Famosity

A Kindred Spirit Remembered

2009-04-25T15:56:00.014-05:00

Over thirty years ago, I arrived in Hyde Park to begin law school at the University of Chicago. I was 28 years old and had been married for five years. In those days, most students went directly from college to law school, so during orientation the small number of "older" students among our class of 120 quickly found one another.

One of those I met was Eugene Vaughan. Gene and I soon found we had something in common—prior to law school, we'd both worked as editors. Gene had edited textbooks, while I had worked as a magazine and book editor. We both expected that our writing skills would come in handy in the practice of law.

When classes began, I was delighted to find that Gene was in my Legal Research and Writing class, a small section of about twenty students. The course was designed to teach us how to research legal questions and produce memoranda and other documents typically required of lawyers. Each section was led by a recent graduate of the law school who had received a year-long Bigelow Fellowship. Our instructor, Sam Saracino, was no older than Gene or me, but he was clearly our superior when it came to understanding legal arcana. As for writing, however, Gene and I figured we might teach Sam a thing or two.

In those days of non-computerized legal information, legal research was an arduous and confusing affair and I found the law library something akin to a Dickensian Office of Circumlocution. During the first few weeks of the course, I wandered the stacks like a lost soul. I'd been an English major in college and my research skills were minimal. When I finally located all the information I needed for my first assignment, I felt the hard part was over. Writing the memo would be a breeze.

However, when my memo was returned, I was in for a shock—red ink all over the place. Apparently, Sam found my research impeccable but thought my writing needed help. Gene suffered an equal surprise—his writing hadn't passed legal muster, either. At least we could commiserate with one another and laugh about our own hubris. As the term went on, though, we realized that we really could transfer our writing skills to the legal arena. After mastering a few necessary legal expressions, we persevered in our view that a good legal memorandum is one that's written in simple, accessible language. Even Sam seemed to finally agree—the red ink appeared only rarely.

Gene and I continued a casual friendship during law school, then lost touch once we went our separate ways. My love of writing soon trumped my interest in law and, after a stint writing law book supplements, I turned my attention to poetry, fiction, and personal essays.

Earlier today, I learned that Gene passed away in January, at the young age of 61. His obituary mentioned that, after practicing law for a few years, Gene returned to his first love, editing, and once again became a textbook editor. I'm sad to hear of his passing, but somehow gratified to learn that, like me, the solitary but satisfying work of an editor/writer ultimately drew him back into its fold. I hope it gave him many years of fulfillment.

Stop, In the Name of Love

2009-03-30T16:53:00.008-05:00

I'm not much of a singer. My children will attest to this. When they were in grade school, if I began to sing they would shout in unison, "Call 911, arrest your singing mother!" At the time, my ego was only slightly bruised—after all, they were kids, what did they know? But to my chagrin, my husband, Eric, agreed with them. Many years later, he still hasn't changed his tune. Much as he loves me, he doesn't enjoy it when I burst into song. Yesterday was a case in point.

While driving on the Interstate, we hit a major traffic jam. Cars slowed to a crawl, then stopped altogether. I fiddled around with the radio, but couldn't find a station the two of us agreed upon. So, I decided I would entertain Eric with a song or two.

I started with a Motown hit—"I Heard It Through the Grapevine." I have fond memories of seeing Gladys Knight and the Pips perform the song back in the sixties. They were the opening act for the teenage phenom, Little Stevie Wonder, at a concert I attended with my then-boyfriend, Peter. Eric has heard the story many times. Maybe that's why he reacted so vehemently when I launched into that particular song.

"Stop!" he cried and added, in the manner of American Idol's Simon Cowell, "You will never make it as a singer. America will vote you out of this competition."

So much for Motown. Undeterred, I launched into a medley of Broadway tunes, a specialty of mine. I began with a rousing rendition of "Oklahoma!", then put on a cockney accent for "Wouldn't It Be Loverly?" from My Fair Lady.

Finally, unable to persuade me to stop, Eric joined in, singing along in an operatic falsetto. We made quite a duo. Thankfully, we were in an enclosed vehicle and people in the nearby cars couldn't hear us. Otherwise, they surely would have called 911 and begged the police, "Arrest that singing couple!"

The Travel Bug(aboo)

2009-03-15T19:27:00.007-05:00

I love traveling—in my imagination. I have a voracious appetite for stories, photographs, and films that illuminate other cultures. My niece recently sent me photos from her trip to Thailand. The pictures of fruits and flowers, crabs on the beach, and coconut ice cream served in a coconut shell present a delightful array of local color. The beaches look stupendously beautiful, the rock formations unlike anything I've ever seen. The Grand Palace in Bangkok glows with an otherworldly beauty. I'm so glad my niece shared the record of her experiences with me, especially since I can enjoy it without the stress of airports and long flights, packing and strange beds, unfamiliar languages and that feeling of being a tourist, an outsider looking in.

To satisfy my thirst for exploring foreign lands from the comfort of my own home, I seek out books that help me enter different worlds. My all-time favorite is Peter Hessler's River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze. Hessler, an American who taught English for two years in Fuling as a member of the Peace Corps, literally asked the same questions I would have asked if I'd been there. He transmitted the flavor of the place as experienced by someone from my own culture, the things that surprised him, captivated him, repelled him. I felt as if I were there, without the hassle, anxiety, and expense.

Novels also have the power to transport me to other cultures, as do films. The movie Monsoon Wedding, set in New Delhi, enveloped me in the sights, sounds, and emotional color of that Indian city. Of course, I got only a brief and narrow glimpse of an enormously varied landscape. Reading or watching a film obviously can't convey the smells and textures of a foreign place. But even when I've actually traveled to other countries, I rarely manage to experience more than a sliver of what lies beneath the facade. And I feel the separation more keenly.

I do sometimes rouse myself from the couch and fly off to foreign locales. Invariably, the most rewarding experiences occur when I know people in the places I'm visiting. In 2007, I spent a few days in Nice, where my French cousin and her husband live. Seeing the city through their eyes gave me a deep sense of connection. During a trip to England, I visited academic friends of my in-laws at their charming house in Cambridge, then spent the afternoon touring Cambridge with them. Exploring Christ College with a retired don and his wife made it so much more personal and real. Those trips were worth the jet lag.

Mostly, though, I prefer armchair travel. I'm one of those (apparently) rare people who truly enjoys viewing other people's travel albums. So, next time you're off to exotic ports, have a great trip. And email me your photos when you return!
Click on photos to enlarge them.

Close Encounter of a Vulturish Kind

2009-03-09T09:15:00.012-05:00

When you walk along Biscayne Bay in Miami, you never know what you might see. Maybe a manatee will raise its gentle face above the surface and take a deep snorting breath. Or a bevy of blue-bubbled Portuguese Men o' War might float beguilingly across the water, deadly tentacles dangling below. Perhaps a dolphin will surprise you with a series of graceful leaps across the bay. Or you could catch sight of a sting ray undulating along the clear water's bottom in search of prey.

Sometimes the sights on the bay aren't part of the local ecosystem—a psychedelic-green tennis ball bobbing along like a bad imitation of a coconut, or a thousand flecks of white foam packing "peanuts" scattered across the water by the wind. But the the most disturbing things I've seen on Biscayne Bay are the blue bundles that sometimes wash up against the rocks next to the sea wall where I like to walk. These are the remains of Santeria sacrifices.

Santeria is a Caribbean religion that combines elements of Yoruba, Roman Catholic, and Native American beliefs. It has devotees among Cubans-Americans in Miami. Animal sacrifice is part of Santeria practice and the local rituals take place at a restaurant that overlooks the Miami River. Once the sacrifice has occurred, the slain animal is wrapped in one of the restaurant's cobalt blue tablecloths. The knotted tablecloth creates a bulky bundle, much like a hobo might carry. The bundle is dumped into the river. From there, the currents carry it out to the bay. Eventually, at low tide, it winds up on the rocks beside the seawall.

When I see one of these blue sacks, I try not to dwell on the poor creature inside and how it met its demise. I just hope the tide will rise quickly and carry it out to sea to a watery grave. On a recent walk, though, I experienced the good, the bad, and the ugly of the circle of life. As I made my way along the bay, I saw something black and hulking on the rocks. I came closer and realized I was staring into the beady eyes of a black vulture, one of four sitting on the rocks, with sooty black bodies and wrinkled gray heads. Two of the four birds flew off as soon as they saw me approach. The other two held their ground. It was then that I noticed the blue tablecloth on the rocks in between them. It had been ripped open by their short, hooked beaks and I could see a few feathers poking out of the bundle.

I've rarely viewed a vulture on the ground. Turkey vultures and, less frequently, black vultures constantly soar high in the skies over Miami, gliding on the wind currents, searching for carrion. But I'd never seen one so close up. It looked enormous, threatening . . . vulturish. Rather than approach any closer, I decided the better choice would be to continue my walk, which would involve circling back to that spot a couple more times.

On my second pass, the two birds were at work on the carcass and didn't even pause to stare me down. They must have concluded I was harmless. By my third time around, about half an hour later, the chicken carcass had been stripped bare and the birds had departed.

Gory though the scene appeared, I saw a certain beauty in it. The poor chicken hadn't been sacrified in vain. Certainly, the Santeria adherents didn't think so. But more importantly, the unfortunate chicken had provided a meal for the hungry vultures. I don't think much of the vultures' appearance or their table manners, but surely they serve an important role in the ecosystem, cleaning up the messes that other creatures make. We humans make the biggest messes of all. Too bad most of them aren't amenable to a quick, devouring, vulturish cleanup.

Photos by Mdf, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Who Obama Should Help

2009-03-01T20:07:00.002-05:00

An article in today's New York Times describes laid-off executives who have taken hourly-wage jobs to make ends meet. It's worth reading the article and watching the accompanying audio slide show online. The former executives profiled in the piece are responsible, hardworking members of our society who lost their prior positions through no fault of their own—not incompetence or negligence or even ill health. Their companies simply downsized or went out of business altogether, landing them on the street.

Despite diligent job searches, these victims of our desperate economy quickly realized that the accomplishments listed on their resumes were not yielding any jobs, let alone jobs comparable to the ones they had lost. So they downplayed their managerial skills and over-qualifications in order to find jobs as janitors, fast-food clerks, and UPS package sorters. They're doing whatever they can to earn enough to make the mortgage payments on their homes and hold onto health care coverage for their families.

One of the individuals profiled in the Times prays every morning with his wife, a breast cancer survivor, and then goes off to work mopping floors and cleaning urinals. This is depressing stuff. But, for me, it's also a story filled with hope. If anything is going to bring us out of the coming depression into a better world, it will be the work ethic of people like those described in the article. These men and women embody the concept of personal responsibility.

I hope President Obama's policies will reward their industriousness with appropriate support and incentives. If families who have stopped making mortgage payments receive assistance to help them stay in their homes, there should also be help for those who are working themselves to the bone everyday so they won't fall behind in their payments. Only that way will anything like equity be achieved.

Annie Leibovitz, What Have You Done?

2009-02-27T18:10:00.006-05:00

What is the world coming to? It can't be coming to anything good when photographer Annie Leibovitz pawns all her photographs to pay the mortgages on homes she inherited from her longtime partner, Susan Sontag. According to the Daily Mail, Leibovitz has put her photographs up as collateral for a loan from an "art pawn shop." Her photos will only be sold if she defaults on the loan.

So, all is not lost. The artist may yet be reunited with her work. I'm guessing the properties mean a great deal to Leibovitz—after the death of a loved one, sometimes remaining in the home(s) they shared provides tremendous comfort to the surviving partner. Still, the fact that Leibovitz apparently had to choose between her photographs and her real property represents a disturbing snapshot of the times in which we live.

Haiku for the Current Moment

2009-02-24T16:41:00.000-05:00

certain as sunset
only death and taxes once
now foreclosure too

The Big Six-Oh!

2009-02-14T09:45:00.000-05:00

Today is my sixtieth birthday, the big six-oh—oh as in Oh, my God, how did this happen? It seems I barely hit forty and here I am, sixty. All shock aside, I've been looking forward to turning sixty. I think of sixty as the age of permission, when it's okay to finally let myself be who I am.

When I look at my face in the mirror and notice a wrinkle or two (or three), now I can say, "Hey, I'm sixty, of course I have a few wrinkles," and when I feel like watching "American Idol," I can just go ahead and do it, to hell with my formerly high-brow tastes. If I go out to lunch or dinner with a friend, it will be because I really want to, not out of some sense of obligation or politeness. And when politics comes up, I won't feel I must go along to get along. I can say what I really think. Because, after all, I'm sixty. I may have to suffer the indignities of older age, but I'm determined to enjoy its privileges. A friend of mine once described the occasional outbursts of elderly people as "geriatric disinhibition." I may not be geriatric quite yet, but I'm ready for a little disinhibition.

Still, old habits die hard and I'm worried that even turning sixty won't free me from the bonds of over-cautiousness. On second thought, maybe I shouldn't abandon all my careful ways. After all, they've gotten me to where I am today—great friends, wonderful family, alive and kicking and psyched for my seventh decade.

I Even Worry in My Dreams

2009-02-12T09:33:00.000-05:00

Last night I had a doozy of a dream. I was in a car with my husband, Eric, in a mall parking lot. We were trying to find our way to the exit, when suddenly some kind of gas was released into the atmosphere, enveloping us in a pinkish-white cloud. By osmosis, or some other process magically available in dreams, I immediately realized that this was the Viking flu, a deadly strain extracted by terrorists from formerly frozen explorers. I knew we had to get home, where I'd hidden (conveniently) a stash of anti-virals, our only hope of combating this deadly flu virus.

I thought of my kids and recollected, in dreamlike fashion, that in a fit of hyper-protectivity, I'd given them some of the anti-virals long ago. But you know kids—I was sure they'd left their stashes behind during their various moves from apartment to apartment. So, I was filled with worry about them. I considered calling my younger son, Alex, who lives in Brooklyn, and telling him to wear a surgical mask on the subway. Fat chance. And I wanted to urge Aaron, my older son, to stay home from law school, that cesspool of lecture halls and germs. Equally unlikely.

In my dream, Eric and I made it back home, where my worries continued. We always live on the edge, food-wise. I can't seem to shop more than two days ahead. Ergo, there's almost no food in the fridge or even on the shelves. So, if we had to stay home to keep from catching the flu or because we'd already caught it, we'd starve.

Then there was Cosmo, our toy poodle—who would feed him if we were in extremis with the flu? Not only would we starve, but poor Cosmo would, too. And where would he relieve himself? On our eleventh-floor terrace? This part of the dream was such a nightmare that it woke me up.

It was five o'clock in the morning. Not surprisingly, I was so disturbed by the dream that I couldn't fall back asleep. So now I have a new worry—if I have many more dreams like that, I won't get enough sleep and I'll come down with the flu.

The Obama Bell Jar

2009-02-11T20:06:00.000-05:00

When I tuned into President Obama's first news conference on Monday night, I expected a thoughtful explication of the Democratic bailout plan, perhaps leavened with a bit of wit. I was disappointed on both counts. The President was serious, long-winded, and even patronizing, and he didn't cogently explain how the bloated bailout bill will pull the country out of the coming depression. Instead, he scolded and even lectured the press and, by extension, the rest of us.

I expected better from President Obama and I'm concerned about what his tone portends for the future. He's only been in office for a few weeks, yet the bell jar already seems to be descending. Like a delicate object displayed under a bell-shaped glass cover, where it can be seen but not touched, Obama may already be trapped in the isolation of the Presidency. Obama's message during the news conference seemed to be that we should adopt the bailout plan because he's the President and he knows best. That sounds eerily similar to our last President. Remember him? He was the "decider."

What drew me to Obama during the campaign was my conviction that here was a man who sought the views of all sides and really listened. Yet during his news conference, he denounced those who oppose the bailout package for "playing politics rather than trying to solve the problems of the American people." Is that listening? I'm worried that soon Obama will only hear the congratulations of his staff, who surely patted him on the back after the news conference and exclaimed "Great job, Mr. President."

A Bang for My Buck

2009-02-05T14:17:00.000-05:00

The other day I went to my hairdresser for a bang trim. I'm 59 years old and I still wear bangs. Bangs are cute on a three-year-old, perky on a teenager, sexy on a sultry twenty-something, but bangs at 59? Isn't there something more sophisticated I could do with my hair?

Probably. But the fact is, I like my bangs. I've had them for so long that they're who I am. When I pull my hair back in a hairband or mousse it off my face, the person who stares back at me in the mirror is someone I don't recognize, someone older, more severe, my evil twin. I feel exposed. There's something comforting about hiding behind a soft fringe of bangs.

During my early twenties, I overcame my distaste for a fully-exposed face and grew my bangs out. I felt comfortable and, at times, even pretty without bangs. But after a few years, a hairdresser persuaded me to let her cut bangs and the instant I saw them I knew I had rediscovered my true self. I've kept my bangs, more or less, ever since.

Still, I worry about what my banged-up state signifies. Am I fated to live in a perpetual limbo—years away from childhood, yet not quite a full-fledged adult? It's hard to say whether the bangs keep me feeling young or whether it's because I still feel young that I keep my bangs. But now that I'm about to turn 60, I find myself wondering, will I ever grow up?

Until my recent bang trim, I'd been once again toying with the idea of letting the bangs grow out. I hadn't cut them for several months and had even trained my hair to go back, off my face. I got somewhat used to letting my wiry eyebrows see the light of day. Sure, I looked older. Yes, those lines between my eyebrows were no longer obscured. But hey, I am older. At almost-60, isn't it okay to look old? I decided I should flaunt my age, not hide behind a youthful fringe.

But then, in a moment of weakness, after catching sight of the lines on my forehead in a harshly-lit mirror, I backed down, went to the hair salon, and undid all those months of growth. Last night, I saw some friends for the first time since the recent cut. One and all, they said how good my hair looked. That clinched it. I'm a bangs girl. At least until it's time for the next trim. By then, I may have changed my mind again.

Duck Duck Duck

2009-02-03T17:44:00.000-05:00

I'm worried about a very ugly duck. It's a Muscovy duck, one of three that live on the grounds of my Miami apartment building. In addition to being ugly, Muscovy ducks aren't too bright, and this duck is no exception. To make matters worse, the poor dumb duck has a peculiar handicap, a tangle of dirty streamers that somehow got caught in his feathers and has affected his ability to fly.

The ducks have a great setup here. A water fountain has been fitted with a plastic pipe that dispenses water at ground level, so they always have a supply of fresh drinking water. They live amidst grass, flowers, palm trees, even a tiny beach, all amounting to nothing short of duck paradise. But instead of lolling on the grass under the shade of a palm, my foolish duck and his equally foolish buddies choose to spend an inordinate amount of time in the building's parking lot. It's a busy area, with cars frequently coming and going. If a car gets too close, I've seen the two able-bodied ducks fly to safer ground. But their crippled brother can no longer fly, so I fear it's only a matter of time before he becomes pressed duck under the wheels of some hapless sedan.

Still, things could be worse. I used to worry that the disabled duck would be abandoned by his companions and that he'd slowly die of starvation or even loneliness. But I needn't have feared. The ducks have shown a remarkable loyalty to one another. They stay together. They rest together in the shade under the cars. I've grown to love the ducks, all three of them. And of course I worry every time a car turns into the parking lot.

Global Cooling

2009-01-29T14:06:00.000-05:00

I'm worried about climate change. Not the man-made warming kind, a la Al Gore. That would be too easy. That would be something we could fix if we just got our act together. No, I'm worried about something far more ominous and way beyond human control—global cooling.

Sounds strange, doesn't it? No one is talking about the coming ice age, except a few Russian scientists and a handful of others, including my husband, Eric. Eric's an amateur scientist and he's got a thing about sunspots, or the current lack of them—he's convinced that their absence may signal an impending period of cooling.

At the moment, it's not politically correct to challenge the prevailing global warming orthodoxy. After all, Al Gore won the Nobel Prize for his efforts to warn humanity about the dire consequences of warming. But, given the extreme winter weather we've been having in many parts of the northern hemisphere, this might be a good time to consider the possibility that Al is wrong and that we really should be worrying about sunspots and cooling.

Simply put, sunspots are magnetic storms on the surface of the sun. They normally occur in cycles of approximately eleven years, during which the number of sunspots increases and then decreases before beginning to increase again, signifying the start of a new cycle. But occasionally, sunspots don't increase as expected. This happened notably during a period known as the Maunder Minimum, when from 1645 to 1715, very few sunspots were observed. Not to worry you, but this period is also known as the Little Ice Age.

Back to the present—currently, we're stuck at a sunspot minimum. The last cycle ended about a year-and-a-half ago and we're still waiting for any significant increase in sunspots. How long this minimum will last is anyone's guess, but it certainly makes me wonder whether our current extra-cold winter might be due to the lack of sunspots, since low sunspot activity historically correlates with global cooling.

Although Eric is the only one I know personally who's talking about sunspots, he does have venerable company—The Old Farmer's Almanac, which has used sunspot levels as an important part of its annual forecasts since 1792, correctly predicted a “numbing” winter for 2008-2009, with below-average temperatures for at least two-thirds of the country.

For a worrier like me, this controversy represents a win/win situation, or should I say a worry/worry situation. I'll keep worrying just a little about global warming and all those poor polar bears, but at the same time, I'm bracing for the cold and seriously worrying about my future heating bills.

A Dog's Life

2008-10-02T19:55:00.008-05:00

I have a dog who chases helicopters. I suspect this behavior began because my office is on the second floor of my house and my desk is next to a big double-hung window. Cosmo likes to lie by my feet while I'm working, just under the low window sill. From that vantage point, he can only see the tops of trees, an occasional bird, and the helicopters that fly overhead. The birds are too quick and too quiet to capture his attention. Planes also fly above us but, while Cosmo can hear them, they're usually too high for him to see. However, helicopters, with their distinctive drone and low altitude, excite him every time.

When Cosmo hears a helicopter, he leaps up, all seven pounds of him, and stands on his hind legs, with his front paws on the window sill, scanning the sky for the offending aircraft, all the while growling, barking, and wagging his tail. When he finally has the helicopter in his sights, his barking increases exponentially. This continues until the helicopter leaves Cosmo's airspace—that is, until he can't see it anymore.

Of course, trapped as he is in my office, Cosmo can't actually chase the helicopter. For that, he needs to be outside. While other dogs focus on squirrels or bunnies, Cosmo is ever on the alert for an aerial opponent. As soon as he hears the telltale whine of a helicopter, he strains at his leash and searches the sky. When Cosmo was younger, he often didn't know where the noise was coming from. I would point in the direction of the helicopter and Cosmo would look at my arm or down the street, anywhere but up. Eventually, however, he got the idea. Now, if he doesn't immediately spot the helicopter on his own, he turns to me for help and his eyes follow my pointing finger up into the sky. When he at last sees the helicopter, delirium ensues. Picture, if you will, an apoplectic apricot bundle of fur, complete with furious barking, frantic running, and fierce growling.

When the helicopter eventually disappears from view, Cosmo invariably looks at me with an expression that can only be described as triumphant. And he walks with an unmistakable swagger. After all, in his mind, Cosmo hasn't been barking ineffectually at an unreachable enemy. He's vanquished the helicopter and chased it clear out of his territory. He's heard the enemy, seen it, and barked it away.

If only my life were that simple.

The Art of Crying

2008-09-27T16:05:00.017-05:00

When I learned I had breast cancer in 2003, I didn't cry. It's not that I decided not to cry. I simply didn't. Though my body thrummed with anxiety, my mind seemed detached. I remember wondering whether I felt sorry for myself. I actually pondered that as an objective question. I realized that the answer was no when, rather than asking "Why me?" I found myself asking "Why not me?" After all, I'd been fortunate to have 54 healthy years before this bad news. My eyes stayed dry.

The process of diagnosis and treatment for cancer is often filled with waiting. For me, the waiting began after a suspicious mammogram. First, I had to wait for a biopsy to be performed, then I had to wait for the pathology report. Once that confirmed I had cancer, I had to wait until I met with my breast surgeon to learn exactly what the path report meant and what treatment she recommended. After that meeting, surgery was scheduled, but not for the next day. Rather, I had to be slotted into my surgeon's busy schedule. I was "lucky" in that I only had to wait ten days. But I was dealing with cancer and I wanted the cancer out, so ten days seemed like an eternity to me.

Once I finally had the surgery, there was more waiting for the next pathology report. And so on. Very anxiety provoking. During these waiting periods, I couldn't eat. I woke up with a start each morning to find my body literally vibrating with nervous energy. But mentally, I remained detached. I focused on understanding my situation. I spent a lot of time researching every aspect of breast cancer and its treatment on the Internet. This kept me outwardly calm. I still didn't cry.

When the pathology report finally arrived, I learned that the surgical margins weren't clean. This meant that some cancer still remained in my breast, necessitating a second surgery. My surgeon was going on vacation, so the surgery couldn't be scheduled for several weeks. More waiting.

Physically, I recovered quickly from the first surgery and (outwardly, at least) resumed my normal life, which included caring for my toy poodle, Cosmo. Cosmo's vet had recommended that his teeth be cleaned, so I dutifully brought him to her office early one morning. Late that afternoon, when I picked Cosmo up, he seemed woozy from the sedation required for a canine cleaning, but otherwise okay. As I carried him out to the car, though, I noticed a swelling on one side of his mouth. On closer inspection, I could see that his entire upper lip was swollen. I immediately brought him back inside and asked what had happened. The vet seemed surprised but not terribly concerned. Probably the technician had propped his mouth open too wide during the cleaning, she speculated.

I felt terrible. Cosmo was totally dependent on me and because I'd trusted this obviously incompetent vet, he'd suffered. I quickly drove home and tried to make him as comfortable as possible. Cosmo bore his wound with stoicism. He didn't cry. I sat down on the floor next to him. By now, his lip was massively swollen, the raw skin of his inner cheek turned outward. I began to cry.

