Therapy on the I'm OK You're Crazy Plan

Dying is easy; comedy is hard,” an old vaudevillian once said. But comedy never seemed that hard to me, provided I didn't mind sacrificing my dignity some. I was just five years old when I first began trying to make my family laugh with a sped-up rendering of the "Look! Up in the air! It’s a bird, it’s a plane…" prologue to the old Superman show,  while standing before my captive audience in my little red jersey and tights, a dishtowel for a cape knotted around my neck.So with all due respect to that old vaudevillian, if you were to ask me for an epigram depicting one true thing, I’d tend to say “Comedy is easy. Therapy is hard.”I found out just how hard therapy is way back when I was first enrolled in counseling by my husband under the “I’m Ok, You’re Crazy” plan. Doing therapy under the “I’m OK, You’re Crazy” plan occurs when somebody you live with suggests you get counseling, although he personally wouldn’t 'open up' in a therapist’s office if you dragged him there in chains and threatened to pull out all his nose hairs.This husband, who I have  often wanted to drag places by his nose hairs, said back then he thought I should seek treatment.Because I seemed sad, he said. “Hey, all humorists are sad down deep,” I quickly retorted, but  I knew he was right: I was sad. Not long before, my mom had died, and I guess I felt too young to face life without her. Plus, she didn’t just die. She died in my living room. During her own 80th birthday party. So, yes I was sad. And finally I began seeing this counselor to try feeling better.Every week I drove to her office, all unwilling. Every week she asked me how I was. I could only tell her how everyone else in my life was. I told her a million stories, most of them richly humorous. I entertained the heck out of us both, but I wasn’t getting at the problem, and I think we both knew that, so after 18 months, I quit.Then ten years passed, and ....I was funnier than ever! - yay! - though still in full flight from every kind of sadness that had ever come my way. I just didn't want to feel it. Then one day, my oldest friend called to say she was doing counseling - over the phone of all things - with a gifted therapist in Colorado, who was at first reluctant to work with someone in such an unorthodox manner.“But it’s helping!” my friend said, and one day added, “and, you know, you should really do it too.”And so. And so I began doing it, though God knows it wasn’t easy.  I couldn’t seem to sit still as I talked to this faraway therapist but because we were on the phone, she didn’t know this.Sometimes I cleaned the bathroom toilets while we talked.Sometimes I stripped small pieces of furniture.Once though, she got wise to me. “Are you DRIVING?!” she said.I was driving all right.But the main thing is I was doing it, as I wish my mom could have done in her younger years, to ease her own aching heart. Because it did sure enough help. I faced my sadness and the sadness under my sadness, and the sadness under that, and so what if I did most of that facing after the therapist and I had hung up.. I’ll say it again and you can take it from this old vaudevillian: Comedy really is easy by comparison; and therapy is very, very hard.   

So Cold the Flashers Stayed Zipped

But if you try sometimes well you just might find

It’s all Happening at the Zoo

Some cruises I've gone on were crazy fun from morning until night, like the one I went on 20 years ago with my sister Nan where she joked that we had to be careful about getting too much blood in our alcohol stream haha. This cruise that I'm on with my old man Dave hasn't been like that, mostly  because on this cruise all I've been doing is getting a kick out of things generally and watching the people around us.It’s been more fun  than a trip to the zoo, it really has, which is not to suggest I think I’m any better than everyone else, far from it. And I know that anyone looking at the two of us would say, “Why didn’t those two just stay home? They’re not doing the Macarena, they didn't come to the bellyflop contest, they’re not wearing whimsical sunglasses with flamingoes sprouting from the frames, what is their deal?”Our deal is that mostly we've been reading, reading, reading.It's been heaven. I see myself walking in the reflection of the gym at the ship's tippety-top and think Who IS that lucky girl? but it's me! It's been like a dream is what it's been like. More on what else I've seen later.  :-)  

Big Calves

In my next life I'd like to be a woman with calves like duckpins.I’m seeing a lot of such calves on this cruise that I'm on. The women who own them seem to have more stability and be more stable than the rest of us ladies here on board.  More 'planted', sort of, like the legs of the big grand piano at the Schooner Bar where the red-haired Irish lady sings each night.They kind of roll with the ship whereas the rest of us scrawny-calved gals skitter around like sandpapers on our drinking-straw legs. We seem plain doomed to topple, kind of like these guys below. (Go 18 seconds in to hear the soundtrack. Love it!)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NawmpwHUVJ4  

