside and wanted to invest it, the investment went sour. They would invest in stocks, only to see the company go under. They switched to real estate and the first house they tried to flip went to a couple who couldn’t get financing from a bank, so my parents held the note on their mortgage. Then the couple declared bankruptcy three months later. They went into business for themselves once or twice, and it never worked out.

My personal hardship? The thing that should be easy but isn’t?

Driver’s licenses. The universe just doesn’t want to extend driving privileges to me.

I was reminded of this fact the other day, when I went to turn in my out-of-state license and get a new one. I was told that here, in the new state I’m calling home, the bureau of motor vehicles is adhering to some new Secure ID policy, and that to acquire a new license I would need to bring in several forms of identification, including my birth certificate, my Social Security card, a W-2 form, and three pieces of mail with my in-state address on them (and those pieces of mail could not be more than 60 days old).

I get that they want to conform to the new federal guidelines, and crack down on ID theft, but come on! It’s a driver’s license. I’ve signed newborns out of the hospital with far less proof of identity than what my new home state was asking of me now.

But my consternation was far from complete. After reviewing my paperwork and all but doing a DNA swab and demanding blood and stool samples, the clerk handling my application informed me that I would now have to take a written test to qualify for my license. She pointed to a dark corner of the building crammed with little desks. Then she handed me a thick sheaf of paper. “There’s your test,” she said. It was 50 questions long!

I slumped into a desk over in the corner and glanced through the test questions. They were multiple choice. The first one was:

The minimum age to acquire a driver’s license in the state is:

A. 16 years, 270 days
B. 16 years, two months
C. 18 years
D. How the hell should I know?

Or something like that. I read through the entire test and it was filled with questions like this: stuff that was somewhere in the state driving manual, but had no real bearing on my ability to safely pilot a motor vehicle. Which we already know I can do perfectly well. Ahem.

It wasn’t so much that I was dismayed with the questions as I was with the fact that I’d have to take a test. Unless they’re essay format, I’ve never been very good at tests, driving tests in particular. Not because I’m stupid (so much) but because, as I’ve said, the universe doesn’t want me to get a driver’s license. And the way the universe tells me this is often through the medium of a driver’s test.

I’ve known this since I was 14, when I was a sophomore in high school and first had to take driver’s ed. Back then, the way it worked was: you had however many hours of classroom instruction; at the end of the year, you took a written test which, if you passed, would earn you your learner’s permit. Then, in junior year, you’d take the behind-the-wheel portion of driver’s ed, log in however many hours of practice driving the state required and by the end of that year—or your 16th birthday, whichever came last—you’d take your actual driving test and get your license.

Problem was, I was the youngest in my class by almost two years and wouldn’t be old enough to use a learner’s permit until my senior year, but I was made to take driver’s ed anyway. It was taught by our health and phys-ed teacher, a real piece of work named Mr. Jack-Ass.

I’m joking, of course. That wasn’t his real name. His real name was Mr. Super Humongous Jack-Ass.

By the time I met him, Mr. S was well past his career zenith—hell, his life’s zenith. He had briefly played professional football, or so we’d been told. Between the intervening years of that apex moment and his tenure as my phys-ed/health/driver’s-ed teacher, he had devoted himself to a new sport, one that evidently involved over-eating. As I scan my mental Rogue’s Gallery, I have a general visual impression of him as a fleshy fellow in food-flecked velour tracksuits whose elastic supports had been stretched literally to their limits.

Talking to him was never something you wished for because Mr. S was a spitter and in conference with him, he would convey large amounts of saliva—along with bits of whatever food he’d recently been eating—onto your face and shirtfront. As if this wasn’t enough of a deterrent to interacting with the man, he also had a tendency to treat any conversation with a student as an opportunity for derision and public humiliation.

I discovered this on the first day of driver’s ed, when I went up to his desk and asked if I might instead be permitted to take a study hall period in lieu of a class in which I was legally too young to participate. After making fun of me for being the baby of the class (a constant refrain of my formative school years), Mr. S essentially told me I had to take the class whether the state of New Jersey thought I was old enough or not.

“But what’s the point?” I asked. “By the time I’m old enough to use the learner’s permit, it’ll be expired and I’ll have to do this all over again.”

“The point?” he cried, liberally distributing spit and masticated chili dog across my glasses. “The point is you take the class now or get an F!” A few of the jocks in class snickered behind me, which only encouraged Mr. S. “And don’t worry, I’ll let you repeat the class with me next year,” he added, then grinned at the jock douchebags behind me, as if he’d scored a lovely point of wit at my expense.

It was one of those moments—I had them often in my youth--where I wished for clairvoyance, so I could inform Mr. S that he’d never get the pleasure of having me in class again, that he’d be gone from the school in less than a year, fired over an incident involving him dropping his velour trousers to moon a bevy of pert young cheerleaders. But in the event, I just slunk back to my seat. I took the course, I passed the test, I got my useless learner’s permit. And then the next year, my schedule didn’t permit me to take driver’s ed with the sophomores and their new teacher. I could have done it senior year, but my ego got in the way and I couldn’t stand the thought of retaking a course I’d aced two years previously. So I graduated and started college without a driver’s license. Which you wouldn’t think would matter (since I was also without a car), but my student ID wasn’t much help when it came to cashing checks.

Thus it was that the next summer, I rode my bike way the hell across town to the local DMV and sat once again for the written test to get my learner’s permit. It was harder than I remembered, but I passed. A few weeks later, I went back to take my behind-the-wheel test and it was an epic failure.

The main problem, as I saw it, was that I had done all of my practice driving in small cars, mainly an old diesel VW Rabbit and a Chevy Citation. The car I used in the actual test was some ungodly Detroit-made monster that shared the same dimensions as a World War II aircraft carrier. Thus when it came to the pivotal moment in the test—the dreaded Parallel Parking—I humiliated myself. I misjudged the distance to the curb by about 20 feet, so that when I turned to back in and gave it a little gas, the aircraft carrier didn’t just hit the curb, it took it out. And kept going. I crunched on through the pulverized cement and up across the sidewalk, leaving a tire mark in the grass of the yard beyond. Then, just to make a day of it, I put the car back in drive and accelerated forward, off the yard, off the sidewalk, out of the parking space, and right into the path of an oncoming car. Luckily, the driver of that car must have passed her road test with flying colors, because she put on a textbook display of defensive driving, weaving around me and managing to give me the finger without losing control of her vehicle.

I had to wait three weeks before I could take the test again, but this time I borrowed a tiny Dodge Omni, and made my friend bring it to my house at the crack of dawn, where I amused some of my early-rising neighbors with an exhibition in parallel parking that went on for almost an hour. I parallel-parked that sucker about 200 times, leaving curbs and lawns intact with almost every attempt, then drove straight over to the testing site. I passed, but as the instructor handed me my paperwork that finally enabled me to get a driver’s license, I remembered feeling a sense of hollow victory, and thinking to myself, Why did this have to be so hard?

I had the same feeling many years later, when I moved to Pennsylvania, another state that required you to take a classroom exam before they’d grant you driving privileges in their state. That was almost more humiliating than the incident with the aircraft carrier. Because it wasn’t a traditional written test. The classroom featured three large antiquated boxlike consoles that each looked like a cross between a Soviet-made television set and a slot machine. In fact, they were audio-visual devices that flashed a slideshow up on a screen, showing you different traffic signs and driving scenarios. After giving you about three milliseconds to study the image, the screen would switch to a question about the image you just saw and you were required to press one of three lighted buttons on the console to give your answer. If you answered correctly, the machine whirred pleasantly on to the next slide. But if you got the question wrong, the contraption made a resounding CLUNK that signaled your failure to everyone throughout the building, possibly even across the state. Pennsylvania gave you a very small margin of error. Three CLUNKS and you were out. I got three CLUNKS, and had to wait two weeks before I could face the devices again. Even then I barely passed because when I accidentally bumped the machine with my leg, some kind of malfunction occurred and I got two unearned CLUNKS. Luckily, I answered the remaining questions correctly (and rather gingerly).

Ever since, I’d been lucky enough to live in states that required me only to trade my current license for a new one. It had been 17 years since I had to reckon with another test, and now here I was having to deal with a freaking exam of 50 questions—none of them essay-type.

Why does this have to be so hard?

Except of course that it wasn’t, so much. I took my time, employed what common sense I have, and finished the test. I only got one question wrong—the first one (turns out it was 16 years 270 days, not 16 years, two months). Then proceeded through the rest of the processing without incident.

Until the end, when the clerk who took my money and my picture, informed me that I would have to use a paper receipt as my license until the bureau of motor vehicles finished processing my information and making—by hand, I suppose—my new super-secure ID.

“Oh,” I said. “Do I just come back in and pick it up?”

“No,” the clerk said. “We’ll mail it to you.”

I paused a beat. “Can you send it to my office? I’m not home during the day to sign for anything.”

The clerk shook her head. “That’s okay. We just send it regular mail.”

I blinked for a few seconds, then said. “Are you shitting me?”

The clerk blinked back.

“I have to bring in every personal credential to my name so you can confirm my identity and create this secure ID—which you then just pop in the mail and trust to the US Postal Service?” I said this last a little shrilly, I admit. I had suddenly morphed into Mr. Super Humongous Jack-Ass, minus the velour tracksuit. I may have even sprayed a little spittle and microscopic bits of food at her while I said it.

The woman shook her head—I gathered this was not the first time she’d heard this response—and muttered, “Why does this have to be so hard?”

Took the words right out of my mouth.

Yours,
From Somewhere on the Masthead

In Which We Let the Dog Out of the Bag...

2010-02-24T09:47:00.000-05:00

Busy week here. Well, every week’s been a busy week, but I’m committed to putting something up here more regularly than once every 90 days.

So in lieu of the usual, I’m sending you over to a fun blog called Coffee with a Canine. We were invited to participate a couple of weeks back and Blaze agreed before I even had a chance to think about it. But I’m glad he did. It’s a neat concept, and we enjoyed being part of it. So grab a cup of joe and head on over.

More soon.

Yours,
From Somewhere on the Masthead

In Which We Report Some Startling Results...

2010-02-19T00:02:00.005-05:00

During lunch, Patrick, the Dingleberry I was saddled with as my lab partner, came over and sat at my table, his hand out in a gimme-gimme gesture.

“Need your lab report,” he said. “I forgot to copy down the results from the experiment.”

I stared at him for a moment, wondering if he really expected me to believe this obvious lie. I had watched only a few days earlier as he scribbled down the results from our latest experiment—something to do with the effects of certain acids on various materials, including baking soda, modeling clay, and several other things (I forget, really. After high school, my interest in the area of acids and bases didn’t extend beyond understanding how a handful of Tums works the morning of a really bad hangover, so it’s all a bit of blur).

I was automatically cagey. You would have been too if Patrick had been a pain in your ass for the previous three years. “I didn’t finish it yet. I’m working on it in study hall next period. But you can copy the results from my notebook right now,” I offered, handing him my spiralbound lab book. I figured it was the quickest way to get rid of him.

He shook his head. “Nah. Just gimme the whole report when you come in for history,” he said. Patrick and I also shared history class, the class just before science.

“What do you need my whole report for?” I asked.

He sneered at me across the lunch table. “Whayaneemywholereporfor?” he mimicked in a whiny, nasally way. “Just give it to me, butt-munch,” he said, chortling to himself. “Butt-munch” represented the absolute zenith of name-calling humor for Patrick. Then he glowered at me. “I’ll be waiting for you out in the hall. Don’t be a dickwad about it or you’ll be sorry,” he said, then shoved himself away from my table and slouched off to join his cronies over in the Dingleberry quadrant of our high school lunchroom.

I sat there for a moment, drumming my fingers on the table and staring at the remains of my lunch—hot dogs and potato chips—for which I no longer had an appetite. Pat hadn’t threatened me in quite this way since 8th grade, but he was still a pure-D bully. And I must confess, back then I was the poster boy for wimpy, bespectacled 98-pound weaklings everywhere (not like the taut ball of muscularity I am today, baby). If I didn’t give him what he wanted—

Just then, I realized I was being watched and looked up. From the next table over I locked eyes with a guy I’ll call Mac, a rather portly member of our class. He was good friends with my missing lab partner—poor Harry, who had broken his leg and was going to be out for several weeks. Mac was just smirking at me and shaking his head, but not in an entirely unkindly way.

“What?” I said.

“Nothing,” he answered, then laboriously got up and squished himself into the seat across from me. “Just wondered how long that was going to take. Let me guess: Pat wanted your lab report.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Says he just needs the results, but he wants the whole report. I think he’s just going to copy the whole thing.”

Mac snorted at my naivete. “Well, no duh. Harry’s been writing them for him all year.”

This bit the biscuit. “What?”

Mac nodded. “Patrick copied one of Harry’s whole reports—word for word—and when the teacher compared them and confronted them, they both got detention. After that, Harry just wrote a different one for Patrick and he’d recopy it and hand it in.”

I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was. I hadn’t known about any of this. Harry certainly hadn’t said anything. But then, Harry and I weren’t exactly buddies. And it occurred to me that in Harry’s shoes, I wouldn’t have said anything either. It would have been too humiliating to admit I was writing two lab reports every week just to keep the class bully off my back.

Mac nodded sympathetically as this sank in, then he looked earnestly at me. “Hey, if you’re not gonna finish your lunch, can I have it?”

As I watched Mac inhale my leftovers, I gathered my books to get ready for next period, study hall. I opened my organizer and stared for a second at my lab report—of course it was finished, I had been lying to Patrick. I looked at the first page, the introduction and the hypothesis and all the other stuff we had to explain in our lab report. Then I flipped the page to where we were supposed to explain the experiment, analyze the data and explain the results. I sighed. I sure wasn’t going to give him my only copy of my lab report, but this was going to take me forever to recopy. I had (still have) terrible handwriting and it took a long while for me to write something legible in long-hand.

Then the bell rang and I stuffed everything into my bag and hurried off to study hall. I threw myself into my seat and grabbed a fresh piece of paper. I only had an hour to write a new copy for Patrick—not much time for me.

“Hey,” said Dino, the guy who sat in front of me.

“Hey,” I responded without looking up.

“Writing Patrick’s lab report for him?”

Now I did look up. “What the hell? Was it on the news?”

Dino just smiled sympathetically and returned to his book. I glanced around, imagining that everyone in the room was looking me, knowing that I was Patrick’s mutt. Suddenly, I was annoyed. The wheels started turning in my head, which was often a bad thing for me at that tender age. When I got annoyed, those wheels often spun off in directions that weren’t very good for me.

Alas, that didn’t stop me. I began writing.

My hand was pretty cramped up from 45 minutes of writing, and I was shaking it vigorously as the bell rang and I walked upstairs to history class. Good as his word, Patrick was waiting for me at the door. Wordlessly, I handed him the lab report I wrote for him and brushed by him into class. And immediately began to second-guess what I’d just done.

I loved history, but I confess I have no clue what the class was about. I spent most of the next hour watching Patrick as he furtively read off my paper and copied what I wrote in his own degenerate hand. Any minute now, I thought. Sweat wasn’t just rolling down my back, it was flying in drops from the top of my head like a cartoon character’s.

After what seemed like about 30 years, the bell rang. I tensed, waiting. But Patrick simply scribbled furiously for a few seconds more, then got up, Frisbee’d my paper at me and sauntered out the door to science class. Numb, I collected the paper, stuffed it way in the back of my organizer, got out my original copy and went on to class. As we all filed in to the lab, I dropped my paper at our teacher’s desk and took up my seat at Lab Table #2 opposite Patrick, who made a face at me. I just goggled at him. How could he not have realized--? I wondered. Then Mr. Schelder, our teacher, came in with a handful of explosive and caustic chemicals and announced that day’s mayhem.

A couple of days later—and it was a long couple of days--Mr. Schelder handed back our lab reports, except for one. He held it up for the class.

“I’ve got a really interesting lab report here,” he said, trying to look a little stern, but he was smiling too broadly. “Patrick,” he said. “This is some paper. I’d like you to come up here and read it to the class.”

Oh shit, here we go, I thought, looking down at the table and breathing hard. Then I hazarded a glance up, expecting to see my death in the Dingleberry’s eyes. Instead, he had a startled, somewhat frightened look. But he quickly rearranged his face into a smirk and sauntered up to the front of the class. He started reading from the first page, a slightly reworded but more or less accurate introduction and explanation of our hypothesis for the lab work.

“You know what?” Mr. Schelder said, interrupting him. “Skip to the results.”

Patrick looked at him, then out at the class, licked his lips and began to read in a slightly cracking version of his usual drawling voice. He read through our results in applying acid to the first two samples we tested in lab, then went on to the last sample, reading word for word exactly what I had written just for him. And it went something like this:

In sample 3, we observed unusual results in applying three teaspoons of the acid compound to the sample, a block of modeling clay. Instead of dissolving the sample or being neutralized, however, the acid caused a chemical reaction which transformed the clay into a cylindrical organic compound composed of meat and meat byproduct.

This rare reaction was first observed by Dr. O. Mayer in the early 20th century. The phenomenon, known in scientific circles as mayermorphosis, revolutionized the food industry. Dr. Mayer patented the discovery and made a fortune as a purveyor of these tubular miracles of science.

To confirm that the process of mayermorphosis was complete, we applied a teaspoon of chemical formula CA(t) Su P to the phenomenon and consumed it.

Half the class was giggling at this point, much to Patrick’s confusion and Mr. Schelder’s great joy (I was busy staring at the floor, willing myself not to crack a smile or laugh in any way, knowing I would be struck dead if I did).

“Wow,” Mr. Schelder said. “So you mixed acid with modeling clay and the whole thing turned into an Oscar Mayer wiener?”

Well, you can’t say the word “wiener” in a room full of high-school sophomores without explosive results. Everyone cracked up (except me), while Patrick just stared, looking back and forth helplessly between the class and the page of the lab report I’d written just for him.

“Wow,” Mr. Schelder said again, with forced wonder. “Spontaneous mayermorphosis here in my lab. Good job, Patrick. Enjoy that F, you clown.”

Then a little cheer went up from parts of the class—mostly from Patrick’s friends—and everyone laughed and clapped. Patrick did a little bow, and on his way back to the lab table, he tromped on my foot, hard.

I knew I wasn’t going to get in trouble with the teacher for writing Patrick’s report—the Dingleberry wouldn’t dare admit he’d copied off of me. But I spent a few weeks after that waiting to have my ass handed to me by Patrick and his friends, especially since Mr. Schelder ran with the joke in every single class thereafter, both when taking attendance (“Lisa? Bill? Dr. Mayer? Dr. Oscar Mayer, are you here?”) and while walking among the tables to check on our results (“How’s wienie roast going over here, guys?”), but the ass-handing never happened. Gradually, it dawned on me that Patrick had let me off the hook. After all, I had given him exactly what he wanted—more attention—so I guess my plan backfired on that score.

On the other hand, he never bugged me for my lab report again.

After that year, I didn’t have Patrick in any more of my classes. I was on the college track (I assume Patrick was on the loser track) and so I went on to a tougher chemistry course, once again in Mr. Schelder’s lab, although this time my lab partners were all girls, who were a significant improvement over my previous partner, let me tell you: pretty and fresh-smelling, all of them gorgeous samples of clay shaped by a kind and loving God. And they never, to the best of my knowledge, lit their farts with Bunsen burners.

I rarely think of Patrick any more—once you lose a Dingleberry, you don’t spend a lot of time imagining what he might be up to, circling the drain of life. But every so often, I do wonder if he ever thinks of me, perhaps at a cookout or a ballgame, just before he takes a bite of his hot dog. I wonder if he ever thinks of the kid who transformed him, however briefly, into the biggest wiener in class.

And then I don’t think about him anymore.

Yours,
From Somewhere on the Masthead

In Which We Resume Our Supper Stories...

2010-02-17T17:56:00.000-05:00

One of the great things about having your family back with you after four months of isolation is that you can once again tell stories at suppertime without the distraction of passersby glancing in the windows and wondering why you’re just sitting there talking to yourself.

The Brownie usually wants animal stories along specific themes—That Time Blaze Saved (insert member of the family here); How the Bat/Raccoon/Owl/Freaking Long Snake Got in the House; or The Curious Incident of the Cat that Got Stuck in Some Improbable Place--there’s quite a selection here: garbage bags, sleeper sofas, pool-table pockets, washers AND dryers, between a window and a screen, and inside a running car engine (a memorable anecdote for all concerned, especially Sammy the cat, who made quite a racket when he got sucked into the fan of my grandfather’s car. He emerged alive, but lived to the end of his 23 years with a healthy fear of cars. And one ear.)

Thomas, meanwhile, seems to be leaning toward cautionary tales, object lessons, and stories with some form of self-help advice mixed in. I think it’s finally dawned on him that Dad not only had some kind of life before he arrived, but may even have been an 11 year-old boy like him (albeit at some distant epoch in the past).

As I believe was mentioned in his guest post, our intrepid 5th grader is muddling his way through some 6th grade classes, including science, where he has been assigned lab partners. Teamwork of this nature is new to him, and so are all of the challenges that come with the group dynamic, particularly when it comes to carrying a malingering coworker.

“This kid doesn’t do anything. He just sits there and makes fun of our work—he said I was using too many big words and who was I showing off for anyway?” Thomas huffed after an early encounter. “But then he copies all of it down and we all get the same grade. But he deserves an F. F like in f--"

“Like in frustration?” I added helpfully, seeing the look of shock manifesting on his mother’s face. “Or maybe a D, like Dingleberry? That’s what we used to call the lazy kids who just hung off the kids who did all the work.”

Thomas liked that (Her Lovely Self, less so). “Why can’t the teacher just put all the Dingleberries in their own group so they can fail together?” he asked.

Of course, that’s not how it works. I gave Thomas the usual wise-parent stuff straight out of the handbook: how group assignments serve two purposes—earning a grade and learning how to work together with people of differing personalities and skill-sets. And I told him that this was good training for the future because unless you choose the life of a hermit or a recluse, you have to figure out how to get along with others, in work and in life.

But his eyes were glazing over—much as yours are now, I’m sure—and so I added, “Of course, that doesn’t mean you can’t get a little revenge now and then.” And that led to a story of my own encounter with a Dingleberry.

I was a little older than 11 when I first had to deal with Patrick. He was the class bully when I started in 8th grade at a new school. He had come close to beating the crap out of me once, but my old pal God smote him with an asthma attack and I had to drag him to the nurse’s office. He almost never touched me again, but he never forgave me for saving his life either. And so, when we ended up at the same high school together, Patrick became a chronic vocal annoyance in my life: inventing a wide variety of effeminate names to call me; heckling me whenever it was my turn to stand up and give a report. And like Thomas’ Dingleberry, he regularly made fun of my slightly above-average vocabulary.

I learned to tune Patrick out over time, but then, in my sophomore year, I was placed in a position where I could not easily avoid him. That position was Table #2 in the Physical Sciences lab of our high school. My sophomore science class was a mash-up of chemistry and physics, taught by Mr. Schelder, whom I remember as a genial if not exactly brilliant teacher. But at least he didn’t teach entirely from the book--he loved to make us do lab work and from almost day one of the class, we were messing about with Bunsen burners and volatile chemical compounds of every stripe.

