Why We Stay Up Late

What do we stay up late for these days?We stay up to read about our friends on the Internet. Say what you will about Facebook, it brings you closer. There’s a woman in Colorado who once lived just five minutes from me here in New England. I knew her not at all then, except by repute as a writing tutor to the young. And I was jealous, knowing her this way. "What's wrong with ME that I'm not a writing tutor to the young?" is all I could think when I heard her name.Today she lives among those mountains. Somehow we found each other on Facebook and now almost I every day I feel her gentle spirit as she shares a thought or a photo. (And my, how she loves her dogs! If they added to the Seven Cardinal Virtues surely loving animals would be right up near the top.)So we stay up to check on one another.We stay up with sick children. Also with children having nightmares, hallucinations, irrational fears. We have them ourselves.We stay up late to watch YouTube videos like the one I recently posted of the grand swoop of that owl with his mighty thighs and his outward-reaching talons as he comes to snatch up his prey. A video like that thrills us, clear witness as it is that something is coming for us too, something fierce and strong.I stayed up so late a few nights ago I had a kind of waking dream. It was of my grandfather about whom I have never dreamed even once since his death 50 years ago.As a small child I felt so safe living in his house as we did. In my dream I didn't notice him until someone said "Hey did you see who’s here?" and there he was, working in the garden out behind the farmhouse where he passed his boyhood in the 1880s. I recognized the place because I have every picture he ever took.Also every journal he ever wrote in.I have his degrees, rescued from the attic and framed now, Also framed pictures of him both old and young. This picture below shows him inhis very first year as a lawyer, looking so proud to be sitting at a real desk with his own law library behind him and his assistant beside him, he who went barefoot most of the year and got to school only when they held school, the typical thing in those rural communities.It was so nice to see him again in this waking dream. He even called me "Blackberry Top", a name he gave me for the shiny black curls clustered tight together on my two-year-old head..At my mom’s 80th birthday party I read aloud a letter he had written her when she was a college sophomore, eating too much and flunking French and smoking her brains out with the dorm windows flung wide to the cold night air. He knew she was doing all that – other letters were filled with admonition - but this was a birthday letter and it was only loving.When I got done reading it aloud to all gathered there for her special day, she turned to her younger sister and said "Did you feel that Grace? He was HERE in the room!” Then, 20 minutes later, she closed her eyes and died.Some months later, after writing to a childhood friend about what had happened, he wrote me back: “In my faith tradition we’re taught that one who loved you in life comes for you at the end. Maybe that’s what happened with your mother: her dad came for her.”What a comforting thought! That someone comes for you, strong with beating wings, and lifts you up and carries you home.

Better than Festivus

Facebook is like the Afterlife. You can get reunited with everyone you ever knew. You can resolve unfinished business and smooth over old hurts.Two stories, both with pretend names substituted for the real ones: In my first career as an English teacher, I had a kid in Junior English. I’ll call Tommy. A full year after he stepped out of Room 334 for the last time, he told me he felt I had paid less attention to him than I had paid to others in the class. I remember how awful I felt hearing this. I apologized sincerely if that really seemed to be the case. Then in a twinkling decades passed and I saw in the paper his mother’s obituary which revealed the fact that he now lived in France together with his partner.I couldn’t find Tom on Facebook, but I did find his partner and asked him to pass on my words of condolence over the loss of Tommy’s mother whom I remembered from many a Parents’ Night. Sure enough in a few weeks, he wrote me and last summer he and his partner, on a trip to the States, came to my house for tea. We had a great visit, at the very end of which I again said I was sorry for the fact that he had ever once felt less than totally noticed and celebrated by his callow young teacher. He had absolutely no memory of having felt that way much less of having said something to me.Was I off the hook then? It sure felt that way. It felt as though I could finally let go of  years and years of self-blame, all thanks to Facebook, king of the social networks, Facebook also gets the credit for NOT letting me off the hook when it came to a far older incident. Listen to this: A boy I knew in middle school “friended” me on Facebook and for a year or more we kept in a light kind of touch, writing a word back and forth every few months until the day he metaphorically cleared his throat so to speak and wrote this.“I just have to ask: Why did you always laugh every time I had to stand up in Math class?”  "I did that?” I wrote back. “Ralph, I have no memory of doing that.” And he wrote again: “Well you did, every time.”I really didn’t remember – until suddenly I remembered. I did laugh at Ralph because his bottom seemed to me to be so much bigger than the other boys’ bottoms.I certainly couldn’t say that, so I just apologized generally, explaining that I was doubtless laughing at others to take the focus off myself with my hand-me-down clothes and my bangs so curly they kept rolling up like window shades.I hope he has forgiven me now. If so, it’s largely thanks to Facebook which showed me that it’s never too late for a person to reach out and bless or affirm or forgive another, as long as you’re both still living. And now for old time's sake, here's George - and his memorable dad played by Jerry Stiller - explaining about the Costanza-invented holiday for feats of strength and the airing of grievances known as Festivus:[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dS7-jcsB_WQ&feature=related]

Facebook's for the OLD?