My Homemade Holiday Card, on this 12th Day of Xmas

This year my homemade holiday card offered a cruise through time, starting with this 1909 shot  of my mother and her brothers and cousins.She's the sad-looking one holding the toy phone. She was saddish by nature as a small child, whereas her oldest brother James, on the far left, was just plain jolly. His letter to Santa to Santa that year was signed, "from James Sullivan, A Fat Six-Year-Old Boy."My card was like that generally, both jolly and  jokey. After this first old picture I fast-forwarded 50 years to an image of David and his cute brothers posed by the their tree in Medford Massachusetts. He's the one with the nice big smile and the striped shirt.He and I didn't know each other yet of course but here I am not more then ten miles away then, together with my big sister Nan in our front yard on Charlotte Street in Dorchester. Nan is so pretty  even now, and was then too. I was always mugging so you can't ever TELL what I looked like.From there the card opened up to show two shots of David and me as a couple,  both in our early 20s, one depicting a holiday-minded Dave with a big red Christmas bow stuck to his head.  I won't put that up here since he hates having his image going far and wide  for all the world to see. Then the other one showed  me having what appears to be a 99th glass of champagne and wearing a one-piece hot pants getup and once again mugging.Then further down came pictures of our kids AS little kids and then a few shots of our grandchildren.Here was little Callie, AKA Caroline Theresa the 5th, named for her mom who was named for her mom who was named for her mom who was named for her mom - tiresome, I know.And, here since I seem to be doing a Ladies First thing, was little Ruthie-Roo, born 13 months ago and already one of the funniest people in the room.Young David Marotta came next in the card, a guy who was plain crazy about Nerf Guns for a while there, until the principle of disarmament settled upon the house.And last but not least there was this picture of Edward, at 11 our eldest grandchild, here dressed for battle for the honor of the Fenn School.Finally when you turned the card over to side four, there was this picture of David and me in the late 80s headed to a gala to celebrate the purchase, by its citizens, of a new Steinway for use by our town. The accompanying text basically said that al though WE two sure don't look as good now as we did then, at least the hall wallpaper has greatly improved.So there it was: a card that was funny and fun to make.And now, with Twelfth Night behind us and Little Christmas here, I'm sweeping away the last of the pine needles and laying those slender self-lighting, self-extinguishing window candles to rest in their attic box. Where one or two of them may well flicker on as darkness gathers and where, until their batteries run down, they will faintly light the gloom up under the eaves, until we pull them forth again next Christmas 

Down at Downton

Downton Abby was so delicious six years ago when the curtain went up on the year 1912 and all those “upstairs” folks started carrying on with their speech like butterscotch topping. Then there were the real people "belowstairs" who you always liked better, or I did anyway. I've often thought I would find it sort of cozy to live all together in a house like that.Of course what a lot of us loved most in those early 20th century scenes was the women’s clothing, the silks and velvets, the wide skirts circling like lassos around the ankles of rodeo cowboys And the colors of both clothes and furnishings! I could never decide what I loved more, the outfits Maggie Smith wore as the Dowager Countess or the window treatments in what I think of as her 'throne room'.Now, in the year 1925, the younger women we see in that candybox  of a library wear hair that is bobbed and gowns that have evolved into "frocks." I bobbed my hair once, seven years ago this month, and did it hang straight down in a perfect Lady-Mary-style wedge? It did not. Ten minutes out of the shower it looked like this.It took me seven whole years to get it back where it belongs.Moral of the story for me: fashions come and fashions go but you’d do well to know what you look good in. Tell your future undertaker NOW what you like, before it's too late and they trick you out in a perm and bright pink chiffon ! (And how's THAT for a dark post in bouncing baby year?) 

Get Out the Elf Cap

Most years by the time we get to December's final innings, I’m worn down to a cranky little nub with all the Christmas prep work. I know I felt cranky a few weeks back when I got all worked up about how we shouldn’t rush Christmas but instead keep on clapping for those muted late-autumn days until they have swept their cinnamon-colored skirts off the stage.Yet for all my talk, this year I too started decking the halls right after Thanksgiving; and whereas this project once seemed like the world's most endless job, this year I found doing it only easy and fun.I had some help and maybe that’s why. That November day, when I heard that our grandsons eight and eleven were coming over, I dashed out to pick up some food, first texting their mom to ask if the kids could maybe go up to my attic for me and drag out the box with those great battery-powered candles that turn themselves on and off all on their own. Imagine my surprise when I got back in the indigo light of dusk to find them all in place, twinkling with their cheery Energizer life in every window. In an hour’s time while I had been running up and down the food aisles, the children has been transforming my house .

• Also, they had brought down the Christmas tree stand.
• Also, the phony-but-flouncy garlands that we can’t bear to throw out because they date back to the phony flouncy 80s.
• Also all three boxes of ornaments and room decorations, right down to the retired treetop angel on whose face I once drew large stagey teardrops for a YouTube skit I was making.