This was something of a saving grace for me. I never excelled in any science class, but I could observe and report results with the best of them and so I reveled in the idea of doing practical work. Until Mr. Schelder told us that we had to work as a team with whoever was at our lab table, and that half our grade was going to be based on the group work we did.

And of course, Patrick was at my lab table.

I was none too thrilled about this. Neither was our other lab partner Harry, a bright classmate who had gone to school with Patrick since about 2nd grade and hated him more than I (insofar as such a thing was possible). I was never very good friends with Harry, but we bonded that long year, exchanging many rolled eyes and freighted sighs as we diligently tried to complete various experiments in spite of Dingleberry Patrick.

Who, predictably enough, could be relied on to be more hindrance than help on lab days. If you were pouring something acidic into a beaker, you could count on him to yell in your ear or nudge your elbow at a crucial moment, leaving you with a chemical burn on your hands or a vivid bleached mark on your shirt or pants. And whenever Mr. Schelder had departed to the supply closet for more chemicals, Patrick’s party piece was to grab a lit Bunsen burner and ignite his farts for the amusement and/or disgust of the rest of the class. So it went.

Harry and I dutifully recorded the results of each experiment, which we were compelled to share with Patrick, who could never be counted to assist us, but was always most attentive when we were scribbling down temperature changes or calculating the volume of something. I consoled myself with the knowledge that, while we were graded as a group on our lab work, we each had to write our own lab reports (and were graded separately for those). Patrick may have earned a free ride when it came sharing our results, but he had to explain and interpret those results on his own in his report. I could only hope he was earning straight F’s, because he was one big f-ing pain to me that year. I had the chemical stains and burn marks to prove it.

I confess I sometimes wished Patrick might meet with an accident—another asthma attack from inhaling caustic fumes, say, or a scorched colon from clenching his sphincter at an inopportune moment and accidentally sucking the gas flame up into his body. But the only one who got injured was that year was Harry. During the winter, he broke his leg in some complicated way that required him to be in a cast from his toes to his belly-button and put him out of school for several weeks. A bit of a downer for him, I’m sure. But who cares about him? It was me that had to deal with Patrick on his own now.

And on our first week’s lab work without Harry, I came to discover just how much poor Harry had been carrying Patrick...

Special Guest Star: Me (Art Lad)!!!!!

2010-02-11T06:56:00.000-05:00

Well, Dad says I can write something here so I did.

He got a new job and we moved out of our old house. I still miss it. It was a good place and my friends lived all on the street and in school. I’m pen pals with a couple of them now, but it’s not the same.

We had to go to a new school right after Christmas and that was WEIRD. It’s a school where you have to wear a uniform but not like an Army soldier or policeman, but like black and tan pants and a shirt with a collar and stuff. Everyone is nice but it’s not the same.

I’m in 5th grade now and that means I have to go to different classes. My homeroom teacher is nice, but on my first day there wasn’t even A DESK for me so I had to stand up in the back with all my books and coats and things, and everyone was looking at me.

I’m supposed to be in 5th grade, but when I went to math class, they were doing stuff I did last year and it was boring. So Mom talked to the teacher and now I have math class with the 6th graders, so I’m like this total baby of the class. The same thing happened in science. And I don’t even do spelling anymore. I can spell everything. Onomatopoeia. See?

And we work in teams now. I have three boys on my team in science and one of them is always making fun of me for being just 11 (but I am taller than him). He doesn’t do any work. He just copies off what me and the other boys do. Dad calls him Captain Dingleberry because he just hangs off your butt and doesn’t do anything. Dad says you have to work in teams for the rest of your life and Dingleberrys are everywhere so he says it’s good to learn how to deal.

He told me a really funny story about a Dingleberry he had in high school that he pulled a good trick on. It was funny. He said he’ll put the story in here soon.

I looked at my Artlad blog the other day and it was weird. I remember doing some of it. I remember all the pictures and talking to Dad and him writing it down. I read all the comments and people making a big deal, but I don’t know. I was 5 or 6. I guess I just got interested in other stuff. But I get the Uranus joke now! I was a funny kid.

Dad says I can put some stuff over there today, so go look. I need advice on my new video ideas.

We have a new house to live in, but it’s owned by Dad’s boss. She lives down the street and is real nice and is letting us stay here all winter. Even Blaze got to go. Whew! Dad thought at first dogs were against the rules because there are already a couple of big ones outside, so we thought Blaze would have to stay with Uncle BB. But he worked it out. I’m glad because I was nervous sleeping in our new place and Blaze sleeps on my bed every night. He used to only do stuff with my sisters but now he’s almost like my dog. It’s good because I wake up at night and think about stuff and can’t go back to sleep and he’s always there. He is a really GOOD dog.

But there’s a bad part. I have to SHARE A ROOM with my sister. She got the best bed (it’s big and it has buttons that let you raise it up and down like on that sleep number commercial) and she hogs the bathroom and closet so all my clothes go on the floor. Mom says I leave them on the floor because I’m a boy BUT SHE IS WRONG. Girls are way messier and leave stuff everywhere. Combs and hair stuff and wet towels and all kinds of stuff. I just have shirts and pants and a toothbrush.

Here is a picture I took of my sisters. Anna wouldn't smile because she says looking at me doesn't make her want to smile. So she does THIS with her face.

Mom says that is smirking. I call it a SMIRN because it is like a smirk and frown together.

My baby sister has her whole own room. She is a lot like Anna was. All bossy. Except she likes me sometimes. She calls me Brubby or sometimes just Brub. It means Brother. I pull her in the wagon and help her go down the stairs so she won’t fall. I have to carry her sometimes, but it’s okay because she hugs me and pats my back. It’s gooshy but kind of nice all at the same time. Here is another picture. Mom took it.

I was sad to move here but it’s getting better. I like having Dad around because it was just me and Blaze against the girls before. He was the baby in the class too and he tells me stories to cheer me up. I made a couple of friends at school—a nice girl named Hadley who is REALLY tall (Dad calls her Hagrid, like the giant in Harry Potter, but I don’t call her that.) And a boy named Hunter who wants me to sign up for sports with him. I like that. We have more sports we can do. Before it was just baseball, but they have track and field here so we signed up for that. I can run pretty fast.

I’m reading a lot. They have a great library here and I am reading the Percy Jackson books and want to see the movie when it comes out. I have a book that I write stories in. I am doing one about robot spiders that travel back in time to steal dinosaurs. We have to write a lot in school now. For homework I have to write two pages both sides about moving here. So this is my homework. It took me two whole days to write. You can hand write it or print it. I’ll print it out and hand it in.

But I’ll take out the Dingleberry and the part about Hadley being called Hagrid.

I just read this all to Dad and he says I am getting good at writing. He’s going to show me how to do links over to Artlad.

Wow. I wrote about 1,000 words! That is a world record!

Well, bye!

Your friend,
Thomas

Of the Treaty I Struck, and of a Discourse on Eating Squirrels Instead of Monkeys...

2010-02-09T00:01:00.005-05:00

Permit me to share with you a truth about dogs: We are not ones for drama, for prolonging events, for creating suspense. This is for people. And cats, I suppose. For us, a good story has a simple, succinct beginning, middle, and end.

So while it amused me to engage in the cliffhanger device the Man so often falls upon in a feeble attempt to generate interest in his chittering, I cannot admit that I feel any great desire to follow his example. Well, not all the time anyway.

Forgive me, then, for leaving you in medias res, as they say. And allow me to remedy any sense of drama or suspense you might have been feeling since last I left you, when I was protecting my pack from two oncoming killer German shepherds.

(Although if pressed, I’m forced to admit you should have had none of these feelings from the outset. With me, well, you know where you are with me. If it were the Man writing this, who knows what would have happened? One hopes, I suppose, that he would have saved his children, and then, given his luck, ended up being eaten by the dogs.)

(I’m sorry. I need a moment to savor that image.)

It has been some time since I had to fight two dogs at once, particularly two German shepherds which, in the interest of sparing them further humiliation, I shall provide with nondescript pseudonyms. Let’s call them, oh, Adolf and Eva.

In a fight where the odds are against you, I find it is always beneficial to engage in psychological warfare, and to use misdirection as time and the situation warrants. You may feel free to adopt my methods as follows, should you ever find yourself in such straits.

In this particular instance, I was able to perform a quick and (if I say it myself) nimble sidestep to the right in front of the children, establishing a skirmishing line. It can be challenging enough on four legs, but I was compelled to do it on three, with my left rear leg, er, deployed, marking the ground in front of me in a wide arc that I regret—but only partially—went a little too wide and spattered the Man’s pantleg (and my, did he dance!)

Then, I Postured. This involved crouching into spring mode while simultaneously raising every hair on my body and announcing myself with authority.

“Death greets any who dare cross the Yellow Line!” I barked.

And the dogs stopped. Several feet from the line. The Posturing worked.

While the Man muttered incomprehensibles to the Woman (something about an Invisible Fence at the edge of the walking path?), Adolf and Eva stood just feet away, growling and muttering their Teutonic threats. Then they began to sniff where I had marked (misdirection accomplished), being careful only to extend their snouts slightly. Clearly they were afraid to come no farther.

Finally, the alpha of the pair, Eva, spoke to me in our Common Tongue.

“We guard this territory, Trespasser,” she said.

“Kill kill kill. All other dogs die. There are fleas in my brain. Kill kill!” Adolf added helpfully. He was by far the older dog. I suspect he suffers from a form of senile canine dementia. I addressed only Eva.

“I claim this territory on behalf of my pack. If you wish to continue to guard it, you do so at my sufferance,” I growled.

“And who are you to claim this place we have guarded for so long?” Eva demanded.

“Kill kill!” Adolf muttered.

“I am the protector of this pack, and in particular of the Queen Baby, the Girl, and the Boy. We now reside in the house behind you and will—“

Eva cocked her head. “You live in the house?”

“We have just arrived,” I said.

Eva shook her head, then glanced back at Adolf (“Kill kill!” he advised. I gather he is not much of a conversationalist when he is off-duty.) Then she looked at me. “But—but even we have never been permitted in the house. No dog has ever lived there!”

“Well, I am like no dog who has ever lived,” I replied.

“That’s right!” The Queen Baby cried from behind me. Did I mention she is perfectly fluent in my tongue? I did raise her from a puppy.

And from there, we began to treat with one another, as dogs of good will can do when they choose to reason together. We exchanged a few pleasantries, Eva complimented me on my Rottweiler build and coloring (inherited from my father).

“Your people come from the Fatherland,” she said. “Then we are near to kin, First Dog in the House.”

And so, with a new name to add to my other, I closed the distance between them. Adolf backed away, watching as I led the children toward our new neighbors. Eva and I formally saluted one another, each of us nose to tail, and naturally the Man had to break the mood with inane chatter, which I shall transcribe for your amusement:

“Hey, you know kids, your grandfather once told me why dogs sniff each other’s butts. Once upon a time, every dog in the world came to a card game—you know, like in those velvet paintings I like so much. Anyway, as they came in through the door, they each had to hang their butts, tail and all, on a hook, then went in and took their seats. Well, in the middle of a big hand, some smart-mouth dog—who was losing—yelled ‘Fire!’ and all the dogs ran out of there. In the rush, they just grabbed whatever butt was on the hook and put it on. So to this day, dogs sniff each other’s butts, hoping to find their own.”

Honestly.

“Is that true?” the Queen Baby asked me.

“Of course not,” I said, when I had finished my salute. “Now stay by me and I’ll take you inside for a fine game of throw-the-squeaky-toy.” I turned to Eva. “I to my work and you to yours, Guardian of the Territory. I trust when my pack is outside, you will protect them as well as you watch these grounds.”

Eva stiffened in salute. “Your pack is my pack,” she said, which was the correct response. Then she sniffed at the Man, who had fallen some distance behind us. “And the monkey?”

I hazarded a bit of sarcasm. “Oh. Well. Him you can have.”

In the moment, I had reckoned without Adolf who, upon hearing this, took me literally and with a sharp cry of “KILL!KILL!” threw himself at the Man.

I confess I was tempted. I mean, he seems so to enjoy the spectacle he makes when he is the object of injury. In some backwards primate way, it occurred to me that he might appreciate the moment of drama and suspense, even if it was his last.

But he does have his uses, and it would be such a lot of mess to have to explain, and so I dashed to save him. Once again.

It was a brief tussle—not even a fight, really. Adolf is an old dog with bad hindquarters, so a simple neck-hold sufficed.

When I released him, I said, “Stick to squirrels, my friend. They have a nutty flavor, nothing so gamey and stringy as this fellow.”

“Kill,” Adolf said, by way of agreement, and promptly left. Eva nodded to me once more (I think she likes me), then followed her friend.

And we returned to the house.

You see? Simple, succinct, beginning, middle, and end. None of this suspense business.

And so we reside, safe and warm, our borders well-protected. And the Man is yet deeper in my debt. I should like to redeem that debt one of these days, and suggest that he keep his big banana-eating mouth shut for a while (no more than a year or so). But he seems never to understand a word I utter.

Perhaps the Queen Baby will deign to tell him for me. I must remember to ask her when next we speak.

Your Humble Servant,
Blazey, First Dog in the House

Enough, I yelp! Enough!

2010-02-05T16:30:00.003-05:00

Sigh. It's just as they say: If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.

Clearly, in this particular case, if you wanting something done at all, you have to get your dog to do it.

And so I come to you now, to answer those howls that he apparently could not.

How has it come to this pass? For three months, that jibbering buffoon, that chimp in clothing, has neglected you, despite my numerous remonstrations. I mean, it’s the basic rule by which I live: You do not leave your pack. Yes, you may be driven out or snatched from their embrace. But abandon them by the side of the Information Superhighway?

Yet clearly this is what he has done, left you, his loyal readers (who I have counted as pack members since that incident of which we no longer speak) staked out in some backyard of his conscience whilst he went off to indulge himself in some misbegotten exercise in ego, unable apparently to bestir himself long enough to jot a simple note. How hard can it be: I’m fine. I’m alive. We are all well. Here’s an anecdote of minor amusement which I will hump like a chair-leg until it’s 3,000 words long, and then congratulate myself on its brilliance, even though I changed tense three times and overused the word “enormously” throughout.

I mean, honestly.

Well, the writer—I should say the former writer—of this blog has had his chance, his moment of warmth in the Great Sunlight Patch Upon the Rug. It now falls to me, your humble servant, the Right Honourable Blaze (I have a longer, sacred name given to me by the Girl, but this will suffice for the nonce) to record the events of the past months so that you may finally have answered for you the questions that I’ve no doubt have plagued you, have kept you yipping and twitching in troubled sleep at the foot of the bed these many nights.

I shall attempt to answer here, and in the dispatches to follow, the most pressing questions. And if in the course of doing so, I occasionally sink the teeth of my wit into the metaphorical shank of he who has kept you in the dark since autumn, well, you can hardly blame me, can you?

First, and for today:

What in the name of Dog is going on?

The short answer, in 150 woofs or less: After being cast out from his work pack, the Man (I use the term here with the greatest sense of irony), flailed uselessly for several months, consuming precious resources (oxygen, for example), and a great deal of household good will, before he managed to find a new work pack to join. I use the verb “find” not in the sense of a noble dog who forges bravely into the wilderness to locate a lost child, but in the sense of some straggling mongrel sniffing pointlessly in the gutter, just as a meat wagon passes and, hitting a bump, disgorges a lovely packet of steak (rrrrrr, steak) at his bedraggled and unworthy feet. Pouncing upon this stroke of luck, the Man decamped for parts unknown.

The longer answer:

The Man did return once or twice, at widely spaced intervals, and then mostly to collect his possessions and a few clean clothes. On his last visit, I gave him a good barking-to and he at last accepted his responsibilities. When he returned to his new den at Yuletide, I saw to it that all accompanied him, the Woman, the Boy, the Girl, and the Queen Baby.

(For so I call her.)

(Is she not exquisite?)

(I have raised her since she was but a pink, hairless puppy.)

For me, there was talk of exile: boarding me with well-meaning friends, sending me to live with the Gorilla (the man’s larger older brother. A fine enough fellow, but, well, I’m sorry to be indelicate, but the man has cats. Cats. I shall say no more.)

I didn’t like to protest—one never wishes to appear needy (except where roast beef is involved). But I was truly worried for the well-being of the children. Who knew what perils might befall them when they arrived at their new home? Luckily, before I could mount an argument, the Girl (the wisest of the pack) made not an impassioned plea, but a simple declarative.

“We can’t go without Blaze,” she said.

Then, the Queen Baby made known her will.

“Blazey come too!” she declared. And, so far as I have ever been able to tell, her word is law.

So I too made the arduous journey, sleeping on a threadbare towel in the hindmost parts of the car, ever watchful of the Man (who has yet to earn back my trust. He may have saved my life—and I’m not ungrateful—but you never abandon your pack) that he would not attempt to drop us at a rest area and drive off.

And by and by, we arrived at a place I shall simply call The Farm. I am given to understand that this is temporary housing through the winter. It is, upon first sniff, a lovely domicile: a large white house sitting upon a massive green sward of trees and walking paths. Inside, it was warm, plenty of space for the children, a plenitude of windows (and so featuring numerous sunny patches for basking), ample table and kitchen space for preparing the Big Food. Upstairs, the Girl claimed an overlarge bed (plenty of room for me) just a bone’s throw away from the Queen Baby’s chambers. The Boy now shares a room with the Girl, which I found agreeable.

He has grown tall and more man-like (although with none of the annoying chittering such as you hear from others of his species), and I am beginning to understand that he will soon rise above me in the pack. But for now, he appears to need me, and so it was well to have him close at paw.

Outside, as I have indicated, is a pleasing zone of nature, which the Man showed us when we went for a walk to stretch our legs after our long trip. I was gratified to note the presence of wildlife--not only rabbits, who leave behind much that is worth eating) but also owls, deer, and at least one cunning fox. I was also puzzled to note a surprising number of dead squirrels strewn about the path and the grounds. Something about their smell suggested--

Then we walked out onto the open green, and I heard a sound that made the hair on my back stand up. A deep, aggressive barking—a No Trespassing warning—that was quickly echoed by a second voice of the same breed.

From around the back of the house, I saw them charging, not two hundred yards distant: two sleek German shepherds. And I grasped immediately the import of the dead squirrels: they were warnings of danger.

The Woman and the children froze. But not the chittering knuckle-dragger. “Oh,” the Man said, in his lazy, banana-in-my-mouth way. “I forgot to tell you: Those are the guard dogs that prowl the property. They’re harmless.”

Truly, he walks around with his eyes closed. And yet he manages never actually to walk off a cliff and spare us his antics. I mean, honestly.

Well, I don’t claim to be fluent in German, but based on what the shepherds were growling as they approached, it sounded to me as though they were discussing which of them would get the Girl, and which would get the Queen Baby.

The answer, of course, would be neither.

I positioned myself between the oncoming killers and the children (the Queen Baby was already clutching at my hindquarters, trying not to whimper) and bared my teeth as the dogs came on, braying in their Teutonic way for blood. And as the world went Red (as it does for my kind, at the onset of battle), I had time for one last thought:

Harmless? He brings his pack to a den patrolled by trained killers and calls it harmless? As Dog is my judge, when I’ve dispatched these two, I’ll have that Man’s balls for squeaky toys!

And then, the dogs were upon me...

(Well, I'm sorry. I understand that these pauses between moments of drama can be painful, but I must say, I rather like the dots of ellipsis. They remind me of rabbit droppings fresh upon the snow. Follow them, for they lead to something tasty. And anyway, do you truly suppose something terrible awaits, now that I am here? I mean, honestly.)

An October Moment...

2009-10-19T00:57:00.002-04:00

(On the off-chance you're not familiar with October Moments by now, go here first...)

Old Sam was a nice man. Like so many of the men I knew during my life in New Hampshire, Sam was a big fellow, predisposed to wearing plaid work shirts and large, roomy overalls. When he walked into a room, the very floorboards creaked under his weight.

Often, the creaking floor was the only notice you had of Sam’s arrival. There were two kinds of men in our town: the merry, hail-well-met types who were given to storytelling and to shouting hellos across the town green; and the quiet types for whom conversation seemed almost painful. When they spoke at all, their vocabulary was limited to just a handful of words: Ayuh, nope, welp, and mebbe. Sam was this type of man.

At least, he was whenever he came to the post office, which is where I could be found most summer afternoons, helping my aunt Barbara, the village postmaster. Sam would lumber on in, give Barbara a jowly smile and a nod, then give me a quick wink or sketch a jaunty salute, and you knew instantly that he was a nice guy.

But like everyone in our town, he had his eccentricities. From my view of Sam through the post-office window boxes, they amounted to two things. First, he studiously read all of his junk mail. He’d stand right over the trash basket by the door and slowly, carefully open each colorful envelope, examine each shrill piece of marketing entreating him to join this book club or give to that charity. Then, one by one, he’d drop the pieces of paper into the basket. Then he’d look up. “Welp,” he’d say to us by way of farewell, then walk out the door.

The other eccentric thing he did was the thing with the keys.

Sam kept a fairly large ring of keys in the pocket of his overalls. I think it was a legal requirement for residency in our town, that every man over a certain age had to lug around this massive ring containing the keys to every car, truck, tractor, front door, and padlock that he ever owned in his entire life, even if those locks had long since rusted away to nothing. They made quite a jangle, now I’ll tell you. At town meeting, when all these men in their droopy overalls came into the hall, it sounded like a chain gang in the middle of a mass breakout.

Sam’s keys were curiously resistant to jingling, though, at least when he walked. But when he was at the post office, you could hear them. He’d take them out of his pocket and jangle them idly in his hand while he waited for Barbara to hand him his letters (he had long ago forgotten the combination to his mailbox), then put them back in his pocket to begin his careful examination of his junk mail.

But if another customer was in front of him and he had to wait long enough, Sam would stop jangling his keys and slowly shake out one particularly long, old-fashioned looking key. Then he’d carefully, deliberately stick that key--the whole shaft, as long as your middle finger--in his ear.

Whenever this happened, I always stopped what I was doing to watch him. You would have too. It is not physically possible to stick a three-inch long key in your ear--I speak from painful, experimental experience here. But Sam would not just manage to get the whole key shaft in his ear. Once he got it in position, he’d start twisting it this way and that, like he was trying to crank the starter on a cold engine. In fact, that’s how aunt Barbara and I referred to Sam’s strange habit. As he’d stand there in the post office lobby, cranking away, head quivering slightly, eyelids fluttering in some kind of strange ecstasy, Barbara would hiss to me, “Old Sam’s trying to start his brains up again!”