Soon I was sobbing. In the midst of my tears, I realized that I was crying not only for Cosmo, but also for myself. In my distress at Cosmo's helplessness, I had at last found an outlet for my feelings of fear and sadness about my own situation. After I'd had a good cry, I picked myself up off the floor. I knew Cosmo's lip would heal. And I'd been told I had an early stage cancer with a good prognosis. I found strength in accentuating the positive. It made my husband and sons feel better and it made me feel better, too. But the release I experienced when I finally let go and cried was profound. My mind and body felt reconnected.

My mother-in-law, Reggie, died this week. I'm saddened by her passing and I miss her already. I haven't cried yet, but I know that crying can't be forced. One of these days, something will trigger my tears. In the meantime, I'm choosing to accentuate the positive by recalling Reggie's many gifts—her free spirit, her contagious laughter, her unexpected insights. Eventually, when I least expect them, the tears will come.

A Saab Story, Part Three: Recapturing Our Lost Youth

2008-06-28T16:41:00.032-05:00

After Eric and I sold our Saab Sonett sports car in the late seventies, Eric tried to compensate for its loss—he took up flying. By the time we moved from Chicago to Boston in the summer of 1979, he had both an MBA and a pilot's license.

Eric's enthusiasm for flying caused me considerably more anxiety than his pursuit of speed on the ground ever had. Nonetheless, once in Boston, I accompanied him on excursions to the Vineyard, Bar Harbor, and other interesting locales. At first, we flew in a rented Cessna two-seater aircraft, but before long Eric teamed up with a friend and together they bought a Piper Cherokee with room for four.

While we were still in Chicago, our Mazda RX2 had died and we'd replaced it with a boaty, used Mercury Montego, which we brought with us to Boston. Eric had been hired as a consultant at Bain & Company and I planned to finish my third year of law school at Harvard. We were both thirty by then and had been married for over seven years, but we hadn't really thought much about having children. Once we decided we were ready for a family, I grew more anxious than ever about Eric's flying hobby. When a mouse got into the Cherokee and chewed up some of its wiring, even Eric acknowledged that flying could be risky.

Our son, Aaron, was born in June of 1982. By then, the plane and the Montego had been sold and we'd moved from Boston to the nearby suburb of Newton. After moving nine times in ten years, we settled down in a 40-year-old Tudor-style house on a quiet, leafy street, a block from the local elementary school. On our driveway sat a Honda Accord and a Honda Civic, which Eric used as a commuting car. I'd decided to forego a career in favor of full-time motherhood, pursuing law and other interests on a part-time basis. Our transition from free spirits to responsible parents became complete when, in 1984, we purchased a Volvo DL 240 station wagon, a tank-like vehicle whose main selling point was its stellar reputation for safety. By 1985, when our younger son, Alex, was born, the Saab Sonett, and the life it represented, seemed a distant memory.

A Mercury Sable station wagon eventually replaced the Volvo and took us through the grade school years. In 1995, it was supplanted by a Toyota Avalon, then in its first year of production. By that time, Aaron was a teenager, and the Avalon's roomy back seat was ideal for big teenage boys. While I ferried the kids around, Eric continued to use a second car for commuting. In 1990, he replaced his Civic with an Acura Legend. It was the first car since the Saab that Eric had really loved—a sleek, metallic-blue luxury sedan, with great handling. Eric drove the Legend for seven years and would probably still have it today had a patch of black ice not caused it to spin out, wrecking its under-carriage. The damage was repaired, but while the car was in the shop I persuaded Eric that an SUV was the way to go for a safer commute in wintry New England, a dubious claim, given the rollover potential of SUVs. Still, Eric agreed that an all-wheel-drive vehicle made sense. He sold the Legend and bought a two-door Ford Explorer.

As Eric's fiftieth birthday approached, I attempted to avert any chance of a mid-life crisis by encouraging him to buy a new car, something really special. Eric had long admired two Jaguars from the sixties—the S-type and the Mark 2. For the 2000 model year, Jaguar came out with a new S-type, whose design borrowed from both those earlier cars. Eric bought the Jaguar sight-unseen and took possession on his birthday, in June of 1999. The S-type fulfilled his expectations—it was a powerful car with great acceleration, but also luxurious and easy to handle. The Jaguar was hardly a sports car, but it reawakened Eric's passion for cars. At about this time, we were emerging from the fog of over-protective child-rearing. Aaron was a senior in high school and driving Eric's Explorer. Alex was a high school freshman. Eric began to fantasize about someday owning a sports car again.

He was encouraged in this line of thought by our friend, Mason, a knowledgeable car buff whom we'd known since college. One summer, Mason invited Eric up to his house in Vermont for a weekend. Little did I realize that the main event of Eric's visit would be the 2005 Saab Owners Convention at Stratton Mountain, featuring vintage Saabs of every description. Among the more behemoth models on display were a few restored Sonetts. On seeing them, Eric immediately regressed to his adolescent state—he wanted one of his own. He even phoned me from Stratton Mountain, claiming he'd purchased a Sonett on the spot. I wasn't amused until I realized he was only joking. I worried that if Eric ever really bought an old Sonett, he would be disappointed, since I believed the actual car could never live up to his mythical memories of it.

I didn't hide my concern from Eric, so he reacted the way any rational man would—he began searching in secret for a 1969 Sonett to restore. His quest continued, without my noticing, for over a year, mostly on the Internet. Since so few Sonetts were built to begin with, there were very few on the market and most of those were in bad repair. Finally, though, Eric thought he'd found the car he wanted. He decided it was time to reveal his intentions to me.

I reacted the way any rational woman would—with dismay.

"You can't recapture the past," I admonished. Eric insisted he simply loved the Sonett and relished the idea of restoring one.

"You'll take over the garage," I complained. Since we have a three-car garage, that argument didn't hold much weight.

Eventually, I was set straight by several of my girlfriends, who pointed out that boys like their toys. One of them put things in perspective—at least Eric didn't want to build an airplane, she reminded me, or ride a motorcycle (her husband had succumbed to the lure of a Harley-Davidson not long before, with near-disastrous results). I was at last convinced and gave my grudging support to Eric's project.

Eric excitedly showed me pictures of the car he'd found through his Internet search. It was located in Arizona, where it had been owned by two generations of the same family. The car looked just like our Sonett, except it was bright red rather than electric blue. The photos showed the car housed in a spotless garage, suggesting it had been well-cared-for. The current owner, Mike, was selling it because his wife was having a baby and wanted the garage space for a sensible car. Here was a woman I could relate to!

When the deal was in its final stages, Mike mentioned that the car had been in a minor rear-end collision at some point before his father purchased it. The damage had been repaired but, in the interest of full disclosure, he wanted Eric to know about it. Eric mentioned off-handedly that he'd had a similar-sounding accident with his Sonett.

"But my car was blue," Eric said.

"Oh, didn't I mention that this car used to be blue?" Mike replied. "My dad painted it red."

Eric asked Mike where his father had purchased the car. The answer—Berkeley, California, not far from where we'd last seen it at Eric's parents' home on the Stanford campus.

Shortly after this intriguing conversation, Eric was helping his mother sort through boxes of old documents as she prepared to move from the Stanford house after 47 years. During the process, he came across a copy of his original title to the Saab Sonett, VIN number included. He immediately contacted Mike, who confirmed that the VIN number of his Saab Sonett was identical. So, Eric was buying back his original car! This amazing coincidence erased even my remaining hesitation about the purchase. A short time later the car was shipped from Arizona to a convenient locale near our home, where Eric picked it up and drove it onto our driveway.

I gazed at our now-red 1969 Saab Sonett. It looked cute, smaller than I remembered, and somehow not quite ours. Perhaps it was the red paint, perhaps the intervening years, but I didn't feel much connection to this little vehicle we once again owned. A while later, back in the house, I saw the car keys sitting on a table in the foyer. I picked them up. They were old, clearly the original keys. I felt a rush of emotion. These were the same keys I had held back in the seventies, when we were young and starting our life together. These were the very same keys I had inserted into the ignition, the keys that had started not only the car, but our journey together. Memories came flooding back, along with the thrill of having somehow recaptured a little piece of our youth.

Our 1969 Saab Sonett, fully restored by Eric and repainted its original blue color.

A Saab Story, Part Two: Over the Edge

2008-06-01T06:41:00.027-05:00

Eric and I arrived in California in the summer of 1972, during a heat wave. The hills had been baked a golden brown by the unrelenting sun and it seemed impossible that it would ever rain. By the time it did, we had been hired as managers of a garden apartment complex in East Palo Alto, where we could live rent-free. We moved into a pleasant one-bedroom apartment with shag rugs and a tiny fenced-in patio. Our 1969 Saab Sonett had its own cozy carport among a row of carports at the front of the complex.

Our neighbors were an eclectic group, including Leonard, a taciturn engineer who restored antique cars; Melanie, a "masseuse" with a throaty, seductive voice; and Susan and Gowen, recent Princeton grads who became our friends. Our next door neighbor, Rita, was a down-and-out middle-aged woman who depended on her no-good boyfriend for support and listened incessantly to a record of Fats Domino singing "Blueberry Hill." Above us lived a lively couple who were into wife-swapping, as we discovered when they invited us for drinks one afternoon. We even had a famosity connection—the apartment across the garden path from us was rented by Joan Baez's cousin and personal secretary. Ms. Baez would sometimes visit with her big German shepherd. Among that varied group, our main distinction was of course our snazzy Saab Sonett.

When the rain finally arrived that fall, it came not merely as drizzle or showers, but also as impressive wind-driven downpours, veritable blizzards of rain. During one such deluge, Eric and I were driving north on the 101 Freeway. We had crossed the Golden Gate Bridge and were in the fast lane. The rain was coming down in sheets and, even with the windshield wipers going, our visibility was poor. Nevertheless, being 23 and fearless, Eric was careening along at high speed. Since the Sonett had no radio, the monotonous motion of the windshield wipers provided our sole accompaniment—left, right, left, right. We had just passed the exit for Ross, Eric's home during his third- and fourth-grade years, when the driver's-side wiper swung left and kept going over the edge of the windshield, where it dangled uselessly.

Within a nanosecond, Eric had no visibility whatsoever. The windshield wiper on the passenger side still worked, but it didn't help Eric see directly in front of the car. Frantically, he opened his window and leaned his head out. I stuck my head out the right window so I could look back at cars coming up beside us from behind and guide Eric into the slower lanes. It was a near-death experience, but not one characterized by white light and bliss. More like screaming intensity, not to mention that we almost drowned. Eventually, Eric edged the car across several lanes of traffic and onto the shoulder. There, we waited for the rain to let up, which it mercifully did after about fifteen minutes.

Back home in East Palo Alto, we made a disconcerting discovery—the part we needed to repair the wiper wasn't available. This was our first stroke of bad luck concerning Saab parts. We'd had quite a different experience during our drive west, when our alternator failed just outside Boise, Idaho. Thinking we'd be stranded for days, we had coasted downhill into town, where we learned that the only Saab dealer between Chicago and San Francisco was located right there in Boise. And he had the part we needed!

This time we weren't so lucky. The local Saab dealer informed us that not only did he not have the wiper part, but no one else in the U.S. did, either. He suggested we call Saab's U.S. corporate headquarters in Connecticut. Maybe they could order the part for us from Sweden. Coincidentally, I'd recently applied to a Master's program in anthropology at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. Eric convinced me that we should wait until I heard from Wesleyan. If I were accepted, he reasoned, we could delay contacting Saab headquarters until we actually arrived in Connecticut. Meanwhile, ever resourceful, Eric came up with a temporary fix using duct tape. By then, the worst of the rainy season was over and the tape held until the coming of spring and dry weather.

During that winter and spring, while Eric worked at home maintaining the apartment complex and writing a book about blues roots piano, I commuted in the Sonett to the Stanford Music Library, where I'd been hired to create a catalog for Stanford's Archive of Recorded Sound. I spent my days in the musty basement of the Knoll, a lovely old building that housed the Music Library. Surrounded by ancient Edison gramophones, I listened to and cataloged spoken-word recordings made at Stanford during the prior decades. They ran the gamut from lectures about Shakespeare, astrophysics, and architecture to speeches by Henry Kissinger and anti-war radical David Harris.

In mid-summer, after I was indeed accepted as one of two graduate students in Wesleyan's anthropology department, we began driving east toward Middletown, Connecticut, where Wesleyan is located. Somewhere in Wyoming's big sky country Eric's duct-tape wiper fix failed. We could see a storm coming from miles away. When it hit, the faulty wiper made a couple of left-right swipes, then headed once again over the edge. This time, fortunately, we were on an empty two-lane highway and the storm was brief. We pulled over and waited for it to stop, then continued on our way. We spent the rest of the trip praying for dry weather and pulling over when necessary. After we arrived in Middletown, we managed to persuade someone at Saab's corporate headquarters to order the correct part for us. Once it arrived and was installed, we felt ready for whatever Connecticut weather might deliver—rain, snow, or ice. What we weren't prepared for, though, was the coming oil crisis.

Following the Yom Kippur War in October 1973, during my first semester at Wesleyan, OPEC declared an oil embargo against the U.S. and other countries that supported Israel. By this time, Eric had found a job in West Hartford, as assistant managing editor of Shuttle Spindle & Dyepot, a weaving magazine. The commute was about 45 minutes each way, not a big deal until the gas crisis hit. When it did, the Sonett proved its worth. With its extremely light-weight fiberglass body, it got about 40 miles per gallon. Even with that amazing mileage, Eric would still have found it hard to buy sufficient gas for his daily commute were it not for the ethnic factor—with his dark hair and Mediterranean complexion, Eric could pass for any one of a number of ethnic groups. The local gas station happened to be run by an Italian who naturally assumed that Eric was a paesano. He told Eric not to worry—there would always be enough gas for him to get to work. Happily, this proved to be true.

After our year in Connecticut, we drove back to Northern California. Although I had planned to follow up my classwork with fieldwork in San Francisco, my anthropological fervor decreased the further away I got from Wesleyan. So, instead of studying the ethnography of language among Portuguese immigrants, I opted for a job as an assistant editor at Guitar Player Magazine. Eric's music background, coupled with his publishing experience at the weaving magazine, led to his hiring by Guitar Player's publisher to develop a book and record division, Guitar Player Productions. We settled in Los Gatos, about 25 miles south of Palo Alto.

Although I felt comfortable driving the Sonett around town, I had managed to avoid driving it on the highway ever since my traumatic downhill experience with the freewheeling clutch two years earlier (see Part One). I still thought the Saab was a cool car and I enjoyed being seen in it, but the fact that I was afraid to take it on the highway served as a constant reminder of my driving inadequacy, so it hadn't exactly enhanced my self-image. All that changed, however, when I heard about the San Andreas Health Center in Palo Alto. The San Andreas center was a holistic health mecca which offered biofeedback, Rolfing, encounter groups, the Feldenkreis Method, and numerous other non-traditional medical approaches. In my quest for self-realization, I was dying to try them all. But I had to get there first. Eric was less than enthusiastic about alternative medicine, so I knew I was on my own.

One evening, there was a lecture on full-spectrum light, which I really wanted to attend. Calming myself with my Transcendental Meditation mantra, I got into the Sonett, made my way to the freeway, and hit the accelerator. The freedom was glorious! It turned out I loved driving fast in the Sonett. And the Health Center was fantastic. I soon started attending biofeedback sessions and, in early 1976, I persuaded Eric to move to Palo Alto. By this time, I had left Guitar Player and, while working as a freelance editor, I began volunteering at the health center. Eric eventually left Guitar Player, too, and joined Inner City Records, a small independent record company.

It was a wonderful existence, but we felt we hadn't quite grown up. In the fall of 1976, Eric decided to apply to business school and, not to be outdone, I applied to law school. We were both accepted at the University of Chicago and decided to return to a colder clime. We agreed that the Sonett wouldn't be the right car for the frigid and gritty south side of Chicago. Eric's dad had long admired the car, so we gave it to him, thinking we might reclaim it later. In the meantime, we bought a more practical but still offbeat vehicle, a used, orange Mazda RX2, with a rotary engine. Soon after we arrived in Chicago, my father-in-law realized he simply didn't have room in his driveway to keep the Sonett. After some soul-searching, we told him to sell it. Thus, a powerful symbol of our carefree youth vanished from our lives. Or so we thought.

A Saab Story, Part One: Into the Wild Blue Yonder

2008-04-29T13:15:00.012-05:00

Once upon a time, my husband, Eric, owned an electric-blue sports car called a Saab Sonett. It was a rare car, one of only 640 built in 1969, his model year. The car was unusual in other ways as well. Its body was made of fiberglass and it had something called a freewheeling clutch, which sounded alluring until I tried using it while descending from a mountain pass in the Sierras.

When I first dated Eric, in the winter of 1969, the Sonett had just been shipped to him from Sweden. On our first date, we drove to a movie theater on Route 9 in Amherst, Massachusetts, where we saw 2001: A Space Odyssey. With the Sonett's aerodynamic design and spaceship-like interior, it was the perfect vehicle to transport us into the futuristic world of HAL. Afterward, as Eric explained the meaning of the film to me, I marveled that I'd found a guy with brains as well as a snazzy car. Despite Eric's attractions, though, I broke up with him the following summer. At that stage of my life, I was too masochistic to settle for such a great guy.

I didn't encounter the Sonett again until January, 1972, during a visit to Amherst College. Eric, having taken a semester off, had just finished his senior year. I had recently gotten back in touch with him. I now regretted our earlier breakup and was trying to figure out how to rekindle the romance.

Enter Wendy Wasserstein. The future playwright and I had graduated the prior spring, she from Mt. Holyoke College, I from Smith, but we had both spent our junior year at Amherst, where we'd become friends. After graduation, we both moved to New York City and saw one another occasionally. The trip up to Amherst was her idea. A friend of ours was giving a French horn recital at the college and Wendy wanted to attend. She asked if I'd like to come along. This gave me the perfect excuse to visit Eric and crash on his couch.

Wendy and I arrived by bus on a bitterly cold evening. Icy snow coated everything and crunched underfoot. Wendy soon departed with our horn-player friend. After they left, I stood shivering outside the fraternity house where the bus had let me off, waiting for Eric. Five minutes passed. Ten. Eric's low-slung car finally roared around the corner and up to where I stood. Eric leaned over to open the door for me. He didn't look happy. Uh oh, I thought, this isn't starting well.

"Sorry, I'm late," he said. "I had a little accident." It turned out that, in his haste to meet me on time, he had backed the Sonett into his friend Rick's VW bug, barely denting Rick's car, but damaging the Sonnet's fiberglass rear end. On impact, fiberglass doesn't dent, but instead fractures. So, Eric's car now had a jagged scar. At the time, I worried that the mishap would spoil our weekend together. It didn't occur to me that Eric's momentary loss of motor control might have been due to his nervousness about seeing me.

Despite starting with such an unfortunate bang, the weekend went well. Eric played hard to get, which only heightened my interest. While I attended the French horn recital with Wendy, Eric stayed behind at the Hadley farmhouse he rented with friends, reading Plato, or so he claimed. When I returned, I found him in bed with The Republic, whereupon I persuaded him to abandon metaphysics for the purely physical. This seemed to help him transcend the trauma of the car mishap. In any event, by summer we were married and heading west to California in our blue Saab Sonett.

Fortunately, we had few possessions, so we were able to cram them all into the Sonett's hatchback. Included was a tent, which we used as we car-camped our way from Massachusetts to California. During our trip, Eric never tired of extolling the car's many virtues—its innovative roll bar, which he assured me would protect us even in the event of a head-on collision with a Mack truck; a windshield designed so that snow and even rain would glide right off, providing clear visibility without the use of wipers; a ventilation system that circulated fresh air, creating a delightfully cool and comfortable environment despite the lack of air conditioning; and, finally, that fantastic freewheeling clutch, which enabled the car to revert to neutral when the driver's foot was removed from the gas pedal, eliminating the normal braking action of the clutch and resulting in an extraordinary sense of freedom.

Thankfully, we didn't encounter a Mack truck along the way, so we were unable to test out the roll bar's effectiveness. As for the car's other supposed attributes, Eric's love for his Sonett was blind, or at least near-sighted. Regarding the vaunted windshield, for example, during the first few moments of a rain shower, the windshield did remain notably clear. However, any significant rain quickly made visibility impossible. To my dismay, though, Eric usually insisted that he could see just fine and often delayed activating the wipers until the rain was coming down in sheets. On the plus side, the windshield wipers functioned just fine once turned on, at least until a fateful day in Marin County (more on that in Part Two).

As for the ventilation system, a day traversing the Nevada desert wilted even Eric's conviction that the Saab's fresh-air flow would keep us cool no matter what. With the windows open and bugs of unusual size splatting against our windshield, we sweated our way through Nevada and began climbing the Sierras. By then, though, I had something else to focus on, for it was in the Sierras that I experienced the full impact of the much-touted freewheeling clutch.

Eric had done most of the driving during our cross-country trip. To be honest, he'd done virtually all of it. Back in Massachusetts, he'd taught me to drive the Sonett's manual shift and I'd taken a spin or two around the block, but I'd never driven on a highway, let alone on steep terrain. Now, he encouraged me to get behind the wheel. We were newlyweds and his faith in my driving ability touched me, so I complied, though not without some trepidation. Once in the driver's seat, I managed to put the car in gear and merge onto the freeway without killing us. We continued climbing, heading toward the pass. I began to relax. This was easy. I'd always been a good driver, after all, even an aggressive one. As we arrived at the summit, I stepped on the gas and the car zoomed downhill, picking up speed until we were approaching 85 miles per hour. I lifted my foot off the gas pedal. Although Eric had explained the freewheeling concept, I instinctively expected the car to slow down due to the braking action of the clutch. Instead, we hurtled down the highway at breakneck speed. What Eric experienced as extraordinary freedom felt like a total loss of control to me. I applied the brake pretty much all the way down from the summit into the San Joaquin Valley, until I finally found a place to pull over and hand the keys to Eric. I didn't drive the Sonett on the freeway again for the next two years.

Despite its quirks, though, I grew to love the Sonett. It had speed and maneuverability. Its black seats, though vinyl rather than leather, were sporty and comfortable. The car featured three-point seatbelts, which were far safer than the lap belts then standard in American cars. It had a simple, elegant dashboard and a powerful engine for its size, which gave it tremendous acceleration. It was even possible to switch that challenging clutch into regular mode rather than using freewheeling, though once I got used to freewheeling, I actually came to like it. Perhaps most important, the Sonett was a great-looking piece of machinery, a really cool car. We drew stares of appreciation wherever we went. In it, I felt instantly transformed from a staid, uptight kind of girl to the hip, laid-back woman I'd always wanted to be. By marrying Eric, I'd gained not only a husband, but a car and the image that went along with it. It remained to be seen if I could live up to that image.

Books & Books & NASCAR, Too

2008-04-04T08:02:00.011-05:00

It's not an exaggeration to say that my husband, Eric, and I moved to Miami because of a bookstore. Once we discovered Books & Books in Coral Gables, it was only a matter of time before we decided to decamp from Massachusetts to Florida for the winter. When we began looking for real estate in earnest, we narrowed our search to the Coconut Grove neighborhood of Miami, only a ten-minute drive from Coral Gables and the bookstore of our dreams.

We had already been drawn to the area because our son, Aaron, spent his college years at the University of Miami, in Coral Gables. Although my parents had lived for over twenty years in Boca Raton, only an hour north of Miami, during our visits there we had rarely ventured to Miami. We thought of it as a high-crime city without much to offer culturally. I did, however, have fond memories of Coral Gables, having spent an idyllic week there in 1969, visiting my college roommate. Her parents' glamorous home featured a "Florida room," a sun-drenched enclosed patio filled with potted palms and other exotic flora, where we dawdled over breakfast before heading to the country club to swim and sunbathe the days away.

Eric and I had been yearning for a respite from New England winters, but we could never picture ourselves living in Boca, with its early-bird specials, homogeneous (read old) population, and its suburban feel, strip malls and all. When we visited Aaron, though, we found Miami to be a city transformed from its gritty past, boasting a dazzling skyline, almost blindingly white compared to the dark brick and stone of Boston. And then there was South Beach, its charming art deco architecture awash in pastels, and Coral Gables, as lovely as ever, with its Spanish tiled roofs and lush foliage. We promised ourselves that in the fall of 2003, after our younger son, Alex, had left for college, we'd spend some time in the Miami area and check out the real estate. We still weren't sure we could actually live there, though. With Miami's reputation for glitz, we wondered if it would suit our more literary tastes.

In November of that year, we flew down to Miami and started looking at apartments. In the evenings, we checked out the vast array of local restaurants. One night, we chose Cafe Abbracci in downtown Coral Gables. We found a parking space about a block away. As we got out of our car, Eric said, "Look. A bookstore." The sign read "Books & Books" and the store appeared to be arranged around an attractive open courtyard. We were already late for our reservation, so we decided to see whether they would still be open when we were through with dinner. To our astonishment, the sales clerk said they closed at the late hour of 11 pm. We surmised that some people in the neighborhood must care about books to justify such long hours.

After a delicious meal at Abbracci, we hightailed it back to Books & Books, which exceeded our expectations. The courtyard was still lively at 8:30 pm, its tables filled with people speaking English and Spanish, enjoying dishes prepared at a small cafe located inside the bookstore. We entered the store through a doorway off the right side of the courtyard. We could see a book group in progress at a table in a small room adjacent to the paperback book area. On the other side of the courtyard, we found not only hardbacks, but a reading in progress in a large back room which housed an impressive-looking collection of art books. From a listing on the bulletin board, we could see that such readings were frequent. Virtually everyday, sometimes twice a day, authors came to talk about their books. We were sold—any community that supported a bookstore as vibrant as this one was a place we could feel at home.