In our front hall we have a bronze sculpture of a woman standing with her hands shyly clasped behind her back. She's a nude, or at least she was a nude until the children placed an elf cap on her bronzy curls and draped some wide red ribbon about her like the sash on a Miss American contestant.Somehow the sight of her thus arrayed really pushed me over into "happy" and I have stayed happy ever since. I've been happy every time I've gone to the mall and found that they are actually NOT playing “Jingle Bell Rock” and “Sleigh Ride.” Heck, I have been happy even when they are playing those jittery tunes on their endless loop.We bought our tree on December 4^th and until three days ago we let it stay outdoors, enjoying a nice footbath in cool water. I have always felt sorry for all Christmas trees, the way they get stabbed with long screws and are left to parch with thirst in the overheated indoor air. We have been happy to think we did something nice for this one.These are small sources of happiness, I know, but they have done the trick for me. We all know what kind of year it has been. Out in the world, the news is dire, but the news is always dire out in the world. The news has been dire since the dawn of self-awareness, when, eons ago, people just like us saw the light failing earlier and earlier and heard the wolves howling in the not-so-distant hills.But thank God here inside - in our apartment buildings, on our blocks, in our neighborhoods - we still have the sense to flounce the place up a bit and lift a glass to brighter days ahead.  

Take Me For a Ride

With all the driving folks do at this season I'm thinking a lot about cars. It’s amazing what people can do in a car. Parents in the Roaring 20s went crazy worrying what their kids were doing when they borrowed the Model A for a night out. “Rolling brothels!” one worked-up elder called the cars of those days but cars were always much more than settings for sex. They were wonderfully mobile spaces people could climb into and go just anywhere - provided their tires didn’t blow and their little sewing-machine-sized engines didn’t fail.But if a car was nice to have then, how much nicer it is now, especially if your car is the much-mocked minivan.In my book the minivan is the best invention since the blow-dryer, the pencil sharpener, the washing machine even. I bought my first Chrysler/Dodge minivan back when the man with the velvet voice took up residence in the White House. It was bright red, like 90% of his First Lady’s wardrobe. Nancy Reagan was chic all right, but I FELT chic tooling around in my Caravan. And so, seven years later when it died, I traded it in for another one, again made by Chrysler, only white this time.

• Then, seven years later, I got a green one.
• Then in seven more years, another red one.
• And now these 30 years later, I have a van of midnight blue with big wide shoulders and a decidedly masculine feel.

I have loved them all, and done my best to nurse them back to health when any one of them got injured, as this one did, when, in a freak accident, our neighbor's construction-related porta-potty ended up falling on it.Yup, in my book, whatever year’s model you have, this seven-seatbelt marvel has all other vehicles beat because of Chrysler’s patented ‘Stow-and-Go’ seats in back, big comfy thrones that, with a touch here and a tug there, sink away under the floorboards, yielding a ballroom of space. Then, another touch-and-tug and up they come again like a band of jolly ghosts bringing mirth to the family table.I have at various times toted whole dining room tables in there, large and swoony palm trees, and up to eight chairs, both wooden and upholstered. I have practiced both yoga and piano back there, the latter on my portable keyboard.  I have soothed whole pet taxis of white mice alarmed by their visit to the vet. I have even refinished furniture back there, though not with the lung-searing chemicals you’d use for a major strip-job but with sand paper and steel wool merely. And this past summer I filled it with two seven-foot paddleboards while two nine-footers rode on the roof.  But the chief joy I take in my minivan comes from the peace I feel inside it, a peace that suffuses the whole car so that even behind the wheel I feel held and soothed.And while I love the model I have now, that doesn’t stop me from imagining the fresh delights that a new model might bring me five or six years hence. Maybe in that van’s roomy back I can set up a ‘The Doctor-is-in’-Style booth for compassionate listening, or – wait, I know! - how about a couple of lanes of bowling for my mice?In the meantime it will just go on being this family's faithful friend, in all our comings and goings.   