“Facebook’s for gerries,” he scoffed in an email last week. This was my old student Kevin and wasn’t he just always that kind of kid mouthy and walking around with holes in his clothes and refusing to put his hand over his heart during the Pledge of Allegiance even though he was on a stage  being inducted into the National Honor Society at the time.He and I stayed in pretty good touch for a while after he left Somerville High and college and was living in Manhattan. Whenever he was in town he'd come for dinner, bringing our small children some odd sort of a prickly toy they couldn’t really play with but seemed to love anyway. Years later, he gave Carrie the scarred leather jacket from his Bukowski days. I think he got slapped in the head with a tire iron in it once and I’m still pretty sure that was a human bite mark on one sleeve.Anyway I found him on the internet a year or so ago which annoyed him hugely - that he could be found I mean - but soon enough he fell to asking did I ever see this one or that one and while I don’t SEE these long-ago students  I do try to keep track of them from a distance.So I very reasonably suggested he join Facebook which is where three-quarters of the population seems to be these days and that's when he wrote it in a one-sentence email, this mouthy kid with the long crazy hair: "Hah! Facebook's for gerries!" he said. Meaning geriatrics, relics, the old. Meaning ME, even though I’m young enough at heart to not mind being photographed in a rumpled garment like this one here,I can't argue that I am old because listen to this fact which stuns even me: my grandfather’s sister whom I knew and lived with was born during the Presidency of Ulysses S. Grant! My grandmother’s sister who lived with us too was born when Andrew Johnson was President.  Johnson, who took over after Lincoln was shot!That darn Kevin: still pretty much of a bigmouth but he tells it like it is.

Beware the Old Bait-and Switch

Hmmmmm….so my grandaddy here always used to say you should never say anything in any forum that you wouldn’t want read aloud in the public square. I know I sure believed him. He knew a lot, that child of Irish immigrants born in Famine-time. He came into the world in the 1870s, raised himself up from poverty and went on to become a lawyer, a judge and the recipient of an Honorary Degree from Harvard.

He was also fun and he gave us kids Hershey Bars. My sister Nan and I got to live with him for all of our first decade on the planet. I actually imprinted on him and not just because we looked alike with our black curly hair. We also act alike, I see now that I'm grown: He was always giving uplifting talks for no money at all, at places like the Young Men’s Hebrew Association in Chelsea. I also give talks for no money at all. In fact every good thing I do I do for no money because come on, did Jesus charge admission to the Sermon on the Mount? No he did not. 

Mostly though, I know I'm like my grandfather because even on my blog, supposedly a much freer forum than a column I still can’t use bad language or say anything I wouldn’t say in front of a Fourth Grade class. I mean pop culture is tacky enough adn I'm freshly nauseated every time I come across the double-entendres in CBS’s Prime time Two-and-a Half Men for example; sickened by the way they have that child repeating phrases which in the storyline he is purported  not to know the meaning of - all so the audience can have that nice in-group feeling of actually getting the  - wink-wink, nudge-nudge naughty - references. It's one thing if you’re a tired 40-year-old watching the show but you know very well it’s also millions and millions of Second Graders seeing it, and God that makes me mad. If there’s anything more shameful than using a child to sneak your dirty joke under the wire I don’t know what it is.  

So….are there any young’uns out there today? You kids on Facebook maybe? If so hear me now and you males especially: If you ever entertained the hope that associating with a woman was going to be like pulling into some big service station in the sky, well I've got news for you: That hope is all based on the ol' Bait-and-Switch and it's brought to you by people who are trying to sell you stuff: Sneakers and blue jeans. Music and push-up bras. It isn’t real in other words and sure I know there’s that whole pathetic world to whom it may SEEM real – pornography is a growth industry they say - but those are loser-men in the grip of an addiction and do you know what an addiction is? Look at the private life of Bill Clinton over the last 20 years and you tell ME if you think that’s a pretty picture.

Anyway all those images of panting women? they’re fake, kids; the women are acting. In the real world you’re going to be dealing with REAL women and let me tell you on the basis of l-o-o-n-g experience: whether they’re 12 or 112, women are interested in three things in their dealings with others: straight talk, mutuality, and respect. Whether they’re 12 or 112, women – and all the good men – and, praise God, a great many young people too - know that we’re all here to do three things: pick up after ourselves, live in a peaceful manner and bring along the little ones to do the same.

- and now here he is again, papa to my mother and to four other little ones too. coming home from work and happy to be home, in the quiet summer of 1905.

Be My Friend? Look, Here's My Allowance!

 Yesterday I seem to have invited everybody in my entire Contact list to be my 'Friend on Facebook' talk about embarrassing, since some of my contacts are famous people. Like Gloria Steinem. And Garrison Keillor I think maybe. And the POPE! and the Center for Wart Removal in Atlanta, and OK yes I’m making it up about the Pope and the Wart Lab but not the others. I HAVE these addresses but I never use them - or I use them only sparingly.

For example when I was younger, see photo, that's me in the chair sobbing, no of course not, that's me the mother, sorrowing over the first haircut... When I was younger my mom died at a party right in front of us all just as we were toasting her birthday, and this highly shocking event caused me in the 2 or 3 years following her death to do all kinds of odd things: Like wearing hats, I think to channel her old jauntiness. Like CRYING while giving speeches that were suppose to be light and funny, making the whole audience cry too, talk about your Typhoid Mary. And like writing letters to famous people.