Our faith was not misplaced. Five years later, Books & Books is still one of our favorite spots. We've attended book groups that meet regularly at the store and we've heard authors as varied as Madeleine Albright, Jared Diamond, Dave Barry, Andrea Mitchell, Carl Hiaasen, and Angelo Dundee. These author appearances are not mere book signings. They're full-blown lectures, during which the author talks about the subject of his or her book, perhaps reads a bit from it, and then takes questions. The Dundee event was preceded by a boxing exhibition in the courtyard. Mr. Dundee turned out to be a delightful gentleman, who shared many wonderful anecdotes about his years as Muhammad Ali's trainer. After Mr. Dundee's talk, we were treated to a few words by the "Fight Doctor," Ferdie Pacheco, who became so emotional about appearing with his old friend that he actually cried.

Not long ago, NPR's Scott Simon came by to discuss his recently-published novel, Windy City, and next week, Jhumpa Lahiri will be visiting the bookstore to talk about her new book, Unaccustomed Earth. Some events are held at local churches, synagogues, and hotel ballrooms, to accommodate the enormous crowds well-known authors draw. Dave Barry rated the ballroom at the Biltmore Hotel and Madeleine Albright filled Temple Judea, which seats a thousand.

A recent Books & Books highlight was a performance by the Florida Grand Opera Young Artists, an event which was held at the bookstore. The performers sang selections from The Pearl Fishers, by Georges Bizet. Maestro Stewart Robertson, the Grand Opera's musical director, provided fascinating commentary about Bizet and his work. When the artists began to sing, the power of their voices in that intimate setting was simply breathtaking. Eric and I saw the entire opera a short time afterward at Miami's spectacular new Ziff Ballet Opera House. While I enjoyed the full production, I felt I had really understood the appeal of opera for the first time when I heard the music performed up close and personal at Books & Books.

Eric and I have learned it can be rewarding to attend events featuring authors whose subjects may not be of particular interest to us. A few weeks ago, we decided to take a chance on Liz Clarke, who was speaking about her new book: One Helluva Ride: How NASCAR Swept the Nation. At best, I had an anthropologist's interest in what makes NASCAR fans tick. I expected Ms. Clarke to be a brassy, hard-edged type, with maybe with a tattoo or two. Instead, I encountered a refined, articulate woman, a sportswriter at the Washington Post and a graduate of Barnard, who lyrically described the personalities of the drivers and the dedication of their fans. Eric and I were so inspired, we bought the book. We even persuaded some friends to drive down to Homestead-Miami Raceway the other day to watch some qualifying heats. Unfortunately, NASCAR wasn't in town, so we were forced to settle for Formula One and Grand Am heats this time. But NASCAR, here we come!

All of this cornucopia of book-related activity owes its existence to one man, Mitchell Kaplan. In addition to starting Books & Books, which now has branches in Bal Harbor, Miami Beach, and the Cayman Islands, Mr. Kaplan also co-founded the Miami Book Fair International, an event that attracts book aficionados and speakers from all over the country. He provides living proof that a single individual can make a huge difference in the cultural life of a community. In fact, I can't think of a better motivation to write a book than the opportunity to talk about it at Books & Books.

Ode to Miami

2007-06-27T07:46:00.000-05:00

Ah, Miami in summer. Warm, tropical breezes, mosquitoes buzzing, frigate birds wafting gracefully on air currents, swarms of gnats, mojitos under the stars. Did I mention mosquitoes?

Miami in summer is paradise, almost. The hot, humid air is cleansed daily by rains that arrive in the late afternoon. The showers cool things off and make for delightful evenings. And lots of mosquitoes. Plus quite a few gnats. Did I mention ants?

For a northerner like me, there's something wonderfully predictable about Miami's summer weather pattern, so unlike Boston's ever-changing climate. After the cooling rains, as the sun sets, there couldn't be a more perfect place than Miami for eating dinner al fresco. But remember to wear long pants, long sleeves, and socks. Probably a good idea to bring along bug spray, too.

Even in the heat, South Beach beckons. So what if the sun on the sand glares so brightly I feel like I'm going snow blind? No bugs on the beach. BIG advantage. And the water is nice and warm. Especially if you like hot baths. Seriously, it's gorgeous. And that lightheaded feeling just before heat exhaustion sets in is kind of special. I haven't felt so spacey since the Woodstock era.

One evening, my husband, Eric, and I decide to try a hot (no pun intended) new restaurant in Miami's Design District. Our son, Aaron, a University of Miami grad, is visiting and we want to show him how hip we've become since we began spending time in Miami. We arrive at Michael's Genuine Food & Drink just as the rain is letting up, a few minutes early for our reservation. All the tables inside are occupied. But outside the air smells fresh and the wood tables under black umbrellas look inviting, so we decide to go for it.

My black mesh chair is comfortable and only a little wet. It's still drizzling lightly but the umbrella protects us, for the most part. Aaron fits right into the scene, with his tee shirt, shorts, and flip flops. I feel edgy in my fitted black tee with the word "courage" lettered in gold across the front. I have on capris and a cute pair of sandals. Eric is sensibly dressed in long pants and socks.

Maybe it's the cosmo that dulls my senses, maybe the fabulous salmon dish, or perhaps just the heady feeling of being in trendy Miami. I don't really notice anything until, just as we're finishing our main course, Aaron complains he's being bitten. Really? In the middle of the Design District? I realize I'm itching a bit around the ankles myself. Eric claims to be fine. Nevertheless, we decide to skip dessert and ask for our check. Aaron insists we stop at Walgreen's for some Benadryl. Still, I refuse to be concerned. Even when I see the massive swelling on my wrist and the nest of bites under my arm. Not to mention the numerous welts around my ankles. After all, that West Nile Virus thing is way overblown, isn't it?

Ah, Miami in summer. The perfect place to be. Especially if you love mosquitoes.

Riding the LIRR

2007-06-16T15:52:00.000-05:00

During a recent trip to Manhattan, I took a taxi from my hotel in the trendy Meatpacking District to Penn Station. I was planning to ride the Long Island Railroad to my old hometown, Rockville Centre. It was pouring and I appreciated the luxury of hopping a cab right outside my hotel door.

Thirty-five years ago, the last time I traveled on the Long Island Railroad, I couldn't afford a taxi. I was working as a file clerk at Columbia University and earning the grand sum of five thousand dollars a year. Back then, I lived not far from my hotel's locale, on 7th Avenue and 14th Street, and Columbia was a straight shot uptown on the IRT subway, just outside my apartment door. But on weekends, I frequently took the LIRR out to Rockville Centre to get away from the city and visit my parents and sister, who still lived there. I had no idea at the time that in less than a year they'd be moving to Illinois and I'd be married and living in California.

The cabby let me off at the 8th Avenue entrance to Penn Station. I felt sure that as soon as I walked inside, I'd easily find my way onto the train and back into my past. My high school friend, Anthea, was visiting her family in Rockville Centre and we'd agreed to meet there. She said she'd pick me up at the Rockville Centre depot and we'd take a trip down memory lane, driving by my old house on Dorchester Road, past South Side High School, the Fantasy Theatre, and all our other haunts.

When I entered Penn Station, I was bombarded by signs for Amtrak, New Jersey Transit, various subway lines, Hudson Books, sushi, deli, even Starbucks. Nothing looked familiar, but what I did recognize was the sharp, bitter smell of the underground tunnels, that universe of train and subway tracks snaking under Manhattan. To me, it was a sweet scent, reminding me of childhood, of holding tight to my father's hand when he took me with him to spend a day in his office downtown, or later, when I was in high school, riding the train and subway to Greenwich Village on weekends in search of Fred Braun shoes and coffee at the Cafe Wha.

Eventually, I found signs for the LIRR and presently arrived at the ticket/information area. Automatic kiosks had replaced ticket sellers in glass-enclosed booths and the space seemed smaller, but the dirty white tiled walls were the same and the benches in the waiting room looked as if they hadn't been replaced since the days I last sat on them. I bought a round trip ticket and headed down to Track 19. I wasn't alone. Although it was noon on a workday, people hurried alongside me, intent on reaching a particular car. In New York, even non-rush hour was crowded.

The old, dark railroad cars, with stuck windows and no air conditioning, had been replaced by silver models. The air was cool as I stepped inside and the leatherette seats were pale gray and blue, instead of the ancient cracked black leather. As I child, I loved the old convertible bench seats, whose direction could be reversed with a huge heave of their brass handles. Commuters would move the seats so one bench faced another, perfect for a daily bridge game or arguing about baseball. Now most of the seats faced in one direction or the other. But in each car, there were a couple of seats facing one another, a nice vestige of the old cars. Since I was traveling alone, I chose what I thought was a regular forward-facing seat, only to find myself facing backward when the train started. I hadn't remembered which way led out of the station toward Long Island.

Memories flooded back, though, when the train started up and the conductor entered the car, shouting "Tickets!". Much as I recalled, he wore a uniform of dark blue pants and light blue shirt, complete with a hard round hat, and he carried a hole puncher, just like in the old days. After he punched my ticket, he inserted it in a little slot on the back of the seat in front of me. Again, a carryover from the old-fashioned cars. But most evocative of all was the conductor's intonation of the train stops—This is the Babylon line, stopping at Woodside, Jamaica, Lynbrook, Rockville Centre . . . Massapequa, Massapequa Park—in a sing-song cadence that's part of my hardwiring. By the time the train reached Rockville Centre, I had fully arrived, almost as if I'd never left. And of course, as I stepped off the train, the rain stopped.

Miss Cobb's Bookstore

2007-06-06T22:32:00.000-05:00

In the fall of 1976, I had just quit an editing job and was busy applying to law school. I needed some kind of work to tide me over until the following fall. I'd always thought it would be fun to work at a bookstore and I knew the perfect place—the Shirley Cobb Bookstore in Palo Alto, California, where I was already a regular customer. Shirley Cobb still owned the store. She was none other than the daughter of Ty Cobb, the legendary baseball player.

Her bookstore was located on University Avenue, Palo Alto's main street. In those pre-Silicone Valley days, Palo Alto was a funky college town. Just down the road from Stanford, it boasted a holistic health center, a health food restaurant, and several movie theaters, including The Festival Cinema, which showed vintage films, and the Varsity Cinema, where Bunuel and Kirosawa were among the featured directors. Shirley Cobb’s was right next door to the Varsity. On the bookstore’s other side, Swenson's Ice Cream parlor had recently opened, featuring enormous helpings—ice cream cones were measured by the pound there rather than the scoop.

Across the street was Celia's, my favorite Mexican restaurant, and Swain's Music, where my husband, who grew up nearby, had purchased his first sheet music. There was also a sewing store in the neighborhood, something of an anachronism even back then. It carried Elna sewing machines from Sweden, along with American Singers. I know that because I had actually purchased an Elna there myself, with the old-fashioned idea that all wives should (and could) learn how to sew.

Shirley Cobb’s was something of an anachronism itself—it sold only hardcover books. They were arranged along the walls of a tall, narrow room, about thirty feet wide and two stories high, as well as on freestanding shelves running down the center of the store. It didn't seem like a great place to be in the event of an earthquake, given the possibility of all those books crashing down in that small space. I credited myself with living dangerously just by being there.

The room was quite deep, about fifty feet. Suspended over its back half was a mezzanine where one of the employees did the bookkeeping at an ornate dark-stained oak table. Behind the main room was a smaller one. There, employees wrapped books, both as gifts and for shipping. Also in the back room, at a small table, book reps met with the manager, Bern Ann.

In addition to selling only hardbacks, Shirley Cobb’s had another peculiarity—it employed only women. Shirley Cobb herself was by then elderly and only rarely came to the store, but she had created the women-only policy. Moreover, she required that her employees wear skirts, an almost unheard of rule anywhere, let alone in laid-back California after the cultural revolution. Miss Cobb also mandated that employees greet each customer and offer assistance, a highly unusual practice for a bookstore, where people are generally left to browse on their own.

Having been apprised of these rules when hired by Bern Ann, I arrived for my first day of work wearing my only skirt. I was introduced to Janice, who was about my age and very pretty, with curly blond hair. Rhoda, short, brunette, and closer to my mother's age, told me about the biggest job perk—we were allowed to borrow books and read them at home. Despite the skirt requirement, this seemed like a job I could enjoy.

I immediately liked Janice and felt comfortable asking her help, which I often needed. I'd been an English major in college and thought I knew something about books, but found myself feeling clueless when customers asked me to recommend a mystery, or a biography, or perhaps a dessert cookbook. I turned to Janice for suggestions and also for help with more mundane tasks, like ringing up sales or taking orders.

While many customers came to Shirley Cobb's because they counted on a knowledgeable staff, some didn't appreciate our offers of help. After I'd worked at the store for a while, I could usually tell who wanted help and who didn't and vary my greeting accordingly, telling people who looked wary of me to “let me know if you need any help.”

Wrapping books provided a welcome break from all that helpfulness. There were almost always books to be wrapped and shipped, since Shirley Cobb’s received orders from all over the world and had regular customers from as far away as Australia. Book wrapping provided unexpected satisfaction for a perfectionist like me. With their solid rectangular shapes, books were easy to wrap perfectly in our signature green and white striped paper. Wrapping books was the kind of mindless work that freed my mind for daydreaming, conversation, or eavesdropping. Sometimes I'd listen in on a session between Bern Ann and a book representative. The rep (they were always men) would pitch book after book, and Bern Ann, invariably polite but no pushover, chose with a clear sense of her customers' tastes.

I was in the back room wrapping books the first time Miss Cobb came to the store. Dressed in a skirt and sensible shoes, she'd driven down with a female companion from her home in Portola Valley. She had a flinty manner, a deep voice, short pale hair, and a weathered, freckled face. She barely glanced in my direction, instead peppering Bern Ann with sharp questions about book orders and sales. She had a powerful presence, even in old age. Perhaps the mystique of being Ty Cobb's daughter contributed to that aura.

Though Miss Cobb was no longer actively involved in running the business, she'd found a marvelous successor in Bern Ann. Plain in appearance, with a long narrow face and prominent nose, Bern Ann favored straight cotton skirts and never wore makeup. Though often brusque, I soon realized her demeanor hid a kind heart. She was single and, as far as I could tell, the bookstore was her life. While she never expected such devotion from her employees, her dedication did affect the rest of us.

After I'd worked at the store for several weeks, I answered the phone one Friday afternoon. It was the New York Times calling. It was then I learned that Shirley Cobb's was one of a handful of bookstores across the country whose weekly book sales were used to compile the Times Bestseller List. Eventually, I participated in tabulating our list of the top fiction and non-fiction bestsellers (all hardcover, of course) and sometimes I handled the weekly call from the Times. Our contribution to the list made us all feel at the center of the book world far from our California outpost.

During my off hours, I hunkered down with such volumes as The Thorn Birds, The Coming Ice Age, and The Vegetarian Epicure, as well as more literary fare. Our customers ran the gamut from Stanford professors to suburban housewives to aging hippies. We had one regular visitor who frightened me at first, a vacant-looking man in a moth-eaten crewneck sweater. He browsed incessantly but never purchased anything. I was afraid to ask if he needed help, lest he fixate on me in some threatening way. But I noticed that Bern Ann always greeted him with a smile and left him alone. I followed her example, and once I got over my anxiety, realized that Shirley Cobb's provided a safe haven for him, a place where he could hang out undisturbed for a little while each day.

Anne was a part-time employee. Tall and athletic, with short blond hair, she breezed in three times a week like the scent of eucalyptus. She had three teenage sons and a wood-paneled station wagon and was accomplished in the domestic arts—gardening, cooking, sewing. I eventually sold her my Elna sewing machine, having melted my first sewing attempt, a polyester dress, with my iron. Anne was good at taking charge and had become Bern Ann's second-in-command, giving Bern Ann the chance for an occasional day off.

During my first few months at Shirley Cobb’s, I kept my law school plans secret, but this became increasing uncomfortable as my attachment to the people at the store grew. Finally, I confided to Janice, who suggested that I wait until I had definite news before telling Bern Ann.

By mid-spring, I had decided on the University of Chicago, which meant moving as well as leaving Shirley Cobb's. I was in for quite a surprise when I finally got up the courage to tell Bern Ann—she revealed that she herself had gone to law school back in the Fifties. She'd never told anyone at the bookstore, not even those who’d worked there for years.

It turned out that Bern Ann had been one of only two women in her class at Stanford Law School. After one year, she had quit. It had been too difficult, she said—not the academics, but the treatment from male students and professors. I no longer faced the same obstacles. Fully thirty percent of the students in my law school class would be women. Still, I regarded Bern Ann as a tough, confident woman, the type who would thrive in challenging circumstances. If she couldn’t hack it, what was in store for me?

As it turned out, much the same fate—sheer stubborness made me persevere through graduation and admission to the bar, but I never practiced law. Unlike Bern Ann, I wasn’t worn down by male chauvinism; I’d simply chosen the wrong profession. I sometimes wished I’d saved myself a lot of trouble and stayed right where I was, in the hospitable world of the bookstore. Sadly, that wouldn't have been possible for long. A few years after I departed for Chicago, Miss Cobb died. Not long after that, the Shirley Cobb Bookstore closed. But while it survived, it was a haven for book lovers and an oasis of civility. Perhaps that was Miss Cobb's antidote to her father's brilliant but brutal career.

The Dream Engine Remembered

2007-04-18T22:40:00.001-05:00

One evening during the spring of 1969, my boyfriend, Eric, picked me up at Smith College and we drove over to Amherst. He wanted me to see a student production, a musical that had been written and scored by his friend, Jim Steinman, who also had the starring role. I vaguely knew Steinman, as everyone called him. I'd seen him at fraternity parties, sitting in a corner plunking the keys on an old upright piano. With long black hair and a closed-lip smile, he acted awkward and shy around me and other women. His friends seemed to expect great things of him.

The musical, Eric told me, was called The Dream Engine. The sold-out performance had already started, but he thought we might manage to get standing room in the back of the theater and at least see the second act. I would find the show pretty shocking, he warned me, along the lines of Hair. Think full-frontal nudity. I felt a shiver of excitement. I would be part of a genuine happening.

No one paid any attention to us as we entered the theater. We stood just behind the back row of the orchestra. The music was hard rock, melodic and catchy. And the actors on stage were naked. I had no idea what the plot might be, I only knew that suddenly the entire cast was coming off the stage, down the aisles, dancing between the seats, even on seat-backs, giving everyone an eyeful, gyrating to this amazing, pounding music. I was dazzled, convinced that I was in the presence of a creative genius.

Theatrical impresario Joseph Papp thought so, too. He optioned The Dream Engine, intending to put it on at New York's Public Theater. The following fall, Steinman asked Eric to play keyboards in the stage band. By then, Eric and I had broken up, at least for the time being. Eric, who was then a junior at Amherst, took the spring semester off and moved to Stamford, Connecticut, where he shared a house with other band members. Rehearsals began. Steinman proved difficult for Papp to work with, though, and after numerous arguments over creative control, the project was shelved.

But the music for The Dream Engine didn't disappear forever. By the time it re-emerged, in 1977, Eric and I had gotten back together, married, and moved to California, then relocated to Chicago for graduate school. Eric, in his first year of an MBA program at the University of Chicago, thought he might want to work in the record industry, although he found himself increasingly drawn to the new field of strategy consulting. I was almost through my first year of law school at the U. of C. and didn't know what the hell I was doing there. I'd applied to law school in a fit of feminist defiance—if Eric was going to business school, then I'd damn well attend law school! For me, as it turned out, trying to master contracts and civil procedure was like trying to fit a round peg into a very square hole.

As final exams approached, I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, vacillating between periods of feverish study and complete collapse, during which I'd lie on the living room couch in a state of total exhaustion. Right at this juncture, a college friend told us that Steinman had come out with an album, Bat Out of Hell, featuring Meatloaf, an enormous and enormously talented recording artist. We immediately went and bought it.

Virtually every cut on the album, we soon realized, was inspired by The Dream Engine music. I couldn't get enough of it. From then on, I spent my sessions on the couch listening endlessly to "Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad," "Heaven Can Wait," and all the other overwrought songs. I loved them. Steinman, like me, had grown up on Long Island, and the steamy lyrics about beaches and cars reminded me of my own Saturday nights as a teenager when I'd been "All Revved Up With No Place to Go." The music evoked nostalgia for my college years as well, when I'd felt strong, beautiful, and on my way to doing great things. Though still collapsed on the couch, I now luxuriated in my depression.

Somehow, the music helped me plow through exams. I even worked at a downtown law firm that summer, the round peg of my being only slightly whittled down and re-shaped by the experience. Though I finished law school, I eventually abandoned law for more fulfilling, if not greater, things. But even now, thirty years later, when I listen to Bat Out of Hell, I'm back there on the couch, the musty smell of law books mixing with the soft air of a melancholy Chicago spring.

My Vicarious Trip to Poland

2007-04-07T16:23:00.000-05:00

When my 21-year-old son, Alex, told me he hoped to spend his spring break in Poland, I immediately felt squeamish. I knew full well why such a trip interested him. He was in the midst of writing his senior thesis play about the Lodz Ghetto and wanted to see it firsthand. But for me, the idea of such a journey conjured up frightening images—bleak Soviet-style architecture under gray skies, a plodding, unfriendly populace who resented American wealth and power, rabid anti-Semites just waiting to pounce on a nice Jewish boy like Alex.

"Why not Cancun?" I said, in a feeble attempt to make light of my concerns. Alex didn't bother to answer, instead offering the merest smile.

"I'm free that week," I ventured, taking another tack. "I could go with you."

Alex acknowledged that gambit with a baleful look before he replied, "I really want to do this trip on my own, Mom."

Though fearful, I admired Alex for his willingness to venture on his own to a such a foreign place. We agreed the trip would make a nice graduation gift, so I offered to let my travel agent handle the arrangements. To my relief, Alex acquiesced and the planning began. Nancy, though a first-class travel agent, didn't really know anything about Poland, let alone Lodz. She'd sent "a few people" to Warsaw, but no one further afield. She said she'd make some calls and get back to me.

While I waited to hear from her, I tried to reassure myself that the trip really was a good idea. After all, I told myself, this was 2007, not 1939. Poland was now part of the European Union. How backward could it be? It was a democracy now, I recalled, and one of the only countries that had actually supported the U.S. decision to go to war in Iraq. In retrospect, a big mistake, but given that Poland had even sent some troops to Iraq, how anti-American could the Polish people be?

I was in the midst of this pep talk to myself when Nancy called back. She'd arranged hotels in Warsaw, Lodz, and Krakow, which she promised were well-located (code for safe), decent, and surprisingly inexpensive. So at least Poland would be a bargain. She also had set up tours for Alex in Warsaw and Lodz, plus a driver to take him from Krakow to Auschwitz, which he was determined to visit.

So there it was, we had a plan. Nancy emailed Alex and me the tentative itinerary. As soon as we okayed the schedule, which included train transfers from Warsaw to Lodz and then from Lodz to Krakow via Warsaw, Nancy would use my credit card to reserve everything.

Only the train connections gave me pause. The itinerary called for Alex to take a train from Lodz which would arrive in Warsaw in the late afternoon. He would have only thirty-five minutes from his scheduled arrival in Warsaw to make the connection to another train leaving Warsaw for Krakow. This seemed like precious little time between trains in a country I still pictured as hopelessly retrograde. If the Italians couldn't get their trains to run on time (a fact which I knew from unfortunate personal experience), how could I possibly expect Polish trains to function at all?

I allowed my imagination to run riot. If Alex missed the train to Krakow, he would be forced to take a later train, which would get him to the Krakow railroad station in the middle of the night, rather than the civilized eight pm arrival anticipated by the itinerary. And everyone knows that railroad stations are dangerous places. If my daytime visions of Poland were bad, my late-night fantasies were a thousand times worse. And what if there were no later train? Then Alex would have to wait until morning, meaning he would miss his already-arranged trip to Auschwitz. Needless to say, I immediately emailed Nancy and expressed my doubts about the close timing of the train connections.

Her reply was to the point: "The trains are very efficient there and these times between trains are standard—off one train and onto another!" I had no idea how Nancy had educated herself so quickly about the nature of Polish trains, and the notion of efficient service certainly didn't comport with my idea of Poland as a third-world country, but with her reassurance, I signed off on the itinerary. Little did I know that, although Alex's trip was still a couple of months away, my own vicarious journey was about to begin.

***

Alex had told me that Lodz is pronounced Woodj in Polish, something he'd learned in the course of doing research about the Lodz Ghetto. That unlikely pronunciation was pretty much all I knew about Lodz, or about the rest of Poland, for that matter. So when I mentioned Alex's trip to my sister, Janet, I was amazed to learn that she'd actually been in Poland during a mostly-Scandinavian cruise that included a stop in the port city of Gdansk.

"What was it like?" I asked, picturing, of course, a gray tableau of abandoned shipyards and cinder block buildings.

"It was pretty," Janet said. Pretty? "The city was basically destroyed during the war," she went on, "and afterwards was rebuilt in the old style. It was quite charming."

Charming? I knew Gdansk was the birthplace of Poland's Solidarity movement but I'd never imagined charming.

Soon after, I was talking to my friend, Barbara, whose daughter Eve has known Alex most of her life. When I told Barbara Alex was going to Poland, she said she herself had been to Krakow many years ago. She described it as a beautiful city, whose old town had been preserved. Even more surprising, she said Eve had a college friend, Marcel, whose family was Polish and who had spent summers between semesters working in Warsaw.

"Marcel told Eve that Warsaw is his his favorite city in the world," Barbara said. Really? In my mind's eye, Poland began to look a bit different, lighter, spots of color brightening the drab mental picture with which I'd begun. Barbara said maybe Eve could ask Marcel to give Alex some tips. I was delighted by the idea of a contact who had spent time in Poland, who liked Poland, who could tell Alex where to go and what to avoid.

I felt glad to have found two people I knew who had links to Poland, however tenuous. Their favorable descriptions made me wonder whether time, democracy, and capitalism had transformed the country into a more tolerant land. After all, Pope John Paul II, himself Polish, had denounced anti-Semitism and had even recognized the State of Israel. Since he was adored by his fellow Poles, his example must have had a profound impact in his native land. At least I hoped so.