Life in These Yewnited States

Sometimes you come too close for comfort. For sure I did that day I picked up a can of Comet and started shaking its contents onto my oatmeal. You know that creepy all-over tingle you get when you almost fall down a flight of stairs? It felt like that.And it felt like that again the very next day, when I gunned my car in the driveway and nearly backed into the spanking new vehicle parked directly behind me, a vehicle that visiting friends had just two minutes before proudly pointed out to me from my kitchen window.That time I actually started hearing things: a kind of tinny high-pitched taunting tune, like the one the maddening little monsters in the film Gremlins sing outside poor Mrs. Deagle's house.So I do have to ask myself: What makes people like me lose their bearings this way?I don't think it's the “task” in multitasking that does it. It isn’t so much what we're actually doing with the many spider-arms we seem to think we possess, but rather what we’re thinking. So many of us get trapped on that to-do-list carousel, going round and round, reaching for that brass ring that keeps reappearing with every circuit.I think of Sisyphus, fated by the gods to push the same giant boulder up the same hill every day, only to see it roll back down again.I think of Prometheus, chained to a rock while an eagle plucked his liver out every day - only to have it grow back again, only to have it plucked out again, etc.But it's not just the repetitiveness of our daily chores that has us sprinkling powdered poison onto our cereal or backing our cars into other people’s cars. It's the assault from outside of us.Once it was just TV commercials, radio ads and billboard messages that we had to tune out. Now, the busy chatter is coming at us from a place far closer.I’m talking about the place inside our pockets. I’m talking about the spot right next to us, while we sleep. I’m talking about the smart phone and all those chimes and dings and hiccups it keeps emitting unless we reach deep into its “Settings” belly and gag it entirely.I myself, for example, am instantly notified by my college every time the place does something it thinks is cool. I’m notified by NOAA every time there’s a storm brewing three states away.I’m notified about any and all criminal trials deemed to be of such interest to the public that bulletins go out every time the Defense rests, every time the members of the Prosecution, prepare to question the witness, rising and buttoning their suit jackets the way everyone is always doing on The Good Wife. I know it's my fault. I did, after all, sign up for these notifications, so it’s on me if I get overwhelmed by the unstoppably pouring spout of them. Still, I can't help thinking of that first phone call in history call made by Alexander Graham Bell to his assistant several rooms away. “Mr. Watson, Come Here, I Want You!” he shouted into the mouthpiece.These days everybody wants us. The challenge is to remember that with the exception of the good safety-minded people at NOAA, really, they only want us so they can sell us stuff.     

Table Manner Don'ts (In Living Color)

I'm sitting in a neighborhood restaurant, reading a book by Sarah Kortum called The Hatless Man, an Anthology of Odd and Forgotten Manners, a compilation of various guides to good behavior from over the centuries.As I read along, a party of four noisily fills the booth in front of me, in the persons of one exhausted-looking mom and her three young children, all dressed in their best.By the sound of it, they have just come from some sort of presentation at which they had to sit far too still for far too long.They’re making up for that now.I look back down at my book - to read both Florence Howe Hall‘s turn of the century remark that it is wrong “to put the spoon or fork so far into the mouth that bystanders are doubtful of its return to the light,” and George Washington’s frank advice, “When in Company, put not your Hands to any Parts of the Body not usually Discovered.”And just as I’m thinking, “Who in the world needs to be told this?” I look up and see these children, one of who is even now doing exactly what the father of our country advised us all against.It’s eerie. I watch them. I look back at my book - and one by one see these taboos enacted by all three kids: by this girl of six, her tights bagging and twisting at her skinny ankles; by her little brother who looks about five, and wears his little his suit jacket askew, in a rakish, off-the-shoulder way; and by the smallest child, tangled Alice-in-Wonderland curls scraped back in a headband and one wet finger hooked like an umbrella-handle deep in the corner of her mouth.

• “Never turn your spoon over and look at yourself in the bowl: it is the action of clown.” And lo, this very thing happens before my eyes.
• “Don’t make a wall around your plate with your left arm, as if you feared somebody were going to snatch it from you. And don’t I see this done, when the French Fries come.
• “In refusing to be helped to any particular thing, never give as a reason that you are afraid of it.” This happens too, when the boy screams at the sight of his mother’s shrimp cocktail.
• Do not “take up a whole piece of bread and leave the dentist’s model of a bite in it,” advises the book. And here is now is the boy child, who has decided to stand up to eat his bread, which he chooses to eat with mouth wide open.
• “Nothing is less alluring than a smile flavored with parsley,” I read on. And yet here is such a smile, garnished too with a slippery finger.
• “It is a breach of etiquette to assume a lazy lounging attitude in company.“ Now one child stretches out full length on the banquette, where, within moments, the bread course complete, the smallest child on his head.
• “Cast not thy bones under the table,” one sage warns in the old book and surely something has been cast under the table, as Alice now slithers off her brother and dives down after it - bringing us to the rueful observation “A vacant chair at a dinner party is a melancholy spectacle.”

But I for one am feeling far from melancholy now, for I begin to see who the rules of etiquette are for: the child in us all at the great feast of life, who, tired and restless and cranky, would like nothing better than to slip beneath the table from time to time ourselves, as the below image from Bluntcard.com suggests. ;-)

GO to Your Reunion!