When you live in a small town, no one has his own unique story. Really, you all become part of the same big story, each person a supporting character in the lives of others. When I was young and stupid, I thought old Sam was just this guy I saw sometimes in the summer and would never have any real relation to, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. Sam had been friends with my grandfather, had known my Dad, man and boy. His wife Edna had been Dad’s first schoolteacher, a claim many older residents in town still make today. When Sam died sometime in the late 1980s (of a heart attack, I think, but am not sure. At least, it wasn’t from any kind of key-induced brain trauma, in case you were wondering), Edna couldn’t keep up the old farm out at Four Corners and so she decamped for the southwest, to live with one of her daughters. And when she did, my parents bought her house.

It was an old Cape-style house, with massive axe-hewn cedar beams notched with the initials of the housewright who framed the place. He had also notched a date on one of the beams: 1740. The frame was sound, as sturdy as the day it was put up, but my Dad had decided that just about everything else in the house had to be torn out and rebuilt. And I mean everything: walls, floors, plumbing, wiring, the whole magilla. I know because I tore most of it out.

I had recently moved back to New Hampshire after a bitterly unsuccessful attempt to find work as a magazine man. I was almost a year out of college and was bunked up with my Big Brother, in a cramped loft of an A-frame house my parents were renting until they found a house they wanted. When Dad came home very early in the spring of 1990 and told me he and Mom had bought Sam’s old house, it was my first real understanding of how the lives of others in this place were connected to mine in ways I had not fully appreciated before. I also understood that I was not going to get to sleep in a room of my own again unless somebody got busy over at Sam’s house and began clearing the way for a major remodel.

And so my days began to fall into a predictable and comfortable pattern. I would rise late in the morning after sleeping off the effects of my night job. I’d dress in my grubbiest clothes, fill a shopping bag with a stack of sandwiches, a large bag of chips and a 3-liter bottle of Coke, then head over to Sam’s house, pick a spot and start swinging my crowbar. I’d work til about 4, go home, shower all the dust and crap off me, then go off to my job.

It was a satisfying existence, although not without its minor inconveniences. One especially vexing concern, to my Dad anyway, was that we couldn’t find Sam’s keys. His widow didn’t have them, and she assured us they had not been buried with him--in fact, she was sure she'd left them somewhere in the house--but they were nowhere to be found. It wasn’t such a big deal when it came to the house proper--we were planning to tear out all the old doors and locks anyway. But in the barn and the back shed, there were a few nice old brass locks on some doors and hatches and Dad dearly wanted to salvage those locks. Of course, he also wanted to see what was behind those locked doors and hatches (and for the purpose of ending needless suspense, I’ll tell you what we ultimately found: old hay, some firewood, a few rat skeletons, and one very startled raccoon). Days passed, no keys turned up, and we just kept on working.

A little more than a month after we began work on the house, I found myself in the narrow, low-ceilinged space of an upstairs bedroom. We were planning to cut through the roof and build out a dormer, so I need to clear out most of the plaster wall and framing on one side. I tended to work alone, banging away with my sledge and crowbar, my earphones clamped firmly to my head, my favorite music blasting away. So I just about crapped myself one day when I felt a heavy hand on my shoulder. I squawked and jumped and turned, crowbar at the ready.

But it was just my Dad. “Better check your swing, Mister Man,” he said, laughing.

It was just shy of lunchtime, too early for my Dad to be here. “Why aren’t you at work down at the plant?” I asked as I took off my headset.

“Pipe fitters are on strike,” Dad said. He was a union man through and through and wouldn’t cross a picket line for love or money. “So you got another helper for today. Maybe even longer, if they don’t settle things.” He began inspecting my handiwork, noting where I’d have to saw something out, where we’d have to knock up a support beam to keep the other side of the roof from falling in while we built the dormer.

"And I want you to be real careful with these big boards in this closet wall right here," he was telling me. "Them are single sheets of pine, come from pine trees that ain’t around no more. I’m gonna woodwork them a bit and--"

He stopped talking and put his hand up. This was my Dad’s quick-quiet stance, which I knew from an entire youth of walking in the woods with him. The moment he heard a snap of twig or rustle of leaves, he’d freeze and put his hand up like this, and we’d listen. I always felt my pulse quicken at moments like these, half-expecting a large, child-eating bear to come crashing through the bushes at any moment.

But this time, there were no twigs to snap, no leaves to rustle. We stood there like statues for a long moment. Dust and plaster hung suspended in the weak sunlight, the stillness of the old house a palpable thing.

And then we heard it. The distinct sound of heavy feet lumbering across the floor downstairs.

Errrrrrrnk. Errrrrrrrnk. Orrrrnnnnnnk. Arrrrrrrnk.

Dad took his finger from his lips and pointed to the crowbar in my hand. Wordlessly, I handed it to him. He gripped it tight, his face hardening. Dad was always on the lookout for burglars and prowlers and people who might be generally out to Get His Stuff. He had a lot of expensive power tools stowed in the cupboard of the old pantry near the front door, too. They’d be real easy to carry off.

Whoever was downstairs, it sounded like he’d entered through the front door and was creeping slowly through the room that was just below us. But in the silence of the house, it sounded like he was right there with us.

Errrrrrrnk. Errrrrrrrnk. Orrrrnnnnnnk. Arrrrrrrnk.

The footsteps continued for a few seconds more, then stopped. Right below us, they stopped. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even breathe.

Then in one sudden motion, Dad dropped to the floor, elbows and knees and crowbar all slamming with a BANG that made me scream and would certainly have scared the bejesus out of anyone downstairs--the noise would have been directly over their heads. But we didn’t hear anyone shout or scream or call out. So my Dad yelled, in his very loudest voice. “WHO’S THERE, BY GORRY?!?”

If it had been a curious neighbor, they would surely have announced themselves. Had it been a prowler, we’d have heard the shuffling of feet as they got the hell out.

Instead, we heard nothing.

Dad was up off the floor, crowbar in the head-bashing position. “You look out, see if you see anyone,” he said, pointing to the dusty, cracked window set into the wall behind me. I did this while Dad scuttled to the ladder that would take him down. I peeked out the window—nothing but trees and a glimmer of wet tarmac out on the road beyond. Dad had clambered a few steps down the ladder, then stopped dead.

He called my name. “Come here a minute, will ya?” he asked, the let’s-kick-some-ass tone gone out of his voice.

As I walked over to where the ladder was, Dad was peering down below at something I couldn’t see. He was shaking his head. “We must be the stupidest sons-of-bitches alive, ol’ fella,” he said, laughing.

“Why?” I said.

He just laughed some more. “We heard someone creaking around on the floor downstairs, right?” I nodded. I was almost to the ladder now.

“Well, sir, then you tell me: How the hell could they do that when there IS no floor downstairs?” he asked.

I didn’t even have to come down the ladder to realize what he was saying. He was right, of course: We discovered early on that almost the entire downstairs floor of the place was dangerously rotted. Consequently, we had to tear out most of the floor first, leaving us with just a couple of narrow cedar beams as walkways over the pit of the old cellar. As I stood at the top of the ladder (it was a long one, extending all the way to the cellar floor), I surveyed the open area below, trying to see what could possibly have made that distinctive foot-on-floorboards sound we’d heard. But all that was down there was a lattice work of cedar beams and a couple of gravity-defying walls off in one corner that had hung onto the ceiling supports even after we tore the floor out from under them. Everything below this was stone and dirt from the cellar far below.

“Well, Mister Man,” Dad said, “If you can find a floorboard to creak down here, you’re a smarter fella than me. You ever heard anything like this going on here before?”

“No,” I said, shaking my head vigorously. Although of course, I usually wore my headphones and listened to my Walkman, or made so much noise with a saw or crowbar that I wouldn’t have heard anything, I realized a little sickly. Now granted, I was in my early 20s by this time, my years growing up in a haunted farmhouse already a fact of my life. But it had been a while since anything quite like this had happened to me. I was a little shook up.

So I did what I always do when I’m shook up; I made a joke out of it. “Must be old Sam walking around,” I said, hazarding a weak chuckle.

Dad liked this. “Ayuh! Ol’ fella come to check on our progress.” He took a breath, then bellowed. “Sam, hope you like what we done with the place! We’ll be starting on the barn next, soon as I find your goddamn keys!”

As soon as he said this, my Dad got a kind of shocked, startled look, as if he’d just remembered something. He hustled down the ladder and hopped to a floor beam that was immediately below. I started down the ladder myself, then stopped to watch as Dad edged along the floor beam until he was in the room that was right below where we had been standing, the room where we had heard someone walking on the floor that wasn’t there anymore. Along the outside wall of this room, two radiators sat on either side of the window. We hadn’t torn these out yet, so they just hung there, suspended by the strong pipes that came up from the furnace in the cellar. Dad hopped from the beam to the window and was now hanging by the sill to inspect the radiator.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“These are old radiators,” he said, staring closely at the one in front if him. “Hot-water heating. You know what you have to do every season when you turn the furnace on?”

I did. “Bleed the air out of the pipes?”

“Ayuh. And what do you need to open the radiator air valve?” He had his hand on the radiator now and was pulling on it.

I knew the answer, and by now you probably do too. “You need a special key,” I said.

But Dad didn’t hear my answer because he was too busy whooping. The moment he pulled the radiator out away from the wall, there was a loud jingle and the massive ring of keys (no doubt they had been set atop the radiator by Sam's wife and fell down the back) plummeted through the space where the floor should have been and landed in the dirt of the cellar. With a cackle, Dad let go of the window sill and dropped down to join them. He stood up and shook them at me triumphantly.

“Knew they had to be here somewheres,” he said. “Shoulda thought of the radiators. Guess I oughtta thank old Sam for jump-starting my brains for me.”

Dad got the locks open that afternoon. And I continued to work at the house almost every day for the next six months. Always with my headphones off.

But I never heard the floors creak again.

Yours,
From Somewhere on the Masthead

In Which We Find the Path...

2009-10-01T00:25:00.007-04:00

May 1976:

I am not quite to the part of our street where the tar ends and the dirt road begins, but I can see it. It’s far, but not too far. I crank a little harder. My old green Schwinn shakes and rattles and sounds like it’s going to tear itself apart as I speed up. The dirt road is getting closer.

Then, even above the sound of my old bike, I hear my Dad’s truck. He makes a wide arc around me, but in passing he still manages to spray me with dirt and bits of gravel. I jam on the brakes and the bike skids sideways to a halt. Dad jumps out and stares at me for a moment.

“You supposed to be riding out this far?” he asks. It’s a rhetorical question, so I don’t answer. I get off the bike and wheel it over to the truck. It’s a heavy bike, but Dad effortlessly picks it up by the frame and shot-puts it over the tailgate. I open the door and climb up into the passenger seat. Dad puts the truck in gear and we roll down the last stretch of road up to where the tar ends.

“You know where this is? This is the town line. It’s more than a mile from the house,” he says, reminding me what I already know: I’m not supposed to ride my bike any further than down to the neighbor’s or up to the bridge. The town line where the dirt road begins is way past the bridge.

“I know,” I say. “It’s what I was going for.”

“Why would you? Knowing you’re gonna catch hell from your mother?” he asks as he makes a u-turn and we head back.

I can’t answer him, not completely, not at the age of eight. I’m tired of riding up and down our little span of street, tired of my Big Brother jumping out from various hiding places, trying to knock me off the bike I’ve only
just learned to ride. I’m proud of this new skill, so hard-won; intoxicated by the sense of potential, of the things I can do with it. Every time I pedal out onto our road and hear the whirring of the tread on the tar, feel the wind in my face, I become aware of an immense possibility. I could go anywhere now, I think.

“Well?” Dad asks. He’s waiting for an answer.

“I just wanted to cross the town line,” I said.

Dad shakes his head. “Your come this way in the car four or five times a week! Why--?”

“Not on my own!” I cry. I’m not supposed to interrupt my Dad--it really riles him--but I can’t help it. I feel a sense of determination building in my head. This seems like an important point to me, but it’s beyond my power to articulate. “I just wanted to see how far I could get on my own,” I say finally, as we pull into the driveway. Mom is waiting on the steps; the look on her face is the look of a woman who just got the weather report, and it’s all storm clouds. I lose bicycling privileges for a week, and also have to bear up under the supplemental punishment of being smirked at by BB. It’s a few days before I realize that my Dad never yelled at me for interrupting him.

September 1976:

It’s quite an accident scene, if I say so myself. Viewed from overhead, it must look awesome: Here are the two cars of the old ladies who went this way off the camp road, and that way into the flower bed. There’s the truck of the guy who wasn’t looking, down in the ditch, its engine ticking and smoking lightly. There are the two big tire ruts from the truck, including the big swooshy one that went right over my old green bike. Oh, and here’s the best part: the big depression in the dirt right next to the bike, and the trail of blood from the depression, leading off and away.

Yeah, overhead it’s a pretty cool scene, but probably not so much from my Dad’s perspective. From his view, pulling up in the main entryway of the campground in Skowhegan, Maine, it must have been a little worrisome. Especially when he saw the distinctive battered green bike, this far down the hill from our campsite.

The manager of the campground is out in the middle of the road, trying to direct traffic. The guy in the truck is drunk and his axle is broken. He’ll need a tow truck. Old Lady #1 is already backing her car onto the road and getting the hell out of there. Old Lady #2 has left her car in the flower bed, and that really seems to have annoyed the manager. He’s calling for her, but she isn’t answering. She’s sitting next to me. In a second, so is my Dad.

“Knew if I followed the trail of blood I’d find you, by Gorry,” he says with a laugh. But he sounds shaky, like he’s just had a bad scare, which I know is impossible. Dad’s not afraid of anything.

“Got reflexes like a cat, this one,” the lady says, then tells Dad how the guy in the truck came through the main gate way too fast and started fishtailing in the dirt road, driving oncoming cars this way and that. I just remembered seeing a truck coming at me and knew I couldn’t turn the bike to avoid him--it was a heavy, cumbersome bike, a little too big for me to steer with any speed or grace. So I jumped, off the bike and to the side, landing in a hard patch of gravel that laid the underside of my arm raw like a big piece of sandpaper. The truck must have missed me by only a foot or two, but I never noticed. I was too busy staggering over to the campground swimming pool. My arm was studded with bits of dirt and whole actual stones, sunk right into the flesh. I needed to wash it off and see how bad the damage was. So I knelt down and dipped my arm in the public pool. The chlorine stung like a mother. Old Lady #2 came over to make sure I was alive, I guess, and keep me company while I picked small stones out of my arm. After pulling out one particularly deep stone, a small but persistent spray of blood started jetting out of my wrist and into the pool. At the lady’s urging, I pressed hard against the injury with my other hand, and that’s how my Dad found me.

“Look,” I say, nodding my head at the pool. It’s not a big pool and its color has gone from sea green to light pink. “Hey, it’s a pool of my own blood. Get it?” I laugh. I feel dizzy.

“Were you headed for the gate?” Dad asks as he pulls out a clean hankie from his back pocket and ties it--hard and tight--around my wrist.

I look around and wonder absently where the old lady went. Then I look at my Dad. “Yeah,” I answer. “It’s only two miles to town. I wanted to--"

“I know what you wanted,” he says as he helps me to my feet. The old lady is back in her car in the flower bed, gunning the engine. Dad walks me to his truck. Someone comes running over to us, wheeling my bike. It has been run over by a truck and still the damn thing works, not so much as a broken gear or bent rim.

“I hate that bike,” I mutter as Dad shot-puts it into the back. “I don’t care if I can’t ride it for a week.” Not that I’d want to, not with my arm bleeding and sore the way it is.

Dad hops in next to me and start up the truck. “Well, sir,” he says, “I’d be inclined to get you a new bike if I thought you’d ride where you’re told.” He doesn’t realize it at the time, but he’s just struck a deal with me.

April 1980:

“This way!” I gasp, making a sharp left off the main street and into the alley. My best friend Shawn follows me on his bike. Shawn is the tallest kid in our class but he has to crank hard to keep pace with me. This is because I am highly motivated: the Privat boys are right behind us, and if they catch me, I’m convinced they will pull my tongue from my head.

I fancy myself something of a boy detective most of the time, but right now all I am is a smart-ass on the run. The older Privat boy, Larry, is BB’s age and size. He and his younger (but not much smaller) brother Craig saw me and my friend in the park. I was wearing the Army utility belt that served as my Mobile Crime Lab and had taken out my magnifying glass and a piece of paper. Shawn and I were testing our survival skills, trying to start a fire by holding the glass in the sun, above the paper. You never knew when you might be on stake-out some cold night and needed a fire, you know?

Larry called over. “What are you two little fags doing with your faggy magnifying glass?”

“Why?” I called back before I could stop myself. “You want to borrow it so you can find your ding-dong?”

And so, to the bikes.

I was riding my faithful steed, my trusty, speedy Huffy Thunder Road racing bike, complete with authentic motorcycle hand-grips and battery-powered 8-channel CB radio (working range up to 25 feet!). My parents got it for me almost four years ago when we left Maine. I had behaved myself ever since, riding only within sight of the house and using my new bike mostly to jump makeshift ramps that BB set up in the driveway. Then we moved to Kansas, to a small town with big sidewalks and quiet, untrafficked streets. Gradually, BB and I were given the run of the town, so long as we didn’t ride out on the highway past the school, over the railroad tracks on either end of town, or past the Litch farm, where the town road disappeared into the vast sorghum fields. I stayed within those limits, but made it my business to know every street, alley, and access road in town.

Halfway up the alley, I hook a sharp left and hope Shawn is keeping up. Then I veer right, across an old embedded track from when they used to back box cars up to the back of the feed store. Now we’re in a dark alleyway lined by vine-covered fences on either side. “Where--?” Shawn asks, huffing behind me. I brake hard, then turn the bike left and duck under an ivy overhang. We’re on a very narrow sidewalk running between two tall buildings. Elbows and knees brushing brick on either side, we glide along the cool dark space and emerge two blocks from where we first turned. The Privat brothers are nowhere in sight.

Shawn is impressed, and that takes some doing. “Not bad,” he says. “Did you really know where you were going?”

“Yes,” I said simply. “Yes I do.”

October 1991:

It’s mid-month and still unseasonably warm in Chicago. I’m sitting out on a bench in front of my office building, eating a tomato and bologna sandwich which, at that time in my life, I considered the second-most delicious thing ever. The most delicious thing ever is walking toward me from the parking lot, where I just watched her pull in.

“Hi,” Her Lovely Self says, sitting down on the bench next to me. I can smell her perfume, and something else. The high sweet smell of oil, of a kind that puts me in mind of my Dad’s chainsaw. She arches her back, turns her face to the sun. “It’s beautiful out,” she says.

“Beautiful,” I echo, staring at her, bits of sandwich all but falling out of my mouth, I'm that pathetic. Then I catch myself and before she can see me gazing at her with such adulation, I direct my eyes down at the ground. At her shoes in fact: a pair of off-white flats. One of them has some kind of dark scuff mark along the top. The mark looks like--

“Can I have your nuts?” she asks. I look up, startled and strangely hopeful, then see her pointing to the bag of cashews sitting nearby. “Thanks,” she says as I hand them over. “I didn’t have time to eat lunch today. Had some birthday money burning a hole in my pocket.” I nod. Her birthday was last weekend. She went out partying with her roommates and her current boyfriend, some ding-dong she met on a bus to a Cubs game. This guy seems to have locked up all of her free time, time I wouldn’t mind sharing with this vision of loveliness. But I need an in, some way to--

Then it hits me. The smell: chain oil. The scuff on her shoe: a tread mark. No time to buy lunch because she was out looking at something to spend her birthday money on. She’s buying a bicycle, I think. God bless you, boy detective, wherever you are.

“I hear it’s going to be warm all weekend. What are you gonna do?” she asks.

“Oh,” I say nonchalantly. “I’m going to take my new bike for a spin, maybe ride up the Skokie Trail--"

“Did you just get a bike?” she says, genuinely enthused. “I was just shopping for one!”

“No way!” I cry, giving her a what-are-the-odds look, even as I’m wondering where I’m going to find the money--today--to buy the bike I just told her I owned. Except...I can’t quite find it in me to beat myself up for lying. Because in that moment, I realize that I’m telling a kind of truth. “I love my bicycle,” I say. “Ever since my old Huffy rusted to bits, I’ve wanted a new bike. It’s how I find my way. When you’re on your bike, well, that’s when you really know where you are. You know?”

Her Lovely Self just stares at me. “You say some funny things sometimes,” she says, then pats me on my forearm, the one with all the scars and gravel divots. “But that’s okay. I’ll pick you up Saturday morning. You can figure out how to put my new bike rack on the back of my car.” I smile and before I can stop myself, I tell her how happy I would be to get my hands on her rack.

August 2009:

I wake in the darkened room and for a minute, I don’t know where I am. Then I feel the tension headache pulsing behind my eyeball, feel the tightness in my shoulders, the pulse in my neck. I stare at the clock--it’s almost nine--and jump out of bed. Late! I think. I can’t be late for work!

Then I remember: It’s Saturday. My first week as editor-in-chief is over. I survived it. I didn’t end up in a pool of my own blood. I didn’t have to run and hide in an alley. No one took away my nuts in a baggie. The relief is palpable.

I throw on a t-shirt and shorts and stagger downstairs to the kitchen of my temporary living quarters. I make a cup of coffee and step outside. It’s already a warm day. Runners and moms with jogging strollers are making use of the walking trail just across the way. Someone told me the walking trail connects to a canal tow path, which in turn joins up with a rail-trail that gives you access to the entire city. I look over at the side of the building, to where my old bike sits, waiting. It could be my green Schwinn, my black Huffy, the mountain bike I bought in Chicago on impulse, and that impulse was love. It's my bike and it sits and waits, but not for long.

In a few minutes, helmet adjusted and water bottle filled, I’m slowly pedaling over to the walking trail. The headache is evaporating, the tension across my shoulders easing. I may have survived my first week on the job, but I still have a city to learn, boundaries to stretch. I see a sign pointing me to the dirt path along the canal, to the city, to the future. I coast along the tarmac walking trail, onto the road, and down the hill.

I am not quite to the part of the street where the tar ends and the dirt road begins, but I can see it. It’s far, but not too far.

I crank a little harder.

Yours,
From Somewhere on the Masthead

In Which We Shore Things Up...

2009-08-13T09:48:00.002-04:00

Just a couple days from starting my new job, and so I have officially Gone Insane, between wrapping up my last few freelance projects and fixing up all the many imperfections in the Magazine Mansion.

Not sure when I'll have time to post about my new doings, but I hate to leave you with nothing to read, so I thought I would put this up. I wrote it while I was in New Hampshire and although it feels like it should be a chapter from my book, I'm actually not quite sure where it fits in. It also touches on a story I posted long ago regarding the Easter Bunny, and while I've worked hard to write as much new material for the book as possible, the fact is I'm bound to include a few elements from old blog posts. When all is said and done, my hope is the book will be about 90 percent all new stuff, 10 percent material based in some part on stories told here. Anyway, hope it keeps you occupied for a little while. I call it:

Victory Lap

We called ourselves Catholic, but if anything I was half-Catholic. Whenever I mentioned this to Mom, she got mad, although for a full Catholic, she wasn’t exactly a model of piety. We almost never went to church on Sundays. It seemed like there were whole years when we didn’t go.