As I struggled to come to terms with my nervousness about Alex's impending journey, one thing was clear. My fears were more about me than about Alex. He'd already spent a semester in London and during that time he'd traveled all over Western Europe, staying in hostels and other somewhat seedy locales. I knew he was smart and resourceful. But he'd always traveled with at least one friend. This time, he would be in Eastern Europe and he'd be alone. What if I didn't hear from him? How would I know whether or not he was okay?

Ironically, I myself had traveled alone in Europe when I was Alex's age. During the summer after my junior year of college, I flew to England with only a rucksack and explored the U.K. and the Continent on my own. Though I met up with friends at various stops along the way, I had no set itinerary and often wound up in out-of-the-way places all by myself. There were no cell phones back then and it was far too expensive to call long-distance on a land line. I think I sent my parents a few postcards.

During my travels that summer, I met some terrific people and did some pretty dumb things, like hitching a ride and then staying overnight with total strangers in Leeds, camping near Lake Como in Italy with two guys I'd just met, and visiting the Parisian garret of a Scottish playright who chain smoked Gauloises, coughed consumptively, and said he wanted to show me his manuscript. He did in fact show me his manuscript and I lived to tell the tale. But taking such risks myself was one thing. Regarding Alex, motherhood had turned me into an entirely different kind of animal—a fiercely protective one.

I knew Alex would understandably bristle if I pressured him to call me every day or, worse, to get the kind of cell phone that would enable me to call him. I suspected that this trip represented a rite of passage for him—a journey of self-discovery as well as an exploration of the destruction of Jewish life in Eastern Europe. I hoped his trip would be a rite of passage for me as well. I needed to let go and let my son live his own life.

Meanwhile, Polish connections kept popping up. Over dinner with my friends, Gail and Jeremy, Jeremy mentioned that his brother, Adam, an alternative energy investor, lived in a suburb of Warsaw. According to Jeremy, Adam and his wife and son loved living there and, better yet, they loved visitors! A flurry of emails followed and soon Alex had been invited to spend an afternoon in Konstancin, which he later discovered is known as the Beverly Hills of Warsaw.

I was pleased about this development. The visit would offer Alex a close-up glimpse of life in Poland, ex-patriot style. Alex was as excited as I about this opportunity. He agreed with me that the more people he could meet in Poland, the more he'd learn about the place. Although he chafed at my over-protectiveness, he clearly appreciated my efforts on his behalf.

Belatedly, I remembered that another friend, Jeanie, had actually visited Poland two summers earlier on a quest to see property owned by her family before the war. So the next time I saw her, I excitedly broached the subject of Alex's trip.

"You might be interested to know that Alex is going to Poland," I said.

"Really? To Warsaw?"

When I began to explain about Lodz, she stopped me, exclaiming "Lodz! That's where my family's property is." She even pronounced Lodz in the correct Polish manner.

Jeanie was even more thrilled than I about this link and was anxious for Alex to meet some of the Polish people she knew in Lodz and Warsaw. Again, a flurry of emails ensued, and tentative plans were made. In the process, I saw Jeanie's photographs of both Lodz and Warsaw. People in the photos looked normal, the sky was blue, and there were modern cars on the street. I began to feel less nervous and more enthusiastic about Alex's upcoming voyage, and hopeful he'd have the chance experience Poland from a Polish perspective.

Around this time, Alex told me he had heard from Eve's college buddy, Marcel.

"Great!" I said, "Did he give you some suggestions for things to do in Warsaw, and maybe some restaurants?"

"Nope, just a list of bars and clubs to check out."

Strike one for connections. I paused, my head filled once again with visions of Alex alone, this time staggering out of some club in an alley at three am.

"Do you plan to . . .?"

Alex didn't even let me finish the question. "No, Mom," he said, in a long-suffering tone, "I'm not planning to spend my time in bars and clubs."

* * *

Alex's fourth day in Poland found my husband, Eric, and me, along with our friends, Susan and David, on Florida's Tamiami Trail. After driving about an hour South of Miami, we turned onto the Loop Road, an unpaved twenty-mile circuit carved through the Everglades, about as far from Poland as I could imagine being. We drove slowly, stopping often to get out of the car and take a closer look. In natural canals next to the dirt road, alligators rested on fallen logs, others lolled languidly in the surprisingly-clear water, cormorants fished, and anhingas dried their wings.

Eric raised his camera to take a picture of a huge alligator, at least twelve feet long, resting on the opposite bank. As he did so, the reptile slithered off the bank into the water with a speed that astonished and terrified us. No fences protected us here, no theme park simulated the real environment. We were up close and personal, separated only by ten feet of water.

We hightailed it back to the car, laughing, panting, exhilarated. Further along, we came to the Sweetwater bird overlook, an amazing natural habitat filled with blue and white herons, anhingas, ibises, cormorants, even a rare wood stork. I glanced at my watch. Alex would be arriving in Lodz just about now. He had promised to call when he got to his hotel. I checked my cell phone. No signal. I was as unreachable to Alex as he was to me.

A while later, we exited the Loop Road and merged back onto the Tamiami Trail, continuing south toward Everglades City, where we planned to have lunch at the venerable Rod and Gun Club. I checked my cell again, hoping for a message. Still no signal. I endeavored to stay in the here and now of the sun-drenched river of grass stretching endlessly on either side of the highway, but part of me waited in the lobby of a run-down hotel on the main street of a once-thriving Polish textile-manufacturing city, watching for a slim, curly-haired American youth to walk through the door.

I gave up on the signal and put my cell back in my purse, resigned. A moment later, I heard its muffled ring.

"Hello."

"Hi, Mom." As if he were in the next room. "I'm at the hotel. Everything is great. I'm meeting Jeanie's friend Agata in the lobby in about an hour."

We talked a little more. What we said didn't matter. Across the great divide of two continents, Alex had reached me. The connection had been made.

Alex has written a fascinating e-book about his experiences in Poland. If you're interested, you can access it here.

Shaggy Dog Story

2007-03-19T13:25:00.000-05:00

Cosmo needs a grooming. Cosmo, as some of you may know, is my seven-pound apricot toy poodle, apricot being an accepted American Kennel Club color, as opposed to peach, plum, or papaya. Cosmo comes from a long line of champion poodles. Never mind that his father is also his grandfather (what's a little inbreeding among family?). Or that his mother weighed eleven pounds while his father/grandfather only tipped the scales at five. I try not to picture that union. But I love the result to pieces.

Cosmo will never be a father or a grandfather, having been neutered at nine months. While this may have stopped his reproductive abilities in their tracks, it did nothing to stop his copious, curly, fruit-colored locks from growing at an alarming rate. Cosmo is like me in that he has hair, lots of it, as opposed to fur. So, like me, he needs frequent grooming appointments. Cosmo's haircuts cost more than I would dream of spending on my own, especially now that I've found the Vidal Sassoon of dog groomers. Every few weeks, I bring Cosmo to The Dog from Ipanema, where Jarbas, the gushing Brazilian owner, takes my "baby" from my arms and, cooing all the way, delivers him to Annette for the full spa treatment.

This is not a mere bath, not a mere haircut. For starters, the bather puts special little goggles over Cosmo's big brown doggie eyes. One of the caveats about bathing dogs is never, ever to get soapy water in their eyes. This is one of the reasons why I never, ever give Cosmo a bath, not counting the time when one of my kids accidentally spilled a full pitcher of pineapple juice on top of him. He nearly drowned in the sticky liquid and a bath was the only solution. But normally, I entrust bathing to Jarbas' crew, which does an admirable job. Recently, my poor little pooch had a double ear infection, so Jarbas made sure cotton balls were carefully placed in his ears before bathing was begun.

The signature of a great groomer is the cut and the comb-out. Annette gives Cosmo a regal, yet adorable cut and her comb-out is a work of art, producing a result more impressive than an eight-hundred-dollar Japanese hair straightening job, not that I've had one (but I'm thinking about it). Cosmo's coiled curls become silky, lustrous, and straight. And his nails—well, I could opt for polish, but I draw the line at pet pedicures. After all, Cosmo is a male. Ditto for ribbons around his neck or fancy rhinestone collars. Not for my manly little canine. Still, when Annette is through with him, he looks like a million bucks, as well he should, considering I'm paying almost that much.

Cosmo, ever the aristocrat, appears unfazed by all the groomer's ministrations. When I pick him up, he makes a beeline for the door, anxious, as always to get back to the important things in life—sniffing, peeing, pooping, and above all, eating.

My Life in Bugs, Part Two: Older, But Not Much Wiser

2007-02-17T15:29:00.000-05:00

One sunny spring morning in Los Gatos, California, I was sitting in the tiny kitchen of my garden apartment, enjoying a bowl of granola and a cup of coffee. The year was 1975. I was reading the New Yorker magazine while I ate, but something made me lift my head—perhaps an intimation of darkness on the white wall next to the window. There it was, black as soot, black as night, black as a black hole—a black widow spider. Even from a distance I knew immediately it was a black widow. It remained motionless on the white background. I stepped gingerly toward it. Although I was afraid it would leap from the wall and bite me, I had to investigate. As I inched closer, I could see the telltale red hourglass on its abdomen.

I felt a frisson of delight. I was face to face with the spider of legend, a spider that seemed too mythic to die, at least by my hand. Yet, I knew we couldn't coexist. It had to go. So I did the logical thing—I called my husband, Eric, and entreated him to kill it. Eric reluctantly grabbed a newspaper, but that seemed too flimsy a weapon for the task. I handed him the New Yorker. While perhaps no more hefty than the newspaper, at least it had the force of intellect behind it. Eric approached the spider, still motionless on the white wall. As it perceived the shadow of the rolled magazine, it began a rapid crawl upward. Eric took aim and brought the magazine hard against the wall. To our surprise, the fearsome black widow expired as readily as a common house spider.

The black widow wasn't our only uninvited guest during the year we lived in Los Gatos. A few months after that episode, Eric and I returned from a week's vacation. The apartment was stuffy, having been closed up during our trip. I hurried to open the sliding glass door which led from the living room to a tiny patio. As I opened the slider I was met with a sight that could have inspired the insect scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom--earwigs, thousands of them, filling the entire track of the door. A few intrepid ones had managed to get off the track onto the orange shag carpet and were advancing into the apartment. Once again, I did the logical thing—I screamed. Eric came running. During the next hour, he engaged in a truly heroic removal effort. With no more than a broom, he swept the earwigs away, back to their natural habitat. A few survived the onslaught intact, but many were severely injured, and most died. Not having the saintliness of an Albert Schweitzer, I felt no remorse at their demise. And I still can't open a sliding glass door without a shiver of anxiety.

Apparently, I hadn't learned much from my childhood experiences with bugs. I still dreaded most varieties and behaved like a distinctly unliberated woman when I came across them. For better or worse, though, Eric wasn't always around to rescue me. During the late seventies, he was often away on business and my only companions in our Boston waterfront apartment were the cockroaches that freaked me out when I turned on the bathroom light. After we moved to the suburbs in the early eighties, Eric still traveled frequently, so I had to learn the ways of carpenter ants, ground bees, and gypsy moths.

Considering that we lived in a manicured enclave not far from the city, we were visited by a surprising number of bizarre and alarming insects. One year, our screened-in porch was invaded by small, winged creatures. I feared the worst—a termite swarm. I was reassured by my exterminator, Danny, that they were not termites but citronella ants, winged ants which emit a citronella odor when threatened.

Ironically, for someone as averse to bugs as me, I'm even more averse to the use of pesticides. Fortunately, Danny, whose kids went to school with mine, didn't push pesticides on me. Rather, he was a genuine bug enthusiast. Once, when a cicada found its way into my living room, where it died on the windowsill, Danny excitedly asked if he could have it to show his son. He promised me that the citronella ants were harmless and would soon disappear from the porch on their own. When they did, I called a contractor and had the foundation rebuilt in the hope of preventing a return visit.

Once my children were old enough to notice my reaction to bugs, I felt it imperative to display courage and calm in the face of even the scariest invader. Some of my worst moments came when bees got into the house. Nothing seemed more threatening than a frenzied bee in an enclosed space. Many was the time I simply closed off the room with the bee in it until Eric arrived home and worked his magic with a folded newspaper. Usually by then the bee was so exhausted it died easily.

But one summer afternoon, I saw the light. A friend was sitting in the kitchen with me when a buzzing sound alerted us that a bee had somehow gotten in. Heading toward the light, it had found its way to a closed window where it buzzed angrily. I suggested we leave the kitchen immediately. My friend pooh-poohed that idea and instead picked up a glass and a thin piece of cardboard. She put the glass over the bee as it came to rest on the window, trapping it, then slipped the cardboard between the window and the top of the glass. Holding the cardboard over the glass, she carried the imprisoned bee outside, where she set it free. It was a moment of revelation and exhilaration for me. I didn't have to kill the bee! I didn't have to wait for Eric to kill the bee! Better for me and certainly better for the bee! Since learning this amazing technique, I've saved numerous bees, an occasional wasp, and not a few flies.

My biggest challenge bug-wise came when a cicada killer wasp decided to build its burrow beneath our brick patio. The cicada killer is an admirable creature, industrious and protective of its nest. It's also gigantic—nearly two inches long. I first encountered one on a lovely mid-summer day when I stepped onto my patio and it dive bombed me from seemingly out of nowhere. I retreated into the house from where I watched it enter a small opening in the stone dust between two bricks on the patio. In short order, little piles of dust formed around the hole. The cicada killer was building its nest by dislodging soil with its mouth and kicking the loose particles back much as a dog would dig a hole.

From that moment on, I only ventured onto the patio in a state of extreme vigilance. Even then, it was hard to predict when the enormous wasp would emerge, zooming straight toward me. I didn't know then that males, though particularly aggressive, have no stinger. Females will sting but only when provoked. Normally, their stingers are used to kill cicadas, which they then bring back to their nests. Even had I known these fascinating facts, my conclusion would have been the same—the cicada killer had to be evicted. We couldn't share the same patio. I was about to call Danny, thinking this problem might actually require a dose of chemicals, when I happened to mention the situation to my children's babysitter, a feisty older woman who knew many old-fashioned remedies.

"You don't need pesticides," she said. "Just wait until the wasp goes into its nest and pour boiling water on it." Eureka! I'd found a solution to the problem, albeit a cruel one. That very day, I boiled a kettleful of water and waited. When the wasp entered the opening to its nest, I went outside with my kettle and poured the entire contents down the opening. I never saw the cicada killer again. I did feel a twinge of guilt, but mostly I exulted in my newfound resourcefulness. For the next decade, every summer brought another cicada killer to our backyard. Sadly for the unsuspecting creature, I made quick work of it each time.

I could go on and on—the mysterious blistering bites that turned out to be from fleas infesting our East Palo Alto apartment; the palmetto bug that terrorized the kids and me in an Orlando hotel; the humongous, though harmless, millipedes that hung out in our basement and occasionally showed up in our bedroom. You get the picture. Bugs are everywhere. They continue to fascinate, repulse, and sometimes scare me. But I've adopted a laissez-faire approach. Live and let live, unless they invade my personal space. Then I do the logical thing—I call Eric.

Now for Something Completely Different—Poetry

2006-12-28T20:26:00.000-05:00

I’ve been writing poetry on and off for my entire adult life. While I’ve had some individual poems published, I've never put together a volume of my work until now.

I’m pleased to announce the publication of Full Circle: Selected Poems, 1980-2005. The book is available in PDF format from Fair Isle Press, an online publisher of electronic books. Full Circle, like all Fair Isle books, can be downloaded for FREE.

You can access the book by clicking the following link: Full Circle . Then click the Free download option on the lefthand side.

The poems in Full Circle feature a variety of subjects, moods, and styles. Below, I offer a sampling of poems from among those selected for the book. I hope they inspire you to download the complete collection.

I Wasn’t There
For Eric Clapton, on the death of his five-year-old son

Over and over in my mind’s eye
I see him leaning out the window
smiling, captivated by something
on the street far below, perhaps,

or reaching to touch an imaginary
butterfly, extending his small
eager body past its point of balance
on the sill’s meager fulcrum,

seesawing away from the heavy brick
and mortar of the world, falling
light as a butterfly, landing—
he must have landed—in heaven.

March, 1993

Swish

The new basketball pole gleams white
next to the blacktop driveway
and the graphite adjustable backboard
vibrates with every shot.

Three suntanned boys in tank tops and shorts,
one of them my son,
ask me to lower the hoop to seven feet
so they can slam dunk.

I watch them watching each other
to see who can jump highest
and I can see that girls
will be watching them soon

then talking about them,
which one is cutest,
girls putting all that energy into talk
while boys shoot baskets,

alive in their bodies,
speaking the pungent language
of sweat and contact,
each guarding the other,

all grinning
as the ball drops through the net
with a perfect swish.

September, 1993

September 13, 1993

I haven’t planted a tree in Israeli soil.
I haven’t floated on the salt waters of the Dead Sea
or pressed my lips against the Wailing Wall,

but today, when Rabin said,
“It’s not so easy”
to make peace with Arafat

his words resonated inside me, plumbing
that deep well from which Rachel drew water—
a reservoir of hope,

an unending source of tears,
the marriage of Jacob and Rachel barren
until finally Rachel gave birth to Joseph

who made his own peace with Eygpt
and forgave his brothers
though they sold him into slavery.

I wish we had Joseph with us now
to interpret this latest dream
of peace.

Midori Ito
A Pantoum

Rising suns flutter in the stands
as she slowly skates onto ice,
face of a Kabuki dancer,
modest, but without kimono.

She slowly skates onto ice,
eyes downcast, her muscular legs
immodest, without kimono.
She has come to skate for honor.

Eyes downcast, with muscular legs
she balances on two sharp blades.
She has come to skate for honor,
devoted as a samurai.

She balances on two sharp blades,
gliding gracefully to music,
devoted as a samurai
warrior facing certain death.

Gliding gracefully to music,
she attempts the triple axel
like a warrior facing death,
needing perfect concentration.

She attempts the triple axel,
leaps, knowing she cannot succeed
without perfect concentration,
and falls, shame etched on her features—

face of a Kabuki dancer
as all the rising suns flutter.

February, 1992

What Tim Wakefield Knows

The perfect knuckleball has no spin. It sails in
from the mound like a solitary ship on a still sea

and, like the mirage of a ship, it hovers before
the thirsty batter, who swings his bat to no avail,

the ball only real when it lands in the catcher’s mitt
with a soft thump. Hitters looking for the fastball

swing way out in front. They can’t uncoil their muscles
in slow motion as the ball floats into the strike zone.

The knuckleball hitter must learn the art of meditation.

October, 1992

Greatest Hits
For Alanna Jones

Waiting for his call,
she transfers CDs to an iPod,
patiently feeds the disc drive
with every CD he owns,
imports his favorite songs
into the small, sleek device
for export to Ramadi, Iraq.
The iPod will lie inside
his pocket, touching him,
maybe stopping a bullet,
crooning words of Top Forty
devotion while she soldiers
through her days at the health club,
trains middle-aged women
fighting nothing more lethal
than gravity and brittle bones
to lift weights, use the shoulder press.

After he calls her, he shoulders
his rifle, bearing the weight—
kevlar vest, helmet,
combat boots, her love.

2004

My Life in Bugs, Part One: The Early Years

2006-11-19T17:09:00.000-05:00

Reckoning my life in terms of the insects I have known may seem strange, but does it make any more sense to explain myself by the colleges I attended, the graduate school, the law school? By whether I wear Manolo Blahniks or Easy Spirits? By how many marriages, how many children, the number of cars in my garage?

Right now, due to a close encounter with some drain flies, I have bugs on the brain. So herewith, a brief exploration of my world according to the insects that have creeped, crawled and flown into my life. Maybe it will evoke memories of your own bug stories.

It was a warm summer day in Wantagh, New York. The year was 1957 and I was eight years old, playing in the back yard with my younger sisters, all three of us running in and out of the wading pool, splashing, abandoning ourselves to the warm air and cold water. Life was joyful as I raced one more time through the cool, green, clover-laden grass. Then one innocent misstep, a piercing pain—my first bee sting. Not only my big toe, but my spontaneity suffered injury. Never again would I step so lightly through blades of grass.

I was a hypersensitive child, bothered by loud noises and strong smells, and keenly affected by slights, real or imagined. But I was also anxious to prove myself brave and resilient, so at age ten I persuaded my parents to send me to Camp Tamarac, an overnight camp in the Berkshires. After a few weeks of bunk living, my group embarked on a “camping” trip, which consisted of hiking past the mess hall, beyond the boys bunks, and over a hummock to our campground. There, we watched our counselors pitch tents, then played tag while waiting for them to cook our dinner over an open fire.

Enter the no-see-ums. The DDT that had been sprayed liberally over the entire camp during our first week had apparently not penetrated beyond the hummock. Swarms of gnats swirled around our heads. I felt a slight prick in one eyelid, then the other. Moments later, I couldn't see at all. My lids had reacted so strongly to the bites that they were swollen completely shut. I briefly enjoyed the notoriety my overly-sensitive skin had brought me, until discomfort and anxiety set in (would I ever see again?). And the longer-term lesson was not so pleasant, either—a measly little gnat had the power to ruin my day. This experience reinforced my already risk-averse nature. Even a pleasant walk in the woods of Massachusetts held unexpected dangers, I now realized. As I got older, I worried about all of them.

Still, during my pre-teen years I led a pretty bug-free existence. Sure, I enjoyed chasing the lightening bugs that were plentiful on Long Island during summer evenings. I had fun collecting the Japanese beetles that threatened to decimate the rose bushes in my neighborhood. And I thrilled to the ladybugs that occasionally landed on my shoulder. I even witnessed neighborhood boys torturing exquisite praying mantises and felt the helplessness of my gender—I never dared to protest, lest the boys torture me instead. But inside my house, I rarely saw spiders, mosquitos, flies, or even ants. It was only after I found my way to the tropics that I began to understand what I was up against when it came to insects.

In 1963, when I was fourteen, my parents arranged for me to spend the summer with a family in El Salvador that my father knew through his job as a coffee buyer. The Bonillas, part of the small, wealthy elite of that country, lived in a lovely house in Los Planes, a suburb of San Salvador. The climate was delightful—temperatures in the seventies during the day, with rain falling predictably in the late afternoon. The Bonillas' home was beautiful and unusual, based on my limited experience. The house was perched on a hillside, open to the tropical breezes, with no glass in the windows, much less screens. So insects were free to enter and leave at will.

Antonio and his wife, Yolanda, were wonderful hosts, a loving and happy couple who made me feel quickly at home among their children, their live-in gardener, their cook, and several servants. Their daughters, Norma and Evelyn, took me under their wing and showed me the ropes. Fortunately, they spoke English, since my Spanish was still rudimentary.

First among my lessons was how to handle beetles. The beetles I encountered in El Salvador were nothing like the plentiful but small Japanese beetles or the even smaller lady bugs (also a species of beetle) with which I was familiar. These Salvadoran versions were giants—colorful, gorgeous, and fearsome. They probably would have been best left alone to proceed in their stately fashion across the tiled floors back to nature through the open windows. But there was always the risk that one would suddenly take flight, putting us right in the path of their hard exoskeletons. Not a fate to be desired, according to both sisters. I heartily agreed.

So, I watched attentively as Evelyn demonstrated the technique for killing a scarab beetle. Stepping on it wouldn't work, she said—its hard outer shell would compress and the insect would probably survive. Instead, shock treatment was called for. Evelyn carefully lifted the poor creature up with her thumb and index finger, its little legs flailing wildly, then threw it hard against the tile floor. I saw her do this again and again over the course of my stay and never saw a beetle walk away. I was loathe to try the technique myself, however. I wish I could say my reluctance came from sympathy for the plight of a living being that meant us no harm. But, in reality, I was too grossed out to even touch one of the beetles, let alone hurl it through the air.

Salvadoran beetles, huge though they were, were nothing compared to the spiders and insects that came out at night. The Bonillas' living room had a soffit around its perimeter from within which lights were directed at the ceiling. Given the open-air environment, that was a good plan. The bugs were attracted to the brightly-lit ceiling, where they congregated in alarming numbers, rather than to the seating area where we often sat. I've never seen such a collection of enormous long-legged spiders, moths, and creepy-crawly things. The Bonillas, adults and children alike, appeared totally oblivious, so I feigned nonchalance. I have no idea if there were poisonous spiders or lethal centipedes among the vast array, but thankfully, I lived to tell the tale.

I've always been fascinated by insects. I like seeing pictures of bugs and watching exotic species on nature programs. But polite distance is one thing, up close and personal is quite another. While I hoped that my experience in El Salvador would toughen me up for insect encounters to come, that didn't exactly come to pass. Rather, for me insects came to represent the ultimate example of otherness--mysterious, repulsive, gorgeous, and downright scary.

Mitt Romney's Inaugural Ball—A Partygoer's Guide to "Pop Outs" and Poor Dressing

2006-09-05T14:47:00.000-05:00

The invitation to Governor Mitt Romney's inaugural ball read "black tie optional." My husband, Eric, owned an old tuxedo but said he'd much rather wear a suit, so I figured my black velvet pantsuit would be fancy enough for the occasion. On the morning of the inauguration, though, the Boston Globe ran a piece about past inaugural parties and described the dowdy Dukakis crowd of twenty years ago—"velvet-clad supporters rode the T to his inaugural ball." The article was accompanied by photos of women in the gowns they planned to wear that evening to the Romney affair—each one more gorgeous, glitzy, and low-cut than the next.

This was my first inkling that an old black velvet pantsuit might not be quite the thing for a twenty-first-century inaugural. Still, I'd never liked formal gatherings and had always refused to spend a fortune on a dress that I'd probably only wear once or twice. I wasn't about to start now, just to impress a bunch of Republican fashionistas.