I always tell myself “Go to the reunions!” but then this strange reticence overtakes me. Maybe it’s common to us all, the worrying that no one will talk to us but the classic what-do-I-wear dilemma weighs, I think more heavily on the females.Take my case.  I’m pretty sure I'm no longer in danger of going in a tangle of long Country-Western-style curls and a fringed leather miniskirt, but what if I end up walking into a room full of evening gowns, only to look down and find myself dressed like Pinocchio? Because, you know, this has happened.But then I remember what my 11-year-old said to me back in the late 90s when I was I fretting about what wear to wear to a certain wedding. “It's fine," he said not unkindly. ”Nobody's going to be looking at you, Mum.” True enough! And so it was that on a recent Saturday night I started getting ready. I climbed into this caramel pantsuit I had bought in the spring of 2012 only to realize I looked like the last cruller in the bin. A mist of cold sweat bloomed down my back. Then I spotted the black dress I had just for $69 in a catalog. I threw it on and headed for the car with my husband.That's when the great realization finally came on me: This wasn’t my reunion! This was HIS reunion! I wouldn't have to do a single thing but smile and listen as people spoke to him.I figured he would have an easy time too, because as the Class President and Football Captain, he's be remembered.He was remembered him. But if people remembered him, they also remembered one another, after the quick peer-down at the nametag for the rapid calculation that aligned this older face with the face they had known at 18.All night, people literally called out to one another in joy.“THIS guy!” a burly ex-football player said to me, his arm tight around David’s neck. “THIS guy went in head-first every single time!”“You know what it was like being in class with Dave here?” another guy said to me ten minutes later. “He’d walk in to class seconds before the bell and find the rest of us frantically studying. ‘Is there a test today?’ he’d go. He hadn’t prepared! Then, what do you think? I’d get a 95 on the darn thing and HE’D get a 98!”In general, the expert remembers like these two carried the evening aloft, bringing people’s thoughts vividly back to the past. It took the woman who spearheaded this whole reunion effort to carry their thoughts back to the present, by arranging class gift of backpacks and bus passes for those current students at the school who could really use them.People danced plenty, though not as much as they had done at earlier reunions. They drank plenty too, but again not as much which one could plainly see when the swarms huddled at the bar slowly morphed into clusters gathered around the coffee and tea.Anyway, I myself had a super time at this reunion that wasn’t my reunion, and by evening’s end I saw how silly it is for any of us to ever worry about who will come talk to us, when it is entirely in our power, as members of the great old Class of 2015, to go up to anyone at all and get the conversation started our own selves.

Don't Be Dumb Tonight

I believe in the young, who in many ways are miles ahead of the rest of us. Still, they do make some super-dumb moves at times.Below, four tales by way of illustration. Let's call this a Halloween Night Sermon For Us All.'EXAMPLE ONE : On a morning suddenly overcast, a young person called home from his workplace to ask his dad to put up the windows in his car, which was parked on the street. “Sure! Where are the keys?” his dad asked. “Where they always are: in the ignition,” responded the kid.“You leave your car on the street? Unlocked? With your keys in the ignition?” squeaked the dad in disbelief. “You don't think it might get stolen?”“Oh no,” said the kid. “Who would do that?” Let's see, I can’t help thinking here: Maybe the person who took my neighbor’s bike right from his garage? Maybe the one who took my baby's stroller from off my front porch and pitched it in the lake? Maybe one of the five separate individuals who stole my car on five separate occasions?EXAMPLE TWO: A s16-year-old girl took a notion to go running. At 10 at night. On a street with narrow twisty roads. “But it’s not safe to run now, especially not there!” her mother told her. “Don’t be silly!” replied the daughter. “There aren't even any streetlights!” (Huh?)EXAMPLE THREE: One morning at a convenience store, a young stranger stocking shelves turned to me with a radiant smile and said this: “I get off work at 2:00 every day. Then I take a shower and go get drunk.”  “You don't mean that,” I said. “I do. I get drunk! Every day! Right after work!” “You'll regret that one day," I said. “Maybe when I’m 40," said the kid.(If you GET to be 40, I thought.)EXAMPLE FOUR, and this by way of showing that I have been plenty dumb myself: When I was 18, I used to hitchhike. Kids did back then. Of course I always wore my good blue dress to show I was well brought up. I hitchhiked to western Massachusetts. I hitchhiked to New Haven, Connecticut. But when I hitchhiked to Cambridge to see the boy I would one day marry, he said I showed bad judgment.It took putting my thumb out that next weekend to show me how right he was:The man who pulled over that day had baby gear in his back seat of his car and looked a lot like Mister Rogers. When I approached his passenger-side window to find out his destination, he asked if I would do a particular thing. When I recoiled in horror, he asked if I would maybe just watch.I hung up my thumb then and there.And so, in this final hour before the blowout that Halloween night now is, I would say only this to the young: Sooner or later Time will claim your bike and your baby carriage; your brand-new car and that bright young sparkle in your eye. Earth is a beautiful place and and it's ours to live in. But it's also the place where we will die. It just seems foolish to invite an early departure. Other than that I say have a ball! 

