Oh, Puff

You never particularly liked being a child. It was such a clumsy period full of indignities and half-understood sentences.

You were a melancholy child, a serious child. I know. I was there.

But still, there are times you miss it in your bones. And once you look backward, you realize it truly was a long time ago. And far away. Remember how you made all of those promises to yourself that you wouldn't grow up. I won't you'd whisper under the covers at night with your stuffed animals. To the trees above the trail. I won't. 

But you did. You had to. And, in the end, they make you want to. You tear it all down yourself.

A dragon lives forever/
but not so little boys

You are still under there, aren't you? I can feel you sitting quietly. Whispering I'm here. I'm still here.

10 Years

Last Thursday, I had the opportunity to read this piece as a featured reader at Story Club. Thanks JP for working hard to get this story told right before the 9/11 anniversary. 

Some kids dream about being a baseball player when they grow up. Or a fireman. Me? I wanted to be White House Press Secretary.

I declared myself a Democrat at age eight. As a teenager, I dreamed of a life of briefing books and tough questions from hard-nosed reporters. Oh, and saving the world, one liberal ideal at a time.

By 29, I was getting close. I was a Press Secretary for the Senate Democratic Leadership, which is how I came to be sitting at my desk in the US Capitol the day that something went very wrong.

I had just hung up the phone with a reporter when my coworker Chris walked into the press office.

“Do you know why they suddenly went into recess?” he asked me. 

Chris, you have to understand, was in charge of tracking the business of the Senate floor for the entire Democratic caucus. It was his job to know why.

“Why are you asking me?”

I followed his eyes over to the small TV on my desk just in time to see the clerks and Parliamentarian quickly rising from their seats at the front of the well and hustling out of the Chamber. Without warning, everyone on the Senate floor had just vanished. 

“This can’t be good,” Chris said.

My body already knew what to do.  I kicked my heels off, ready to run, when the yelling started in the hall outside. 

August and Everything After

It's the tail end of August, but today it was cool enough in Chicago to wear a sweater over my short sleeves. Tonight, after much wriggling, resistance and gnashing of teeth, I did some writing and began to make a plan in my mind.

I can't help but think back to last year at this time. I started the September Blog Challenge, began a class on novel writing that helped kick my book in gear. I even outlined the entire book in one feverish session on a caffeinated Saturday. So much was coming together.

And then my Dad's death slammed into it like a car through a plate-glass window.

OK, then...

It has been a wretched couple of months.

Kiss Me, I'm Irish

I'm not saying I'm into geneology or anything, but where my ancestors came from has always been fairly important to me.

My dad's father was Swedish -- straight up -- from an immigrant father and first-generation Swedish-American mother. Grandpa spoke Swedish until grade school. Even though he grew up to marry a Norwegian-American, my grandmother, our family holidays were a swirl of Dala Horses, fruit soup and Swedish smorgasbords. I like to refer to my brother and myself as Vikings and look forward to seeing "the home country" for myself someday.

Just as sure as I have been about my Scandinavian side, I always believed my mother's side of the family to be Scottish. I was a little less fervent about it, but when I visited Aberdeen the summer after my senior year of college, I made sure to chat up the Scots we met in pubs with the fact that my ancestors were MacCleods from the Isle of Skye. Skye had been "settled" (more like invaded) by Vikings centuries ago, which I assume is what makes my brother and me look like we wandered off a ski slope in search of a sauna.

I've also always had this little thing about the Irish. Specifically, Irish-American culture and its overbearing insistence on boisterous St. Patrick's Day celebrations and ear-splitting live Irish music that pops up out of nowhere on what was supposed to be a quiet night out with friends.

"You don't get a whole month!" I insisted to my (half Irish) friend J as we sat in a neighborhood pub underneath a promotional poster laying out the events for the "Month of St. Patrick." I also dragged her up to Andersonville the first chance I got for some Swedish pancakes and a little spin around Swedetown. When March 17th rolls around each year and people ask me why I'm not wearing green, I cooly respond "I'm not Irish."