But this party promised to be different than others I'd attended—Eric and I would be noticed. Eric was Romney's newly-appointed Secretary of Administration and Finance, a high-ranking Cabinet post. So this wouldn't be one of those gatherings where we could go off and hide in the corner. We would have to mingle.

Eric arrived home late in the afternoon with a surprise announcement—he'd decided to wear his tux after all. It turned out "everyone" was going in black tie, even the most outdoorsy member of the new administration, an environmentalist known for wearing blue jeans and biking twenty miles to work each day. Though normally not susceptible to peer pressure, Eric was persuaded that he'd stand out more if he were the only cabinet official without a tux than if he went along with the crowd. Despite my determination not to be self-conscious about my outdated outfit, I felt a rush of anxiety.

In a last-ditch effort to glamorize, I nearly asphyxiated myself with hairspray and painted on a coat of nail polish. Then off we went to Boston's World Trade Center, where we'd been invited to a pre-ball gala for family and friends of the new Governor, a VIP event that included an open bar and an elegant sit-down dinner. The women looked resplendent in long shimmering gowns. I hastily removed my velvet jacket—the velvet tank top underneath looked a bit more dressy—and fortified myself with a glass of white wine.

We had just started dinner when Eric was tapped on the shoulder by Rob, a member of Mitt's security crew.

"In a few minutes, the Governor would like you both to come downstairs with him to greet people. I'll come get you when it's time," he said.

Downstairs. That was where the main party was just getting underway. Sixty-five hundred supporters gathering to eat, drink, revel, and listen to the Boston Pops Orchestra. I allowed myself a small shiver of excitement. We were being singled out to accompany the Governor. I took a bite of filet mignon and waited for the call.

A few minutes later, Rob approached our table, gesturing urgently. "We need you now, Mr. Secretary," he said. I would be tagging along as Mr. Secretary's spouse. That was fine with me. Though fascinated by celebrities, I was far too shy to seek the limelight myself.

We followed Rob to the exit, where Mitt and his wife, Ann, waited with a few other Cabinet Secretaries, as well as Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey and her husband, Sean. Rob and several other security types hovered next to Mitt and Ann, who wore a dazzling black beaded gown. At the signal, we followed them through a labyrinth of back hallways.

"It feels like we're like rock stars," Eric whispered to me. Dowdy rock stars, I thought.

We all crammed into a large service elevator. Rob explained that we'd be taking part in several "pop outs" behind Mitt and Ann. I didn't have a clue what a "pop out" was—a dramatic entrance accomplished by jumping through flaming hoops? Nothing quite so exotic, it turned out. "Pop outs" referred to the several adjacent party venues on the main floor. Mitt and Ann would "pop out" and greet the guests in each locale and our job was to follow behind the couple and add our welcome to theirs.

Emerging from the elevator, we were led through a large coat-check area into a cavernous space filled with partygoers. Within seconds, Mitt and Ann were surrounded by bright lights and cameras. Not surprisingly, no one was interested in Eric, let alone me. Even though articles had been written about Eric’s appointment, it dawned on us that no one was likely to actually recognize him. We hovered at the edge of the press frenzy encircling the Governor, feeling a bit silly and very anonymous. On the other hand, the new Secretary of Transportation, also a member of the "pop out" entourage, was in his element greeting partygoers. He'd run for State Treasurer, albeit unsuccessfully, so people recognized him and wanted to say hello.

Eric was trying to work up the courage to shake an old lady's hand, when we realized that Mitt and Ann were moving at breakneck speed through the crowd and on to the next "pop out." We caught up with them just as they disappeared through a curtain, emerging on the other side to greet more glittery guests in yet another vast and drafty hall, a space far too chilly for all the décolletage in evidence. I was actually glad I had my velvet jacket with me. Eric and I paused so I could put it on, then we looked around and realized our entourage had vanished without a trace. Giving up, we slowly made our way through a claustrophobic crush of people back upstairs to what was left of our dinner. The entree had long since been cleared and almost everyone had proceeded to the main party. We sat down at our empty table to enjoy coffee and dessert before rejoining the crowd downstairs.

"Fame isn't all it's cracked up to be," Eric remarked.

Maybe not, but if I ever get another chance at my fifteen minutes, I vow to dress for the occasion.

Antonin Scalia and the Case of the Albemarle Pippins

2006-08-10T21:45:00.000-05:00

In the fall of 1977, I entered the University of Chicago Law School. My first-year professors were an illustrious group. Among them was Richard Posner, one of the seminal thinkers in the field of law and economics and presently Judge of the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. He taught us Torts. Our Jurisprudence professor was Edward Levi, previously President of the University, who in the fall of 1977 had just returned from serving as Gerald Ford’s Attorney General.

For Contracts, we had a newcomer—Antonin Scalia. Professor Scalia had arrived at Chicago fresh from the U.S. Department of Justice, where he had been Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel.

As a first-year law student, I was intimidated by almost everything about law school, particularly the Socratic method, but Scalia brought a sense of lightness and humor to the classroom—at first. In those early days, as my classmates and I struggled to master legal concepts and terminology, Scalia seemed intent on making Contracts fun, or at least comprehensible. He was an energetic teacher and anxious to succeed, just as we were, so we viewed him sympathetically.

He particularly won our hearts with his hypotheticals, the imagined situations he used to illuminate legal concepts or test our nascent legal reasoning skills. Hypotheticals are a mainstay of legal teaching, and during the first month or so of class, Scalia employed a series of hypotheticals concerning apples, Albemarle Pippin apples, to be exact. He wove hypothetical tales of agreements to buy and sell Pippins and used Pippins to illustrate fundamental ideas like “consideration” and “bargain.”

His choice of the humble apple for his hypotheticals seemed a brilliant stroke. What better way to introduce students to legal complexities than through easily understood examples involving apples? As it happens, Albemarle Pippins are no ordinary apples. Brought to Virginia by George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, they became favorites of Thomas Jefferson. Perhaps in choosing the Albemarle Pippin as his hypothetical apple, Scalia even then pictured himself among the shapers of American history.

We students, on the other hand, were hoping merely to make the grade. At the University of Chicago, as at other law schools, no exams were given until the end of the first term. Until then, no one really knew where they stood or even whether they would survive the first year. That made for a lot of tension, which students traditionally relieved by devising clever pranks to amuse their classmates. For a few of my fellow students, Scalia, along with his Albemarle Pippins, made an irresistible target.

As I sat in Contracts class one morning, hoping I wouldn't be called on to analyze the assigned case, there was a pounding on the door. One of the students sitting nearby jumped up and opened it. A tall young woman, whom I recognized as a second-year student, entered the room. Her blond hair was done in braids and she wore farmer's overalls and a red-checked shirt. To complete the outfit, she sported a hayseed between her teeth.

“Antonin Scalia?” she asked in a convincing down-home drawl. “We got yer shipment for ya. C’mon boys, bring’em in.” Scalia looked understandably confused.

In came apples, bushels of them, pushed, pulled, and carried by several upperclassmen also dressed as farmers. “These here are yer Albemarle Pippins,” one of them intoned, as the class exploded with laughter. Scalia smiled bemusedly. For a few minutes we enjoyed the pleasant delirium of group participation in a shared joke.

Then Scalia stopped to smiling. He didn’t merely stop—his entire demeanor changed. Perhaps he suddenly felt we were laughing at him, not with him. That perception couldn’t have been further from the truth, but it might explain the transformation that took place. One moment, Scalia was the jovial teacher, sure of his abilities and secure in the admiration of his students. In an instant, his entire affect changed. “That’s enough,” he said angrily, dismissing the farmer actors. Our laughter died down in a hurry as we returned to the case at hand.

Ironically, my classmates chose Scalia as the object of their prank (and persuaded several second-year students to take part) precisely because we all liked him so much. In the days and weeks that followed, however, Scalia never recovered his prior avuncular manner, preferring instead to grill students harshly about legal issues. No more cheerful repartee in class, and definitely no more hypotheticals involving Albemarle Pippins.

The following year, a friend of mine took an upper level course with Professor Scalia. She reported that he’d regained his equilibrium and once again displayed a spirited and brilliant teaching style. The succeeding years seem to have reinforced his renewed sense of confidence. Nowadays, whatever one may think of Justice Scalia’s legal philosophy, he certainly comes across as self-assured. But, reflecting on the thin-skinned response he had in the case of the Albemarle Pippins, I can’t help but wonder how that aspect of his personality influences the decisions he makes today.

Going Dutch

2006-07-24T14:23:00.000-05:00

I recently returned from a week of walking in the Netherlands, where I breathed in the North Sea air, ate Dutch pancakes, viewed numerous canals, and saw many paintings by Vincent Van Gogh. The Dutch people I met were friendly and engaging and most spoke excellent English, thank goodness. Though I'm normally adept at languages, I found Dutch completely baffling.

My trip involved eight to ten miles of walking per day in the company of a small group of fellow Americans and two Dutch guides. We sauntered down city streets and hiked over sand dunes and through pristine Dutch farmland. The main object of my trip, as with all my travels, was to get a sense of the place, to see what the people care about, and how they live. Here are a few of my impressions.

Based on my experience, the Netherlands has the perfect climate--75 degrees and sunny every day (okay, our second day was a bit overcast). One of our guides, Arjen, stressed that this was not typical weather, but my memories of Holland will be of a warm and sunny locale. Apparently, things have gotten still warmer since I returned home, making July the Netherlands' hottest month in 300 years! The temperature has climbed as high as 37 degrees Celsius (around 98 degrees Fahrenheit). Normally, I'm told, the average temperature in July is 17.4 degrees Celsius (around 63 degrees Fahrenheit). Global warming strikes again.

Heat or no heat, it's windy in Holland. Now I see why all those windmills were so effective at grinding grain and reclaiming land. Arjen referred to the almost-constant stiff breeze as the "Dutch wind." Happily, the smell of sea air is often carried by that wind, which makes the air quality quite delightful.

The biggest surprise about the Netherlands? Bicycles--they're everywhere! Who knew? Perhaps I should have, Holland being so flat and gas prices so high. But I hadn't anticipated the Dutch reliance on bikes as a primary mode of transportation or the beautiful and efficient way bike lanes are incorporated into the traffic scheme of cities. Riders and bike racks are ubiquitous. For an American, it takes some getting used to.

My first encounter with a bike occured shortly after we arrived in Amsterdam, at 8 a.m. on a Saturday morning. My husband, Eric, and I had left Boston at 7 p.m. the night before (there's a six hour time difference). We checked into our hotel and fortified ourselves with breakfast, in the process learning that "over easy" is a concept foreign to the Dutch, or perhaps merely lost in translation. After breakfast, we decided to take an exploratory walk before we collapsed of exhaustion. We left the hotel and I stepped onto the sidewalk, or so I thought. In fact, I had inadvertently entered a bike lane. I heard a softly ringing bell then a skidding of wheels as a bike ridden by a tall middle-aged man came to a stop inches from my derriere.

Only belatedly did I notice that the sidewalks, bike lanes, and roadways, while all made of brick, were carefully delineated by slightly different colors of brick, one red, one yellowish, another soft orange. It turns out that the bell I heard faintly ringing before my near-demise is the main mode of warning employed by Dutch cyclists. Very civilized and understated. (Car traffic is understated as well--I barely heard the sound of a horn during my entire visit.)

And the sheer number of bicycles! Thousands of serviceable bikes, not fancy racing bikes. People don't ride bent forward, as racers do. Instead, they sit impressively erect on their seats and zoom along. They may not be racing, but they really move. Another surprise--no one wears a helmet, not even small children. Arjen contended that few accidents occur. Indeed, the closest collision I witnessed was my own.

Dutch people, I discovered, are tall, very tall. Even the women towered over me and I'm almost 5'5", average height for an American female. In fact, many of the women seemed as tall as their male counterparts. It turns out that recent studies rank the Dutch as the tallest people on the planet. It must be all that bike riding, and a diet rich in dairy probably doesn't hurt.

I know there are poor people in the Netherlands, but I really didn't see them, despite walking all over Amsterdam, Utrecht, Haarlem, and the Dutch countryside. I also didn't see many Muslims during my trip (so far as I could tell, judging by women wearing head scarves), although Holland has a large Muslim population. Despite all the ground we covered while walking, I suspect our guides circumvented the poorest areas. Still, the Netherlands ranks as one of the wealthiest countries in the world. From what I saw, it's a healthy prosperity--most people seem to dress sensibly, have lovely but small apartments and houses, and plenty to eat. No Manolo Blahniks in sight. Not a lot of ostentation. I felt perfectly appropriate in my REI pants and L.L. Bean shirt.

I also felt right at home with the neatness and order evident wherever I travelled in the Netherlands, being something of a neatnik myself. The fact that many Dutch residences don't have curtains on the windows supposedly originated in a desire to show the world that their homes were tidy. Today, it also seems to reflect the quality of openness I experienced throughout Holland.

In accord with a penchant for order, the Netherlands is a country replete with rules. Arjen explained that the Dutch have a rule for everything. But he also described an outlook that saves people from coming off as prissy or sanctimonious--the Dutch are very tolerant of people who break the rules. It's an odd paradox, perhaps one that accounts for Holland's unusual status as both a financial center and a haven for drugs and prostitution.

The rule that most fascinated me was the one regarding squatters. In the Netherlands, if a building is unoccupied for a year, squatters have the right to move in. As I understand it, the building is still owned by the legal owner, who is also still liable for payment of taxes and even utilities. But the building may be occupied and renovated by the squatters. The object of the law is to make sure all available housing is used. Arjen pointed out several buildings currently occupied by squatters. Recently, there's been legislation proposed by conservatives to make it more difficult to squat, but it's met stiff opposition.

Which brings me to the most delightful part of our trip--lunch at the home of our two guides, Arjen and Karin. The two are just friends (Arjen is married), but both reside on a former country estate in Utrecht, once occupied by squatters after standing vacant for the required period, but since converted to sixteen separate apartments--with a catch. Each apartment contains living space but all bathrooms and kitchens are shared, commune-style. The setup resembles a very sedate commune. Arjen characterized two of his fellow residents as hippies from the sixties, whom he said were slobs and never cleaned at all. But having gotten a peek into Arjen's neat living room and having seen the lovely grounds of the estate, I take his word that those two are the exception.

Our lunch was courtesy of another couple who live on the estate with their young daughter. The two started a catering business and were permitted to build a professional kitchen in the estate's former stable. They are proponents of the "slow food" movement, which advocates the use of locally-grown ingredients cooked from scratch. We were treated to a fabulous vegetarian repast, complete with edible flowers. After lunch we took a walk through the beautiful parkland (now public) that surrounds the estate. Arjen, Karin, and the estate's other residents have managed to achieve an enviably gracious lifestyle on modest means.

A couple of final notes: Indonesian food--delicious! And a welcome contrast to the much blander, dairy-rich Dutch diet. Windmills--what an amazing example of Dutch ingenuity. We had the opportunity to climb to the top of a working windmill and see and feel the power of the wind in action. Lastly, Americans--they like us! We felt no hostility during our stay and no one seemed to resent the fact that we could only speak English.

As you can see, I don't have a single negative thing to say about the Netherlands. And I'm not even part-Dutch! If you go, one word of advice. If at all possible, find someone Dutch to show you around. It makes all the difference.

Gone to the Dogs

2006-07-06T20:49:00.000-05:00

For most of my life, no one could have accused me of being a dog person. In fact, I loathed dogs, right down to their wagging tails. All their supposed virtues were wasted on me—I refused to pet even the most mild-mannered animals, I heard every bark as hostile, and I absolutely hated being jumped on, no matter how playfully. Dog hairs on furniture? Scooping poop? I thought dog owners were nuts.

My aversion began when I was six years old and my parents brought home a dachshund puppy. Our new dog arrived on Christmas morning, so we named him Blitzen, after one of Santa’s flying reindeer. Given his low-lying physique, though, our Blitzen could barely waddle, let alone leap into the air and take flight. Someone else might have found him cute, but I was horrified. This frankfurter on legs was not my idea of a dog.

To make matters worse, my parents didn’t have a clue about canine behavior. My mother took everything Blitzen did personally. If he soiled the carpet, he was getting back at her for not feeding him on time. If he barked incessantly, it was to annoy her. Nor did my parents grasp even the rudiments of dog training. If they had, things might have been different. As it was, during his sojourn in our house, Blitzen ruled.

This became frighteningly clear to me the first time I walked him. I was under strict instructions not to let him pick up anything from the street. Blitzen immediately latched onto the round paper cover of a Good Humor Dixie cup. I grabbed the cover’s edge and tried to pull it from his mouth, but the dog had a death grip on the flimsy piece of cardboard. He growled savagely and looked into my eyes with unalloyed hatred until I relinquished his prize.

Blitzen must have terrorized my parents during walks as well, because they began letting him out on his own. One day, he simply failed to return. My father searched for him and, finding no flattened remains, assured us that Blitzen would come back soon. To everyone’s secret relief, he never did.

A year later, we were driving past a nearby playground when I spotted a boy walking a portly dachshund—Blitzen. My parents were only too happy to let Blitzen remain with his new family. I couldn’t have agreed more. Of course, the primary beneficiary of this decision was Blitzen himself. An intelligent creature, he’d taken matters into his own paws and found a home with people who loved him and actually knew how to handle him.

My aversion to dogs was seriously reinforced some years later, when I was in college during the sixties. It was the Age of Aquarius and students allowed their pets the same total freedom they demanded for themselves. Roving packs of canines ran unfettered on the campus. Though the animals never showed the slightest interest in me, they presented an alarming picture, rising over the crest of the hill like a pack of wolves on the prowl, and heading straight for the main quadrangle where I often walked.

The dogs were even more poorly groomed than their long-haired owners. Worst among them was a once-elegant Afghan, whose hopelessly matted fur gave him a wild, maniacal appearance. I was terrified of the Afghan and his roving pack, but given the hang-loose demands of the era, I couldn’t let on. Still, I never crossed the quad without a heavy book bag for protection.

Naturally, I had no interest in getting a dog of my own. The first time I even considered the idea was years later, when my husband and I began to think about having a child. I wondered, was I ready for the responsibility? Perhaps I should practice on a dog. One trip to the pet store was all it took to convince me otherwise. No sooner did I pick up a long-haired dachshund puppy than I began wheezing and sneezing uncontrollably. Not only was I afraid of dogs—evidently, I was allergic to them, too. That’s it, I decided. A dog might be someone else’s best friend, but never mine.

Time and the birth of two children did little to change my mind. When my older son was an infant, I lived in fear of the Doberman down the street. A six-foot fence designed to restrain him didn’t do much to reassure me—every time I pushed my son’s stroller by it, I noticed with alarm that the dog’s frantic attempts to clear the hurdle were improving daily.

Just as success seemed imminent, the Doberman left town. For a while, I only had to contend with Ginger, the overweight beagle who lived next door and liked to relieve herself in our yard. As the years passed, though, more dogs moved into the neighborhood—first a border collie, then a Cairn terrier and a Pekinese. Eventually, almost every family had a dog. My two sons, now teenagers, begged for a puppy, but I resisted. Then friends who lived across the street got a miniature schnauzer. I was surprised. Hadn’t their younger daughter just left for college? Why get a dog now, with no children at home clamoring for one? Apparently, that was exactly the point. Faced with an empty nest, my friends filled the void with their puppy, Maxwell.

They doted on Maxwell, talked baby-talk to him, tied a bandanna around his neck. They took him everywhere. No food was too good for him. Clearly, they’d lost their senses. Or had they? Even I could see that an adorable little puppy might comfort me when my kids went off to college. And weren’t dogs known for their unswerving loyalty, their uncritical devotion? Compared to my kids, who were embarrassed by my every move, an animal that offered unconditional love had its appeal.

But how would my sons react if, after all their pleading, I finally got a dog only when they’d gone? They’d never forgive me. I realized the time to get a dog was now.

It had to be a hypoallergenic variety, of course—if there was such a thing. And it had to be small—I needed the advantage of size. After investigating numerous breeds, I opted for a toy poodle. Under fifteen inches tall, it wouldn’t be able to jump higher than my knees. And with hair instead of fur, it was less likely to provoke allergy attacks. Plus, poodles were regarded as smart and easy to train. As for my kids, they were willing to accept any breed, so long as it had four paws and a tail.

When we brought Cosmo home at eight weeks, he looked more like a furry mouse than a dog. I had prepared for his arrival by reading every book I could find about dog training, yet the first time he made a puddle on the kitchen floor, I panicked. What had possessed me to get a dog? I had visions of Blitzen, urinating regularly behind my mother’s favorite sofa, expressly to torture her. Cosmo must have sensed my misgivings, since he promptly got the message—within a week, he housebroke himself.

I had to admit he was cute, with his wagging little pom-pom of a tail. But when I tried to brush that tail, he growled at me. Again, I saw the specter of Blitzen, terrorizing the family. In desperation, I hired a trainer, who began initiating me into the mysteries of pack animals. Apparently, the solution was for me to become a dog! And not just any dog—the leader of Cosmo’s pack.

Somehow, I rose to the challenge. I learned to dominate Cosmo, mastering various commands—sit, stay, come. If he started chewing on my sock, I could tell him to drop it, and most of the time he actually did. During walks, Cosmo learned to heel—he quickly realized that if he didn’t obey, I could simply pick him up, all seven pounds of him, and carry him home.

The reward for my effort? I’ve become the object of Cosmo’s adoration. Even my husband and sons have to play second fiddle. Cosmo follows me everywhere, sleeps in my room, eats when I eat. It may be absurd, but I’m deeply flattered by his attention. We spend countless hours together—long walks, play sessions, cozy evenings on the couch. And I certainly spend more time and money on his grooming than I do on my own.

To think that an animal so small could overcome a lifetime of aversion. In fact, some might say that Cosmo’s got me pretty well trained. He’s certainly found his way into my heart. And no one is more surprised by my transformation to dog-lover than me.

Anatomy of a Wedding, Part Two

2006-06-27T17:39:00.000-05:00

Eric and I returned to Hadley and began packing. I kept hoping Marya, one of our housemates, would show up. Marya often wore her mother’s old wedding band. Having just told a complete stranger we were married, I was keenly aware that I had no wedding band to prove it, let alone an engagement ring. Maybe Marya would lend me her wedding band for the weekend. Of course, I’d have to devise a convincing story so she wouldn’t think my request was totally weird.

When we had packed and Marya still hadn’t returned, I persuaded Eric to make a quick stop at the greasy spoon where she worked as a waitress when not pursuing her true calling as a sculptor.

“We’ll tell her about the free weekend at the Northfield Inn, “I said to Eric, “but we’ll say we had to pretend to be married to qualify.” Never mind that we were married.

We found Marya at the restaurant, but she wasn’t wearing the wedding band after all and, although she believed our story and would have been glad to lend it to me, we didn’t have time to return to the house and retrieve it from her room. So we drove on to the inn, an old New England resort built in the grand manner. We deposited our bags in what seemed to us an incredibly luxurious room, furnished in colonial style and painted an historical shade of green. The two double beds would have to wait until later.

By the time we arrived on the verandah, the cocktail party was in full swing. We'd been too nervous to eat much during the day, but it was still warm and muggy and we were very thirsty. Eric, who ordinarily didn’t drink, headed over to the bar and ordered us both screwdrivers. When he returned, I was being introduced to our sponsors, a middle-aged couple from Greenfield, Tom and Joan. They were specially assigned to us to make us feel comfortable. Just what we needed on our wedding night—ersatz parents. I took a sip of my drink, and Eric swallowed his in one gulp. Tom was in the fuel oil business, we learned, and he and Joan had three children.

"And what about you?" they asked. "What brings you to Massachusetts?"

"We were just married," I couldn’t resist answering, "and this is our honeymoon trip." Eric rolled his eyes at me and excused himself to go get another drink. I asked Joan and Tom about Greenfield, and they told me we'd get to see a lot more of it during the weekend. There would be a tour starting right after breakfast the next morning.

"When was your wedding?" Joan asked. A natural question. I panicked. How could I tell these people we'd gotten married three hours ago? No wedding gown, no wedding reception, no family in sight. These were nice conventional people, who represented pretty much everything Eric and I had rejected by deciding to get married secretly. I'd have to invent.

"The wedding was last week, on Sunday."

"Oh, what date was that?" Joan was nothing if not persistent. Frantically, I tried to count backwards to last Sunday.

Eric returned. "What date was our wedding last Sunday, honey?" I asked him. What woman doesn't know the date of her own wedding? I was sure by now that Joan thought we were lying about being married at all, and I couldn't blame her, especially since I had no wedding band. Eric gulped his second drink down and was about to give some sort of answer, when we were saved by an announcement that dinner was served.

We entered a wide corridor and began walking toward the dining room at the other end of the sprawling inn. I was endeavoring to explain to Joan why I'd forgotten my wedding date, some fantastic story about the wedding having been postponed and how I always got the dates mixed up, when I realized that Eric wasn't beside me. I glanced back and to my horror saw him staggering blindly toward the wall. I rushed over just as he fell in a dead faint, and caught him before he cracked his head on the marble floor. He lay there, looking an historical shade of green and sweating profusely. I was wondering what to do for him, when a woman rushed over crying, "I'm a nurse!" She took his wrist in her hand. "No pulse," she said.

No pulse? My God, had my husband died on our wedding day? But no, surely he was breathing. And he was still sweating, buckets. Slowly, he regained consciousness, and appeared to recognize me. After a short consultation, during which most of the captured tourists and their sponsors gathered round, it was determined that a few of the men would help bring Eric to our room, where I would stay with him.

There we spent what was to be our idyllic wedding night, Eric lying spread-eagle on one of the double beds, overcome with nausea, only getting up sporadically to rush into the bathroom. Someone thoughtfully had dinner sent up for me. I ate while Eric tried to sleep it off. Whatever it was. The screwdrivers? The heat? The wedding itself? At one point I tried to lie down next to him along the edge of the bed, but my merest touch brought on more waves of nausea. So I spent the night in the other bed, consoling myself with the thought that I had probably saved Eric's life by catching him before his head hit the marble.