Trapped in an Elevator

Imagine you and a stranger find yourselves trapped in an elevator and by some stroke of fate both your mobile devices are stone dead. Imagine you've already used the elevator’s emergency phone to report your plight, but the guy on the other end says everyone down in Maintenance is off celebrating the birthday of this other guy's 30 years of service. They'll get to your problem in an hour, he says, two tops . Then let’s further set the stage by assuming that the two of you share a common language and that neither one of you has to go to the bathroom. Thus, on these two fronts at least, you can relax and really inhabit this little soap bubble of time in which you find yourselves floating.Now the question is, not what you're going to DO, as this list drawn up by the funny people at The Onion, but rather what are you going to talk about? You know what you’ve been taught NOT to talk about: the forbidden trinity of religion, money, and politics. Stay away from all three subjects in polite company, you have always been told, but you can't just look over the person’s head like people do on the subway. That would just be weird.Soooo, what subjects could you turn to pass the time?Well, people turn to the topic of their kids pretty quickly, so maybe you could start down that avenue, sharing information about their ages and so on. There would be no turning to your dead phones to get at photos of course, but that’s ok: you could paint a picture with language, old-fashioned concept as that is.You could also say a few words about other family members, though this can be a tricky arena.  I once spent a mere 60 seconds alone in an elevator with a man who was so furious he was hissing like a teakettle. “Bad day?” I finally asked. “EXCUSE me?!” he hissed, greatly offended by the question. “I…I'm sorry, I shouldn't have spoken,” I stammered. He only paused for about 20 seconds before blurting out, “My damn MOTHER-IN-LAW!”So I guess you have to be careful choosing your topics.Here’s an idea: People love explaining their scars, I’ve noticed, though this might not be the right setting for that particular show-and-tell.Ailments also make a reliable topic but they too might be dicey in this context, especially if your elevator-mate has been on earth long enough to have a nice long medical history. I mean, you might never get your own turn to talk!The weather’s a pretty tired topic and sure there’s sports but what are the chances you’re both fans?I’ll tell you what I go to when all else fails:Television. You’ll never go wrong with TV shows. I don’t care if you’re Cleopatra the Queen of the Nile, you watch TV. At least a little.Admit it.Even if your tastes differ as to genre – I, for example find sitcoms almost unwatchable these days what with all the wink-wink of sexual innuendo – I bet within two or three minutes you’ll find common ground. And then you won’t even realize that the guys down in Maintenance have moved on from eating cake to doing shots. You have another human being and the chance to talk and talk, and really, what’s nicer than that?

My Almost Famous House

A text arrived from my next-door neighbor saying that a “location manager” had just spoken to her about using both her house and ours as the setting for a major motion picture. Could he ring our doorbell too in a bit?“Sure,” I said, and 20 minutes later he was here.This wouldn’t be the first time a film crew had chosen our house. Fifteen years ago, a public utility made a commercial here using just the outside. Then, five years after that, some college kids used the inside too, to make a movie that affixed so many wires and cable to our newly painted trim that we had cause to muse on the futility of any and all home-improvement projects.“Oh, but this is the big time!” said the man, and that sounded true enough to me when I heard the names of two of the actors who have already signed to the project. “When we leave, you won’t know we were here at all.”“Even with that crew of 80 you mentioned?" I asked. “Even with that crew of 80," he said. All we had to do was (a) agree to be relocated for “seven weeks give or take”, (b) allow all our furniture be relocated too, and (c) give permission for the walls be repainted and the wallpaper be covered with other, temporary, paper as the film’s visionaries saw fit.But! All would be restored when the project was complete. AND, besides covering our housing costs, we would be compensated for our trouble with a fee to be mutually agreed upon.He took scads of pictures, talked more to my husband David, newly returned from the office, and left, with the understanding that he would come back in a week with six even bigger bigshots.When, that evening, I told my cousin about this potential offer, her reaction was swift. “WHY though? Why would you do this at all?” It was a good question.Over the next few days I began to see that I would say yes to the project mostly to see if we still had wings, as well as roots. Were we still capable of signing up for such radically new “dance suggestions” from the universe?Because we have been here one very long time: Little House on the Prairie was still airing fresh episodes when we got here. For almost four decades, I have watched the morning sun touch the tops of the tall oak trees across the street.David, who is equanimity itself, thought it might be an adventure, but I happen to know that he can be happy anywhere as long as he has his books and the daily crossword.I am not like that.I got worried about my houseplants, all still at ‘summer camp’ on the screened-in porch? Where would they go, some storage facility in South Boston? And could I actually live in a hotel, even for those seven weeks 'give or take'?As promised, the man came back with the bigshots, who spoke not a word but slithered like eels, all silent, around our rooms. As they left, our man thanked us and said he would call in a week with the decision.And when he did call, it was to say that they had decided to go with an another house in another town.Was there disappointment around here? Not for my houseplants. Not for the two rooms we freshly repainted just last month. I walked outside to where I could see those trees that greet me each morning and felt a slow smile cross my face. Because how lucky a thing is it to go from youth to age looking out at the same window at the tops of the same stately familiar trees, not just those oaks across the street, but this ginkgo and her graceful final shedding.[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVv1vsHXHmQ[/embed]