Then Mom put us in a Catholic school and I had religion class for the first time. It was my worst subject, right after penmanship. My teacher was a nun named Sister Augustina, who often took us down to the little chapel at the back of the school and drilled us in our prayers, but it had been so long between church visits for me, I didn’t know any of them. I didn’t even know Sunday service was called Mass. When Sister Augustina first mentioned going to Mass, I thought she was talking about driving down to my grandparents in Boston, which both my parents hated to do, Mom because she always got an earful from Grandma Horan about how her grandsons were growing up wild; Dad because it meant getting on a highway filled with crazy Massachusetts drivers.

One morning, Sister Augustina had been having us recite the Apostle’s Creed one by one, and caught me in the act of not knowing a thing about it. I told her I’d never heard it before, but it sure was nice. “You have to know the Creed,” she said, incredulous. “Don’t you go to Mass on the weekend?”

“Oh, hardly ever,” I said. “Mom says we wouldn’t go at all if Grandma and Papa didn’t call and make her feel bad about it. But once they die and we go to the funeral, she says we won’t have to go ever again. It drives Dad nuts. Every time we go, he complains about the mean people who flip him the bird. He keeps a little bottle in his jacket pocket and drinks from it the entire time. He says he needs it to get through the whole Christly ordeal.”

After that, it was pretty clear Sister Augustina and I were never going to be buddies, especially since she told my Mom what I said. Next Sunday, we started going to church again for a while, long enough that I learned all about the Creed, and a bunch of other stuff, like Communion, which my Big Brother was going to get to do that year. Sister Augustina said that when we got to go to Communion, we would actually be eating Jesus’s body (BB said it tasted just like bread, though). “But when it is your time, children, it will be up to me to decide who gets to share in this holy sacrament. Some of you may not be ready,” Sister said, looking right at me. I knew then that I was never going to get Communion. Not a half-Catholic like me.

I was half-Catholic because Dad was a whole other religion, a Methodist. He actually never went to church. On Sundays when Mom piled us in the car in our good shirts and best plaid slacks, Dad would head out to the garden to hoe. “Does being a Methodist mean you don’t ever go to church or believe in God?” I asked him one Sunday, after we got back and I’d changed into my grubby garden clothes.

“Hell, no,” he said, stopping to lean on his hoe and look out across the tilled acre. “I’m already at church, right here in my garden. And you know, I talk to God all the time, Jesus, too. Him and me, we’re old pals.” Well, that was true. Last summer, when Dad was putting on the addition on our house, the old wooden ladder broke under his feet and he dangled from the edge of the roof. Dad yelled Jesus’s name really loud then, and asked Him to bring the long stepladder, but Mom and BB got it instead.

My classmates told me that if you weren’t Catholic, you went to hell, and that scared me. I asked Mom if it was true that Dad would go to hell for being a Methodist. She thought about it for a long minute, then said, “No, but your father probably won’t get right into heaven. He’ll have to spend some time in Purgatory first.” Mom explained that Purgatory was where people like Dad would have to wait until their name was called. I imagined him sitting in a metal folding chair, reading old magazines and looking up at a clock. It sounded like being at the doctor’s.

Purgatory didn’t make sense to me. Hell either, for that matter. In religion class, Sister told us that God loved everyone, so I took that to mean everyone got to go to heaven. Certainly I was going. But how could I enjoy paradise knowing my Dad was stuck out in the waiting room? Dad would have to get a pass, I decided, if for no other reason than to satisfy the eternal happiness of me, a perfect child. Then that spring we learned in class about the meaning of Easter—that Jesus died for our sins so we could go to heaven--and I knew Dad would be okay. He was on a first-name basis with Him, after all. His pal Jesus would get him in somehow.

I always liked Easter, even before I knew why we celebrated it. For one thing, it made a nice break there at the end of winter. Depending on when Easter came, we sometimes still had a little snow on the ground, but some years, it was late enough and warm enough that we had already started work in the garden. Once the garden was planted, Dad got up at dawn to check on the seedlings and prowl for varmints. As a rule I didn’t get up early on weekends, Easter or not, but one year I made an exception. From Sister Augustina, I now knew that Jesus rose up into heaven on the first Easter Sunday, and I got it in my head that He did it again every year after that, like a victory lap. Naturally, I just knew it happened first thing in the morning, at sunrise.

That Easter, it was still all blue outside when I woke up. I threw on a coat and ran to the door, but Mom caught me and said I had to bring a Thermos of coffee out to Dad. The garden was on the wrong side of the house to catch the sun--or The Son--coming up. But I went, trying to look up in the sky the whole way.

“Ssst! Get down!” I heard my Dad whisper. I saw him over behind the pile of chicken manure and ran crouched over to him. He was kneeling on the cold wet ground, the shotgun already up on his shoulder. Beyond him, a faint row of little green seedlings sat, tiny and pale and vulnerable. A couple at the end were bent over where they’d been viciously nibbled and three or four on the other side were just gone, only a little green nub sticking out from where Dad had just planted them.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Thought I saw a woodchuck,” he muttered. He set the gun in his lap and I handed him the Thermos. He unscrewed the lid, pulled out his little bottle and poured the contents into it, then drank it. “So,” he said, scanning the woods along the edge of the garden. “Did the Easter Bunny come?” I had been so focused on coming out to see Jesus that I’d forgotten the other good thing about Easter. “I hope so,” I said. I had to get back in soon and check. Apart from anything else, BB would be up and if he saw my basket of eggs unattended, he’d be into it like a fox in a chocolate henhouse.

I turned back to the house apprehensively then, trying to look into the living room window from here, but it was too far. Also, the sun was rising up over the house now. I stared straight into the corona of glare that lit up the chimney. Dad said you shouldn’t look at the sun because you’d see spots for the rest of your life, but I figured it was my last chance to catch a glimpse of Jesus until next year.

Just then, right behind me, came a BAM! so loud my ears rang all day. I jumped about 20 feet and turned in time to see Dad sprinting around the manure pile, gun in one hand as he ran fast along the edge of the garden. Way off at the other end, I could see bushes moving. Dad had hit something but hadn’t killed it.

The shot brought Mom and BB out of the front door. BB was holding his Easter basket by the handle. He already had a little smeary chocolate beard on his face. “Was it the woodchucks?” he asked.

But just then, another BAM! ripped through the quiet morning. We turned and watched Dad as, with a distant cry of victory, he reached into the bushes and pulled up the body of the varmint who’d been at his new garden. It wasn’t a woodchuck. Dad lifted it up by its long ears.

“Suffering Jesus!” Mom cried.

BB dropped his basket, his chocolate-ringed mouth agape.

Dad was a short man with stubby legs and long arms and a round belly that spilled over the top of his jeans, but he looked so graceful that morning as the sun rose over the top of the house and the light hit him. He was smiling that big-bearded smile of his as he completed his lap around the garden, smoking shotgun in one hand, dead rabbit in the other. He ran right up to us, set the gun next to the Thermos and triumphantly shook the rabbit in the air. Mom just looked at him.

BB started crying. “Dad just shot the Easter Bunny!”

Well, of course it wasn’t. But the more I thought about it that day, the more the Easter Bunny troubled me. Well, the idea of him, anyway, which didn’t make any more sense to me than the idea of Purgatory. I knew he was real, of course, but the Easter Bunny just didn’t seem to fit in any way with the stuff Sister Augustina was telling us about Jesus the Risen Lord. An Easter Dove, or something that flew, well, that made sense. But an anthropomorphic bunny? Hiding colored eggs? How did that fit in with the Death and Resurrection of Christ?

When we got back to school after Easter break, our first class on Monday morning was English. But instead of reading a story or learning vocabulary words, our teacher asked us to get out a pencil and a sheet of paper and write a story about Easter. It could be about Jesus, about what our family did on Easter Sunday--anything. As I sat for a moment to collect my thoughts, I absently started doodling in the corner margin of my paper. Finally, I had my opening line: “Early Easter morning, Dad sat with his shotgun, aiming carefully at the furry little bunny that was eating in the garden.” But I never wrote it. Instead, I looked at what I had just doodled on the corner of the paper: It was a little sketch of an Easter egg, sitting not in an Easter basket, but in a little box full of hay. That box looks like a manger, I thought.

Then BAM! with the suddenness of a gunshot inside my head, the whole Easter Bunny puzzle resolved itself. I saw it clearly, instantly, and it all made sense! Sister Augustina had talked about divine inspiration--God pouring words into the heads of the guys who wrote the Bible--and I knew this had to be the same exact thing. I began writing as fast as I could, afraid I would forget it before I could get it all on paper. In the quiet of the room, my furious jottings were loud enough to attract attention. Classmates stopped, looked up from their monosyllabic nothings about egg hunts and Easter Mass, whispered, pointed, giggled.

My teacher got up, walked behind me, started reading over my shoulder. Ordinarily, this made me nervous and self-conscious, but I barely noticed her. When the bell rang for morning recess, she was still standing behind me. She called for the papers, but put a hand on my shoulder even as she did this. “You can stay and finish that, if you want,” she said, her voice all funny. “You can even take it home and hand it in tomorrow. Take your time.” Her name was Miss Seaver and she was the first teacher who ever encouraged me to write. She also gave me the two best pieces of advice you could ever give a writer: Stay and finish. Take your time. I took the story home and worked on it until bed time, then took my pen light and pad under the covers and kept writing. BB teased me from the top bunk. “What are you writing down there? Love letters to a girl?” I didn’t even look up from my paper. “Shut your damn mouth,” I said. “This is holy stuff.”

By first bell the next morning, it was finished, the information God had poured into my head the day before had made its way onto paper. The Almighty hadn’t supplied me with a title for my story, so I went with one inspired by the comic books I loved. I called it "The Secret Origin of The Easter Bunny." Miss Seaver handed back everyone else’s stories and had kids take turns reading theirs aloud in class, while she read through mine. Finally, when everyone else was done, she asked me to come up to the front of the class, handed me my story and had me read it. It was the first time a teacher had allowed me in front of a class since that time in first grade when I stood up and gave a monologue about bear poop. I cleared my throat a couple of times, then began to read:

Once upon a time, it was the first Christmas. “What?!?” you say? “An Easter story, beginning at Christmas?” Of course! Because that’s when the baby Jesus was born, after all. And he wasn’t the only one.

It was my doodle of the Easter egg in a manger that did it, see. Because when I thought about it, there was only one instance I knew for sure where Jesus interacted with animals at all, and that was in the stable in Bethlehem, so that’s where I started...

We all know how the Wise Men and the shepherds and all the other dirty animals came to look at the baby Jesus, right? Cows and birds and foxes and bears and deer all sat side by side, not eating each other because they all loved Jesus. And so did a special girl bunny. She couldn’t have kids. Like my great-aunt Pat, she had a kink in her pipes. So she hopped into the stable and had a look at Baby Jesus, and prayed for a miracle. And it happened! She suddenly was having a baby. But not a normal baby bunny, no! Instead, she laid a colored egg right there in the manger, and out of it hatched the Easter Bunny.

I went on from there. I worked in a story Dad had told me, how on farms, kids used to sneak into the barn at midnight on Christmas because, according to legend, all the cows and chickens gained the power of speech, just as they did on the first Christmas...

But because the Easter Bunny was actually born in the stable along with Jesus, he didn’t just get to talk at Christmas. He got to speak and think and walk and everything for his whole life, and that’s forever. So when he grew up, he started wearing clothes and carrying baskets and hiding colored eggs around people's houses so everyone would know how he was born and who made him that way. Then people would look at him and say, “How did a giant talking rabbit get in here? Jesus Christ!”

My story was six pages long and when I got to the end, I got a reaction I didn't expect: Miss Seaver started clapping, then the whole class joined in. Kids asked me where I heard that story, did I really make it up, I didn’t, did I? There was a lot of murmuring and nodding as though I had explained a lot of things for them.

People were still talking about it through morning recess and into the next class, which was religion. Sister Augustina was annoyed at the chatter in the little chapel and demanded to know what the hubbub was about. A girl named Maryann told Sister I had written the best Easter story ever and I fell right in love with her for saying that. But then Sister Augustina turned to me and asked me what my story was about.

I got as far as the Easter Bunny’s mom laying an egg by the baby Jesus' head when I got another reaction I didn’t expect. Sister Augustina got me by my sweater vest and hauled me straight over the top of the pew. For someone who was just complaining about noise in the chapel, she sure was making a lot of it herself.

“How dare you?” she screamed. “An Easter egg in the Manger? That is sacrilege!” As I would soon learn, a lot of priests and nuns were a little prickly about the whole Easter bunny thing. But Sister Augustina was more than prickly that morning, she was a whole porcupine. I tried to tell her about my moment of divine inspiration, but that just made her angrier. “I don’t want to hear another word! Easter rabbits in Bethlehem! It’s heresy. There IS no Easter bunny!” she cried. Maryann gasped. So did several other kids. One little girl started crying. Sister looked around, rattled. Then she turned back to me. I stared at her, wondering how she could say something like that. Everyone knew there was an Easter Bunny. Why he did what he did was a mystery--one I thought God had called me to solve--but he was real. No Easter Bunny? Please. She might as well have said there was no Santa Claus.

Sister Augustina left the class alone in the chapel, murmuring over this terrible lie the nun had told. She dragged me back to Miss Seaver, who tried to stand up for me, but that just got her in trouble, too. Next thing I knew, me, Miss Seaver, and my story were all sitting outside the principal’s office, up at the very top floor of the school. Sister Augustina shrieked and hollered from the other side of the door. Occasionally, she’d be interrupted by a deep, booming voice that was too low and froggy to understand, but I knew was the principal, Mother Mary. I had only seen her up close once when I was coming out of the library and she swooped past in her dark glasses and black dress and habit. She looked like the Angel of Death. It made me wish for my own mother Mary, and I started to sniffle a little.

“Don’t cry, now,” Miss Seaver said, patting me on the knee. “Everything will be fine. You musn’t let this discourage you. I thought it was a very creative story.” But then the booming voice called Miss Seaver’s name and her face went pale and I knew we were dead. She disappeared behind the door and then everyone’s voices got too low for me to hear, even with my ear pressed against the frosted glass. I jumped away quick as the door opened and Sister Augustina stepped out. She gave me a look that could have stripped paint, then stormed off back to the chapel, where the rest of my class was still waiting. A second later, Miss Seaver, still alive, leaned out the door and called me in. She gave me a quick wink and I felt my heart lift.

But Mother Mary crushed that. The Angel of Death was sitting silently, leafing through my story, a frown on her face. As I looked at that frown, I noticed she had a little gray mustache. Now that I thought about it, Sister Augustina did, too. I wondered if this meant anything, but then Mother Mary looked up, catching me in the act of staring at her mustache. I waited for her to open her mouth and pronounce my death in that deep voice of hers. I looked down at the spot on the carpet in her office where my body would fall.

“Did you really write this all yourself?” Mother Mary finally asked.

I was so expecting her to tell me to die that I just stood there staring, until Miss Seaver nudged me. “Yes, Mother Mary,” I squeaked. “I started it in class yesterday and Miss Seaver said I could finish it for homework.”

Mother Mary nodded, then took a breath and handed my story back to Miss Seaver. “Very interesting,” she said. “As a child, I myself wondered about the Easter Bunny. I am not quite sure he was part of the Holy Nativity, but you found a very imaginative way to tie the two together. When you are older, you will understand more fully the true nature of Christ’s Resurrection and the spirit of Easter. Sister Augustina will see to that.” Then Mother Mary made a face at me, her mustache peeling back to reveal a scary row of the straightest, whitest, falsest teeth ever. I didn’t realize until later that she was smiling. “That is all,” she said, nodding. I still couldn’t move. Miss Seaver had to grab my elbow and turn me out the door.

The bell rang then, signaling lunchtime recess. Miss Seaver nodded to me and I bolted down one floor to the cloakroom, where I found my lunchbox. Then I dashed out the back door to the fire escape that would take me down to the gymnasium where everyone ate.

I stopped on the fire escape and leaned over the railing, letting the cold spring air blow over me. The sun seemed extra bright after my escape from death. Birds were singing and everything. I stood there for a moment, looking down from my great height, first at the gymnasium, then at the playground beyond and finally to the greening hills and mountains off in the distance. I watched the children stream out from the doors below, then ran down the steps to join them. Even half-Catholic, I understood the spirit of Easter just fine.

So, there you go. And now here I go. More soon...

Yours,
From Somewhere on the Masthead

In Which We Start at the Very Beginning...

2009-08-01T20:23:00.003-04:00

A wiser man than I once said that people don't read magazines for who they are, but for who they want to be. That in every magazine there is an inherent promise to grant a wish. Spend enough time with magazine editors and you will hear people talking about "the promise." What is the promise of this story? Have we got enough of the promise on the cover? The promise is that particular piece of verbiage that tells the reader not only what the story is about, but also what they can hope to have or become by reading it.

I got into magazines by virtue of a very different kind of promise. When I was a wee lad, I was a voracious reader. When I ran out of kids' books--The Great Brain, Encyclopedia Brown, even the musty old Hardy Boys books we had in the attic--I would read whatever my parents had on hand. Often as not, what they had was magazines, new and old, piled high in a big old wooden barrel in our living room. I got into the habit of reading to my mom while she did chores. I'd start with Woman's Day or Better Homes and Gardens. Some days, Mom did a lot of ironing and I'd dig deep into that barrel, reading to her from the musty vintage magazines she and Dad had accumulated over the years: Collier's and Holiday and many others. I always saved Reader's Digest and its humor departments for last. My mom loved those little nuggets. Oh, they made her laugh. "You know," she used to tell me. "Someone writes those for a living."

I pointed out that readers sent in the anecdotes for the Digest. "Yes," my mom countered, "but someone at the magazine polishes them up, makes them sound better, funnier. They get paid to play with words." It was a compelling promise, especially for me. I loved words. Picked them apart, played off them, strung different ones together to see how they looked on a page, or hear how they sounded spoken aloud. The idea that you could make a living doing this was an arresting one, even at the age of 10.

And now, here I am, 30 years later. After two decades of writing and editing, after playing with words for a variety of venues, some you've all heard of, some you haven't, I'm here: Seven months unemployed, scraping up enough freelance work to keep the lights on and the mortgage current. Whatever promise that compelled me as a child to choose this work seemed long since to have evaporated.

Or...maybe not:

I've just accepted a job to be editor-in-chief at one of the biggest magazines in the world--or at least it used to be.

Trust me, you've heard of it.

The magazine is in the process of a redesign (Incidentally, it also shares something very much in common with the day, time, and basic nature of this blog entry). My job is to help restore it to what it was in its heyday. To be paid to play with words.

As opportunities go, this was one of the most unexpected of my life. The notion of running a magazine--let alone this one--was a dream I had just about abandoned. Taking this challenge on may be my finest hour—or a total train wreck. Or, knowing me, probably a little bit of both.

Either way, I may be gone for a while--the "For Sale" sign goes up in front of the Magazine Mansion tomorrow. Even though I won't be in my new office until the middle of the month, I'm already deep into issue planning, as well as wrapping up the last of my freelance and, somehow, finishing my book proposal. Oh, and fixing up the house with spackle and fresh paint. Lots of spackle and fresh paint.

But I'll be back. As I wrote in my very first entry, "this is my attempt to cope with it all." I thought I was talking about the business I was in, but I see now that I was really talking about my life. And this blog has become a very special part of it. So I'll continue to use it as another opportunity to work with words, in whatever way seems to suit me. That's my promise.

You're welcome, as always, to follow along.

Yours (Once Again),
From Somewhere on the Masthead

In Which I Stall for Time...

2009-07-29T13:07:00.003-04:00

Busy day/week/life here at the Magazine Mansion, and more going on than I can articulate. So instead of giving you any news about my planets-in-alignment opportunity, I thought I would cleverly distract you with another sample chapter from my book. A lot of folks wanted to see something about my mom, and I would say this fits the bill. It's not the funniest or sharpest piece of writing I've ever done, but of everything I've written in the past few months, it's the story I'm fondest of, probably because it's the closest I've ever come to capturing the kind of person my mother was when I was growing up.

Also, it has the added advantage of featuring a famous incident (at least in my family) involving my brother and the time Mom tried to put him on a diet.

Hope you like it:

Iron Mom

Whenever my mother plugged in the iron, my brother and I knew we had two choices: Get very quiet. Or get out of the house.

Mom said she did her best problem-solving behind the ironing board, and I guess that was true enough, because when she wasn’t behind that board, she was busy creating whole new problems, problems that never would have occurred to me to worry about if she hadn’t brought them up. She was forever drilling us on potentially life-threatening situations—what to do if we fell through the ice, or were buried alive, or had to escape from the car if it ever flipped over and caught fire. That was the only one that really bothered me, not because I couldn’t figure a way out, but because Mom said, “Whatever you do, run and don’t stop. Just leave me behind.” She might as well have said, “Stand by uselessly and watch me burn to death,” because that was the image that stuck in my head.

But it must have eased her mind in some way, because she did this for years, constantly surprising us with ever stranger and unlikelier scenarios, needling us for instant answers to see if our survival instinct was sufficiently honed. There I’d be, reading a comic book in the back seat of the car, minding my own business as we drove somewhere, when suddenly she’d say, “What would you do if there were burglars upstairs and you were trapped in the basement?”

BB would get all rigid next to me, like one of those pointer dogs that’s finally found a bird in the bushes. “Ooh, I know! Pull all the fuses so when they came down to check the power, I’d sneak out,” he’d say, then give me a satisfied nod as if to say, Beat that.

“Not bad,” Mom would reply. “But suppose you were tied up in the corner? Then what? You think about that for a minute. Now it’s your brother’s turn. MM? Put that down and listen. What would you do if you were trapped in the basement…”

I sighed hugely across her. “Ma, we don’t have a basement,” I said. It was true. All we had was a tiny little crawlspace under the house and I was never going down there.

“Don’t interrupt. Now, listen! What would you do if you were trapped in the basement and it started flooding?” I gave it the moment’s consideration I thought it warranted. Aside from having no basement, none of us could swim either.

"Well?" Mom demanded after half a second. "What would you do?"

“Drown,” I answered. Mom got angry at me for that.

When I was little it seemed like anger—not the need to think or solve problems--was what drove Mom to iron the most. And she could be mad for hours at a time. You only had to look at our clothes to tell this. Everything in our closets, all our school shirts and pants, our jeans, even our t-shirts and underwear, were all starchy-smelling and folded or creased like they had just come from the cleaners. Even though she ironed every day, Mom’s clothes hamper in the living room was almost always full. If she pressed her way through our clothes, she moved on to her own, then Dad’s last of all—construction workers didn’t have a lot of clothes that took well to ironing. When she put the hissing iron to the arms of Dad’s work shirts, even freshly laundered, you could smell the sweat coming off them.