By the next morning, Eric felt better, though still a bit queasy. He didn't think he was ready for breakfast. But I convinced him. The people of Greenfield, I pointed out, had made us their guests. How would it look if we didn't appear at breakfast, if we skipped the tour of Greenfield's landmarks?

We arrived in the dining room to find other tourists greeting each other and sharing tables. As a concession to Eric, who was certainly not feeling sociable, we sat at an empty table in the corner. Before long, though, we were joined by a somber-looking family of four. We soon learned they were somber with good reason. They had just endured disastrous flooding in their hometown, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Their house had been virtually destroyed, they told us, but they had nevertheless persevered with their vacation plans. Not knowing what state their community would be in when they returned, they were living in the moment and claimed to be enjoying Greenfield’s hospitality. However, the entire family spoke in such affectless tones of voice that I could only conclude they were suffering from some kind of shell shock.

We were rescued from this gloomy conversation by the appearance of our sponsors, Tom and Joan.

"It's good to see you all recovered," Tom said, clapping Eric on the back. I watched anxiously, hoping Eric wouldn't barf up the meager breakfast he'd managed to get down.

"Eat up," Tom said. "It's almost time to head for the bus."

We had quite a day in store, with stops planned at the Greenfield War Memorial and the new Western Massachusetts Electric hydroelectric power plant. Tom and Joan didn't ask us any more questions about our wedding. I guess they'd decided to leave that subject alone.

When we arrived at the War Memorial in the center of town, everyone piled out of the bus. Eric noticed a photographer hovering nearby.

"You planning to take a picture of us?" Eric asked, stating the obvious.

"Sure am. You'll probably make the front page of the Greenfield Recorder."

"I guess we're pretty big news around here," I murmured to Eric, momentarily relishing the idea of being on the front page.

Eric pulled me aside and reminded me that our marriage was supposed to be a secret. How secret would it remain if we were identified in print as a married couple? Against my will, I felt a thrill. Soon we would be out of the closet. But I could see Eric wasn't ready for that, so I reassured him that no one we knew ever read the Greenfield Recorder. And the story wasn't likely to be syndicated, big deal though it might be in Greenfield. Our secret was safe. We joined the group posing in front of the War Memorial and smiled for the camera.

The rest of the day was interesting, but no honeymoon, in the ordinary sense of that word. It was more like fieldwork, with Eric and me as anthropologists exploring the heartland. Although virtually all the tourists and their hosts were white middle-class Americans, like us, we felt different and, from our counter-cultural perspective, superior. We thought we knew what was important—love, not propriety; justice, not power; inner peace, not material wealth; youth, not old age. The people we met were pleasant enough, but so conventional and dull, we thought. We somehow avoided noticing that we too had opted for the conventional in getting married, however unconventionally.

And, though we felt alienated, we hid it well. By lunchtime, Eric was talking business with Tom, even though Eric's business was two bins of used records for sale in a friend's music shop. And I discussed the vicissitudes of raising children with Joan, even though I couldn't yet imagine having children. I could barely imagine anything beyond getting through this experience.

The crowning event of our stay came that evening—a barbecue at the local Lion's Club. Eric and I, wanting to avoid a repeat of the prior night, decided beforehand that we wouldn't drink, which put us further beyond the fringe. Liquor flowed freely and the more sober we remained, the more smashed everyone else became. During dessert, the speeches began, first by members of the Chamber of Commerce, extolling all that Greenfield had to offer, and then by us, the captured tourists. There was no escaping. One by one, the guests stepped up to the microphone, full of gratitude and praise for our hosts. When our turn came, the crowd was hushed, expectant. By then, we'd become known affectionately as the "newlyweds," and Eric had gained special notoriety due to his fainting episode.

"Greenfield is totally unique,” Eric said. The crowd burst into drunken applause. “There's no place like it in the world." More raucous applause.

It was my turn now. "This has been an amazing weekend,” I said, wanting to tell the truth without offending anybody. "One I'll never forget," I added, as everyone cheered wildly.

We didn’t remain at the farmhouse long after our return from the Northfield Inn. Although outwardly nothing was different, we felt as if everything had changed. However uncelebrated our wedding had been, we’d taken an enormous psychological step, into the realm of commitment. It was time to move on.

Eric had saved some money playing in a rock band during his college years, and we both wanted to travel, so we decided we would spend a year in Europe. We had no idea what we’d do there. Perhaps Eric would join a band. I would soak up the local cultures. Most important, we’d be far from both family and friends and could avoid the question of whether and when to divulge our secret.

But first we had to deal with Eric’s beloved Saab Sonett, a sports car which had been handmade in Sweden and purchased with part of Eric’s hard-earned band money. Eric wouldn’t hear of putting it in storage. He preferred to drive the car to California, where he could leave it with his parents while we traveled. This scheme would have the added benefit of enabling me to meet my new in-laws, so in early July we headed west.

* * *

Once in California, we moved temporarily into Eric’s old bedroom—his parents seemed to have no qualms about our sleeping together despite our apparently unmarried state. They were delighted to have Eric back home and, as I gradually realized, they were determined to keep him there. If that meant allowing me into their son’s bed, they were willing.

Eric and I quickly fell into a pleasant routine—days spent by the pool or exploring the Stanford campus on bicycles; in the evening, leisurely dinners with Reggie, Joe, and sometimes Mark. Over white wine, crab legs, and artichokes, Reggie initiated intense conversations about Eric’s career options. This parental “guidance” seemed a small price to pay for such opulent hospitality, and we politely refrained from discussing our European plans. After a few weeks, Europe began to feel very remote, and our plans began to seem a bit self-indulgent. After all, our savings didn’t amount to much, only a few thousand dollars. Besides, we were finding the California lifestyle very agreeable.

We began to think about moving into our own place and soon figured out how to do that without dipping into our savings—we answered an ad seeking a married couple to manage a garden apartment complex in East Palo Alto. In return for performing managerial duties, we could live rent-free. To the man who hired us, we were a conventional married pair, but Eric and I agreed that we would still keep our marriage secret from family and friends, who assumed we’d lied to get the job.

Since we’d been hired as a married couple, though, we introduced ourselves as married to the tenants in our building. We were leading a double life, but at first we felt we could handle it. Then a young couple moved in. We hit it off with them immediately and they soon became friends as well as tenants. Having introduced ourselves to them as husband and wife, we now found ourselves with new friends who thought of us as married, while our old friends, as well as our families, viewed us as unmarried. The line between our true (married) and false (unmarried) selves was becoming increasingly blurred.

We began to fantasize about revealing our secret. We imagined how surprised people would be, especially our parents. Finally, in late October, we gave in to the urge. We told Eric’s parents in person, then immediately called my parents. They were all, as expected, shocked but not, alas, uniformly pleased.

My mother, who had been the most opposed to our living together out of wedlock, was the most upset at having been excluded from the wedding. Joe was perplexed, and wondered why we hadn’t trusted him enough to tell him. On the other hand, my father was happy that the wedding had already occurred—perhaps relieved at having dodged a financial bullet. Reggie showed delight over the union by running up to her bedroom and emerging with a gold and amethyst ring, which she insisted on giving to me as a wedding gift.

In the end, Reggie’s exuberance prevailed, and what resulted was something approaching a conventional wedding without the ceremony. Reggie and Joe invited friends and both our families to an afternoon reception in December. Eric and I registered for gifts at a local Scandinavian housewares store where, ever the non-conformists, we selected stainless steel flatware instead of the then-customary silver. We took a similar stand against tradition with our wedding announcements, which we designed in the unusual format of a newspaper article. Entitled “Secret Nuptials Revealed,” it detailed the story of our wedding and unexpected honeymoon.

The party was a great success. A lot of champagne was consumed, but no one fainted. Eric and I found that we actually liked being the center of attention. We even enjoyed showing off our new wedding bands. After all, we never had been as unconventional as we liked to think. Moreover, by following our own weird path to the altar, we’d managed to conform quite well to the prevailing ethos of the seventies—do your own thing.

Anatomy of a Wedding, Part One

2006-06-21T10:10:00.000-05:00

Eric and I arrived in California during a heat wave. It was July, 1972 and we were newlyweds, driving west from Massachusetts in our blue Saab Sonnet, without air conditioning. We left Nevada, climbing through the Sierras. Eric kept assuring me that things would cool off soon. He'd grown up in the Bay Area, so I took his word for it. But the air only grew more stifling as we descended into the San Joaquin Valley, heading toward Palo Alto.

"Wait until we get through the Valley," he promised me. "It's never hot like this in Palo Alto. Wait until we cross the Bay."

So I waited and sweated, mostly from the heat, but also from nerves. I was about to meet my in-laws. They knew I was coming, but they didn't know they were my in-laws. Eric and I had gotten married without telling them, or anyone else. It hadn't been an impulsive decision. We'd planned ahead, taking the blood tests required in Massachusetts and obtaining our license at the Hadley Town Hall. We'd set our wedding date by opening up a calendar to the month of June (it was April at the time), closing our eyes and pointing to a date—June 28th, as it turned out.

Not that we thought either of our families would oppose the marriage. We were both recent college graduates of the same religion—how could they object? We just thought marriage should be a private affair, untainted by a wedding party. Since our married life would involve only the two of us, we reasoned, so should our wedding. Eric said his parents would totally understand, once we told them, which we didn’t plan to do for a while. I wasn’t so sure about my parents, but I figured I’d cross that bridge when I came to it.

We pulled into my in-laws’ driveway, the scent of eucalyptus washing over us, the air like a sauna under a blue-white sky. Eric opened a redwood gate stained pale gray, revealing a patio bordered by curved oriental screens and a hedge of star jasmine. He led me through sliding glass doors into the kitchen, where my mother-in-law, Reggie, sat drinking ice water with my brother-in-law, Mark.

Reggie looked surprisingly young, not much older than me, although she was in her mid-forties. She was full of enthusiasm, despite the heat.

"Oh, hi, come on in, isn't this heat incredible. Would you like some ice water?" They had an automatic ice maker, the first I'd ever seen. Its apparently limitless supply of ice seemed a portent of things to come in California.

After we'd each downed several glasses, Reggie suggested we go for a swim. Mark said he’d join us.

"I'll have to dig my suit out of the car," I said.

"Oh, don't worry about that," Reggie said. "Just jump right in. You don't need suits." So this was my mother-in-law. To my relief, she chose to remain in the house while Eric, Mark, and I took a dip in the buff.

I didn't meet my father-in-law, Joe, until that evening. He was arriving from out of town and Eric and I drove to the airport to pick him up. He was delighted to see Eric and pleasant to me, but he didn’t seem particularly interested in getting to know me. To him, I was just the latest in a string of Eric’s girlfriends, and he probably figured that, like the others, I wouldn’t last.

* * *

Our decision to get married made Eric and me an anomaly among our friends. The only married couple we knew had recently split up. Other couples had been living together for years without feeling the need to tie the knot. After all, this was the seventies and the idea of marriage seemed hopelessly outdated. Nevertheless, when Eric proposed I was thrilled, even though I was sure our friends would disapprove. Keeping the wedding secret solved that problem—they wouldn’t know.

Our wedding day dawned hot, sticky, and overcast at the farmhouse we shared with several of our friends in Hadley. I had no premonition about the strange turn events would take that day, only a bride’s nervous excitement as I dressed for the ceremony. I wore a floor-length flower-print granny dress with an empire waist. Eric put on blue jeans, cowboy boots, and a long-sleeved gold shirt with French cuffs, his dressiest clothes.

Our plan was to drive to nearby Historic Deerfield and find a justice of the peace, but Deerfield turned out to be more a museum than a functioning town. We couldn't find anyone to marry us. By mid-morning, we realized we'd have to devise an alternate strategy. We located a phone book and looked under the heading “Justice of the Peace” for Greenfield, a neighboring town. We found a listing for a Mr. Cunningham and called him. He agreed to perform the ceremony at four that afternoon.

It was before noon and already we were sweltering. My dress, which was made out of a cotton hopsack material, felt itchy. I suddenly wished I had a special dress for the occasion. And a wedding ring. Since our marriage was to be a secret, I couldn't wear a wedding ring, but at that moment I wanted one. And a honeymoon. We certainly weren't going to get one of those.

"My dress is all sweaty," I said. "Let's drive to Northampton. Maybe I can find something new to wear for the ceremony."

"Fine," said Eric. "It'll give us something to do." When we got to Northampton, I searched through racks in Peck & Peck and other stores on Green Street, right next to Smith College, not knowing what I was looking for, not finding anything remotely appealing. I gave up and we went back to the farmhouse, where I changed into a brown-and-white cotton print dress, one that I'd bought several years earlier when I had a summer job as a billing clerk on Wall Street.

We drove to Greenfield and arrived at a white colonial shortly before the appointed time. Mr. Cunningham, a cheerful elderly man with thin white hair, invited us into his living room. I don’t remember much about the short ceremony, only that he married us according to the authority vested in him by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. After the ceremony, he filled out the marriage certificate in a wavering hand, then said he had some important advice for us. We waited expectantly, hoping for something momentous.

"Don't drink and drive," he said, possibly because we looked so spaced out.

Outside, it had started to drizzle. That meant good luck, I remembered, or at least maybe some relief from the heat. We stood under a big maple tree and took each other's photograph, first mine, then Eric's. Before heading back to Hadley, we decided to return to Historic Deerfield for a celebratory dinner. We were pretty sure they had a functioning restaurant in Deerfield.

But we never made it to the restaurant. As we drove along Deerfield's main street, we were flagged down by a middle-aged man in red slacks and a short-sleeved plaid shirt.

"Are you folks from Massachusetts?"

"Yes," said Eric.

"Gee, that's too bad." The man looked very disappointed. "If you'd been from out of state, we would have invited you to be our guests at the Northfield Inn."

"Actually, I'm from California. We're just staying in Massachusetts for a while." Eric showed the man his driver's license, which really was from California.

The man looked extremely pleased. "That's wonderful. Then you're eligible. I represent the Greenfield Chamber of Commerce. Every year we ‘capture’ a group of tourists and give them a free weekend seeing the local sites. It's almost dinnertime and I was afraid I wasn't going to meet my quota. You are married, aren't you?"

We nodded, dazedly.

He peered into our tiny sports car. "Do you folks have any luggage?"

"Yes, we do," Eric said, thinking quickly. "But we don't have it with us. We left it at our friends' house, where we've been staying."

"Where's that?"

"Just south of here, in Hadley."

"You should have plenty of time to get your bags and make it back for cocktails at the Northfield Inn."

Our free honeymoon was about to begin.

The Julie Nixon Chronicles, Part Six: Catching Rides with Manolo as Nixon Rides to the Presidency

2006-06-09T07:19:00.000-05:00

During the late sixties, limousines were an uncommon sight on the roads. If one drove by, it invariably aroused curiosity, since limos were then generally used only by V.I.P.’s—Presidents, movie stars, and the like. When Julie offered me a ride home for the Thanksgiving holiday, it didn’t occur to me that I’d be riding in style until the Nixon limo pulled up at the front door of Baldwin House.

Richard Nixon had dispatched his valet and chauffeur, Manolo Sanchez, to transport Julie back to Manhattan. Julie suggested that Manolo drop me off at Penn Station. From there, I could easily catch a train to Long Island. So, off we went, cruising down Interstate 91, chatting about school and holiday plans. All the while, I kept noticing the people in other cars staring at us as we sped by. Just riding in such a fancy vehicle with the daughter of a famous person induced in me a heady, albeit unmerited, sense of self-importance.

In my recollection, Manolo was a bit of a crazy man, or at least a crazy driver. On that trip, he zoomed along at breakneck speed and made it to Manhattan in record time. But, the next time I hitched a ride home with Julie, Manolo managed to get totally lost in the wilds of Westchester. He kept insisting that he knew where he was going as he careened from one exit to the next. I began to fear we’d wind up in Pennsylvania, with Manolo protesting all the while that everything was fine. Despite his faulty sense of direction, Manolo remained with Richard Nixon throughout his Presidency, serving as his valet.

During that second ride, before Julie and I had to focus on getting Manolo back on track to Manhattan, we talked about her father, who was busy campaigning for the Republican Presidential nomination amid rising anti-war sentiment. Julie said he had received a number of unsolicited letters from soldiers at the front, voicing their support for him and their confidence that if Nixon were elected, he would find a way to end the war honorably.

I was quite moved by this conversation. Not because I thought Nixon would really end the war if he were elected, nor even because I was touched by the soldiers’ naïve faith in his ability to bring about peace with honor. What moved me was Julie’s passionate belief in her father’s goodness. I thought her confidence in him was misplaced, but it was impressive all the same.

Back at Smith, Julie survived geology and Professor Burger urged me to select it as my major. At the time, I foolishly thought pursuing subjects that came easily was tantamount to cheating and instead gravitated toward the ones that came hardest. I never took another geology class and wound up majoring in English.

At the end of first semester, Gloria and I switched roommates. We separated amicably and, as a parting gift, I gave her my llama rug, which she’d made good use of during our sojourn together. My new roommate was tidy and quiet, but moody. In retrospect, I missed Gloria’s weirdness, accompanied as it was by her invariable good humor. At the end of freshman year, I learned that she’d managed to flunk out of Smith, no mean accomplishment, as the college bent over backwards to help its students succeed. My next (and last) sighting of Gloria occurred in the mid-seventies, when I was married and living in Palo Alto, California. I ran into her on the steps of the local Post Office. She told me she’d just arrived from Hawaii, where she’d been living. She had a job selling Shaklee Vitamins—a healthy progression, it seemed, from the drugs she’d been into back at Smith.

My freshman year marked the last time I shared a dorm with Julie. The following fall, she took first semester off to campaign for her father, then married David Eisenhower in December, 1968, shortly after Nixon’s election. When Julie returned to Smith, she and David moved into an apartment across the street from Baldwin House, so I still saw her from time to time. She occasionally came over to Baldwin House for dinner, which created quite a stir, given that she was accompanied by Secret Service agents, who sat discreetly at other tables. I remember one dinner in particular, when a handsome young agent sat at my table. I found him articulate and pleasant, except for a few odd moments when I asked seemingly innocent questions, only to watch his demeanor stiffen as he replied, “Sorry, that’s classified,” in a clipped voice.

A few years later, as Watergate unfolded, I sometimes told friends the story of meeting Richard Nixon and his odd remark about the plumbing in Baldwin House. They often urged me to do an exposé of Julie and her father, but I could never bring myself to write such a piece. I simply liked Julie too much and didn’t want to take advantage of her friendship. A lot of time has passed, and I offer these chronicles as part of my personal history. I hope if Julie ever comes across them, she’ll read them in that spirit.

The Julie Nixon Chronicles, Part Five: Rocks for Jockettes and Winter Weekend with Jocks

2006-05-30T16:38:00.000-05:00

Like generations of college students, I regarded the introductory geology course at Smith as an easy way to fulfill my science requirement, so I signed up. Julie evidently felt the same way. She had avoided science altogether during her freshman year, but now also opted for geology. We often walked to class together, across the leafy campus to Burton Hall, where Professor Burger, a newly-minted PhD, held forth on the wonders of the earth’s history as told through its rocks.

Having no expectations that I’d enjoy the class, I fell in love with geology. Professor Burger, wiry and energetic, with an engaging smile, exuded zeal for his subject, which included the very terrain around us. He waxed positively poetic as he described the Connecticut River oxbow in Northampton (made famous by Thomas Cole’s painting, The Oxbow, now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York). Over thousands of years, he explained, sedimentary deposits on one bank and simultaneous erosion of the other had shifted the river to form a graceful arc. His account of these processes only deepened my appreciation for the oxbow's natural beauty.

And who wouldn’t be dazzled to learn about violent volcanoes, powerful earthquakes, and glaciers that marched inexorably across continents? Julie, for one. While I lapped up every lecture and adored the labs where we committed the names of rocks to memory (mica, chlorite,quartz, feldspar . . . a near-infinite list), Julie struggled to understand metamorphism and other basic mechanisms that shaped the earth. She was a history buff but her enthusiasm apparently didn’t extend to the history of the planet itself. She preferred to focus on the Founding Fathers.

Back at Baldwin House, Julie often sought me out in the foyer as we waited for Mrs. Nicely to lead the way into the dining room for dinner. Ever solicitous, Julie took her responsibilities as “big sister” seriously and wanted to make sure I was adjusting well to college life. And when Mrs. Nixon came to visit one fall weekend, she surprised me by going out of her way to find me and say hello.

Julie’s discomfort with geology soon showed up in her quiz results. While I was getting A’s, Julie was barely passing. She asked if I would tutor her, to which I gladly agreed, delighted to find a means to repay her continuing kindness toward me. As fall gave way to more wintry New England weather, we began our tutoring sessions and continued our walks to class. One morning, the temperature dipped below zero. Clad in my mother’s old racoon coat, I joined Julie for the hike to Burton Hall, a trek made memorable by Julie’s moist eyelashes, which froze solid in the frigid air—a vivid, if momentary, demonstration of the power of ice to transform the landscape.

After Christmas vacation, as exams approached, I climbed the stairs one evening on my way to Julie’s room. We’d arranged to meet and go over the class materials. Julie was sitting on the carpeted hall floor outside her room, talking on the hall phone (no one had their own phones in those days, let alone cell phones). The phone’s cord barely reached around the corner from its connection point in the little hall kitchenette.

Julie sounded upset. I lingered awkwardly for a moment and was about to return to my room when Julie asked me to wait just a minute. She managed to drag the phone inside her room and closed the door. Even through the door, though, she sounded more and more distressed as the conversation continued. Then I heard her say “Hold on,” and the door opened.

“Are you going to Winter Weekend with Peter?” she asked. I said I was.

“Are you planning to stay overnight?”

“Yes,” I answered.

Looking like she was about to burst into tears, Julie again asked me to wait, retreated into her room, and closed the door. When she re-emerged, she told a tale with a political twist all its own.

Some background: During my freshman year, women at Smith still required parental permission to stay out overnight. However, parents could sign a blanket release allowing their daughters to take overnights at their own discretion. My parents had signed such a release but Julie’s hadn't. Also, women still weren’t permitted to stay overnight in the Amherst dorms. For special weekends, they normally rented rooms from local residents. Quaint as it may sound today, I had made arrangements to rent a room for Saturday night of the upcoming Winter Weekend, whose festivities would extend far beyond the normal Smith weekend curfew of 1 am.

All these restrictions would go out the window by the following year as the cultural revolution took hold, but in the meantime, Julie had a dilemma. David wanted her to take an overnight on Saturday so they could party late into the night along with everyone else. The small supply of available rooms in town having already been rented, he proposed putting her up at the Amherst Motel, on Route 9, a short distance from the college.

When I arrived at her room, Julie was on the phone with her mother, entreating her to give permission for the overnight. While not unsympathetic, Mrs. Nixon saw a major potential problem. Her husband's campaign for the 1968 Presidential nomination had gone into high gear. The last thing he wanted was a story in the newspapers about his daughter spending the night in a seedy motel with the former President’s grandson. No matter that the motel wasn’t particularly seedy and that David would gladly have said goodnight at the door. Even the possibility of scandal was too much to risk. Despite Julie’s avowal that “even Barbara is allowed to stay overnight,” Mrs. Nixon regretfully decided that Julie could not.

Clearly, fame had its price. Never had obscurity seemed so appealing to me as when I happily packed my bag for my overnight at Amherst a few weeks later. But as much as Julie may have disliked having to sublimate her wishes to her father’s ambition, she also supported that ambition and believed in him passionately.

More about that in my next installment: Catching Rides with Manolo as Nixon Rides to the Presidency

The Julie Nixon Chronicles, Part Four: The Squash Connection

2006-05-18T10:58:00.000-05:00

In 1967, Smith, like most colleges, published a freshman facebook. This collection of photos helped me and other Smith women identify our peers, but it was of far greater interest to the men of Amherst, Yale, and Princeton, who were looking for dates.

The facebook contained shot after shot of modest-looking young women sporting Peter Pan collars fastened with circle pins. My photo, on the other hand, featured me in a sleeveless tee with a suggestively low v-neck. My long hair appeared tousled and my expression was more come-hither than demure. I’d submitted it in all innocence. I hated most pictures of myself and this was one of the few in which I thought I looked decent.

Apparently as a result of this photo, I began receiving phone calls from total strangers asking me out. But I wasn’t even tempted. I already had a boyfriend—an Amherst sophomore named Peter, who had gone to Southside Senior High School with me back in Rockville Centre. We’d even been in the same Spanish class. I’d always regarded Peter as cute but way too immature, despite the fact that he was a year older than me. Then, in December, 1966, I saw him in a whole new light.

Southside had a tradition of inviting recent grads back to meet with seniors and share their college experiences. I’d just been accepted at Smith, early decision. Knowing that Peter attended Amherst, only a few miles down the road from Smith, I was mildly curious to hear his impressions of college. But when he showed up, looking dashing in a brown suede jacket and exuding a newfound confidence, I felt intrigued. With his wavy black hair and crooked smile, he really was handsome, I decided. He’d even grown a bit taller. But that oh-so-cool jacket clinched it. I was smitten.

A few days later, he asked me out and by the time his winter break ended and he returned to Amherst, we were a couple. When I arrived at Smith the next fall, his presence nearby represented a small island of security in my sea of anxieties. I wasn’t about to jeopardize that for a few facebook dates.

The year before, Julie had her own facebook problems. Apparently, on viewing her photo, some men at Amherst and other schools thought it would be a lark to go out with the former Vice President’s daughter. As a result, she got countless calls from guys who probably had no real interest in getting to know her. She could never be sure, but her natural self-protectiveness led her to assume the worst.