Originality is Overrated

Speaking of writing your own poems as I was here, the more I think about it the more I realize how hard it is to be really original. I mean, who among us CAN be original with all, 'pop pop fizz fizz oh what a relief it is' buzzing around in our heads? (And if you remember  that jingle, you’ve probably been receiving AARP the magazine for at least a decade.)Used to be, folks memorized things not accidentally because of commercials and popular songs but on purpose, because our teachers made us memorize. Used to be, every kid with an 8^th grade education was walking around with all sorts of lines in his head: The poetry of the ages. Scripture. The second and even third and fourth verses to all the patriotic songs.Wouldn’t we be better off if we 21^st century types had that rich lore at our fingertips today?We pay too much homage to originality anyway, which I really do believe is mythical in the first place. Example: I once thought of myself as quite the witty one-of-a-kinder; but the then why did I name the journaling manual I wrote The Trail of Breadcrumbs. The reference is from Hansel and Gretel natch, with the subtitle “Journaling to Find Your Way Home”. Pretty UNoriginal that one!Now I’m wondering if all the titles of the books I brought out were also pretty derivative I Thought He Was A Speed Bump may SOUND original but actually it isn't at all since I stole the phrase from the little boy next-door who, when he was three years old, ran over his friend's tummy, not once but twice, with his tricycle. It’s true I haven't yet heard of a book besides my own called Vacationing In My Driveway but I’m sure people use that phrase in every day life. I mean, that’s why people laugh the minute I give its name: they get its message at once. Nope, the real originals are few and far between. I give Francis Scott Key a lot of credit with the Star-Spangled Banner whose lyrics are seriously original even if he used an existing drinking song for his tune. I mean, seriously, who else ever wrote lyrics like this? The "Oh say"  phrase alone, never mind those bums bursting in air as a million little kids so lustily sang? For really original stuff we should look to the lyrics the kids think are the real lyrics to any song or prayer. Theres bound to be some fun in mining that vein: Blessed are the monks in swimming and Round John Virgin" alone, from the Hail Mary - and that's before you even get to that someone in the kitchen with Dinah strummin' on the old man's joe." ;-)

Pompeii?

This is an example of the to-do list I have been making every day since I was in the 9th grade..The 9th grade!I came upon it this morning on one of my million legal pads and,  because I wasn't quite awake yet, thought, "Great, it's my list! Ok, what am I supposed to do first?"It took me a while to realize it was a list that I had made ... when?A year ago? Two years ago?I study it and think 'What a busy girl!' And also, I wonder if I got it all done?   Probably not but I I know I sure tried.Someday, stuff like this is all that will be left of us, besides our acreage-gobbling burial places. It'll be like what we know of the inhabitants of Herculaneum and Pompeii after Vesuvius blew her top: besides our bones-and-dust and a few gold teeth there'll just be a bunch of old kitchenware and some wall treatments - though hopefully not just the sex-and-phallus-glorification kind like they left. The theory is, this was an oil lamp:No accounting for tastes I guess. . Right now people rummaging among my things would find a bunch of sample grey damask papers for highly outdated front hall (speaking of wall coverings. :-)

Necessary Roughness

What can we say of the yearly mammogram? The glass plate is cold, they make you stand so close to the machine your ribs bruise, and then they force you to hold these contorted positions and stop breathing for like a million minutes while they set up the shotAnd then, of course, there's the vise.That victim of  the revenge of Joe Pesci's character in Scorsese's  Casino comes to mind.Your eyeballs don't pop out like that guy's did, but it feels like two things further down might pop for sure.Oh I know, I know, you don't really get permanently disfigured during a mammogram, and it's a crucial diagnostic.It's just that you go in with two rough approximations of this shape on your chest:And two minutes later they look like this:I think I was even leaning over like this guy by the time we got done - and though he appears to be almost smiling,  I sure know I wasn't!