I wrote to Ronald Reagan and sent him the column I did about him when I saw him in Concord NH. I wrote to the Prince of Wales after seeing him at the 350 birthday of Harvard. I remember sitting in the Yard looking up at all those ivy leaves declining like Latin nouns down the sides of the old buildings and thinking 'Damn you Ten Thousand Men of Harvard, why did you keep my kind out for like 99 % of your history?'

I wrote to Garrison Keillor when I applied to be the first Journalist in Space. I had mentioned him in my application essay and have always kinda figured that's why I got to the final 40 in that contest.

I even wrote to the great John Updike when I read a short story of his in the New Yorker that made it apparent his mum had died too. I sent him a condolence note and a copy of the column I wrote about Cal’s dramatic death – that was my mom's name, 'Cal', as jaunty a name as she was a person, a cigarette held tight in her teeth as she took the corners on two-wheels to get us to that convent school she enrolled us in by mistake where she was in a fight with the nuns from DAY ONE.

And they all wrote back, these famous characters: Ronnie R. wrote right back. The future King of England did too or at least His Honor Lord High-Fanny of the Royal Equerry wrote on his behalf. And Garrison Keillor and John Updike sent actual postcards, John Updike's saying a thing so nice about my writing it pulled me up out of obscurity like the wave of the Bibbity Bobbity Boo wand of Cinderella’s fairy godmother. In fact just last month he had another story in the New Yorker, this one so beautiful I was forced to write him again and what do you think? Another postcard came, as gracious as the first.

Now 15 years had passed between my first letter to him and my second, that's how careful I am. And I wouldn’t DREAM of writing to the Pope even if I had his email address, and the same goes for Lord High-Fanny who gave me some serious attitude in his letter just because my column said Prince Charlie wore the academic hood of his alma mater whereas in fact he wears the robes of the University of Wales just because he like OWNS Wales or some insignificant thing like that.

Gloria Steinem though? Gloria’s address I was saving for a special occasion, like offering myself to come be the jester at the next Inter-Galactic Women’s Conference. And now – agony!- my girl has called her girl if you can call an Address Book a girl and I seem to have asked her to be my friend on Facebook! The Queen gets invited to the worker bee’s after school party, Aaargh I could die! But, on the other hand in the last 24 hours I've heard from people I haven’t seen in decade and have admired their pictures and have written on their walls so why be embarrassed? Because really we're ALL members of the Class of '08, right? So really, why NOT write in each other's yearbooks?

Thy Belly is Like a Sheaf of Wheat

I just joined Facebook. Had to scroll down a million times to get to my birth year. Thought about putting ‘1910’ just for grins as Kevin Bacon keeps saying in the movie Diner and hey you can be old but you can still wear a hat is all I can say, even if it does make you look like Will Rogers.

 (That's me in my hat up top with Andrea M. who came to Barnes & Noble to see me at a book signing in 2003 and has been a dear friend to me ever since. )

When you wear a hat people think that you’re a nice, jaunty, what-the-hell kind of a person which you have to at least PRETEND to be in life sometimes God knows God knows, especially at book signings when decent people hurry by eyes averted thinking 'How shameless ! Peddling her wares in public!'

Speaking of public peddling I find it so sad to watch those prostitutes on the HBO series. They look so lonely out on their street corners with who knows what kind of a nut ready to pick them up and treat them to who know what kind of crazy violence… And then there’s all that holding in of their stomachs they have to do all the time.

When I was a girl in my 20s as I believe all female people in their 20s are (girls that is, mere girls and innocent in their hearts no matter what crazy mistakes they have made already and the 20s are the years for mistakes eh?)  Whe I was a girl we wore pants so tight you could hardly swallow, never mind breathe. They had wide Ace bandages for waistbands and they cinched even the ribcage – moved from the solar plexus clear down past the tummy and hips, like corsets of old,  all the way down til you got to the knee when they flared so much the cuffs completely covered your shoes, as well as any apple cores, car keys, small children you may have dropped onto the floor around you.

Now, as I seem to have just written somewhere we get to all wear pants that are actually roomy at the waist because  bellies are all right again <!--[if gte mso 9]> Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 <![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]> <![endif]--> and THANK YOU DEAR JESUS FOR THAT or whatever perhaps-female deity is in charge of fashion trends up on the Heavenly runway. The clothes are bigger all around now and today you buy a size 10 pant and by God isn’t it designed for a little tummy! I never thought I would see it but the aesthetic is actually changing back to what it always was. Why? Because women are meant to have curves. Just look at one of the most erotic love poems ever written, that being the Song of Songs Which is Solomon’s: “Thy belly is like a sheaf of wheat,” the lover says to his beloved and he means it as a compliment and there by gosh is a thing that can help us ALL reach for the bread basket because hey it’s Sunday and the summer is just gittin' started and (I know you can sense it too) hats off to the electoral  process there’s a new time comin’ soon!