Imagine what a relief it was to hook up with Amherst student David Eisenhower. David was equal in celebrity and understood exactly what Julie was going through. Their romance took off. And here’s where the squash connection comes in. David and Peter were both on the Amherst squash team. Hence, Julie and I knew what it was to hover inside the chilly corridors overlooking the squash courts while our boyfriends wacked a hard little ball inside a claustrophobic cubicle.

This connection led to at least one double date and gave Julie and me a common bond. Few of the freshmen and sophomore women in Baldwin House had steady boyfriends and even fewer were dating guys from Amherst. In fact, some felt condescending toward the little college down the road. I remember one senior remarking haughtily that she only dated Yale men. This struck me as odd, since it was a much more arduous trip to New Haven than to nearby Amherst.

I wanted to be with Peter as much as possible. He felt the same way, except for a few things that took priority--squash and tennis matches, squash and tennis practices, hanging around with his Deke fraternity brothers, even schoolwork. Given that I would drop anything to spend time with him, whereas he made time for me only when it was convenient, I was usually the one traveling the nine miles between our two schools.

Before one of my visits to Amherst, Julie asked me a favor. David had a history paper due that day, but was away from campus and had given the paper to Julie for delivery. Could I drop it off at his professor’s office? Of course, I said yes. During the ride over I struggled with the temptation to read what he’d written and, without too much hesitation, gave in. While I can’t remember the exact subject of the paper (something to do with American history), I do remember my reaction to reading it. It was an okay effort, not terribly well-written. I believed I could have written something at least as good, maybe better.

But this was David Eisenhower, grandson of the President! Since famosity had me in its grip even then, I was awed by David’s lineage. Wasn’t he guaranteed by birthright to be a superior student? The realization that he was merely competent bowled me over. For the first time since I arrived at Smith, I felt that I might actually belong there.

Next installment: Rocks for Jockettes and Winter Weekend with Jocks

The Julie Nixon Chronicles, Part Three: Digression—Mrs. Nicely and other Niceties of Smith College

2006-05-04T09:45:00.000-05:00

As I began writing this installment, I realized I couldn't describe my experiences with Julie at Smith without first setting the scene. Hence, the digression which follows.

By the time I left for Smith in late September, 1967, I was a nervous wreck. I anticipated entering a rarified world of cultured young women, many of them debutantes, who would be far better prepared for the rigors of college life than I, and probably far better dressed.

To make matters worse, the morning of my departure from Rockville Centre my father threw his back out heaving one of my over-laden suitcases into the car trunk, adding a dollop of guilt to my anxiety—knowing he had a bad back, I should never have let him lift that bag! He was forced to remain at home while my mother and I drove the three hours to Northampton, Massachusetts.

Baldwin House was an ivy-covered, four-story brick building dating from the turn of the twentieth century. It housed 77 students, freshmen through seniors. On arrival, I found myself relegated to the smallest double in the place. I was told by a helpful upperclasswoman that my room had been a maid's room in the days when students brought their maids along with them to school.

Great. I'd been assigned to the maid's quarters. As compensation, however, my roommate, Gloria, and I had a private adjoining bathroom almost as big as our room itself. The other students on our floor shared a communal bathroom at the end of the hall, no doubt one of the leaking facilities alluded to by Dick Nixon.

Gloria was not at all what I'd expected in a Smith roommate. From Castle Rock, Colorado, she was the first high school graduate ever to come east to attend college. I was hardly reassured when, out of earshot of my mother, she informed me that she'd hidden the LSD carefully, so it wouldn't be found and get us into trouble. LSD? I'd yet to try marijuana.

She also informed me that she liked to do barbell exercises on the floor, in the nude, (while slathered with body lotion, I later discovered). She instantly adored my prized possession, a small llama throw rug my father had bought during a business trip to Peru. She pronounced it the perfect spot for her naked barbell exercises.

As we unpacked, Gloria proudly displayed her latest fashion acquisition, a paper dress. (The concept of disposable clothing was short-lived, even for Gloria. Hers wound up on the wall of an Amherst freshman, Rob Cohen, for whom, I assume, she'd taken it off. Famosity requires me to divulge that Rob went on to become a filmmaker, directing such blockbusters as The Fast and the Furious.) Gloria also raved about the Evelyn Wood Speed Reading technique she'd mastered (and which she later convinced me to try, much to the detriment of my comprehension of Plato's Republic).

Despite her oddities, Gloria seemed genial and at least I didn't find her intimidating. My other classmates, however, were a different matter. Though I later learned that my entering class was an anomaly at Smith—the first class in which a majority of students (67%) had graduated from public high schools—at Baldwin House many of the freshman and still more of the sophomores, juniors, and seniors were products of elite private schools.

My anxiety about how I'd measure up induced an acute attack of self-consciousness. In particular, I became excruciatingly aware of the way I spoke—I'd always prided myself on not having a New York accent, but suddenly my vowels were nowhere near proper enough. And the teenage slouch that had always been good enough for Southside Senior High School seemed totally declasse among my fellow Smithees, who, in my idealized view, all stood ramrod straight.

No description of my arrival at Smith College would be complete without mention of Baldwin's housemother, Mrs. Nicely, whose name apparently predestined her for her role as enforcer of genteel comportment. With her white hair and pleasingly plump figure, she was the very picture of a mother in my eyes. I immediately decided that the rebelliousness which had characterized my teenage years and made my actual mother's life miserable could never be allowed to surface with Mrs. Nicely. A mere whiff of her disapproval, I imagined, would send me into paroxysms of shame.

Mrs. Nicely lived in an apartment on the first floor of Baldwin House and presided over dinner every evening and tea on Friday afternoon. In those waning days of parietals, men weren't allowed upstairs and Baldwin House residents were still required to sign out for the evening with Mrs. Nicely and return by 1 a.m. (11 p.m. on weeknights). Such decorum now sounds quaint, even ridiculous. But at the time, I aspired only to master the intricacies of what was known at Smith as "gracious living," which included wearing a skirt to dinner and properly folding one's cloth napkin after meals and returning it to its allotted cubby.

Among my freshman classmates were some who seemed to embody the cultured upbringing I lacked—Kathy, daughter of a Ford executive and graduate of Miss Porter's School in Farmington, Connecticut, whose family lived in the exclusive enclave of Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan; Pril, who traced her lineage back to the American Revolution and had attended the Emma Willard School; and Liz, fresh from the Madeira School in McLean, Virginia. They were all lovely young women who became my friends, but initially I was convinced that their impeccable credentials made them superior to me.

In truth, several of the sixteen freshmen in Baldwin House were much like me—nice girls from good suburban high schools. We arrived with our Weejuns, our Villager outfits, and our liberal views. And there were also a number of scholarship students who'd had far fewer advantages than me growing up. I eventually realized that we were a diverse group and that I could succeed just by being myself. But during those first anxious days at Smith, I strained to achieve perfect etiquette.

We freshmen had moved in early, along with a few upperclasswomen who helped with orientation, so I didn't see Julie right away. By the time she arrived, I greeted her as a welcome familiar face. We were delighted to discover that we were both taking Geology 101 to fulfill the science requirement. And we found that we had another thing in common—boyfriends at Amherst College. More on that in my next installment.

Next Installment: The Squash Connection (really!)

The Julie Nixon Chronicles, Part Two: Dinner Chez Nixon

2006-04-18T13:46:00.000-05:00

After Richard Nixon departed for the Harvard Club, Julie suggested that Tricia, she, and I repair to her bedroom, where we could chat until dinner was ready. She led the way to a large room containing two twin beds covered with frilly, feminine spreads. I sat on one bed and Julie and Tricia took the other.

Tricia, a giggly blond, seemed less earnest than her younger sister, who wanted to know all about me--whether I had siblings, how I'd gotten interested in Smith, what I planned to study. Julie's rapt attention to my answers made me feel as if I were a fascinating and important person. Although I attempted to make polite inquiries about her, somehow the conversation was all about me. It was my first experience of Julie's remarkable ability to deflect the focus from herself onto the person with whom she was speaking. Perhaps because she'd been raised in the public eye and subject to media scrutiny her entire life, she'd become adept at directing attention outward, away from herself, a protective mechanism that preserved her privacy.

We had only been in the bedroom a short while when, to my surprise, Pat Nixon joined us. She took a seat next to me on the bed and seemed as interested as Julie and Tricia in hearing about my mundane high school life. And she loved my outfit! She especially admired the black Danskin top and wanted to know where I'd purchased it. She suggested to her daughters that they go shopping with her in search of similar tops.

It seemed to me at the time, and still does, that Mrs. Nixon loved being a mother, loved hanging out with her daughters and their friends, and wanted nothing more than a low-profile life as a wife and homemaker. In the kindly light of Julie's bedroom, Mrs. Nixon's face softened and her smile seemed more natural than the pained expression I came to associate with her television appearances. I don't know whether she'd been invited to the Harvard Club shindig along with her husband that evening, but clearly home is where her heart was.

When dinner was ready, we sat down to eat in the formal dining room, complete with silver candelabra in the middle of the table. The meal was served by Fina Sanchez, the Nixon's Cuban cook. Her husband, Manolo, served as driver and all-around valet to the Vice President (more about Manolo in a future installment). Mrs. Nixon was a delightful hostess, engaging me, along with Julie and Tricia, in conversation about what I might expect at Smith College. Our discussion, thankfully, was more about academics and social life than plumbing.

All would have been completely lovely were it not for the fact that the candelabra, with its glowing candles, was directly between Mrs. Nixon and me. Still on my best behavior, I endeavored to look at Mrs. Nixon while talking to her. My eyes became bleary and I craned my neck in an attempt to see over the candles, leaning first to the right, then to the left, all the while endeavoring to sound intelligent. Mrs. Nixon appeared not to notice anything amiss. I felt too unsure of myself to request that the candelabra be moved.

Having gotten a quick glimpse of the Nixons' lives, I was tempted to draw all kinds of broad conclusions. I gave into that temptation, bigtime. In the foyer, earlier, I decided Dick Nixon was a man who focused on the inner workings of things at the expense of the big picture. Later, in Julie's bedroom, I saw Mrs. Nixon as the very paradigm of a devoted wife and mother. Now in the dining room, it occurred to me that Mrs. Nixon and her daughters might be as insecure as I about matters of etiquette. It takes a certain amount of confidence to know when to break the rules and move the candelabra.

Overall, my impression of both Julie and her mother was of two genuinely caring individuals. Regarding Tricia, I couldn't tell what kind of person hid behind the giggles, which may have been her defense against invasions of her privacy. As for Richard Nixon, although I believed I'd learned something about his world view, I still felt clueless about the man's own inner workings.

Next installment: The Squash Connection

The Julie Nixon Chronicles, Part One: Meeting Richard Nixon, or Plumbing on the Brain

2006-04-16T13:33:00.000-05:00

It was summer, 1967. I was eighteen years old and about to begin my freshman year at Smith College. I lived in Rockville Centre, a suburb of New York City, with my solidly Democratic parents and two younger sisters. Richard Nixon lived not far away, on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, with his wife, Pat, and daughters, Julie and Tricia. He practiced law at his firm, Nixon, Mudge, Rose, Guthrie & Alexander, and he bided his time. He intended to run again for President of the United States.

Though I lived geographically close to the Nixons, we were worlds apart. Nixon had served as Vice President for two terms under Eisenhower and his daughters had grown up virtually in the shadow of the White House. My father was a German refugee and my mother the daughter of poor Russian immigrants. I was about to become the first in the family to attend college, a Seven Sisters school, no less. I'd navigated high school well, but I had no idea how I'd fare among the daughters of the elite. Then a letter arrived. It was from Julie Nixon.

Julie wrote that she would be my "big sister" at Smith. She was entering her sophomore year and lived in the dorm to which I'd been assigned, Baldwin House. I later learned that big sisters were chosen according to geographic proximity, in the hope that incoming students would have a chance to meet their new mentors before school began. Her job, Julie said, was to help ease my transition to college life.

Her letter brimmed with advice--about New England weather, appropriate attire (she favored skirts)--and she encouraged me to ask her any and all questions I might have. The letter ended with an invitation to join her for dinner at her family's New York apartment.

Talk about an offer I couldn't refuse. Here was a chance to get an inside glimpse of the life of someone powerful and famous. Nixon wasn't a man I admired, far from it, but even then famosity had its hold on me and I was excited by the prospect of seeing how he and his family lived. At the same time, I was terrified. I wondered what to wear, how to behave, what to say. I imagined myself committing some dreadful faux pas that would haunt me forever after. But not for a minute did I consider turning down the invitation.

Both my mother and I considered a new outfit de rigeur for the upcoming occasion. But what should it be? After much shopping, we settled on a wool suit from B. Altman, with a short jacket and A-line skirt in a rust, gold, and black plaid pattern. We completed the ensemble with a black long-sleeved Danskin top.

On the appointed day in early September, I made the thirty-five minute trip from Rockville Centre to Penn Station on the Long Island Railroad. From there, I took a taxi to the Nixons' apartment at 810 Fifth Avenue. Just taking a cab by myself was a new and heady experience. I'd been tutored by my dad on how to tip. I felt very grown-up and incredibly young at the same time.

The doorman directed me to the elevator. I'd been in a doorman apartment before, when I'd visited my cousin on the Upper East Side. But I'd never had an elevator experience like the one that awaited me. When the elevator doors opened on the fifth floor, they opened directly into the Nixon's apartment. It seemed the height of luxury.

When I stepped out of the elevator, Julie, her sister, Tricia, and their mother were waiting to greet me. They ushered me into a darkly-furnished foyer and were very gracious in making me feel welcome. Mrs. Nixon wanted to know if I'd had any trouble finding the place and Julie told me how glad she was to meet me. Mrs. Nixon said she wished her husband could join us for dinner, but he had to give a speech at the Harvard Club that evening. Just then, the Vice President himself strode into the foyer.

With an enthusiasm I would come to know and appreciate, Julie introduced me to her father.

"Daddy, I'd like you to meet Barbara. She'll be a freshman this year at Smith and she'll be living in Baldwin House. She's my little sister!"

Nixon shook my hand. "Has Julie warned you about the plumbing in Baldwin House?" he asked. "They've had a lot of problems with leaks in the bathrooms there."

I kid you not. These are the words with which Dick Nixon greeted a shy and impressionable eighteen-year-old. Not "Smith is a wonderful school. You must be looking forward to studying there," or "Julie's had a great experience at Smith so far. I hope you will, too." No. Richard Nixon focused on the plumbing.

At the time, I thought it a very odd comment and decided it must be indicative of Nixon's world view. He was, I concluded, a man mostly concerned with form and not substance, with the mechanics of things rather than their meaning. In light of subsequent events, his casual remark took on a far more ominous quality and seemed frighteningly predictive of Nixon's paranoia about leaks during his Presidency.

As many will recall, the Plumbers was a White House Special Investigations Unit established in July, 1971, whose mandate was to stop leaks of confidential information to the media. The Plumbers was formed in response to the leaking of the Pentagon Papers by Daniel Ellsberg. Its members went on to commit many clandestine and illegal acts, including the Watergate break-in.

Back in September, 1967, Richard Nixon's presidential aspirations were barely a blip on the public radar. But even though I felt awed at the time to meet such a famous personage, I was struck by the weirdness of the man. History has confirmed my reaction, and then some.

Next installment: Dinner Chez Nixon

Foam Flecks and Bobbing Coconuts

2006-04-09T11:45:00.001-05:00

The other day, I stood on a sea wall gazing out at Biscayne Bay, mesmerized by the soothing chop of the water. My eyes were drawn to two broken white lines on the water's surface, between the pilings that guide boats into the nearby marina. I assumed at first that the lines were foam, probably from the wake of a boat that had recently passed. But I hadn't noticed a boat. Surely I wasn't in so much of a trance that one could have passed right by me without my seeing it.

As I watched and wondered, the white patches seemed to undulate on the water's surface with something more than the lightness of foam. I thought I could also see patches of gray. If this were merely the wake of a boat, wouldn't it have dissipated more quickly? Not having binoculars, I was forced to rely on my own vision in the brilliant mid-afternoon sun--my own vision coupled with a wishful imagination.

Soon I felt sure there was something alive in the water and I believed I knew what it was--manatees. Not one, but a small group of them, grazing on the abundant plant life in the shallow harbor. I came to that conclusion logically, since this part of the bay is known as a favored feeding ground for the gentle sea cows. In fact, boats are required to travel slowly as they make their way out to the open bay, lest they injure the endangered creatures with their propellers.

I recently read that manatees sometimes congregate in groups, so the idea that four or five of them might be just offshore didn't seem too farfetched, even though the total number of manatees in Florida's waters is probably under four thousand. And the fact that their coloration is normally a uniform gray didn't give me pause. It seemed likely that time (manatees can live for up to 60 years) and run-ins with boats and other obstacles could produce the mottled skin that appeared to be just under the water's surface.

I'd also read that from the shore manatees look like bobbing coconuts, an effect created when they break the surface with their rounded snouts to take in air. (Like whales, dolphins, seals, and sea lions, manatees are mammals.) I had to admit that amid the roiling, mottled water I didn't see anything that reminded me of a bobbing coconut. Still I watched, riveted, as the manatees seemed to migrate slowly toward the opposite shore. I didn't want to believe that what I was seeing was merely flecks of foam being pulled by the current. I wanted to believe that manatees were out there. The idea that I might briefly be witnessing their lives in the wild thrilled me to the core.

The following evening, at sunset, as I walked by the same spot on the sea wall, I saw a long double white line leading through the channel directly to the marina. This time there was no doubt--these lines were made by the wake of a boat. They were too regular to be anything else and they led directly to one of the boat slips. Apparently, even though the boat had passed sometime earlier, the foam left in its wake lingered. So the mystery of my supposed manatee sighting was solved. The forms I'd imagined in the water had merely been a wake's foam after all. In the wake of that realization, I was left with a feeling of sadness. A momentary connection with the wider universe seemed to have been lost.

But I haven't given up. I'm on the lookout for bobbing coconuts that aren't actually coconuts.

Get Me to My Flight on Time

2006-03-20T11:58:00.000-05:00

When it comes to arriving at airports, there are two types of people: those who relish cutting it close and those who like to arrive nice and early. I'm emphatically the latter, married to the former.

One could say that airport arrival strategy reflects one's entire philosophy of life. Since I'm a worrier (as anyone who reads my blog regularly will know), I always plan for the worst. So, naturally, a trip to the airport must take into account the possibility of a dire traffic jam, long check-in lines, and still-longer security lines, followed by random selection for a special search (resulting in complete pat-down and removal of every last item in my meticulously-packed carry-on bag).

My husband, Eric, suffers from none of these concerns. Though he devotes considerable energy to worrying about the likelihood of catastrophic events (asteroids, pandemics, earthquakes), he never sweats the small stuff. He assumes traffic will be moderate and we'll breeze through check-in. Should security lines be long, he reasons, they'll move us to the head of the line if our flight is about to depart.

Eric wouldn't necessarily agree with my characterization of him as a risk-preferring, last-minute arriver. Instead, he sees himself as an eminently sane traveler, able to rationally gauge how long it will take to get to the airport and make his way through security. As he sees it, he leaves enough time, but not too much. To him, more than half an hour at the gate is way too much.

I, on the other hand, regard myself as the sane one. Airports are pretty pleasant places these days--no smoking, more places to eat and shop once you get past security, even wi-fi. How delightful to arrive and make it through security with an hour to spare and plenty of seats available at the gate, where I can settle down with a Starbucks decaf mocha and a good book. Even our dog, Cosmo, a frequent traveler, seems to like the airport ambiance and is content to sit on my lap and take in the scene.

Eric had hoped that the new automated check-in systems would speed things up so he could convince me we didn't need to arrive quite so early. But Cosmo put the kibosh on that pipe dream. Automated check-in isn't permitted when you bring a pet along. This means we have to wait in the regular check-in line, the one that's always the longest. No more curbside check-in for us, let alone the automated kind.

Recently, Eric made a valiant gesture, a peace offering in our ongoing airport-arrival struggle. For my birthday, he presented me with a certificate (laminated and indestructible) declaring that he'll leave for the airport as early as I want. Fabulous, as far as it goes. The certificate guarantees acquiesence, but doesn't promise the acquiesence will be entirely gracious. Eric still can't quite hide his disbelief when I suggest a good time to leave for the airport, generally an hour before he'd like to leave. Still, he's lived up to his end of the bargain and my travel bliss is almost complete. Now, if only I could get him not to go off in search of a magazine just as the plane is about to board.

A Very Small Circle of Friends

2006-03-07T17:20:00.000-05:00

I was working on the Monday New York Times Crossword Puzzle and the clue was "Indian city of 13 million." I had the first letter, "D", so it took no time to fill in the blank spaces with "elhi"--Delhi. Just when I was feeling smug because, with that word, I'd managed to finish the easiest puzzle of the week, it hit me--thirteen million people, and I don't know a single one of them. In fact, take all one billion or so people on the subcontinent--I'm not acquainted with even one human being. Add China, Indonesia, Russia--don't know anyone who lives there, either. In France, I have one friend and a few relatives I've never met; in England, a lovely couple we met on a recent visit. And that's about it. If the world is a global village, I must live on the moon.

The extreme narrowness of my acquaintance first struck me forcefully during the Hurricane Katrina disaster. Like most Americans, I was horrified and riveted by the unfolding scenes of chaos in New Orleans. I have neighbors who were concerned about friends and relatives made homeless by the storm. But I realized that I myself don't know a single person who lives in the entire state of Louisiana, let alone New Orleans, unless you count a friend's daughter who attends Toulane and an old college friend who, last time I checked, teaches there. I can't even claim an old college friend for Mississippi, Alabama, New Mexico, or Utah. And the list goes on.

I've lived in places that can justly lay claim to being cosmopolitan--Manhattan, Boston, Palo Alto, Chicago, Miami--and I've regarded myself as someone with friends from many different backgrounds. On reflection, though, that's not quite true. My friends may have different religions, different professions, different ethnic origins, but most of them, like me, grew up in intact middle-class families, went to good colleges, moved to suburban locales to raise their kids, and currently live in or around Boston.

I love my friends. I just wish I had a few from more far-flung places. All these years I've thought of myself as worldly and sophisticated. Turns out I'm just a small-town girl with a very small circle of friends.

Remembering Wendy Wasserstein

2006-02-27T14:10:00.000-05:00

Famosity got hold of me when it came to Wendy Wasserstein--I felt an inflated sense of self-importance just because I knew her. By all accounts, Wendy herself never succumbed to famosity, never let her fame get to her head. In fact, it was her ability to transform her self-deprecating nature into the funny, poignant characters of her plays that made her famous and gave her importance in the eyes of the world.

I met Wendy when we were both part of an experiment at Amherst College during the academic year 1969-70. We were two among the first twenty-three women ever to attend the college. Wendy was a junior from Mt. Holyoke, I a junior from Smith. All of us had been accepted for one semester but we soon petitioned and were invited to stay for the full year. The members of our small band of women were viewed on campus as representing the "woman's point of view" in an era when women's liberation had made our views interesting, even to men. We all felt the heady sense of being larger than life, of performing before a rapt audience of our male classmates. Given that extraordinary environment, it's no wonder so many of Wendy's plays concerned feminism and college life.

It was during second semester that I really got to know Wendy. After Christmas vacation, I moved into the one of the Social Dorms, which had suites consisting of a common room and four single bedrooms. My suite was connected by an interior door to a second suite of four singles plus common room. I returned early from vacation so I could settle into my new room. Most students hadn't arrived yet. That first evening back, I heard voices coming from the adjoining suite and ventured through the interior door. Like Alice going through the looking glass, I entered the world of Wendy Wasserstein. Her friend, Mary Jane, also from Mt. Holyoke, was there as well, doing her Theda Bara imitation. Wendy greeted me with friendliness and a blizzard of jokes aimed mostly at herself.

She and Mary Jane made an odd but arresting pair of friends: Mary Jane--slim, self-contained, darkly beautiful, taciturn; Wendy--plump, messy, exuberant, with wildly curly hair and a freckled face. Mary Jane intimidated me. She seemed the essence of cool, her cigarette dangling between her fingers and her lips a pouty red. Wendy, on the other hand, made me feel instantly comfortable. But dazzled. She was just so brilliantly funny.

That first evening, I learned about her father (like Holly's father in Uncommon Women and Others, he invented velveteen) and her ditsy, dance-obsessed mother. She told the story of the beautiful suede jacket given to her by her father. Wendy, incurably clutzy, was afraid to wear it for fear she would ruin it, so it stayed in her closet during most of first semester. Finally, she cast fate to the wind, wore the jacket to a fraternity party, and promptly spilled beer all over it. Now that the jacket was "ruined," she said, she could finally wear it and not worry about it.

We became friends. Wendy thought I was smart and could see I was thin, two qualities she admired. I hid my insecurities better than Wendy, who used hers to make us laugh, but I felt a bond with her because of them. With Wendy, it was more than okay not to be perfect.

While at Amherst, I attached myself to an amazing group of upperclassmen, who achieved a creative alchemy that resulted in exciting theatre, art, and music, both at Amherst and beyond. Naturally, Wendy was also drawn to this group. Some of its members later became characters in her plays.

The following year, when Wendy and I were back at our respective women's colleges, one of our Amherst friends, David Rimmer, directed an edgy production of the musical Peter Pan, with a classmate, Artie Wilkins, as a black Peter Pan. I was cast as Wendy's mother and the real Wendy (Wasserstein) was the choreographer for the production. David brought together a talented bunch of people: he himself went on to write Album, a Pulitzer Prize finalist play; his musical director, Barry Keating, earned several Tony nominations for his musical, Starmites; Artie went on to a career in dance; and then, of course, there was Wendy.

Wendy's choreography talents weren't needed for my non-dance role, but she devoted her efforts to building up my acting and singing confidence and supporting me when Barry tried to get me to sing Tender Shepherd in a higher key. Barry prevailed, after which Wendy managed to convince me that I really could reach the high notes. The whole experience was a marvelous lark for me, the high point of a senior year spent unhappily back at Smith College.