Bag it, Baby

Here's a funny email that just zipped quicker than the Road Runner into my inbox“Dear friend” it reads.(I have a friend, that’s so great! I love having friends!)“Glad to hear you're in the market for column bags.”  Wait I'm in the market for column bags? I am?Well it’s true always in the market for something. Yesterday I went online to buy two nice fat wooden knobs for the ends of a pair of curtain rods I don't even own.And I guess maybe I can see why I’d get this email, since columns have been part of my daily life for some damn long time now - meaning I do actually write columns, every single week and have been doing that since the year Jimmy Carter found himself freshly ushered off the stage. These columns appear in papers all over the country . But gosh I didn't know you could store them in BAGS.Yet here's this company saying specifically "we specialize in column bags with good quality and competitive price” – AND they’re "willing to establish business relationship with" me! Not 'a' ie, a single business relationship, mind, you, but ‘business relationship’. It sounds so sort of …eternal. Anyone with abandonment issues like I have has gotta love that! Plus I'm excited because all this time I've been trying to store all 10,000 of these columns in dreary old file cabinets and I get all these paper cuts and there's all this bending over to get at them.Bags though? You can hang a bag. Bags are always better, especially when they're nice and new like mine would be. James Brown knew all about this didn't he though? I do love me some James Brown. Saw him perform once in a little club in Revere Beach. ;-)[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QE5D2hJhacU[/embed]

Is This the SAME PLACE?

 Right now the air is so damp and sodden!I feel like I need gills instead of lungs to keep on living.And the vegetation outside is just drenched with chlorophyll..It's ALL SO GREEN !Even the inchworms are green, to say nothing of the mold growing on that one clementine that got stuck at the bottom of the fruit bowl.It looks like a fuzzy green bowling ball for Dopey and Sneezy and pals now.But seriously..Can this really BE the same block?The same state?Nay, the same hemisphere, that used to look like THIS?Can this be the same hemisphere where, when  the sun began to set and the icicle below halted whatever dripping it had been doing OUTSIDE the house and instead got busy dripping secretly INSIDE, painting so many of our walls and windows a rich caramel brown?I mean can this above picture really be  taken from the same exact spot in my house as THIS?It can be and it is.... and all I can say right now is Mama Nature she does like to keep us hoppin'!

Nice Try on the Fathers Day Gift

I was browsing in a gift shop one June day when I came upon the simple-looking staff that I think of as a “Talking Stick.“Labeled a “Rain Stick,” it is a varnished section of cactus inside of which are many spoke-like slender thorns and tiny pebbles. When you tip it at an angle, a delicious pattering sound ensues as the pebbles fall from one end of its four-foot length to the other, tumbling past spoke after tiny spoke.The tag accompanying this Rain Stick told that in Aztecs culture the males would confer using such a staff, which helped preserve order, since a person was only allowed to speak while holding it.In fact I had used something very much like a Rain Stick the day my middle school daughters and her pals fell into an argument. I went and fetched a small broom from the closet by the back door and explained the rules.And it worked like a charm: There was no interrupting, the pace of talk slowed way, way down, and at the end of 20 minutes the four girls had not only had their say but had wept, hugged, blown their noses, and gone to the fridge for a little snack.Remembering this, I stopped in my tracks when I saw this gift-shop doodad. This is it! I thought. Here it was almost Father’s Day so why not give my children's father a Rain Stick, which, as the tag pointed out, would “help make life more enjoyable, meaningful and even complete”? Anyway, wasn’t the dad in this family ALL ABOUT male-bonding activities? Didn’t he have those pals he got together with every week to play cards, inhale Scotch and highly-salted snacks, and insult each other’s moves? Couldn’t a Rain Stick elevate THEIR level of communication?I paid the 30 bucks and took it home.On Father’s Day itself, the kids and I had planned to take our honoree to an open-air concert performed by a bunch of people dressed like 19^th century serfs. But as it turned out, actual rain was pouring like water from a busted hydrant and the concert was canceled.Then the dad received an invite from a buddy-dad to watch the Stanley Cup finals and somehow in there the Rain Stick got forgotten.Days later, when we at last got around to presenting it, we let him play with it a while. “It says self-realization follows,” we told him, reading from the tag.“So… are you realizing anything yet?” we added.“Yeah, I'm realizing you guys really blew Father's Day,” he said.Nothing daunted, the next time the scotch-and-sodium pals came over for bridge, I brought the Talking Stick forth to show it to them.They looked up from their brimming fists.One grunted.Another picked it up and swung it like a bat.Then they all looked back down at their cards.A month later, the youngest in our family whacked it on the floor and we saw 10,000 pebbles explode like confetti all around us.The child yelped in glee. On hearing about this later, so did his dad.  We three remaining family member, females all, sighed deeply. Then, in the ceremony of resignation common to families everywhere, all five of us adjourned together to the fridge to have a little snack.