She used to tell us that being a grown-up was more complicated than we ever appreciated, that every day she and Dad had new problems to solve. “But often as not, I’m the only one who wants to solve them!” she’d say mysteriously, her voice rising at the end of the sentence. Then she’d slam something down—a plate or a heavy book, maybe. If that wasn’t satisfying enough, she’d go rummage around in the kitchen cabinets, usually the lower ones, where she kept the big metal pots and pans and could get some good clanging noises out of them. But after a while of banging around in there, she’d come out to the living room, set up her board, plug in her old black-and-nickel plated Sunbeam, and set the dial way over to the side marked “Steam.”

Sometimes she would ask me to read one of her magazines to her, so I’d pick my way through the stories in Reader’s Digest (I liked the humor pieces. Mom was a big fan of the “Drama in Real Life” disaster stories). I’d have to look up occasionally to see what she was ironing, knowing that if she got to my clothes, it was time to go to the bathroom and forget to come back. For Mom, there was a very literal connection between what she was ironing and what she was thinking about, mad or not. When she was working the wrinkles out of your clothes, she was apt to start working some wrinkles out of you. If I was too slow to notice that she was pressing my slacks, I’d have to sit and get an earful about my smart mouth or some pointers on how to make my teachers like me better (these pointers nearly always seemed to involve me talking less and listening more).

Not long after he sent me to the hospital, Mom spent a lot of time ironing BB’s clothes, thinking about all the times he flew off the handle and thumped me, or talked too fast to be understood, or couldn’t settle down at night (for some reason, he kept having bad dreams about being buried alive or trapped under ice). After talking with Dad about it, Mom announced that BB was going to see a special doctor, a psychiatrist. “Oh, like Lucy in the Charlie Brown comics,” I said. “You pay her a nickel and she tells you your problems.”

Dad shook his head sadly. “This one’s gonna cost a lot more than a nickel,” he said.

He was right. The doctor told my parents that BB was hyperactive, which I could have told them for free. My brother never sat still. It was frustrating. You’d be playing Hot Wheels or building a block tower and he’d freak out if a car turned over or a block fell. Then he’d smash up the track and knock down the blocks and then thump me just because. The doctor gave him some medicine—it didn’t work, it made him more hyper than ever. Then he recommended a school in Manchester for kids with special problems--like being a spaz and hitting your brother all the time. On BB’s first day of school, the teacher complimented him on his neat appearance and his crisp, unwrinkled clothes. He got a little better about the spaz thing, too. The psychiatrist had told BB that when he started to get excited or found himself in a stressful situation, he needed to take a deep breath and focus on the problem, instead of just yelling or lashing out. And it worked: I discovered it often took me five or six good insults before I got BB mad enough to actually try to hit me.

But Mom wasn’t done fixing my brother yet. One afternoon, while ironing clothes she found stuffed in the back of BB’s closet, she suddenly said to him, “You don’t wear these clothes because they’re too tight. You’re too big, that’s your problem,” she told him. “I was husky like you when I was younger, but I started watching what I ate. You will too.” That was a great week, the week she started my brother on a diet. The best part was the night he came back from the kitchen with his third helping of chicken and rice and Mom, remembering that she was trying to slim my brother down, snatched his plate away and took it back to the kitchen. “She took my food!” he cried, looking across the table at me. “Now you know how it feels,” I said, stuffing my mouth with a big load of chicken. You wouldn’t think you could smile and chew at the same time, but you'd be wrong.

In the end, the crash diet didn’t work. For one thing, BB started getting up at night and sneaking food from the kitchen. And not just sneaking, but hiding it. One morning, I reached in my dresser drawer for a fresh pair of underpants and knew something was wrong when crumbs fell out of the crotch. I yelled for Mom as I always did when there was a problem with the laundry service. She took one look at the crumbs and began pulling all my crisp, neatly pressed underpants out of the top drawer and shaking them. Towards the back, chocolate chip cookies started falling out.

That’s when BB walked in from the bathroom. He took in the scene, then took a deep breath. He calmly turned to me and said, “So Mom finally found out where you were hiding the cookies, huh?” Even in my rage and indignation, I had to admire my brother’s self-control in that moment of crisis, but Mom still saw right through him. “How could you hide food in your brother’s underwear drawer?” she cried. BB glared at her for one whole second, then collapsed. “I had to!” he cried. “My drawers are already full!” After she made him put all the food back in the pantry, Mom punished BB by teaching him how to load the washer and dryer, starting with my Fruit-of-the-Looms. From then on, it was his job to bring the fresh clothes directly to the ironing hamper and keep it topped off.

A few times a month, we’d find Mom ironing stuff at the bottom of the basket and we knew she and Dad had probably had a big fight, usually over the checkbook, which Dad kept in a secret place and wouldn’t give her. Those times, Mom would get all the way down to the linen napkins that we only used at Thanksgiving, bed sheets for the guest room, and a stack of old cloth squares that had a curious combination of faded black and yellow stains and delicately embroidered initials. “What are those?” I once asked her, when I was 5 or 6, before I was old enough to know better than to talk to her when she had an iron in her hand.

“Handkerchiefs,” she’d say grimly, mashing the iron onto them. “Vintage linen and hand-stitched. They belonged to your great-grandpa. He was a smart man. Good with money. He left quite a bit to your grandmother. He died before you were born. But these old hankies are still good. Someone should get the use of them.” I don’t know who she thought that someone would be, but it wasn’t going to be me. Looking at those old stained hankies, it was only too easy to imagine that with one blow, you’d inhale whatever killed great-grandpa and die all sneezing and bloody. Anyway, I didn’t need a hanky. That’s what long sleeves were for.

Once, in late fall, when the weather turned cold, we came home from school to find the house exceptionally bright. It took us a minute to figure it out, but then we realized that all the windows were bare, although even out here in the breezeway they were all slightly steamed over. BB and I looked at each other, then he crept into the swirling mist coming from the living room while I stayed by the front door. He came back fast, his eyes wide. “The basket’s empty. Mom’s ironing all the curtains now,” he reported. We put our coats back on and played outside until Mom called us in for supper.

That was the day we found out that Dad had no job.

“Well, you’ve had no job before. You just went down to the union hall and got another one, right?” BB said to Dad, as we sat quietly at supper that night. The table had a stiff white tablecloth on it that I’d never seen before. Cloth napkins too. They were still warm and smelled slightly of hot steam.

“That’s true,” Dad said, nodding. He wasn’t looking at anyone, especially Mom. He was staring at his beer bottle, was in fact peeling the label from the bottle, letting bits fall onto his plate. “That’s true, but there isn’t a lot of new work happening in New Hampshire anymore.” He took a deep breath and kept not looking at Mom. “And we don’t have much in the bank right now, so if we want to keep on the way we are, I’m going to have to go sign on with one of the big construction companies doing work up in Maine. Or Canada, maybe. What would you do if we moved there?” he asked.

“Canada?!?” BB cried, looking to Mom, I guess to see if this was another of her disaster scenarios. But Mom just stared down at the tablecloth, smoothing a crease over and over with her hand.

“But what about going up to Springfield? Finishing the cabin and living up on the Hill?” I asked.

Dad looked up then. “Hill’s not going anywhere. We’ll always, always have that. And you know that’ll always be home, no matter where we end up living. It’s just, if I want to make money, I have to go where the work is. And there’s none left for me here in New Hampshire. Believe me, I’ve looked.” Mom got up then, her supper unfinished. She started to go toward the living room and the ironing board that was still set up, the iron still sitting on it. Halfway between the dining room and the living room, she stopped. I could see the hamper was empty. She’d ironed everything in the house, except the clothes on our backs. She walked over to the board, picked up the iron and for a second I thought she was just going to start running the iron across the empty board, which I knew meant she’d finally had the nervous breakdown she’d been swearing we’d drive her to all these years. But she didn’t. Or if she did, it was an unsatisfyingly quiet one, because she just flipped the board closed—one-handed, like the pro ironer she was. Then, holding the iron in both hands, she wordlessly took it into the bedroom and closed the door behind her.

The next morning, it was like nothing unusual had happened. Dad was already gone when we got up for school and Mom seemed fine, if quiet, as she gave us our lunchboxes and herded us out the door to catch our ride. But when we got home that afternoon, things were different again. Not different like Mom had ripped the curtains off the windows, but still, different. For one thing, there were a few dishes in the sink—Mom never let a dish or glass or dirty fork sit for more than 12 seconds in her sink. For another thing, Mom wasn’t ironing.

But she was at the ironing board. Only instead of leaning over a shirt or a pair of slacks or my great-grandpa’s hankies, she had stacks of envelopes and papers spread out all over the board. In one hand, she held a pencil, which she gently tapped on the board. In the other hand, she held a rectangular object I didn’t recognize at first. It was the checkbook. She stared at it, then scribbled something on the sheet of paper in front of her. Then she picked up an envelope, peeked inside, and started writing something else down.

“Oh, you’re home already,” she said, finally noticing us and, apparently, the time. “Well, your father said to say goodbye. He got a call from a work friend and had to leave for Maine right away. He’ll call us tonight, and if he gets the job, he’ll stay up there and come home on weekends, I think.” She looked back down at the checkbook. “I’ll start supper in a minute, but I have to finish something here, so you two can help out.” She pointed at me with the pencil. “There’s some dishes in the sink that you can wash and put away. And BB, go get the laundry out of the dryer. It’s just yours and your brother’s clothes, so please put them away in the right drawers.”

As I walked back to the kitchen and got the step-stool so I could reach the sink, I heard BB say, “You don’t want them in the ironing basket first?”

“No,” Mom said in a calm but faraway voice that made it clear her attention was on the checkbook. “Just fold them and put them away.” As BB went out to the laundry room, I got the dish soap out from under the sink, then climbed up on the stool and turned on the hot water.

Not long after that, I had a dream that we were in the car, all of us. Mom was driving and Dad was in the passenger seat. Then I heard some tires screeching like in the movies and suddenly we were upside down. I heard flames crackling but couldn’t see them. The car was filling with smoke. I couldn’t see BB next to me. Up in front, the passenger seat was empty; Dad was already gone. I should have been scared, but I wasn't. I knew the way out of this: I turned, put both feet together and kicked hard at the passenger window. It exploded in tiny kernels, like it did the time Dad locked his keys in the truck and had to break the glass. I clambered out and started to run, but then I remembered my mother.

I turned and she was still in the driver’s seat, hands on the steering wheel. The crackling got louder, then the whole car caught fire. “You go on,” she called through the flames in a voice that sounded far away, but calm as anything. “You get clear,” she said.

I ran then, my heart in my throat. I ran, even though I knew she was on fire. I couldn’t see it, but I could smell it, like hot steam rising.

---

Well, there you go.

As for other developments, I hope to have more to tell you soon, perhaps this weekend. We'll see.

Yours,
From Somewhere on the Masthead

In Which We Offer A Taste...

2009-07-23T07:53:00.002-04:00

So, here's the chapter I promised. It's from early in my book, which I guess I should tell you is sort of a memoir about growing up in New Hampshire, but is mostly about being raised to tell stories, by people who were themselves master storytellers. In fact, each chapter is its own story, each building on the next until the whole thing adds up to the book my parents always told me I'd write.

This will read a little different than my usual blog post. When I post, I give very little thought to structure; I do almost no rewriting or editing after the fact. What you get is a rough draft. This here is a first draft, a little more polished and rounded out. Or at least it ought to be. Jesus, I sure hope so.

And now that we come to it, I feel weirdly self-conscious sharing this with you. I guess it's good that I care that much about it, but weird too. Anyway, have a look:

Brubby

My parents bought my brother for 150 bucks.

That sounds like a real bargain at today’s baby prices, but in 1965, at my father’s hourly rate at the welding shop, that was more than two weeks’ pay. Dad was not an extravagant man and large expenditures—anything above, say, $17.50—were an affront to his sense of thrift, easily the keenest of all his senses, except for maybe his eyesight. But he questioned even that when he got the bill that fall from the Elliott Hospital in Manchester. He was so stunned he made Mom read it back to him to confirm the amount. Then he had to go out and rake leaves for an hour.

“Spent that hour trying to remember where the receipt was. Thought we might be able to return him,” he’d say every year on my brother’s birthday, as he’d tellabout how the 150-dollar baby came to live with him and Mom.

“Why didn’t you?” I once asked when I was seven. For $150, my parents could have bought me a good bike or a used motorcycle or something and spared me seven years of torture and pain beyond anything my parents or any other child could ever understand.

“Well, it was too late,” Dad said to me with a freshly stunned look, inviting me to share his astonishment. “We’d already named him—and after me. It’s like getting your initials monogrammed on a sweater—can’t bring it back to the store after that.” I nodded, understanding instantly. No other parents would buy a used baby like that, especially one with a name like Douglas Francis.

At some point in the annual telling of the story, Mom had to jump in and spare Dad the obvious pain of talking any more about the time he got rooked on a bad baby deal. Mom always told nice things about the birthday boy. But this was crazy for two reasons: one, it was all obviously made up, and two, the birthday boy didn’t care. He never seemed to listen to the story, preferring instead to stay hunched close over his plate to eat, hand and mouth working together like the piston and wheels of a locomotive.

“He was a beautiful baby. And healthy too. The nurses said he was the loudest burper on the ward,” she said. And the beautiful baby looked up and offered a loud belch in support of this claim. He blew it across the table at me, enveloping me in the stale smell of partially digested pork and onions. I made a face and fanned my hand wildly to ward off the death cloud. “Maaaa!” I cried, adding extra vowels to signify my righteous disgust. “He’s blowing stinky burps!” But this caused my mother to make up even more lies.

“You have no idea how lucky you are to have such an excellent big brother!” she cried. Then she told a story about how, before they went shopping for me at the hospital, she and Dad ordered a crib from Jordan Marsh over in Bedford. When the deliverymen came to set it up, my brother, who was almost 3 years old, screamed and cried, inconsolable because the little brother he’d been hoping for had not come with the crib. “Where my Brubby? I want my Brubby!” he howled. Allegedly.

When I finally did come home, Big Brubby—or BB, as he sometimes referred to himself--followed me everywhere, watching me as a baby and toddler with all the undiluted affection and awkward care of a St. Bernard. If I cried, he was often the first one into the room to soothe me. He even went so far as to check my diaper himself. “He would stick his finger in and yell out, ‘Mom! The Kid is wet! Mom! The Kid is brown!’ He loved you that much,” she claimed.

I looked at my brother, and tried to reconcile the angelic guardian of my mother’s fantasy with the reality that sat across from me, and just knew they couldn’t be the same person. When my parents left the table to go to the bathroom or something, BB often reached across and took food right off my plate. I was willing to indulge this behavior if we were having pot roast or tuna casserole, but if it was chicken and dumplings or spaghetti and meatballs, I had to scream Mom’s name with about 25 extra vowels or else be ready to fight to the death for my supper. Dessert? I had to eat that in the kitchen, or standing up, ready to run.

I had to admit, at least Dad got some heft for his money. All the grown-ups referred to my brother as husky, but I knew fat when I saw it and it was staring at me right across the dinner table, shoveling in the grub like it was being outlawed tomorrow. I was never happy about my brother’s size. It wasn’t just that he was fat—although he weighed a whole other me—it was that he was tall, too, and getting taller all the time. Mom was forever letting out the cuffs of his pantlegs and about once a month we had to drive over to the Antioch Shoe Outlet to get another pair of shoes or sneakers for him. Plus BB was strong. He had inherited our father’s long gorilla arms—at 10 years old, his were just as hairy as Dad’s and almost as strong.

This put me at a severe disadvantage when we got to arguing, because after a few heated words over ownership of a Hot Wheels car, or for control of the Lincoln Logs, my brother would just abandon diplomacy and punch me—an act he euphemistically referred to as “thumping,” as if he were a gentle bunny rabbit giving me a playful nudge. In fact, BB put his weight into it. And if he thumped me hard enough that I started to cry or bleed or both, he would panic and hide the evidence.

My parents were big ones for saving containers of every stripe. In the garage, they still had giant cardboard cartons saved from the move out of the apartment and into the house. My Dad also bought plastic garbage cans whenever they were on sale—they made great storage bins for the scraps of pipe and lumber he was forever bringing home from job sites. In the house, my mother had three wicker hampers, each bigger than an oil drum. She kept one in the living room for clothes that needed ironing, one in her and Dad’s bedroom as a laundry hamper, and one in our room for toys. We also had four long wooden toyboxes that Dad had made—using scrap lumber he brought home. They slid under the bottom bunk.

Depending on our location when the thumping occurred and how loudly I started crying, BB would sometimes dump me head-first into a musty wardrobe box, which was too high for me to escape from unaided. Or he’d throw me into the garbage can with the least amount of pipe or lumber in it, then put the lid on it and a cinderblock on top of that. It was only by poking the lid repeatedly with a length of copper pipe that I was able to lift the lid a little bit on the side and stick the pipe through and so get enough oxygen to survive until rescued.

Once, when Mom was out hanging clothes, BB thumped me so hard my lip swelled up like a hornpout’s and long stringy ropes of blood began falling out the sides. Before I could spit some evidence on the floor and scream my guts out, he put me in the wicker ironing basket, closed the thatched lid and ingeniously locked it with a bent wire hanger. As always, he hissed that he would be back to let me out once I stopped crying and promised not to tell. By then, this had happened enough that I didn’t panic—not like the time he emptied a toybox, put me in, and rolled me under the bed. I had never been in the ironing basket before and thought it was kind of nice. I wiped my mouth on one of my mother’s white blouses, then made a little nest out of the linens in there and fell asleep. Eventually my mom got to wondering where I was, and when she couldn't find me, my brother was too scared to tell her what he had done, so a house-to-house search of the neighborhood ensued. When he thought the coast was clear, BB returned to let me out, but Mom caught him.

The problem was, my brother usually just got shouted at—if Dad was home he might get a rap in the mouth. But mostly BB got sent to the bedroom we shared, and that wasn’t like punishment. I mean, all our toys were there and since I couldn’t go in until he was paroled, it was kind of like punishment for me, too. Eventually I discovered that, though BB was bigger, I could dominate him—or at least annoy him--with my mouth, which was way more satisfying than watching him get sent to our room.

When I was eight, I found a book in my parents’ closet that explained where babies came from and how they got there in the first place. I didn't understand all of it, but I gained enough new knowledge to drive BB crazy. I informed my brother that, in fact, I was our parents' first child, but that our mother and father loved me so much, they held me back. Then they had BB "first" so they could see what went wrong with a kid, figure out how to fix those mistakes and get it all perfect with me, as they so obviously had. I usually had to start running as I said the last part, because the only way BB could soothe his rage and frustration was to lay hands on me.

Once, when I was too slow, he caught me by both arms, lifted me off the ground and pulled my arms in opposite directions. Something in my chest popped like a giant knuckle. It was so loud my mom heard it in the next room where she was ironing. It even startled BB, who dropped me to the floor. I landed flat on my stomach, knocking the wind out of myself and that was how Mom found us--me gasping for air at the foot of my brother, who was already crying, “I didn’t mean to break his ribs! I didn’t mean it!” But even blacking out and half-dying, I knew he was a big fat liar.

By the time we got to the hospital, I had secretly come back from death, having caught my breath on the drive into Manchester. My chest felt sore, but not too painful. I was lying across almost the entire back seat of the car, a pillow under my head and a blanket wrapped around me. I felt as comfortable and cozy as I had been that day I was trapped in the ironing basket. BB was scrunched way over in the corner. I know because I kept him there by pushing both feet up hard against the side of his butt.

“Are you still alive?” he kept asking, his voice sounding high and warbly. I ignored him a couple of times, but then Mom would get worried and speak up from the front. “Is he breathing? Are his eyes closed? Are his lips blue?” Then I would have to answer—weakly, “I can breathe--” I waited a moment, then sighed hugely. “—just a little.” BB stared at me, chewing the nails on his first two fingers. He was always eating something.

At the hospital, they took X-rays, which was scary because I had to go in a dark room all by myself. I was sniffling a little when they brought me back to the exam room where Mom and BB waited. My brother was gazing at me with eyes I’d never seen before. He came over and—very gently—patted me on the shoulder. “Are you okay, kid?” he asked. Then Mom squeezed my hand, and changed the subject. “Good God, last time I was in a room in this hospital was when you were born. The nurses wheeled you in on a rolling crib from the nursery. You had the biggest head of red hair.” She ruffled it now. “And you still do.”

“Was I born here too?” BB asked, looking around the room with new interest. Mom nodded, giving my brother a serious look. “The doctors thought you would be stillborn.”

“What’s that?” he asked.

“It means born dead,” I said wistfully, remembering the word from the book I found in my parents’ room.

“You were fine, of course, but they didn’t know at first,” Mom said. “The bastards gassed me, knocked me out before I could hold you. I was bullshit mad when I woke up. Later, Grandma and Papa made a special trip up to take a look at you. They only had one other grandson, your cousin Buzzy, but since he was Aunt Barbara’s child, you would be the first one to carry on the family name,” she told my brother.

“Did they come to see me too?” I asked, feeling that Mom’s attention had wandered. She turned back to me. “Not you, dear. You were old news by then.” Then her expression hardened and she looked at BB. “Do you know, when Grandma got a hold of you, she looked you over, then handed you back and said to your father. ‘Well, at least we know he’s yours.’ Then she gave me a look and walked out. Five minutes later, she and Papa were back in the truck. Can you imagine?”

I looked over at BB, who gave me back the look we shared when we had no idea what Mom was talking about. It didn’t matter anyway, because a second later the doctor came in and said the X-rays showed nothing broken, which disappointed me a little, after all the trouble I’d been to. Then the doctor pushed his cold hands all around on my chest for a long time and listened to my insides with an even colder stethoscope. Eventually, he announced that I had a pulled muscle. He told Mom to give me a baby aspirin and a day of rest, but I knew an injury this severe would take at least a week on the couch to heal up.

I let a nurse put me in a wheelchair. When they rolled me out to the front desk, Mom remembered to be mad at BB again, especially when the clerk handed Mom the bill. Dad had lousy insurance back then. Mom had to pay for the two X-rays. “Seventy-five dollars? Each?” she cried, inviting the sympathetic clerk to share her astonishment as she fished in her purse for the checkbook.

For a moment, Mom’s eyes fell on BB, still hunched attentively over my wheelchair. She pointed at him then said to the clerk. “Can I still return this one?”

It still needs work--it's only a first draft. But I'm already committed to this thing like an insane person to an asylum, so I guess that's something.

Hope that was worth waiting six weeks for. Maybe I'll post another taste one of these days.

Yours,
From Somewhere on the Masthead

In Which We Spin The Wheel...

2009-07-21T17:48:00.003-04:00

And so, full circle, back once again at the Magazine Mansion.

I'm sorry if I kept any of you waiting or worrying. I've had an eventful six weeks. Oh, my first month or so in New Hampshire was slow enough, alternating between writing and continuing to clean out my parents' (now my Big Brother's) house and throwing out as much as I could when BB wasn't looking. I'm satisfied with my progress on both fronts—I averaged 10,000 words a week on my writing and smuggled six truckloads of useless crap out of the house and into the local landfill.