Except, it turns out that I am.

Bush vs. Gore

Last night, I tackled my second open mic at Story Club.  It was a bit of a different vibe than the one I did in January -- lots of friends and loved ones in the audience this time, including my sister Ariel, visiting from Michigan.  My good friends JH Palmer and Johanna Stein were this month's featured readers and they were amazing, as always.  

The theme was "Religion" and I like to think this touches a bit on the notion of losing it:

There are some things you just know at a very early age.  Some people become Cubs fans, falling asleep beneath Blue and Red pennants and dreaming of the World Series.  Some people are Catholics, lulled by the incense and hymns and Hail Marys.  Some people are outlaws – pilfering gum and Girl Scout dues before they learn long division. 

Me – I knew from the time I hit second grade that I was a Democrat. 

Greetings from Griefland

I read this piece last night at the very first Story Lab Chicago.  It was such a great night and I had a fantastic experience doing a live show for the first time.  It's a little tough posting this here, because I wrote it to be read out loud and I think a lot is lost without hearing it live, but for my friends and family who couldn't make it to the Black Rock, here's what I did:

“Grandpa died.” 

I have wandered into my brother’s dining room late Thanksgiving morning, blinking against the sunlight into the middle of an earnest conversation between my little nieces:

“Grandpa B died!” says Claire, age three and a half .  She takes a scoop of oatmeal and lets this fact settle over her younger cousin Evie.  When you’re three and a half, there are few opportunities to be the authority on things…Claire is taking this opportunity and rolling with it full speed.

Camping Alone

Last night, I read this during the open mic at Story Club Chicago. It was the very first time I've ever done a live performance of something I wrote that wasn't part of a class.  It went really well and I'm excited to make my billed-reader debut at Story Lab at Black Rock Pub on January 19th.

“Looks like its going pretty good now.  I was worried for a minute there.”

These Sudden Ends in Time Must Give Us Pause

Somewhere between three and five hours after writing my last post, my dad died suddenly.

In the bizarre grief world that followed, my words haunted me. The fact that as I was blithely typing away about the little time we have on this Earth and reassuring a former classmate that all was well, my father was living his last hours, alone and far from home.

Even though he had no reason to know his time was short, my dad was a morbid bastard. My brothers, sister and I planned his funeral services from handwritten instructions on paper from his familiar and favored yellow legal pads. A teacher of literature, he had chosen poems for my brother and I to read. For me, it was Year's End by Richard Wilbur, which I post here in memory of him and in honor of all of the students he touched.

Year’s End by Richard Wilbur : The Poetry Foundation [poem] : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry.

Don't Wait Too Long

I tore out this picture of Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan from last week's New Yorker and tacked it up above my desk. 

I did this for two reasons. 

Then/Now

October in Chicago has been sunshine and honeycrisp apples in oatmeal and a slow easing into the weather change, like wading into a lake. 

That girl running on the lake path today, singing this under her breath?  That was me.





I follow Tavi's style blog. I get this weird pleasure from her posts extolling the virtues of Sassy Magazine, Hole and the movie Heathers. I was her age when all of that stuff was breaking, and one part of me is freaking out, feeling old and bewildered at how much time has passed. The other part of me is vowing not to miss out on Doc Martins this time around.

Dreamlife

I need to quit sleeping so much. 

I wigged myself out this morning with a two-part dream in which a little girl, about 7 years old, killed the Pope (oddly, JP II, not Benedict) and all of the cardinals and nuns standing nearby.  She walked up to him wearing a grey schoolgirl uniform and a beret, gave him a sweet hug and when she pulled away, he was a dried up, shrunken corpse.  All of his attendants dropped dead simultaneously. They were laid out, their skins like a blackened banana all around the outdoor altar we were gathered around.

The second part of the dream took place in a mansion or a compound.  I was trapped there with several other people, who decided to start eating the pets when the food got low.  I rescued Andromeda, Odin and a gray Burmese that was almost hairless.  All three of them went into the same cat carrier, and I walked through the streets with them, promising them that I'd never let anyone kill them. The new cat could talk, she told me she was scared.