After I graduated, my contact with Wendy was sporadic: an occasional coffee together when we both lived in Manhattan in the early seventies; a note dropped in my law school mailbox in 1978, when Wendy was in Chicago for the opening of Uncommon Women; occasional letters back and forth; a dinner at Wellesley College, where Wendy had been invited to attend a performance of Uncommon Women. By then, she had achieved widespread fame with The Heidi Chronicles. Later, when The Sisters Rosensweig opened, I wondered whether the fact that one of the sisters, Gorgeous, lived in the same Boston suburb as me was coincidence or not. Sadly, Wendy and I had lost touch by then and I never had the chance to ask her.

A few years ago, though, I crossed paths with Wendy's old friend, Mary Jane. Still glamorous, but no longer so intimidating, she updated me on Wendy--the difficult birth of her child, Lucy Jane, the challenge of meeting the high expectations created by so much early success.

By that time, my younger son, Alex, had become passionately interested in writing and the theatre. He went on to study dramatic writing at NYU's Tisch School and immersed himself in the New York theatre world. I thought about contacting Wendy. I knew Alex would enjoy meeting her and I was sure she would like him. I imagined she'd be gracious, even delighted. But still, I put it off, not wishing to impose. Now it's too late. I'll always regret that.

But at least I have Wendy's plays. I can introduce Alex to her through them. And I can hope that she remembered me as fondly as I remember her.

Too Much Stuff

2006-02-11T11:59:00.000-05:00

I'm back from California, where we celebrated my mother-in-law's eightieth birthday. Lots of fun, good food, great company, walks in the woods and on the beach. In between, of course, I checked email, got phone messages, kept my cell phone charged and ready. And there's the rub. I've gotten so dependent on all this technology that it's hard to live without it. Hard also to live without my king size Select Comfort mattress, my hairdryer, my magnifying mirror, and without my Stark Sisters Maple Almond Granola. In short, I'm surrounded by stuff and it's running my life, especially when things go wrong. Which they always do, particularly if technology's involved. Here's my corollary to Murphy's Law--the more stuff you have, the more likely something will go wrong with all or part of it.

Lately, Eric and I have been splitting our time between Miami and Boston, so our stuff has just about doubled. Somehow, though, the number of things that have gone wrong has at least quadrupled (there must be another corollary there).

Take our disposal woes. The six-year-old model at our Boston house suddenly died. We had it replaced, but in so doing, the plumber inadvertently reversed the sink faucet's hot and cold settings, necessitating a return visit. Less than a week later, in our Miami apartment, the sink became stopped up and our brand new Insinkerator failed. We replaced it with another Insinkerator, only to have it suddenly stop working two days later--apparently defective. Insinkerator number three is currently doing okay. Of course, we're afraid to put anything down the disposal to test it out.

A disclaimer: I'm not exactly complaining. I feel incredibly lucky to have a nice house and now a nice apartment. But I am questioning the price I pay in time, money, and mental health to maintain such a material-laden lifestyle. Like many Americans, I sometimes buy things just because I can, not because of real need or because they add meaning to my life. In fact, what I fear is that all the stuff obscures what really matters--love, ideas, humor, connectedness to people, animals, and the environment.

In one of our recent technological failures, we had no Internet in our Miami apartment for a month, due to Hurricane Wilma. My initial reaction was nothing short of withdrawal symptoms--I really didn't know what to do with myself without email, online newspapers and other information sources at my fingertips. I was able to check email daily at a nearby hotel, so I was never even completely cut off. But what surprised me was that after the first few days, I missed the Internet less and less. I stopped craving the latest news. I read more books, took more walks, paid more attention to the dog, sat on my terrace instead of inside at my computer. Maybe next time I lose the Internet, I'll take things a step further--unplug my tv, turn off my cell phone, and go birdwatching.

Slow People

2006-01-28T15:04:00.000-05:00

I'm a slow person. No, I don't mean mentally retarded, though some might argue that point. I also don't mean slow-moving, sluggish, or drowsy. By a slow person, I mean someone who takes life one thing at a time, someone for whom multi-tasking is as challenging as rappeling off the Empire State Building, and equally unlikely. A slow person leaves plenty of unstructured time between commitments, likes to hang out with the dog in the backyard, and even considers that a bonafide activity. Being a slow person doesn't mean not feeling guilty about leading a slow life, but it does mean persisting in it despite all guilty feelings.

I was introduced to the term by a friend. She used the phrase to describe herself and meant it in a modest and self-deprecating sense, by way of explaining her daily schedule, which includes power yoga and volunteer work with the blind. Like me, she doesn't over-program herself. Yoga isn't something she does before work, or after. It's her morning's activity.

As she explained her slow nature, I immediately saw in myself a kindred spirit. Putting a label on my modus operandi appealed to me, made it seem somehow more acceptable. Because mostly, I feel as if I'm out of sync with the world around me, a world of fast track, productive personalities. And thank goodness all you type-A's are out there. You're the ones who make the trains run on time (oops! bad example). But, while you're pulling out of the station, I'm probably still at home, tying on my sneakers and taking Cosmo for a walk.

I'm not suggesting here that everyone take time to smell the roses. Rather, I'm asking your understanding, even sympathy, for those of us who can't do anything but smell the roses. And please don't stop multi-tasking. Without you fast people, who would grow, ship, plant, fertilize, and water the roses for us slow people to smell?

Update - Waiting for a Sign

2006-01-23T15:02:00.000-05:00

After my appointment at the Wellness Community was postponed by the director last Monday, I spent several days waiting and wishing for a sign to tell me whether I should keep the appointment we'd rescheduled for today.

I checked out the Wellness Community's online newsletter, which included photos of many staff and board members as well as clients, hoping something would click. It looked like a nice group of people and the programs and events sounded excellent, even inspiring. But I couldn't quite see myself in the picture.

I gazed out my window across Biscayne Bay toward the high rises of Kendall, where the Wellness Community is located, hoping a single ray of sunlight would break through the clouds above Kendall, signaling a divine intention that I volunteer for this organization. But nothing out of the ordinary appeared.

Eventually, despairing that a Deus ex machina would materialize to solve my dilemma, I took a long walk with Eric, during which I tried to get him to tell me what I should do. Actually, I hoped he would tell me what I wanted to do, since I couldn't figure it out for myself. After all, we've been married for over thirty years. Shouldn't he know my wishes better than I do? He didn't fall for that one, though, and wouldn't even reveal his own view about whether I should pursue the position. In fact, he claimed he didn't have an opinion.

So I was on my own. And just when I had stopped expecting it, a sign of sorts came along to help me decipher my mixed-up feelings. I received an email from a writer friend who wanted to hear more about an idea I'd mentioned to her casually over dinner a few weeks earlier--starting a small press. During dinner we'd also talked about an anthology she was working on and I'd secretly envisioned publishing it as my first book.

As I read her email, I felt calm, centered, happy. Here was a woman who, like me, understood the joy (and pain) of sitting alone in a room in front of a blank page. This was how I wanted to spend my time, involved in the writing life. No matter that I haven't published much other than some poetry and a local newspaper column. I'm still a writer. It's how I define myself. Before committing to volunteer work which would take me away from writing, I wanted to explore the possibilities of a small press, maybe look into putting together my own anthology, keep writing this blog.

Not that writing and volunteering need be mutually exclusive. But for a one-track perfectionist like myself, it seemed best to pick a single focus for the time being. Armed with my new self-understanding, I called the Wellness Community and cancelled my appointment.

Social Inaction

2006-01-16T16:16:00.000-05:00

On paper, I'm the ideal candidate for a volunteer position. I'm an empty nester, my husband manages to support the family with no help from me, and I have skills that many organizations could probably use--typing, editing, filing, answering phones, designing web pages. Hey, I even speak Spanish! But guilty though it makes me feel, I've never been able to get on board the social action wagon.

Not that I haven't tried. Way back in the seventies, I worked at one of the first wholistic health centers in the nation--the San Andreas Health Center in Palo Alto. I acted as a receptionist several days a week, answering phones, greeting clients, fielding questions. I enjoyed the people and was very interested in the work the center was doing. In fact, my motives for volunteering weren't pure at all. I wanted to try out the various services and my volunteer status entitled me to discounts for such exotic fare as rolfing, biofeedback, and encounter groups. I was more like an indentured consumer, working off my various therapies by manning the front desk.

Later, after I had my first child, I was grateful to Warmlines, a networking organization for parents, so I worked for a while manning their phones. Being new to town when Aaron was born, I'd felt isolated and lonely. Through Warmlines, I connected with other first-time mothers who became some of my closest friends. I wanted to return the favor. But even with such altruistic motives, I didn't last long at the job. I've never been great at phone tasks--my answers to questions are always more complicated than necessary. And I began to resent licking envelopes and doing other grunt work. Before long, I bowed out.

Onward and upward to "meaningful" volunteer work. I decided I'd offer my help to Greater Boston Legal Services. After all, I had my J.D. and was a member of the Massachusetts Bar. Why not do something challenging and at the same time help indigent people? Plus, there would be something in it for me--I'd use my legal skills and that way keep them from deteriorating until I was ready to enter the real job market. GBLS greeted me with open arms, apparently thrilled to have me. I was assigned to work with an attorney who promised me lots of interesting work. So I eagerly signed on. No matter that I'd have to pay a sitter while I worked and also pay for parking in Boston. But each time I arrived at the office, my attorney never seemed ready for me, never had any work set out, never utilized my expertise. She'd scurry around looking for something to keep me busy after I'd arrived. More make-work. So I was paying for a sitter and parking in order to spend several boring hours a week in downtown Boston. No thanks.

After that, I stuck to more child-centered volunteer options, performing a variety of services at my kids' schools as they made their way through the grades. Again, my aims weren't exactly unselfish. Volunteering at school enabled me to form good relationships with teachers and staff while getting a firsthand glimpse of what went on in the classrooms.

My most recent attempt at social action occurred not long ago, when I was invited to help start a Restorative Justice project. It seemed like a great idea--working together, lawyers, social workers, and the local police would design an innovative approach to juvenile justice. Offenders and victims would meet in a supportive setting with other community members and the aim would be to find ways offenders could make meaningful restitution to their victims. We had a number of meetings, launched several pilot projects, and I even wrote a grant proposal to fund the effort. But the group seemed more interested in process than results, with meeting after meeting yielding little progress. Frustrated, I finally severed my ties. As far as I know, the project still hasn't gotten off the ground.

Fast forward to January, 2006. I called the Wellness Community in Miami, where Eric and I plan to spend a good part of the winter. The Wellness Community helps cancer survivors cope with post-diagnosis issues. The director seemed delighted at my offer of help, though she warned me it would be mostly "administrative" (code for answering phones and licking envelopes). Still, I've heard that it's a terrific organization. And I've been feeling guilty. I should be giving something back to the community, here and up north. I made an appointment to meet the director.

In the days leading up to the appointment, I found myself thinking about the notion of volunteerism. In all my previous efforts, I never felt as if I were making much of a difference. I might feel virtuous, but I wasn't changing the world in any meaningful way. Maybe I didn't stick with it long enough. Maybe my expectations were too high. But sometimes it seems as if social action does more for the psyches of volunteers than for its recipients.

So when the Wellness Community director called me on the morning of our appointment to say she couldn't meet with me that day after all, I wasn't exactly disappointed. More like relieved. She hadn't realized it was MLK day, she said, and besides, the computers were down and she needed to attend to that. She sounded somewhat discombobulated. Shades of my GBLS experience?

We rescheduled for next week, which will give me plenty of opportunity to rethink the whole idea. At the moment, making a financial donation as opposed to volunteering my time is looking pretty attractive. I'll keep you posted.

A Common Language

2006-01-05T17:47:00.000-05:00

Hablo espanol. Not fluently, but well enough to carry on a conversation with almost anyone. It's one of my proudest accomplishments. Sometimes, it helps me make a connection that would otherwise be impossible, an I-Thou moment between myself and another human being. I experienced such a moment the other day.

I had stopped at a supermarket in a wealthy suburb, a market I'd never been to before. At the checkout, I was told the bagger would accompany me to my car and load the groceries into my trunk. I always feel awkward about this type of arrangement and that day was no exception. I walked through an icy rain toward my car, feeling like an entitled matron with a servant in tow. He was a youngish man, painfully thin. I had heard him speak Spanish while in the store. I was tempted to say something, but I thought that might be presumptuous, so I walked rapidly toward the car.

When I lifted the lid of the trunk, I noticed that my ice scraper, which I would need to clean the windshield, had slid all the way to the back of the trunk. I thought I might strain an already inflamed shoulder if I reached for it myself, but this was just an excuse. Really, I wanted to say something to the bagger, to show him my good will.

"Me puede hacer un favor?" (Can you do me a favor?) I asked. "Puede alcanzar esta cosa que se usa para hielo?" (Can you reach the thing that is used for ice?) Not a perfect Spanish sentence, to be sure, but adequate, I hoped.

His reaction was all out of proportion to my hope. He bestowed on me an absolutely radiant smile.

"Habla espanol!" he exclaimed and praised my use of the word "alcanzar". He seemed amazed and delighted. I smiled back. I imagined that I might have been the first customer ever to address him in his own language.

We chatted a bit longer. I commented that it must be difficult not to be able to "platicar" (chat) with customers. He agreed. He wanted to know where I had learned Spanish. He seemed reluctant to leave, utterly oblivious to the rain and cold. We stood for a moment, suspended, having transcended the formidable barrier of language. For one beautiful instant, we were real to one another, linked souls. Finally, I thanked him for his help.

"Feliz ano nuevo!" (Happy New Year!) he said, waving as he headed back toward the foodstore's bright lights. "A usted tambien," (To you, too) I called out, filled with good will toward men, or at least toward this one unexpectedly kind and friendly man.

Snow Tonight, or Does a Mother Ever Stop Worrying?

2005-12-31T16:34:00.000-05:00

A light snow is falling as I write this. The snows of early December have finally melted and the ground is bare, but that will soon change. Before dark, just as the snow began, I took Cosmo out to the backyard and let him romp around on the grass. An eight-pound poodle, he can (literally) run circles around me. He seemed joyously oblivious of the flurries around him and blissfully unaware that this would be his last daylight sniff of 2005.

The problem with New Year's Eve is that it occurs in winter. So snow and ice are always possible, even probable, here in New England. And the problem with snow and ice on New Year's Eve is obvious--driving, drinking, sliding, skidding.

I thought I had things worked out pretty well this year, though. Eric and I will be close to home, just a few blocks away. (I would feel better if Eric had put the snow tires on his rear-wheel-drive car, but hey, if we get stuck at the bottom of our hill, we can always hike up.) As for older son Aaron, he's in New York City and will be ringing in the New Year on the Upper East Side, where it probably won't be cold enough to snow, and anyway, he doesn't have a car.

Then there's Alex, the younger. I thought he was under control, too. Control? you might well ask. Whose control? At twenty, he's not amenable to mine. But his plan was okay with me--he'd head to a party at his friend Max's house in Cambridge and, since he would be drinking, it was understood that he wouldn't be driving. Instead, he'd spend the night at Max's and come home in the morning.

But the best laid plans, etc. etc. I wandered into Alex's room after walking Cosmo and couldn't miss the pile of used tissues on his desk.

"Got the sniffles?" I asked, hoping it was an allergic reaction to the Mexican food he'd had for lunch. But no, it was as I feared. Alex said he wasn't feeling so great--sore throat, stuffy nose, your basic cold.

"I think I might come home early tonight," he said. I glanced out the window. Snowflakes danced in the fading light. Visions of slippery roads glistened in my mind's eye.

So, what's a mother to do? Well, being the kind of mother who has a hard time separating unless she's made sure her children are aware of all possible impending dangers, I stated the obvious. I reminded Alex that my car, which he'd be borrowing, wasn't as snow-worthy as his old Toyota. I warned him that the roads would be slick, that drunk drivers would abound, that he should "DRIVE CAREFULLY." I almost ended with my standard apologia--It's not that I don't trust you, it's just that it makes me feel better to know I've warned you. But, remembering the pained expression on his face the last time I tried to explain myself that way, I left the words unsaid.

I know the ice sculptures at First Night in Boston will be gorgeous on this frigid, snowy night. And inside, at parties across the Commonwealth, warm fires and plenty of champagne will bring a rosy glow to the faces of revelers. And I believe Alex is a careful driver who won't drink if he's going to drive. Still, I'll be praying it all turns to rain.

Johnny Damon, Samson Redux?

2005-12-21T13:07:00.000-05:00

Everyone (in New England, at least) is pondering this burning question: Why did Johnny Damon leave the Red Sox? Sure, the Yankees coughed up the big bucks, but why did the Sox let it happen?

Sportscasters and fans alike are racing to assign blame. It's all Larry Lucchino's fault--clueless Larry, had to be told by the media that a deal with the Yankees had been reached. No, it's those hapless co-managers, Jed Hoyer and Ben Cherington, galloping around like headless horsemen, ineffectual without the wise counsel of Theo Epstein. Or why not blame Theo himself? If he'd sucked it up and accepted the Red Sox offer, all would have been smooth sailing. Johnny's hair would still be waving in the Fenway breeze and the Sox could still laugh in the face of the Yankees vaunted lineup.

Sure, it's fun (in a masochistic Red-Sox-fan kind of way) to figure out who's at fault in our latest off-season fiasco. But maybe we're asking the wrong question. Face it, Johnny's gone. It's a done deal. We need to look to the future. We need to look to Johnny Damon's hair. It's all coming off! And his unshaven face will soon be baby smooth. This is the price the Philistine Steinbrenner exacts from those who would be Yankees. This is the price Johnny will so casually pay. Here's the real question we need to ask: Will Johnny be the same without his hair? Or, like the biblical Samson, will our formerly wild and crazy center fielder lose his power when he loses his locks? I'm counting on it.

This story has all the elements of a biblical tragedy. Our team's great savior, the rock star of Red Sox nation, lusts after the fame and fortune to be found in Yankee pinstripes. He betrays his team, crosses over to the dark side, sure that he'll equal in greatness those who graced Yankee center field before him--DiMaggio, Mantle, Williams. He loves his long hair, but he's willing to sacrifice it, not realizing that along with his silken tresses will go his charisma, his attitude, his baseball persona. And maybe, his talent. Imagine Damon leading off at bat, whiffing, distracted by the lack of hair under his helmet. Picture him making a sliding catch in the outfield, his unprotected cheek abraded as he slams into the ground. These things could happen and there's no telling their effect on Johnny.

Okay, so I'm just another heartbroken Red Sox fan, once again forced to watch a beloved team member join the hated Yankees. I'm reduced to grasping at straws, hoping for a miracle of biblical proportions, praying that Johnny Damon won't lead the Yankees to yet another World Series victory.

One final note: Johnny Damon is an excellent exemplar of famosity. He's a guy whose fame as an athlete has filled him with a sense of self-importance. Behold his words to sports reporter Dan Roche of CBS4 Boston: "A good leadoff hitter is tough to find, and I think that New York just found the best leadoff hitter in the game." Still, such hubris might be forgiven and even considered endearing, if only Johnny were still playing for the hometown team.

Gathering of the Crows

2005-12-20T16:23:00.000-05:00

Late afternoon, the day before winter's solstice. Sky bluish-pink, snow whitish-blue. From the window of my study, high on a hill, I watch the crows swoop down, settle like black leaves on bare tree limbs. Hundreds dot the cold, dusky air, inhabit the landscape. It's a noisy conclave, resounding with caws and strange crow clicks. Then eerie silence as they seem to wait, poised for some signal, mysterious to me.

Crows no longer come here in summer. Since the invasion of West Nile, mockingbirds and blue jays have usurped their realm. But today the crows have mustered their forces and gathered in vast numbers, as if to assert their dominion over the coming winter.

The light fades, the wind shifts, one among them makes a decision, and they all lift off into the twilight, pervading the world with their triumphant cries.

Cyber Relationships, or the Art of Intimate Anonymity

2005-12-19T15:15:00.000-05:00

What I love most about the Internet is that I can get things done without having to interact with another human being in person or on the phone.

I’ve always been an anxious phone caller. As a kid, I’d beg my mother to call the doctor, dentist, or teacher for me. And I dreaded having to do errands at the corner candy store. Buying cigarettes for my mom (legal at the time) embarrassed me no end. These days, although I can log hours talking to friends on the phone, I retain a residue of my early anxiety when I have to make a business call. And I still hesitate before entering a store with a request.

It’s so much neater and cleaner to handle things on the web. Literally. No newsprint all over my fingers when I read newspapers online, plus I can access news from around the world. With my son Alex in London this past semester, I regularly read the London Times, the Guardian, even the Financial Times. When riots started in France, I read Le Monde in (weird but entertaining) translation. And no more crossed-out, illegible crossword puzzles for me. Doing them online is so much more satisfying.

A couple of years ago, while looking for a writing workshop to join, I discovered the world of online classes. I found a terrific memoir-writing class, with lectures and discussions directly on the web, plus email access to all the class members. The best part—it was 24/7. I could check in any time I felt like it. The class also featured a weekly live chat online, which turned out to be its weakest aspect—with the opportunity to enter into discussion any time, meeting in real time wasn’t especially appealing to the group. After the first week, live chats were poorly attended. Another great feature of the class—members were from all over the world, from London, Malta, and Hong Kong, as well as various states.

After that first class, I “attended” several more online workshops. I relished the anonymity. I could let people “see” as much of me as I wanted, but not necessarily all of me. And when participating in discussions, I could edit my comments until they expressed exactly what I wanted to say before submitting them to the group. No more wishing I could take back some stupid observation. Now I just edited it out. I’d never felt so articulate in a class before.

As in any live class, in my online classes I gravitated toward particular individuals and found some real kindred spirits. One person in a fiction class asked if I wanted to keep exchanging short stories after the ten-week class officially ended. Although I liked her and admired her work, I felt leery of embarking on a one-to-one relationship. It seemed like I’d lose my precious anonymity—she’d get to know me too well.

But during a subsequent class, this one on writing poetry, I was again approached (via email) by a class member whom I’d gotten to like and whose work I enjoyed reading. She proposed that she and I, along with a third person in the class, continue to workshop our poems independently. We could keep up the helpful structure of deadlines and writing critiques, she said, but we wouldn’t have to pay. An excellent point. We agreed to submit poems only once a month, rather than weekly as we’d done in class, and I signed on.

My cyber poetry buddies were far flung, Bonnie from Washington state’s Olympic Peninsula and Cheryl from the Jersey shore. We knew nothing about one another other than what we revealed in our poems. It was fantastic—poetry in a pure vacuum. Over time, bits and pieces about our lives did emerge. Cheryl emailed to apologize for a delay in her critique, saying she'd been on vacation. Bonnie wrote a poem about the death of a young girl’s father, then revealed (in responding to our comments) that her daughter’s ex-husband had been killed in a car crash. From that I gleaned also that Bonnie was a grandmother.

Still, it was all very sketchy. We continued in this liberating anonymous vein for almost a year. Then Cheryl sent a fateful email. She reflected how amazing it was that we’d maintained our cyber relationship for months, yet knew so little about one another. She wondered in her email what would happen if we shared more information about ourselves. While I was mulling that one over, Bonnie took the bull by the horns and sent a lengthy email telling us her life story.

There it was. The genie was out of the bottle, no turning back. Almost before I could press send/receive, Cheryl responded with her story, and a photo! Instead of a wispy brunette, as I’d imagined, she was a big, brassy, blond! With growing trepidation, I typed out the story of my life and sent it into the ether, complete with the most flattering photograph I could find.

Self-consciousness had entered my cyber world. Now I worried about looking good for these ladies. They knew who I was! And maybe they’d want us to meet. Not a cyber meeting, but a real one, at the continental divide or some other poetically symbolic locale. I told myself to stop being irrational, that nothing had really changed. But everything had.

After the flurry of email autobiographies and photographs, things quieted down and seemed to return to normal. We sent off our poems to one another on the first of the month and our critiques within the next couple of weeks. But then Cheryl emailed us with the good news that she’d sold her house. After all, we now knew all about the house she’d been renovating with her husband, so of course we’d want to know that she'd sold it. And I confided my fears about Alex being in London after the bombings there last July. Why not? We were friends, weren’t we?

But our poems were suffering. That month, Cheryl submitted an older one, not having had time (in a month) to write something new. And Bonnie told us she was working hard on a novel, with little time left over for poetry. As for me, I eked out a poem, but it was uninspired. The muse had deserted me.

Just last week, as our little group's year anniversary approached, I emailed Bonnie and Cheryl, confessing that my heart wasn’t in writing poetry anymore, and wondering how they each felt. I was grateful when Bonnie responded, agreeing that our workshop was “winding down,” and saying she hoped we’d stay in touch but perhaps the time had come to end our formal relationship. We’ve not heard yet from Cheryl, except an email saying her computer crashed and she’ll get to our emails soon.

I expect she’ll be disappointed. After all, it was she who brought our little group together. But it was also she who initiated our self-revelations. For me at least, anonymity set me free to write intimately revealing poems. The loss of anonymity was fatal to that endeavor.

But I haven't given up hope. For one thing, I've started this blog. Here I can communicate with my imagined audience without ever having to make eye contact. Furthermore, I'm thinking of taking another class online. There's a universe of people out there who know nothing about me!

Famosity? Is that a word?

2005-12-15T14:00:00.003-05:00

Yes, famosity was once considered a bonafide word, defined in Webster's 1913 edition as "the state or quality of being famous." In my current revival of the term, famosity refers not to the state of being famous but to the exalted sense of self-importance people feel when they achieve any degree of fame or even know someone who's famous. In my dictionary, fame (or proximity to it) plus pomposity equals famosity. For this blog, I plan to write about what's on my mind under the famosity heading. I hope the word will serve as a constant reminder to me not to take myself too seriously. And I won't hesitate to point out examples of famosity in others when I see them!