Then I left to go retrieve Thomas and bring him back to my home state for a week of camping and hiking, and that mostly in the rain. But he enjoyed it and I may tell more about our adventures, but for now I'm just trying to get back into the swing of things.

If you were to illustrate my working life (such as it is) and the way I prioritize it (such as I do) you'd find it would resemble the mutant offspring of a pie-chart and a roulette wheel, with about 50 percent of it devoted to finding freelance and 40 percent devoted to my own personal writing projects. And every day, Fate spins the wheel. For most of the past month and change, the wheel has been stopping in the 40-percent zone, and when I got back home last week, I knew the wheel would turn round and I'd find myself shifting away again toward the generating-freelance spots.

And then I got a phone call that made everything spin wildly, and when the wheel came to rest, it was on the remaining 10 percent that you thought I wasn't going to mention. Though it represents the smallest slice in the weird wheel, it's an area I always leave open in my life, an area that allows me to cram in all my dream opportunities that I used to fantasize about. When I was younger and the wheel was in constant motion, dream opportunities occupied, naturally, the biggest area of the wheel.

But as you get older, and your sense of reality hardens to a thick shell, you understand that most of these things are never going to happen. Most people I know just write these dreams off, chalk them up to childish whim and forget about them. I give them the last sliver of the weird wheel of my life.

Some of these opportunities include:

--An international job of some kind (hey, I never said all these dream scenarios were specific)

--A chance to volunteer for any experiment involving time travel (pretty much given up on that one. I mean, if time travel was ever going to be discovered in my lifetime and I actually got to go, I know I'd leave/will leave/will have left myself a letter or sticky note--just a few words of encouragement, and possibly a lottery number or two, as proof that I made it--and I've never found such a note)

--A shot at running my own newspaper or magazine (I think my last few months at the Really Big Magazine cured me of that one)

--The opportunity to write a script (for comics or a movie, doesn't really matter)

The list goes on, into ever weirder and more embarrassing territory, but you take my point, I think. Keeping the list, allowing it 10 percent of the wheel doesn't mean I think any of them are ever going to happen. In fact, I allow that these would be possible for me only through blind luck, or circumstances for which the phrases "once in a lifetime" and "all the planets in alignment" were created.

The phone call was blind luck, pure and simple. A person I met exactly once, about 5 months ago, passed my resume to the Mystery Caller. This Mystery Caller also happens to work with a friend of a friend of a former colleague of mine who by sheer coincidence also mentioned my name in passing. So the Mystery Caller took a hint and phoned me, 24 hours after I returned from New Hampshire. We talked, and 10 minutes later, I was packing a bag and driving across the country (again) to meet with the Mystery Caller, I was that intrigued with the opportunity he wanted to discuss.

Which, if you haven't guessed by now, is an opportunity I can't tell you about yet. I hate when people do that to me, so I hope you believe me when I tell you how sorry I am I can't reveal more yet.

(I'll make it up to you by posting--in the next day or so--a few of the 20,000 words I wrote last month. Fair enough?)

I can tell you this is something I've always wanted to do, at a place I've known and admired for most of my life. When I told Her Lovely Self I was getting back in the car and driving off into the unknown, I expected her to try and talk me out of it--it really is a long shot. But she just smiled.

"I know you too well," she said. "You'll go and find out more because it's a long shot. And I think you should. Don't you?"

"I guess so," I said, stuffing a handful of socks and underwear into a satchel and throwing toiletries into a shaving kit, and trying to do about four other things at once. "It's one of those things I always leave a possibility open for. You know, in my weird roulette wheel, the 10-percent part, where it's--"

"Once in a lifetime, all the planets in alignment," she said, nodding. She's read this post before. "And how many planets would you say are in alignment right now?"

I stopped then, underwear in one hand, a toothbrush in the other. "Honestly, maybe four or five," I said. "There's a chance--a small one, but still. There's a chance this might happen."

I should know more soon. But meanwhile, you should know that I'm alive and well and bouncing off the walls. If this thing happens, it'll probably happen in the next 48 hours, and after that, the weird wheel is likely to spin off its axle and leave me wondering what the hell I'm supposed to do next.

Still.

For the first time in a long time, something massive and celestial is in the works. I can see them in the twilight, Mercury, Venus, Mars, all of them, spinning slowly into place.

Am I hopeful? Am I excited?

You bet Uranus.

Yours,
From Somewhere on the Masthead

Vlog Out...

2009-06-03T08:33:00.002-04:00

Here at last. A short vlog, with none of that annoying camera motion you got while I was driving. Instead, you can have the nausea inducing camera motion that comes with walking.

I hate to tell you that this will be it for a while, because that's the sort of thing that makes me post something a day later. But I expect to be busy. I expect to be offline. I expect to have some fun while I'm gone.

So for now, I won't say "See you in a month," or "So long for a little while."

Instead, I will just say "..."

Road Vlog #4...

2009-05-31T10:05:00.000-04:00

My friend and fellow blogger Jim Sullivan (aka Suldog) has been a faithful online pal--moreso than I deserve, for sure. Certainly the man has bigger fish to fry. I have been so pleased to watch him grow in stature on the 'sphere (have you seen his numbers?), not just because he deserves it, but because I intend to cash in on his fame by using one of his many kind remarks about me as a blurb on my book.

Seriously, Jim has been a great source of inspiration and motivation to me, in ways both special and strange. On the strange side, I live in fear of being placed in the detention zone that he reserves for bloggers who have not posted in 30 days (once was enough!) On the special side: his blog also sets me in a place I do not deserve (although it of course secretly pleases me). He provides unfailingly positive encouragement in the form of his comments and emails. And he regularly sends interesting people my way, most recently through the good offices of the excellent Authorblog.

It was also because of Jim that I received the CD Mister Rogers Swings! Which absolutely SAVED my long day of driving in the rain:

Since the Brownie hijacked the CD when it arrived, I didn't get to make as timely (or as articulate) a post about it as Jim did, but we are most certainly of one mind about its excellence.

Jim's original post had this info about the CD, but such things always bear repeating:

The Amazon page to get your own CD.

Where to go to hear and learn more about my new crush Holly for yourself.

And to Suldog, I just have to say the one thing I don't say nearly often enough: Thank you, my blogging brother.

Yours,
From Somewhere on the Masthead

Road Vlog #3...

2009-05-29T10:02:00.002-04:00

Still alive, still vlogging.

Sorry for the jiggly camera, the changing perspective, the surprise study of an unexpected portion of my face. I figured out one secret to successful road-vlogging: keep it to surface roads, or freeways where the traffic tends to force you to maintain speeds below 50 miles an hour. Well, that, and also be a talented and handsome performer, which I am neither.

You know how they say men tend to get better-looking as they get older? I am, sadly, the exception that proves that rule. I thought I could just train the camera on my good side, but--turns out, I don't have one. Also, I have that drooping left eyelid. It falls lower and lower when I'm tired, a feature that my tussle with Bell's palsy only seemed to accentuate. It's not the sort of thing, alas, that elicits sympathy from an audience, makes pretty girls go "awww" and involuntarily reach for a blanket and pillow. Instead, it makes people think Why does he look so wall-eyed?

But hey, that didn't stop Claudette Colbert from a career in pictures, and it won't stop me, unfortunately for you--the seven of you--who are still watching.

And since a weird proportion of you emailed or asked, I give you:

Which shows clearly, I hope, the detrimental effect of driving cross-country with no one to talk to but a dog (a real one. I think) and a camera. Don't let this happen to you, kids. You've been warned.

Oh, and for those who wondered last time: the music WAS The Waterboys (as someone correctly guessed) but was in fact the title track from the newer 2-disc "Fisherman's Blues" set. Perhaps my next vlog will be wholly devoted to what I'm listening to.

Ooh, excitement.

Yours,
From Somewhere Along the Mohawk

Road Vlog #2...

2009-05-28T09:26:00.001-04:00

Wow, really tired tonight. Either from driving or talking to myself the whole trip.

Here's today's vlog, refreshingly free of excessive nostril focus, but with brief yet diverting coverage of my right ear.

Hey, it came down to a choice between this or some ramblings about the real moral of the story of Clifford the Big Red Dog (which, while information I think every discerning person should have, was nevertheless the longer of the two vlogs, and this WiFi connection is way slow), so count yourself lucky.

And to bed.

Yours,
From Sozzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Road Vlog Number 1 (possibly Number Only)...

2009-05-27T09:02:00.000-04:00

Oh, dear lord,

As if we needed more reason to be thankful that Shane and his wonderful vlogs have returned, I offer you a video post from the road, which I originally named "Raining Cops and Dogs."

But which should really be called "MM's Nostril Theater." Especially towards the end. WTF?

Here's hoping I manage to avoid cutting off the top of my head--along with my eyeballs--in future installments. Always assuming there are any. Damn, but Shane makes it look easy.

Still, despite the rain, the brush with the law, the already-crushing longing for my family, my nonexistent camera skills, I must admit:

It is deeply cool to be on the road, headed east, knowing what the next month holds for me.

More soon.

Yours,
From Somewhere in America

In Which We Do the Math...

2009-05-26T16:02:00.003-04:00

[Operational note: If you're reading this, it seems I have successfully used the vastly complicated Blogger option and post-dated my, er, post. It's still the weekend for me, but it should be some time Tuesday for you. This pleases me strangely, especially since I am somewhere on the road now and not in a position to update the blog.

Why am I telling you this? No idea, except it's late and I'm punchy and I couldn't think of a better way to generate a scintilla of suspense about my encounter with the suspected young perverts lurking around my house, spying on my daughter and her friends while they imprudently performed a few backyard acrobatics that was causing them to flash a little more skin than a Daddy like myself would prefer.]

It's a little sad to admit, but one of the unfortunate features of being a father of girls is that I seem to have developed this distressingly overtuned pervert detector--it's a standard feature of my overall array of Daddy Senses, but easily the feature that gives me the most pause. I'm a bit like Blaze in this regard, scowling at every passing male from age 5 (okay, 4) on up, using my vast psychic powers to peel away their defenses and sniff out the slightest trace of unwelcome interest in my daughters. I analyze the merest wave of the man walking his dog (did I see a hidden salacious hand gesture in that salute he just sketched to the Eclair?), or the briefest glance and nod from a deliveryman (did he hold the Brownie's gaze for longer than my personally defined standard of one-quarter to one-half of one second?). It's an awesome and terrible responsibility, this pervert detector, because if that detector trips--it hasn't, but if it does--if the light in my tiny brain goes from green to red, someone will die.

I know I'm given to hyperbole--it's a genetic condition--but on this point I am being my least dramatic, most matter-of-fact, and completely literal. It almost goes without saying that I would kill for my daughters, and since I am not a physically prepossessing fellow, I know I would instantly use every tool at my disposal, from the teeth in my head (having a nose or ear bitten off is a reliable diverter to many perverts) to the very life in my body. It's a simple equation, the Pervert Equation: In a situation where I must solve for any Pervert, I am prepared to die. Since I am already prepared to die, you had better believe I am prepared to make any Pervert die along with me (as a busy guy, I like to express this in my head as a simple formula--P/Dy=D1+D2, where P is the presence of a Pervert, and D1 is my...you know what? Never mind. I know it makes no sense mathematically. But then, neither do I).

I wouldn't say the above was running through my head--not in any sensible way--as I surfed down the stairs on my heels, ready to intercept the little perverts I sensed were spying on my daughter and her friends. But obviously I realized there was a problem with my equation (beyond the obvious fantasy math it represents), and I caught myself. I couldn't just go tearing after those boys. I had no idea who they were, but they must live in the neighborhood (little perverts in my neighborhood!) and I was on the neighborhood watch, for Pete's sake. I had to think this through. I had to measure out a proportionate response to the situation. Aside from anything else, I didn't want to be the reason two kids in the neighborhood would henceforth go by the nicknames Noseless and One-Ear.

Oh, fuck that. At least put the fear of God in them! I thought.

But first, I decided, I needed the element of surprise. I stepped out of my shoes and tiptoed down the hallway to our kitchen, looking for Blaze (the Brownie may have dismissed him as fat and stinky and useless, but Blaze was still my first stop when it came to Fear of God. Also, in my experience, dogs can get away with biting body parts off people far more easily than daddies). But Blaze's kennel was open and empty.

"Thomas?" I hissed. I had just heard him around the kitchen--he'd been haunting the freaking kitchen every afternoon for days, sneaking Blaze treats. But no one, it seemed, was in the house but me. I stood there for a moment, silent, letting the Daddy Sense reach out through the back wall of the house to see what it could see.

A quick layout note: The downstairs on this side of the house is one open space: kitchen flows to eat-in area to family room. Just before the family room, there's a back door onto a raised wooden porch, with an outside stairway that descends quickly from view. I noticed now that the glass door was wide open, the screen door left slightly open too. Instinctively, I leaned over and silently closed the glass door--I could imagine Her Lovely Self returning (from wherever she was with the Éclair) and complaining about bugs getting in. As I backed away from the door, I looked through and noticed the very top post of the porch stairwell was vibrating. Someone, just beyond my vision, was on the stairs leading down from the back porch to the backyard. My money was on Thomas. And I had to assume the dog was with him.

Maybe Thomas IS playing some kind of hide and seek with his friends, I thought.

But then I remembered something the Brownie had said to me in a huff, back on her birthday. "Kids can do a lot if grown-ups would just go away and let them!" she had said. Granted, that was her way of declaring a little independence, but all of a sudden, it occurred to me it might apply here. What if Thomas, knowing his Dad was spending a lot more time in the basement working, decided to take Blaze and handle a situation that his father had clearly been oblivious to? If that was true, what I really needed to do was not put in an appearance (not yet, anyway), but to disappear. Like, right now!

Which explains why, a moment later, if you'd had X-ray vision, or a Daddy Sense of your own, you'd have perceived me, a 40-year-old man, in his own house, in broad daylight, dropping to the floor and crawling on his belly across his own family room rug, just like when he was 10 and playing soldiers with his brother.

Except, man! Who knew that those intervening three decades would make crawling so exhausting? It took me whole minutes to reach my destination--which were the picture windows in the family room, the ones that look out on the back yard--or at least out into the lush spring foliage of the backyard. I had just opened these windows. Curtains were swirling in the breeze. The girlish giggling and screaming wafted in. I couldn't see the girls--this time of year, there's only one window that affords a view of the swingset. The rest are obscured by shade and bushes.

Even over my exertions, even over the sounds of my own heartbeat in my ears and my own surprisingly extravagant grunting, I could hear the creak of sneakered feet on the wooden stairs outside and below me as I passed by the first of the open windows. At almost the same time, I heard from the opposite side a rustling of bushes and the sounds of two--no, it was three--boys breathing hard from their run around the front of the house. I held my breath, which my middle-age body took as an invitation to have a stroke. Blood pulsed in my ears as I waited for the moment of truth. Were we all playing soldiers together, us boys, all hiding behind the bushes (and/or family-room curtains) or was something else going on?

From just below the open window on the left, I heard Thomas, his voice normal, but perhaps a little breathless.

"You been sneaking around here all week, watching my sister," he said evenly.

"So?" I heard one boy answer challengingly from below the open window on the right. His voice seemed very loud to me--I couldn't believe the girls couldn't hear this (although to be fair, they keep up a pretty consistent racket of laughing and jabbering, which would effectively tune out all but a tornado siren). I didn't recognize the boy's voice--he sounded big (I imagined a gross fat-ass). Certainly bigger than Thomas. I waited for my son to respond, probably in a raised, slightly squeaky voice, as he gets when he gets excited.

Instead, he dropped his voice to a low, rumbling whisper. "So get the hell out," Thomas said.

Whoa! I thought, feeling the hairs rise on my neck and arms. I tell you, radio really is the theater of the imagination. Not seeing Thomas's face, just hearing this Dark Knight/Dirty Harry rasp, I suddenly wondered what kind of secret math he had running in his head for this situation. But mostly, I found myself in a state of utter shock and disbelief. Is that little Art Lad? Is that my son talking? I thought.

And almost immediately, a certain voice in my head answered back, No, ass wipe. That's a Big Brother talking.

Now, I waited for Fat-Ass to reply to Dark Lad's command but a new voice--a grating but pipsqueaky one--fired back and this was one voice I thought I did recognize.

"You gonna make us?" Pipsqueak yapped.

"Three on one," Fat-Ass added (with, I imagined, a sneer).

Ordinarily, I'd have simply been dismayed at this pronouncement, since it meant that Thomas had no doggy backup with him, that he was taking on the perverts solo. But my overarching emotional response was indignation at the very cheek of this implied threat to my son. My mouth dropped open (which was unfortunate, as I was on the floor and promptly swallowed a mouthful of lint and random floating dog hair). Suppressing a cough, I focused instead on my annoyance at this impertinence. You little (or possibly big) fat-assed shit! I thought. Trespassing on MY property, spying on MY daughter, threatening MY son? That's it!

I started to get to my knees, preparing to manifest my Dad-ness in its most awful aspect. I imagined myself looming up above them there in the open window, striking wholly justified fear in the hearts of little pervert boys everywhere. I just hoped I could do it before Thomas backed down and lost face. But I had barely raised my ass six inches off the floor when that low, rumbling whisper answered right back.

"Oh yeah?" The Dark Thomas rasped. "Look behind me."

(I couldn't help it--I looked behind me.)

At the same time, I heard Thomas clap once, hard, then yell, "Now!"

And nothing happened.

"Look at what?" The Fat-Ass asked.

Thomas' cool whisper was gone. "Now!" he said, a little louder. And I knew whatever he'd had up his sleeve, it wasn't happening. I raised my ass from the floor again.

Just as I was about to really manifest my Dad-ness in its most awful aspect, something hit me hard in the back of the head. It felt like somebody was driving darning needles into the back of my neck. My head shot helplessly forward, my brow buffing the window ledge. More darning needles in my mid-back and something very heavy landed on me.

Something fat and stinky.

I had just enough clarity for one thought to register (Wow, the sound of a window screen being punched out and the sound of a punted football are weirdly similar) and then there followed a loud clatter and much incidental noise. Such as boys screaming.

I finally got up for a look, no easy task when you first have to shift a large, hairy ass off your shoulders, and back your head out from between the two legs in the house you would least want to have straddling your head.

Fat, stinky, brave, wonderful Blaze had totally stolen my thunder. He stood, front paws and stocky chest halfway out the open window, barking his head off--and also the heads of the stunned boys. The third boy had vanished utterly, leaving me with no verbal or visual impression of him. Thomas reported later that he was just the little kiddo from three doors down, who tends to tag along and do whatever any Big Boys are doing. Fat-Ass's three-on-one scenario was pure bluster.

Speaking of, turns out I had imagined Fat-Ass accurately (if disturbingly older--12 or possibly 13--than I expected), although I had reckoned without the extreme pleasure of seeing him laying flat in the bushes, a bent window screen covering his face, his mouth open and blubbering as he stared up at Blaze, the wild, hairy, curled snout, the bared teeth, raining flecks of foamy spittle down on him. Pipsqueak was exactly who I thought he was--a kid from way down the street and around the corner. And I suddenly guessed that Fat-Ass was his older, seldom-seen brother. Who I gathered--judging from the way he teased and harangued her at the bus stop in the morning--had a thing for Kay, the 12-year-old neighbor girl who tended to shadow her young sister Bee, one the Brownie's girlfriends, all of whom were over at the swingset just a few yards away.

In fact, here came Kay now to see what the commotion was. I noticed instantly that she was wearing a peachy-colored tank top--the sort of color that a Dad (a Dad who couldn't look away fast enough) would have mistaken for flesh from a distance. What's more, it was smartly--and securely--tucked into the waistband of her shorts, so clearly she had not been exposing any skin to any perverts in training. Blaze stopped barking instantly and whined in a friendly way. He adores Kay, and really, all children in the neighborhood (from my vantage, I could see his tail was wagging even as he barked at the boys).

Kay's attention was instantly drawn to Fat-Ass. "What are you doing here?" she said, annoyed. At the sound of her voice, Blaze yipped and tried to wriggle out of the window to get to her.

Fat-Ass got up, brushing the screen away. He was red as a beet and couldn't look at Kay. Instead, he looked up at Blaze, then at Thomas. "That dog's not mean," he said, in a jeering way. "He's just a fat old--"

Thomas clapped, loud, and shouted "Now!" and next to me, Blaze snapped to instantly, a low growl of anticipation in his throat (Fat-Ass jumped five feet straight backward). Smiling now, Thomas fished in his pocket and pulled out a small nugget of food--a piece of beef jerky--and tossed it up towards us. Except for one instance when he bit a bird's head off in mid-flight, Blaze has almost never displayed any talent for catching food in midair, so you can imagine my surprise when he stretched his neck out and, with a dramatic snap and click of his jaws, caught the jerky.

(And I, jerk that I am, finally realized what Thomas had been training Blaze to do with all that roast beef the past several days, prepping his canine backup to take down the little pervs. And I had almost ruined it all by closing the back door! Clearly, I deserved to have my head straddled by a dog's ass.)

I had a brief word with Kay, begging her, as a favor to me, to suggest that the younger girls tuck their shirts in before they invert themselves on my swingset (it seemed the prudent way to pass this information to the Brownie, who wouldn't have appreciated it coming from me). Then, you better believe I escorted Fat-Ass and his brother off the premises, and all the way down to their house, where their father was wondering where his kids had got to. I had a genial but emphatic Dad-to-Dad chat that cogently outlined the dangers of trespass and voyeurism (intended or not) on my property. Then, leaving the boys to their just desserts, I returned to my boys back at the house.

When I walked in the door, Thomas was striving mightily to fit the bent screen back into the window. Blaze sat nearby, tail wagging, whining encouragement. I almost reached in to take the screen from my son, then stopped. "You almost have it," I said. "Just kind of push that one crimp back--there you go! Now pull that holding pin and it'll snap back in." And of course it did.

Thomas stood back, surveying his handiwork. Blaze looked from him back to me, with an expression that seemed to say, "Well, guys, what shall we do next?" Or maybe he was just doing his own math and wondering if the answer would be more roast beef.

"You did good," I said to Thomas, clapping him on the back. "You're a really good Big Brother. I'm sorry I yelled at you when you were trying to train Blaze to back you up. I can't believe you taught him to catch food in the air."

"I've been training him to do a lot!" Thomas said, pleased as anything. "I even--"

But just then, we were interrupted by an aggrieved cry.

"Thomas!" the Brownie shrilled. "Are you still over by the window? You and those boys get OUT!"

Thomas gaped at me, his face expressing the Injustice of the World and Little Sisters. "She's been blabbing at me since you left. I've just about--"

"Tho-MAS! Are you still over there! Go AWAY! Mom! Dad! MOM!! DAD!!"

Clearly at the end of his rope, Thomas was about to yell something back, when I put a hand on his arm. "I got this. You go take the rest of the afternoon off."

I stepped to the family room window--the one that afforded a view of the swingset. The Brownie saw me and, apparently forgetting that she was an independent woman of eight who can do a lot if grown-ups would just go away and let them, began tattling.