Sleep is my drug of choice.  I didn't want to wake up this morning and deal with the logistics of attending a wedding in the suburbs tomorrow with only enough money to either rent a car OR spend the night...not both.  So I kept going back to sleep and to the creepier, more desperate choices of the dream world. 

September, je t'aime

Today was one of those weird days where you can see the moon in broad daylight.  Staring at it, I felt like an alien who had landed here, taking in the skyscrapers against the clear sky and wondering where it all ends up.

September's over.  I'm back at my desk in my treehouse (or, as I sometimes call it, the Kit Kat Club)  The computer situation is partially...mostly solved.  I've been ripping out recipes for braised pork shoulder and spiced cakes and pasta dishes heavy on mushrooms and red wine.  Looking forward to October, to writing my damn book and to hot apple cider with whipped cream.

Technical glitch aside, writing here every day has been great, great fun and good practice for me.  I may not be back every day, but if a week goes by without a post, by all means -- give me the business.  Sitting down and forcing myself to write something, anything before midnight comes has been a better exercise than I anticipated.

Big shout-out to JP at Buttered Noodles for hitting the big 3-0 (posts) today, too.

Knots to Untangle

OK, it's not the absolute worst time for my computer to go tits up, but it's far from ideal. 

I'm back at Winston's on the shared machine, the only one of the two that doesn't have the same virus as my laptop.  Looks like I'll be dropping some unexpected cash on a new computer sooner than I'd hoped. 

My dad and stepmom recently divorced after more than two decades of marriage.  One of the hardest parts has been counseling my dad through the random shit that happens in life -- things that my stepmother used to just deal with for the both of them.  He gets so upset when an unexpected credit card fee pops up or when the Internet service he ordered and paid for turns out to be spotty at the river cottage he moved into this spring.  He takes it personally, and spins into rages at these little indignities.  "Dad, this is life, these kind of things happen all the time and they happen to everybody," my brother and I found ourselves saying over and over.

And tonight, I'm having to say it to myself.  Over and over.

grrrr. 

Bloggus Interruptus

I did not forget to post yesterday.  I wrote very dutifully about Little Ed and my crazy upstairs neighbor last night.  But posting was thwarted because my computer is infected with a virus or some type of malware (which is a very badass word). 

My five year old computer has been dying without dignity since January.  I'm taking her in the shop again tomorrow, but I fear the end is near.  I am posting this tonight from the free public computer at Winston's -- the leather-bar-turned-24-hour coffee-shop a couple of blocks down.  I may be the first patron in the establishment's history to use this computer for something other than cruising "HoTT BuTTs" or "Sinagaporean Sloppy Sluts." Or, you know, Facebook.

Anyway.  I will be back on track through Thursday, either on this borrowed machine or on my own computer now living on borrowed time.  Say a few Hail Marys for us, won't you?

September 27: The Visitor

I have just gotten back to sleep after a breaking up the 6am cat war that is fought in or around my bed every day when the sun starts to rise. Someone is banging on my door. That can’t be right. I don’t know a single person who would be banging on my door at 7:30am on a Friday.
“Hello??” Bang bang bang.
I recognize my upstairs neighbor’s baritone with its dramatic flourish, “Hel-OOO??!”
Here’s what I know about my upstairs neighbor: he writes poetry, he has a pet bird that he frequently shouts at to “Shut up! Shut UP!!” He spends a great deal of time out on his back porch, directly above mine. He appears to be about 70 years old, with an entirely bald head and dresses in sandals and button down shirts from the Frank Costanza cabana wear collection. I sometimes wonder if my cats and I are going to get contact high from the clouds of earthy pot smoke that waft in through my open windows and from the hallway. His musical tastes run from The Little Mermaid soundtrack to Donna Summer.

I open the door a crack, trying to keep Odin and Andromeda from darting out into the hallway and leading me on a chase up and down stairs to retrieve them.