"Thomas and some boys were watching us!!" she screamed. "He-"

"I know," I cut across her, manifesting my Dad-ness, at least enough to get the attention of her and her friends. "I know he was watching you," I said. Then I added, "We're all watching you." And before the Brownie could open her mouth again, I turned and walked away.

Which I think is how it has to be some times: A guy--be he a Dad, a dog, or a Big Brother--just has to do his job, without explanation, self-recrimination, or second-guessing. And yes, sometimes even in the face of scorn from someone he loves. I'd like to think that, on some level, the Brownie understood that.

Although...now that I look back on it, since I didn't really explain what I meant when I said "We're all watching you," the Brownie's girlfriends must have thought I was one creepy bastard.

Yours,
From Somewhere on the Masthead

In Which We Emerge from the Basement...

2009-05-22T22:47:00.003-04:00

Instead of writing about the birthdays that fall in spring in my family, I seem to be filling the space between them. Mostly that's by accident, but some of it's by design. Not my design, though.

"Dad, do you write something about me every time I have a birthday?" the Brownie asked me last month. She was asking with The Voice. Like her mother's Looks, the Voice tells me more than mere words could ever say. In this case, it dictated my answer for me, sparing me the trouble of thinking, which I suspect my elder daughter thinks I don't do anyway.

"Wellllll," I began, "I guess I don't have to. Would you rather I didn't this year?"

The Brownie did an amazing impersonation of a bobble-head doll, then gave me a "yes" that was three aggrieved syllables long. "I'm glad you figured it out!" she added.

Yeah. My daughter's kind of getting a mouth on her. She doesn't seem to have inherited it from me, because so far as I can tell, it's not getting her in trouble at school. Clearly, it's her mother's mouth. Her Lovely Self was so quiet in school, teachers would call her parents to ask if she had a speech impediment, which caused my in-laws to impersonate bobble-head dolls themselves, because they would get all kinds of sass from their eldest girl.

But it's not really sass the Brownie is giving me, so much as she's asserting her independence. That doesn't mean it doesn't sting a little. At the majestic and all-knowing age of 8, she has her own friends, her own plans, her own agenda, and they don't include us so much. By "us," I mean the males of the house.

Thomas takes it on the chin the hardest, being the closest sibling and therefore the natural object of all scorn. He cannot be anywhere within a 10-block radius if the Brownie is in the back yard, playing (or more often, talking and giggling) with her friends, although my son insists that is just fine with him. He actually does seem to bear it all with a certain quiet resolve. I had no idea just how much resolve.

Poor old Blaze, though, has fallen from the Brownie's grace, and that has been hard to see. The other day, when she got off the bus with her girlfriends, he once again defeated all doors and locks and got out through the garage to meet her in the driveway, ever the faithful companion and protector. He jumped around her and her friends in his big galumphing way, but it broke my heart a little to see the Brownie push him away and squeal, "Ew, Blaze! You're so fat and stinky!" And all the girls laughed and ran off to the backyard. Tail wilted but still wagging, Blaze watched them go and made to follow, but by then I was outside and had a hand in his collar. "Oh, don't," I muttered, dragging him back inside. "Have some respect for yourself."

And of course I've been getting my share of disdain, too, although the Brownie's latest outburst caught me a little by surprise. I didn't think she really knew that I wrote anything about her, but of course, nothing escapes her. She's known for years, and apparently has never forgiven me for it, not since the time I posted pictures of her pissed-off fish face.

"It needs to stop, Dad," she said. "If I want a bunch of people to know about me, I can write it for myself. I'm eight years old now, you know. Kids can do a lot if grown-ups would just go away and let them!" If it were any other child saying this to me, I'd be a little startled by the articulation and assertiveness, but then, this is the same woman who at 4 interrupted her own teary temper tantrum to inform me that she wouldn't have to cry if I would just follow her directions. So I quietly acquiesced and slunk off, fat and stinky, to my basement.

That's how it's been for the past few weeks, and to be honest, it's just as well I was forbidden to write about the Brownie. Because the truth is, a couple of days earlier, I had taken on a huge pile of freelance work--way more than I ever have before (or ever will again). From about seven in the morning til very late in the afternoon (and then again on into the evening) I wrote and wrote and wrote some more. My day was marked not by the passage of the sun (there are two windows in my basement, both of them well out of view from my little cell under the stairs), but by the noises that filtered down from ground level. Most of the day was punctuated by the pitter-patter of the Éclair and the steadfast clack-clack-clack of Blaze following her from room to room. Then, things would be deathly quiet for an hour or so--nap time for the Éclair, and for poor Blaze. And then, not long after that, an explosion of sound--excited paw clacking, the squealing yawn of the front door, followed by the twin Booms! of bookbags hitting the floor. Then the general mysterious muffled sounds of girlish murmuring and giggling from somewhere in the back yard. So it went everyday.

And then there was a new sound pattern. Several afternoons--and continuing for a solid 10 days--I would hear the unmistakable pounding of Thomas coming into the house, followed by Blaze. There would be some noises--Thomas talking a low voice, the squeal of what sounded like a door, some more noises from Thomas. Then I'd just hear Thomas say something emphatic...followed by nothing much. This went on and on, all through the late afternoon, it seemed. After a couple of days, I noticed (in that back-of-the-mind way you notice things when you're a parent in your house, but distracted by work) that after Thomas said his emphatic word, I'd hear a low growl from Blaze, sometimes a low growl accompanied by the briefest clatter of feet.

After a week or so of this--and in particular on a day where I was staring at the screen, trying to solve an annoying writing problem--the endless repetition of this got to me and I pounded up the stairs and threw open the basement door, just as Thomas was dropping a giant piece of roast beef into Blaze's mouth.

"This is what you've been doing? Sneaking him treats all afternoon?" I asked (okay, asked in a shouty kind of way). Thomas and the dog both looked at me, abashed, and slunk off--to the front yard, since the Brownie and her coterie had taken over the back yard.

Next day, though, he and the dog were at it again. But I had a lot to write, and I was ashamed of myself for snapping at Thomas, so I just let it go. And anyway, by then I had eaten all of the roast beef so all Thomas would have to give Blaze would have been dog biscuits, so no harm done.

And thus the routine continued, until today, when I finally finished all of my freelance work. Almost all of it was due next week, but I had decided I wanted to finish it all before my birthday, and the holiday weekend. So it was with a light heart and a full bladder that I came upstairs to stretch my legs and have a celebratory pee. It was stuffy in the house--and warm outside--so after the requisite stretching and celebrating, I cranked open a few windows downstairs, then went up to the bedrooms to do the same. I found a few other chores to take care of--putting my socks in a drawer, leafing through Wednesday's new comics that I hadn't quite got to read. Downstairs, I heard a door slam, heard Thomas and Blaze pounding around, tuned them out. Through a bathroom window, I could hear girlish squealing down in the backyard, tuned them out.

At length, I remembered to finish opening the windows, and as I was opening a side window in my bedroom, I heard a noise outside that was like boyish pounding around, but not quite. It was like giggling, but not quite. I pressed my head to the screen so as to look down at the ground below and saw two--no, it was three--huddled forms at the corner of my house. I couldn't see who it was, but I could hear them. "No! Can't see! Go around the other side like last time!" one--or all of them--seemed to say.

Just Thomas and some friends playing hide and seek, I thought, and returned to my comics.

But just then, very clearly, from somewhere in the neighborhood of the stairwell, I heard Thomas hiss, "Shh!" and I remembered he was in the house. Which was now very silent. It was the loudest possible silence, though, the silence of Children Trying To Be Quiet.

After three weeks of being buried in the basement, my Daddy Sense was tingling, permeating the very walls of the house. I knew instantly that two--no, it was three--unknown boys were now running crouched and fast around the front of my house. My son, either with them or not (I used the extra gear in my Daddy Sense and suddenly divined Not), had shushed the dog (probably locked him up in his kennel, lest he give Thomas away) and was somewhere downstairs, almost certainly near the back door, but not within view of the girls, or the Brownie would have yelled at him.

The girls... I thought.

My Daddy Sense only extends so far, so I went to window in my bathroom for a look. Because of its quirky placement high up on the bathroom wall, coupled with the fact that the yard curves down and away from that side of the house, this window commands almost a bird's-eye view of the back yard. I could clearly see the Brownie and three of her friends, another 8-year-old girl, and the neighbor girls, Bee and Kay, who are 10 and 12, but who still hang out with the Brownie. They were no longer murmuring and gossiping, but were instead making use of the old wooden swingset in our backyard, which includes a couple of sturdy swings set up high (big-kid height) and an even higher trapeze thing. It was a warm spring day today, and there in the leafy confines of our backyard, the girls, younger and older, were in high spirits, engaged in various acrobatics on the swingset.

In point of fact, they were swinging or hanging upside down from either the swings, the trapeze, or the beam of the swingset itself. I couldn't pick out my daughter from among them. Because, as I said, they were all hanging upside down. With their t-shirts or tanktops falling up, over their faces. Exposing their bare chests. Instantly, as though bleach had been hurled in my face, I averted my gaze from this unfortunate if innocent display of immodesty.

And of course, it all clicked into place. Those little peeping perverts! I thought, as I bolted from the window.

This was not a time for letting my daughter have her independence, I decided, as I surfed down the stairs on my heels. This was not a time for hiding myself in the basement like some fat, stinky dog--clearly, I'd been in the basement too long!

It was time to go all Dad on somebody's ass...

In Which We Have A Little Faith...

2009-04-29T09:53:00.004-04:00

Oh, lucky readers, sometimes I think you don't know what a good friend I am to you.

After yesterday's disastrous revelation--that in the midst of our first big vacation together, I had somehow been bamboozled into dropping Her Lovely Self off with an old boyfriend (Popeye, the old boyfriend she still seemed to have feelings for) while I went to a wedding of some college friends--you had only to agonize (as I always like to assume you do) for a day about what would happen next.

I had to agonize for two weeks.

And the throes of that agony twisted me every whichaway. I wanted to blow off my friends' wedding and keep Her Lovely Self to myself. I wanted to forbid! (which I later amended to "ask" and then to "beg") her, tell her I wanted her to go anywhere else, do anything else. I even contemplated doing something sneaky--of which I am, sadly, all too capable--like sabotage my own car, or somehow pretend that it had broken down. Nothing permanent (or God forbid, expensive), just enough to put us a day behind schedule, forcing us to cut the whole Connecticut part of our trip out of the itinerary.

In the event, I did none of these things. I had decided to be patient, as I had with so many other of Her Lovely Self's boyfriends. Patience, I'd decided, was the path to trust and faith, things I sensed I would need if I was to have any future with the woman I loved. As I've mentioned, being patient was not a natural state for me. It was a decision, really, a hard one. In fact, I look back at my 23-year-old self with a kind of quiet, slightly head-shaking pride. The decision to be patient was probably one of the first truly adult decisions of my life (what am I saying? It was THE adult decision of my life.) And like so many adult decisions, while I sensed that this decision was the right way to proceed--or at least lay in the general direction of the right way--it made me a little miserable.

Although it must be said, I had a lot of help when it came to feeling miserable. This is because I made the mistake of telling everything to Greg and Bill, my good pals and true from my Chicago days. I called them after the events of yesterday's post and we convened almost immediately for an emergency session at our favorite bar. At first, they just couldn't grasp the stupidity of what I'd agreed to do. "So, in the middle of your first big mess-up-the-motel-sheets-in-nine-states getaway with your little honey, you're going to take a break from that and drop your girlfriend off. At this other boyfriend's place. For a whole day," Greg said, very slowly, to make sure he understood.

Alas, Bill knew me slightly better than Greg, and understood only too well the kind of awful predicaments I was capable of getting myself into. "Jesus!" he cried. "I thought you were smart. What the hell are you thinking?"

"Well, the whole thing snowballed on me," I whined. "She insisted I just drop her off at Popeye's and I couldn't think of a way to stop her. I mean, what am I gonna do, leave her at a rest area for a few hours while I go to the wedding?"

"It's an option," Greg said. "Anything's better than delivering her to his doorstep like the freakin' pizza man. You think he's gonna tip you? No. He's gonna bonk her."

"No, that's not what's going to happen!" I cried.

"Actually," Bill said. "It sounds like that's exactly what's going to happen."

"I bet Popeye's strong to the finish, too," Greg mused.

"Would you STOP? What are you, Satan?" I cried. "Are you two helping me? At all? You know HLS! She's a good person. I love her and I'm supposed to trust her and be patient and have faith in her. And you guys are supposed to be the angels of my better nature and remind me of that, not wind me up!"

Bill gave me a I-don't-understand-the-words-coming-out-of-your-mouth look. Greg just shrugged. "It's not our fault you're fixing your girlfriend up with her old boyfriend." Bill just nodded. I tell you, I never had friends before or after like the ones I had when I lived in Chicago. Thank God.

So now, here Her Lovely Self and I suddenly were. Two weeks later, Chicago just a faint skyline behind us, we were on our way east in my old Toyota, planning to stop somewhere in the middle of Ohio for the night. In the morning, the fateful morning in which we were planning to make it all the way to Connecticut, so I could be there in time for the wedding the next morning--and to do that other thing--I started the car and noticed a light come on that I had never seen come on in my car before, but it was red and looked dire.

I got excited for a moment--God had stretched out his finger and stilled my car at a crucial time! But no. Directly across from the motel--and I mean 20 feet from where I had parked--was a garage with a big Toyota sign hanging on it. The guy was opening for business as I coasted across the street and, wouldn't you know it, his morning schedule was open too. It turned out my alternator was shot. I couldn't afford a new one--not without spending a massive chunk of vacation money. Why, we'd probably have to just skip Connecticut and one or two other stop and just head on up to New Hampshire and stay in my parents' old trailer or something. Anything sounded better to me than what I was scheduled to do that day. But as I was broaching this scenario to Her Lovely Self, the mechanic came out from a storeroom holding what turned out to be a rebuilt alternator--the only one he had in stock--and it worked only on my precise year and model of car. Seventy-five dollars and 45 minutes later, we were back on the road.

"Wow, that was a lucky break," Her Lovely Self said, although she sounded a bit strange when she said it.

"Mmm," I said.

"I can't believe how well that worked out. I mean, I really thought we were going to miss--well, you know, really going to have to change our plans," she said, in that same voice.

"Hmm," I said.

The next 12 hours were 12 hours I could stand to have erased from my life. It was easily the longest time I've spent in a rolling metal capsule with someone I loved and not said anything. Or rather, said lots of things, lots of useless small talk ("Look at that." "Do you need to stop?" "Mmm." "Hmm."), but not address the great big elephant in the back seat. And the front seat. We stopped for the night just outside of Springfield, Massachusetts, almost within sight of the Connecticut state line. I had driven almost the whole way and I was utterly, physically and emotionally exhausted.

"Are you all right?" Her Lovely Self asked me when we were finally settled in. There was a tone in her voice that made me think she wanted to talk, and I meant to turn and talk to her. But instead I fell asleep. We didn't mess up any sheets that night. I had fevered dreams about Greg singing "Popeye the Sailor Man" and the mechanic from earlier in the day, coming out of his storeroom with something in his hands. The mechanic had horns on his head. And in lieu of an alternator, he was holding my beating heart.

In the morning, I threw on slacks, a jacket and tie. Although the wedding wasn't til after lunch, I wasn't really going to have a chance to change. We had a hasty and rather silent breakfast and then drove on into Connecticut, down through Hartford, on our way to Groton, where I would drop Her Lovely Self off before heading back to New London for the wedding.

As we got closer, I was feeling a kind of atmospheric pressure building up inside me. Whatever odd and unhelpful compulsion--the one that had kept me from saying anything to Her Lovely Self concerning the day we were about to spend apart--was finally wearing off. I started to say something, but literally as I opened my mouth, Her Lovely Self suddenly cut across me.

"We're going to be there in about 15 minutes," she said, staring at a map.

"Mmm," I said.

There was a pause of a lot longer than 15 minutes. Of about 15 years, I think. Then she said, a trifle hotly, "And you don't have anything to say to me?"

"Hmm?" I said. "I mean--"

I closed my mouth. I was frozen. Suddenly there were a hundred things I wanted to say. "Don't go! Come with me! Let's get out of Connecticut! Forget this wedding, let's have one of our own!"

I opened my mouth again and for one awful second, I thought my friend Greg's voice was going to come out of my mouth, shouting, "Don't bonk him!" or something. Instead, I sputtered. "What--I don't--" I took a breath. "What did you want me to do? Forbid you from seeing this guy, like some caveman? A caveman driving you to Connecticut?" I don't know why I added that.

Her Lovely Self gave me a Look. It was early in our relationship, so I didn't realize it was a Look, until she said, "What are you talking about?" Then I realized what that particular Look meant (she thinks you've lost your mind) and filed it away for future reference.

I was so busy storing this information that HLS forged ahead. "I don't know what you're--what do you mean 'forbid'--" she took a breath. "I was talking about this wedding thing you're going to."

I stared at her for so long, I almost drove off the bridge and into the water between New London and Groton. "What?" I asked, totally confused.

"You're just going to go to this wedding and not say anything or, I don't know, promise me you'll behave or whatever?" she asked, her voice rising.

Now I was ready to just turn the wheel and steer us straight off the bridge.

"What?" I asked. It was the only word I could muster.

Then she gave me another Look and I had no trouble figuring this one out. She was mad. "Look. I'm not stupid. This is a wedding where all your college friends are going to be there, right?"

I nodded dumbly, thinking Please God, bail my poor ass out of this. I have no fucking clue where this is going.

"So," she said. "So your old girlfriend's going to be there, right? The one you almost shacked up with?"

"Gretchen?" I asked, in utter astonishment. It honestly hadn't occurred to me to think about Gretchen. Hadn't thought about her in, literally, a year, probably two. But now that I did, I was worried. Because, yeah, Gretchen would almost certainly be there. And the last time I saw her, she was furious with me. I had, after all, just told her I wanted to see other people (specifically, other women). I broke her heart. It was not my finest hour--certainly not one you'll find on the blog, not in great detail, anyway. What was more, Gretchen was a brown belt in karate. She swore that if she ever saw me again, she'd kick my ass. Suddenly, I wanted to drop me off at a rest area, or ask if I could tag along with Her Lovely Self and Popeye.

Her Lovely Self, not quite used to reading my face either, mistook my look of shock as one of guilty shamefacedness. "I knew it!" she cried.

There was a sound in my head of gears grinding as my brain reversed course and tried to take this in. Are you kidding me? I thought. Is my life SUCH a sit-com that we've both just wasted hours and days--and a really nice motel bed last night--each worrying that one was stupidly letting the other go off to a tryst with an old flame? I tell you, some day--a very long time from now--I will be dead. And the first person I want to see when I cross over is not either of my parents, nor any of my dead friends or relatives. The first person I want to see is the guy who wrote my life while I was living in Chicago. And I'm going to make him explain WHY exactly he felt the need to put me through such unnecessary emotional calisthenics.

But meanwhile, I was continuing not to say anything and this was driving Her Lovely Self up the wall. "God, I'm so stupid! I wondered why you were so eager to dump me with [Popeye]--I mean, what boyfriend does that? But then I realized why!" I tell you, we were hitting a lot of firsts on this road trip. Aside from getting exposure to some new Looks, I was discovering that Her Lovely Self was just as capable of crazy as the craziest women I'd ever gone out with. She was working up a real head of steam. It got scary there for a few minutes, I'm here to tell you.

"Listen--" I began.

Her Lovely Self was studying her directions. "We have to go up Route 12. [Popeye's] apartment building is a few miles north," she announced, as if she hadn't heard me at all.

Knowing a little about whoever was writing my life at this point, I realized I had just a couple of minutes to pull this one out of the fire, otherwise, the big plot twist of this episode was going to be at my expense. The way things were going, Her Lovely Self would end up with Popeye just to spite me, not realizing that I was heading off to a meeting with an ex-girlfriend where the only physical contact I was likely to get would be a round kick that sent my teeth through the back of my head.

"Okay," I said. "First of all, nothing is going to happen with Gretchen, I can assure you. Yes, she will probably be there, no doubt with the guy she's currently 'shacked up with.' And I sincerely hope she doesn't see me, because if she does, there's a good chance she'll reach down my throat and turn me inside out, anus to esophagus." Unfortunately, that amused me, saying the end of that sentence. I often amuse myself like that--it's actually quite fatuous of me. Especially at this moment, because I let out the smallest laugh. It was bad.

"You always think everything's a joke," she muttered, and I realized I hadn't said the thing she needed to hear, which was that I had no interest in my former girlfriend and that even if she begged me, I'd just turn my head and politely but firmly decline all amorous overtures. I started to add this, but she interrupted me with terse instructions--"Turn here"--and I saw that we were at Popeye's apartment complex.

"Listen," I tried again. "It's just, I'm relieved," I lied. Actually, I was feeling dizzy and nauseous at the thought of what stupid ideas we'd been laboring under. I pulled us into a parking space that was far from the apartments, and then I just spilled my guts, told her everything I'd worried about the last two weeks, how hard it had been to resist the urge to say anything to keep her from doing something she might regret (well, anything that I might regret). How I was trying to be all grown-up and patient about these kinds of things.

Her Lovely Self seemed to be coming back from crazy, but not entirely. Finally, she said, "Why didn't you say any of this before? I don't know any man, [Popeye] included, who would just drop me off at the door of another man without being a little jealous. What were you thinking?"

"Honestly? You said it was something you wanted to do, instead of going to the wedding. I want to give you what you want," I said. "I want to let you do what you want to do. Even if it's something I'd just as soon not have you do. In this case, I figured I'd just have to trust you."

"Oh," Her Lovely Self said, looking kind of stunned herself.

"But if you'd rather," I added, "we could just make a little pact: I'm happy to promise not to bonk Gretchen at the wedding if you promise not to bonk Popeye."

She laughed at this. Evidently, "bonk" amused her in a way that "anus to esophagus" did not. "No," she said. "I liked your first answer better." And then she kissed me, which was fantastic for two reasons. One, just on general principle, because my girlfriend was such a great kisser (almost as good as my wife). And two, I suddenly understood that we were going to be fine, and in that moment all the agonizing I'd done the past two weeks seemed almost worth it just to get to this moment. I guess sometimes the guy who wrote my life back then actually knew what he was doing.

Also, I lied. The kiss was fantastic for a third reason: Her Lovely Self planted it on me just as a certain sailor man was peering in through the back window, scowling at me as though I'd just stolen his favorite can of spinach. Which I like to think I did.

And that was that.

I went on to my friends' wedding. And yes, Gretchen was there, but my digestive tract remained in its original configuration (it turned out she was actually not too mad at me anymore. But I still didn't bonk her.)

Her Lovely Self spent an uneventful, if sadly awkward day with her old flame. I guess he tried pretty hard to get her to dump me and stay with him. He made so many disparaging remarks about me that she quickly kicked the shim out from under the door she's had propped open in her heart for him all those years. She may have also made some comparisons about petty boys versus grown-up men, as well as a few remarks about the abiding virtue of trusting your woman and having a little faith, instead of resorting to jealousy and possessiveness. In short, Popeye pretty much hanged himself, ruining whatever chance he might have had with Her Lovely Self.

At least, that's what she told me when I picked her up late in the day and we continued our vacation back into Massachusetts and on northward to the next motel. After we got back, I told my friends Greg and Bill what happened. They just crowed at me, told me I was gullible and naïve.

But I knew what I knew. And what I didn't know--particularly where she was concerned--I was just going to have to trust, to take on faith.

That strategy has worked pretty well ever since.

At least, I think it has.

Yours,
From Somewhere on the Masthead

In Which We Wonder Pointlessly About A Near-Miss...

2009-04-28T08:19:00.002-04:00

So I had some time before a story interview today. It wasn't quite enough time to work on my other writing or really do anything constructive, but it was plenty of time to indulge in some pointless rumination. Specifically, I found myself thinking of the dream Her Lovely Self had a few days ago. You know: the dream about marrying her ex-boyfriend. I didn't tell you this, but the ex-boyfriend in my bride's dream scenario was not just any old ex-boyfriend, but the one I will call Popeye, for no particular reason, except that this guy and the eponymous spinach-eater were both sailors, and both terribly unattractive, each with a cartoonishly screwed up face and a chin like a baby's ass. I suppose I could be misremembering some of the details. I only met the guy the one time, and really, once was enough.

You'll have to forgive my animosity, considering he only popped up in dream form, but you have to understand: Popeye was a real near-thing deal. He and Her Lovely Self met in college, harbored secret affections for one another for years, but only got over themselves and started dating towards the very end of their last year of school. At one point, Her Lovely Self told her parents, "That's the man I'm going to marry." (Something that, incidentally, she never said about me. Me. The man she actually did marry.) To me, that's a worst-case scenario.

Thankfully, Her Lovely Self did little more than voice this idea, and then only to her parents (and later, alas, to me. Many times.). Popeye went off to fulfill his financial-aid obligations to the Navy and Her Lovely Self proceeded to Chicago where, as you may recall, Fate had already expertly guided me.

But after putting me in the path of Her Lovely Self, Fate took a powder and left me to fend for myself, which sucked. First, I had to endure being just pals with my future wife, which is ordinarily a process I enjoy. But Her Lovely Self, in case I have never otherwise left you with this impression, was Different. I wasn't friends with her very long at all before I realized that I had been struck--but good--by the Thunderbolt. So it was sheer agony to have to listen to her moan about all the awful guys she was dating, of which there was quite a dismaying lot. This was during the phase of my life when I was known as Every Woman's Second Choice on a Friday Night. Certainly I was hers.

But I was patient, which actually is not a natural state of existence for me, at all, ever. Nevertheless, there's no other way to put it: I was patient. I waited these guys out. Instead of coming off all jealous and crazy, I just let them pay out enough rope to hang themselves, let them reveal themselves for the cads, churls, and mashers that they turned out to be.

I didn't wait forever, of course. Some boyfriends proved to have unfortunate adhesive qualities--not unlike wet sand, say, or a globule of snot--when it came to getting up against the woman I loved. Thus I was compelled to act. In particular, I'm thinking of Joe, the boozing frat boy who couldn't keep his hands off Her Lovely Self during a party. While I watched. No man should have to stand by and be subjected to that kind of thing, so I have long since forgiven myself for following Joe to his car, ambushing him, and locking him in his trunk (details here). Really, it was protective custody. If he had remained at the party any longer, I would have been forced to light a match in his face, igniting the alcohol in his breath, burning him from the inside out.

Trouble is, Chicago's a big place with too many guys and not nearly enough trunks, and so, when I decided that patience had gotten me as far as it was going to, I declared my feelings, which, in yet another example of my impeccable timing, I did while Her Lovely Self was waiting for her current boyfriend to come pick her up, which rather diminished the effect I was going for, and forced me to resort to overkill (details here). Don't ever let anyone tell you that overkill is a bad thing when it comes to wooing a woman, boys. Overkill works.

You know, so long as you don't already have a reputation as a stalker.

I know I've written before about the lengths I went to, well to win Her Lovely Self (which, ladies, let me just say here and now that I meant that in the kindest non-objectified I-know-she's-not-a-Kewpie-doll-at-the-carnival way), but I never really told you about Popeye. Recalling what happened with him sometimes makes me a little ill, because in the early days of my romantic involvement with HLS, Popeye was a great threat. If things had gone just a little differently, if I'd been wrong about how I chose to deal with him, he'd be writing about his wedding anniversary and stuff instead of me (although I like to think you wouldn't be nearly so entertained. Popeye was a terrible writer. I know this because one night at her apartment, after Her Lovely Self fell asleep on the couch, I had a good look around her room and found all his letters to her).

The big problem, see, was that Popeye and Oliv--I mean, Her Lovely Self dated just briefly at the end of their senior year of college and never really got a chance to explore that relationship as fully as they might have had they started going out a little earlier. In short, they went off carrying a bit of a torch for one another. Which is why Her Lovely Self would bring him up, just pop him into conversation whenever things looked they might just be getting serious. Popeye had become the Ideal Absent Boyfriend. I'd already had some experience with girls with IABs, and I really, really, really did not want anymore. The woman who holds a torch for an IAB is a woman who has a door propped open in her heart, and as long as that door is open, no one else really has a chance at getting all the way in. Well, at least I didn't have a chance, if my history is anything to go by. Your romantic mileage may vary.

And while we're on the subject, I have to say that I didn't think being an IAB was any great thing. In my recent past, I had been an IAB, which was disastrous in my case, since the woman with whom I was conducting this long-distance relationship had ultimately decided she liked the idea of me more than my actual physical presence, something I did not discover until I had driven 22 hours and a couple thousand miles to see her. But I digress.

I gave Popeye a lot of thought, more thought than I had ever devoted to any man, then or since. I finally concluded that, since I had a sort of home advantage--I was in town; he was off somewhere in Europe finishing up his tour of duty--I just needed to continue to run my own race and do my level best to avoid Popeye as a subject of conversation.

That worked well enough for a while. My relationship with Her Lovely Self seemed to grow stronger. She stopped mentioning Popeye altogether. She began openly to refer to me as her boyfriend. Indeed, by that summer, we decided to take the big step of going away on vacation together—10 days, a long time for your first vacation as a couple. Her Lovely Self had never been to New England, and I guess I talked about it a lot—it was home, after all—and she was keen to see it.

Unfortunately, right about the time we were finalizing our plans, Fate came back into town and decided to play a little trick on me. It came in the form of a wedding invitation. Friends from college, now living in Connecticut, were getting married and I was invited to the wedding, which would fall within the very 10 days that I was already planning to be there. Alas, my friends were young and poor and many invitees were given solo invites. No "and Guest" on the invitation. I presented this unfortunate turn of events to Her Lovely Self. I hated the idea of leaving her somewhere for a few hours while I went off to a wedding without her (in case you were wondering, I offered to pay whatever the per-head fee was that the wedding caterer had determined so that HLS's presence wouldn't pose a financial burden, but was rejected out of hand as it was a small reception space and there actually wasn't any more room for additional guests).

But before that could even become an issue, Her Lovely Self informed me that she was perfectly happy--relieved even--not to have to go to a wedding where she didn't know anyone except me.

"Also," she added, almost as an aside. An aside as big and looming as a skyscraper, "I looked on a map of Connecticut, and the wedding is one town over from where [Popeye] is living now."

"Oh?" I asked, all Joe Cool. "I thought he was off the coast of Europe or something." Clearly I had not found all the letters.

"No, he's back in the country. He called me the other day. I mentioned I was coming east and told him about this wedding, and so he invited me to spend the day with him while you're at the wedding with your friends. Isn't that great?"

"Mmm," I said, noncommittally.

"Well, you don't mind do you? I mean, you're not going to get upset if I spend some time with him, are you?" she asked, pointing her loaded question right at my head.

"Hmm," I answered.

"Well, okay, then," she said. "I'll call him and make my plans."

Sweet Jesus, what the hell do I do now? I thought...

In Which the Past Is Prologue...

2009-04-26T14:10:00.005-04:00

Well, if you've been here even once or twice, you know what today is (and if you don't, jumping back two years in the archives will solve the mystery for you). But instead of dwelling on the last chapter of my parents' lives--I won't even bother with a link--I find myself looking in other directions, including back beyond my parents' beginnings to, well, their prologues.

Alas, I don't know how my Dad's parents met (it's a gap in my story catalog that I really need to fill, and hope to this summer, when I go on an extended research trip to New Hampshire), so that's a tale I can't share yet. How my maternals met--my mother's prologue--that's fairly well documented.

Mom was from Massachusetts, although that was something her New Hampshire relations tried very hard not to hold against her. There was no saving her father, though, not the mighty Papa Jim. He was a Massachusetts flatlander bastard to his core.

(I know it rankles some Mass. folks to hear that label, and there are a stunning lot of you who read me, so please accept this parenthetical as an apology. But I just have to say: To me, it sounds less like an insult and more like a gang of cool badasses, like a Civil War regiment. The 57th Massachusetts Flatlander Bastards)

Papa was proud of it, too. As I've mentioned before, he grew up in South Boston and took no shit from anyone, except his mother, who talked him out of accepting a baseball scholarship to Colgate (Papa Jim was, by all accounts, a stunning athlete in his day). So when he graduated from high school, he quit baseball and in 1938 got a job tending bar at the Statler-Hilton hotel in Boston. No more fastballs or curveballs for Papa Jim--only highballs.

If my grandfather ever regretted not going to college, he never admitted to it. In fact, I suspect he was just fine with the way his life was going at the hotel, because in short order, Jim took notice of one of the hotel's chambermaids, a statuesque woman with raven-black hair and a regal bearing. Grandma Catherine--known in her family as Kay--lived near Cambridge. Her mother's family worked in publishing at the Riverside Press--one grandmother was a copy editor; her husband a skilled marbler--creator of those beautiful colorful wavy designs such as you never see now on the endpages and edges of books. Her father's people were horsebreeders and trainers and young Kay was brought up as something of a thoroughbred herself. As well-heeled as she was, her parents were by no means wealthy, so they had taken care to impress upon her the importance of making your own way. When she enrolled in college for her nurses' degree in the fall of 1938, she took a part-time job making beds and cleaning bathrooms at the Statler. It was good work--in those days, hotel guests almost universally left tips for chambermaids in the room. The only imposition Kay had to suffer was the attention of the cocky young bartender with the Southie accent. She found Jim to be déclassé, and did everything she could to ignore him. "Back then, I wouldn't give him the steam off my oatmeal!" she famously remarked one Thanksgiving, which made me laugh so hard that gravy came out of my nose. It still makes me laugh.

Both of them were devout Catholics. Both went to Mass every Sunday and Holy Day, and both of them prayed to God every night. I imagine my future grandmother appealing to the Lord for the strength to resist the mashing advances of the drinkslinger from Southie, while across town, Jim was asking God for a little help, a small miracle to win the woman of his dreams.

I've always understood that Papa Jim was good pals with God, and if proof was required, this is the story that does it for most folks. You see, God answered Jim's prayer, and not with a still, small voice, either. God pulled out all the stops. God went Old Testament on my future grandfather.

He sent The Great Hurricane of 1938.

As I bet my Massachusetts readers (you are still there, right?) could confirm, that storm still stands as one of the worst in New England's recorded history. It was no answer to a prayer for some people--casualties of the storm range from 600 to nearly 1,000, depending on your source--but it did Papa Jim a big favor.

Jim was walking to work the morning that the storm hit Boston. The streets were practically deserted--Papa later said the only other person he'd seen on the way in was a man who'd been blown literally off his feet and into a doorway, which quickly opened and allowed him shelter. But Jim wasn't stopping--he had to get to work. In minutes, the wind was so ferocious, he was rappelling from lightpole to mailbox to get to the door. In the front windows of the hotel, the rest of the staff already there--Kay included--watched Jim's slow, almost heroic progress. They really shouldn't have been standing anywhere near the windows, but Jim was very popular on the staff (with the one notable exception) and they couldn't look away. Which was just as well, because really, they hadn't seen anything yet.

Then it happened: Just up at the corner, a metal sign tore from its post and came flying down the street, heading straight for Jim like a killer Frisbee.

The staff watching from the window let out a terrible moan, except for Kay, who screamed as the sign whistled past. Jim's head was bent slightly, so he didn't see the sign until about one half-second shy of Too Late. And in that split instant, whether it was his baseball instincts kicking in or a nudge from his old pal God, Jim ducked. The sign came so close, he said later, that he felt it cut his hair. But that was all it cut. Jim scrambled on all fours through the hotel door to safety, and I like to think, a round of cheers and applause.

Like many people caught in the Hurricane of 1938, the staff and guests of the Statler-Hilton were stuck there for a couple of days--even after the storm abated, there were downed power lines and broken gas mains everywhere. I guess for want of anything better to do, Catherine finally spent a little quality time with Jim and came to realize that, coarse Irish bastard that he was, he was evidently her kind of coarse Irish bastard.

They dated for a couple of years, then married during World War II. By that time, my grandfather was in the Army and due to ship out to Alaska and then Colorado to train with the 57th Massachusetts Flat--er, I mean the 10th Mountain Division. He and Kay didn't have a lot of time or money, so they went for a cheap honeymoon, up in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. There they spent a happy week in one of the many tiny but snug tourist cabins up there, before Jim had to get back to Boston and ship out.

Nine months later, my mother was born.

To the extent that I've thought about it all, (and really, I haven't. The only thing worse than contemplating the death of your elders is contemplating their sex lives. Parents, grandparents, it doesn't matter--it really is the very definition of Too Much Information.) I guess the fact that my mother was likely conceived in New Hampshire gave her a certain immunity to flatlander bastard-ness. From a young age, she loved New Hampshire and often begged her father to take the family--which would grow to include her sister, my aunt Cathy--on vacation up there. Something about the place must have appealed to Papa--with a take-zero-shit attitude like his, I'm sure the "Live Free Or Die" motto of my home state struck a chord in his heart--because almost every summer, he brought the family up to a little inn in the Lake Sunapee region of New Hampshire. My mom loved that inn so much, that when she turned 18, she started working for the proprietors, paying her way through college exactly as her mother had.

The chambermaids at the inn were composed of local girls and several from away, including my mom. She and several other girls stayed in a kind of loft in a long shed at the back of the property. When they were off-shift, the girls hung out in their loft, smoking cigarettes and playing records, and were often joined by the local girls, who often as not were being followed by a bunch of local boys.

One night, the guys were in a triumphant spirit, and brought another boy who was the center of their attention. Partly this was because the fellow had brought two six-packs of beer with him, but mostly because he was the main character of a really good story that happened that day, and he was warming up to tell it.

An awful thing about being the storyteller of your particular branch on the family tree is that your predecessors are always better than you. They knew more, remembered more, and told it all so much better than you. And then they go away without completely filling in all the details, forcing you to leave big gaps in a story or else make up the truth, which is of course the storyteller's greatest skill, and one I have yet to master.

Which is my long-winded way of saying I don't know what story my Dad told that day. It's possible he related the tale of how he shot a hawk through the eye--while it was in flight--with a .22. He might have told the story of the drag race on the New London road, or of the mountain lion he'd glimpsed in the woods, despite there being no confirmed sightings of the beasts in a century or so.

Whatever story he told, he must have told it with hurricane force. My mother was certainly blown away by it. It led to her going with him on a date to the movies (Mom fell asleep in the middle of the film and drooled extravagantly on Dad's sweater. It was a Friday the 13th, forever after a lucky day in our family) and things just went on from there.

So it's probably better that I don't know the story that won Mom over. For one thing, young love deserves its mysteries (especially when your parents are the young lovers. Like I said, TMI). What's more, the stories you don't know have a way of making you appreciate the ones you do, so you might as well be grateful.

And anyway, it hardly matters, because we're well past my parents' prologue. What happened next is really prologue for someone else. And after today, he's not looking back at his story.

After today, his eyes are fixed forward.

Yours,
From Somewhere on the Masthead

In Which We Count to 15...

2009-04-23T22:07:00.003-04:00

This morning, the morning of our 15th wedding anniversary--the Crystal Anniversary, if I'm not mistaken--my wife announced that she'd had a wedding dream.

"Oh, wow. What are the odds?" I said.

"Yeah, I was getting ready to marry my old boyfriend."

This wasn't the dream-wedding scenario I'd had in mind. "Oh. Where was I?"

Her Lovely Self just waved her hand and made a Pff! noise with those perfect lips of hers. "No idea. You were just gone. Outta the picture."

"Oh. Well, that's a nice way to start your anniversary," I said.

"Stop it. I can't control my dreams. It was just a dream. It's not like he e-mails me. Not like all your old girlfriends."

Well, this was a fair point. Over the past 15 years, I must confess that I have received electronic mail from at least four--no, it's five--women who at one time or another qualified as being, howsoever briefly, girlfriends (for our purposes here, a "girlfriend" is any female I’ve had amorous contact with at any point along the American Male Baseball-Field Scale of Sexual Conquest. Which, if you really must know, involved me spending a lot of time between first and second, and, alas, setting a league record for the number of times I fouled out along the first-baseline).

"Yeah," I finally said. "But they're not emailing me to get married, you know."

"Well, how do I know?" she said, baiting me.

"Because you read all my e-mails," I countered.

That got her. "Oh. And how do you know that?"

"Because I know you. Just like I know them," I said. I meant that I'd always started out as friends with every girl I'd ever dated, and friendship is weirdly durable, often able to survive even the worsts of events, including break-ups, and so it was only natural that I might get some e-mails, not from old girlfriends, but from old friends. But based on The Look my wife gave me, that wasn't what she heard. So I hastened quickly to add a clarifier, which was a mistake. "Well, obviously, I know you QUITE a lot better than I know them," I sputtered on. "And of course I don't KNOW know them the way I know you. Like, you know, Biblically, or anything. At least not anymore. I mean—"

Truly, no one digs himself into a hole faster than me.

Thankfully, one of us had some crystal clarity for her 15th anniversary today, and she let me off the hook. In a moment, things degenerated pretty quickly into one of those not-quite arguments that's just so ridiculous you have to laugh.

At least, I think it was.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go spend the rest of my anniversary with the woman of my dreams.

Yours,
From Somewhere on the Masthead

In Which We Count to Two...

2009-04-21T13:13:00.002-04:00

Dear Elizabeth Claire,

Well, my little Éclair, you're two years old today. The idea that there are no longer any babies in the house fills me with the most contradicting feelings of stark relief and utter despair. But really, there's no arguing the point. THIS is no baby:

Like your big sister before you, you jumped from babyhood right to small womanhood, only you did it faster. You do everything faster. When I think back on your big brother's baby days, everything took longer. Your brother (and can I say here how much I love that you call him "Brubby" and not his given name? Which is exactly what I did to my Big Brother when I was two, at least according to our parents) was a baby for years on end. Then the Brownie came along and I thought she grew up rather quickly. But baby, she was a slowpoke compared to you.

I know it's mostly a birth order thing (well, birth order and sheer genius), but you did everything earlier, from walking and talking to climbing the pantry shelves to the high place where the M&M's hide to wrapping the males in your house around your stubby little fingers.

In the nearly four months that I've been home, you have inexorably bent me to your tiny will, much to the shrill exasperation of your mother. Incidentally, it really bugs her that after asking her anything she tells you "No" too, you immediately turn on your little heel and seek me out to ask for (actually, what really cheeses her is that I tend to give it to you. Except that crème brulee torch. I'm drawing the line: It has to wait til you're at least three).

These past few months--a whole twelfth of your life--have been hard for me, in a way I hope you never experience for yourself. It's a terrible thing to find that I have become a walking cliché--the unemployed middle-age middle manager, the out-of-work father of three. But rather than let me dwell on that, you fill my days with a constant, noisy, messy, frustrating, wonderful, joyous string of demands. I love how you approach me for things, wandering in past me, as if you were looking for your Elmo doll or the little piano thing the childless couple gave us, and then veering and coming at me from ambush to yell, "Daddy! Want you!"

Actually, like you're doing right now.

I love how you insist on having the first bite of whatever I'm eating (I warned you that enchilada was hot, though). I love how you yell for me and Blaze--not Mommy--to come rescue you from your afternoon nap. I love how you can't let me do my work without being a micromanager, to the point of sitting in my lap while I type.

Like you're doing right now.

I conffffooffess iiiii wishdh you dintttttttttt inssssist @$#%thyryeurooooo on mashingggjsl;kg the keyyss whilllxlkjbl while I type, because it forces me to get you in a right-armed bear hug and type one-handed, which is slow and annoying. But I'm willing to put up with it for a bit. A paragraph, anyway.

You probably don't know this--although you're so scary smart I wouldn't put it past you--but there was a point in time when your mom and I didn't think we were going to have any more than two children. And then when we came back from New Hampshire that last time in the summer of 2006 and found out you had snuck aboard for the ride, we weren't quite sure we could handle it. I've talked to a lot of parents over the years who have counseled me on the dangers of letting your children outnumber you, so I admit I was a little worried. Then you showed up--two years ago today--and it was as though every last tumbler in my life had finally clicked into place.

Almost from the first day of your life, I've said that you resemble your grandmothers. When you get worried or put out, you look a lot like Grammy N. But when you've decided it's time to get me off my dead ass and do something, you have a look that is a pure distillation of my mother, the Grandma you never got to meet. You were only on the same planet together for five days. Grandma got to hear you (I held the phone to your hospital crib when you were about two minutes old) and she and Papa at least got to look at some pictures of you. But it's small consolation when you remember (as I always will) that she and Papa were just eight or nine hours--a mere business day--from getting to see you before they died. That was a hard thing for me to deal with, especially with a recovering mommy and a new baby in the house. Actually, it's still hard. In fact, I know there are days over the past two years when it would have been downright unbearable, so bad it would have brought me to my knees permanently.

But somehow, having you around made it all easier to bear. I don't know whether that's because it's hard to focus on death when you're around a baby with so much life in her, or you just decided I needed to be kept busy so I couldn't stop and feel sorry for myself (something your grandmother was also rather skilled at). But either way, I have to tell you, in perfect honesty, that I think your being here saved my life. In fact, every day you continue to save my life.

Like you're doing right now.

So, Happy Birthday, baby. I know the kids have already given you a thousand nicknames--Zuzu, Puppy, Turd-face (that one was from you brother), Stinkypants (your sister), Harooo (the noise Blaze makes only when I go to get you from your nap), Buggy, Lil Bit, Bitty, Bumpus, and many others. These days, you are almost universally regarded as Little Bizzy (when you say your name, it comes out "Bizzet," which your brother and sister quickly modified to "Bizzy" and my God it suits you. You are the busiest--and occasionally dizziest--baby I've ever met).

But no matter how many names you go by, no matter how old you are, no matter how big you get, you'll always be my little Éclair.

Love,
Daddy