“Oh, hi!,” he drags out key words like he’s doing an impression of Joan Collins. “Listen, I just wanted to let you know that I’m going to be banging around upstairs for a bit because there is a squirrel in my apartment.”
“A squirrel?” I wonder for a minute if I’m still dreaming.

“Yes, I had my screen door open yesterday and this squirrel just ran right into my dining room from outside! Well, I tried calling the City and they said they’d send someone but that was yesterday and of course they haven’t done a goddamn thing. So I called our management company and they sent someone over, and I thought I heard it run out the door so I sent him away. Well then this morning, I walked into the dining room and I heard this grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.” he makes a low growl that I’ve never in my life heard come out of a squirrel. “So, he’s still in there!”

I think I get it now. “OK”, I say as cheerily as one can when one has been roused from sleep by cats and strange neighbors. “No problem, thanks – “
But now he’s launched into scolding. “Do not keep food on your back porch. If you keep any food out there it attracts animals. That’s why I had this squirrel run into my apartment."

This kind of pisses me off. I don’t keep food out on my porch – why would I? “OK, I don’t keep food out there, but thanks.”

“You shouldn’t because it attracts all kinds of critters.”

“OK, I won’t,” I say, guiltily remembering the night I put out a dish for a sweet stray cat that followed me up from the laundry room and the 2-3 times I’ve put my trash bag out on the porch overnight so it won’t fester in my kitchen overnight.

I have never seen evidence of squirrels in the garbage. I’ve never even seen a squirrel on the back porches. Not that it would be surprising, we live right at tree level on a street lined with old sugar maples and oaks.

This also isn’t the first time I’ve gotten a dubious lecture from Mr. Upstairs. He came down one day after I lit my charcoal grill and claimed that the smoke was flooding into his apartment and that if I followed his technique where you light just four coals, let them get ashy and then pile up the rest of the coals around them, there will be no smoke at all.

I didn’t point out to him that what he was proposing would make twice the ignition smoke and take twice as long, just like I don’t point out to him now that the reason the squirrel ran into his apartment is because he had his back door wide open.
I agree through clenched teeth, and my neighbor, satisfied by my promise, goes upstairs and bangs around. Presumably the squirrel gets the message, I didn’t hear anything else about it all weekend.
Tonight, I came home from the office, and pulled the trash out of the can. I put it outside on the porch quietly, remembering the dire warnings I received last week. “Whatever, dude.” I think to myself.

Shutting the back door, I notice that one of the jars on my kitchen windowsill has been pushed almost to the edge. Cats must have been up here. I move it back into place, and come face to face with a black, eager little eye.

This isn't THE squirrel, just A squirrel.  A cute squirrel.

It’s the goddamn squirrel! He sits on my windowsill, looking straight at me then scurries halfway up the side of the drainpipe toward the upstairs deck.
Laughing, I retrieve the trash bag from my porch. Point: upstairs neighbor.

The little squirrel comes right back. Even now, he’s curled up, sleeping adorably on the outside ledge of my kitchen window with his tail wrapped around the top of his body. Part of me wonders if he has rabies. Part of me wonders if he was a pet or something – am I just imagining the longing on his face as he peers into my kitchen? Part of me wonders if maybe…he’s a little hungry. I think of the almonds in my cupboard.
Anthromorphizing animals and other objects is an old, old habit of mine. When I was in Kindergarten, I wrote and illustrated my first book, “Little Ed Under the Bed” about a little girl who brings all of her stuffed animals into the bed to sleep with her, but forgets all about Little Ed under the bed. She’s wracked with guilt when she finds him the next morning and promises to never leave him down there again.

And so I keep checking on little Ed out there on the window. Wondering if he’ll be gone in the morning.

In the House

He could still hear her wailing in the other room, as wretched and insane as a barn cat. 

Coffee

Fixing my coffee feels like preparing a baby's bottle.  Sugar, lots of cream, get a spoon from the drawer or a thin wood strip from the bin and stir until it's toffee tan.  Don't skip a step.  Can't drink it if it's too hot -- I like to take big, bitter gulps to get it through the oblong hole and into my bloodstream as quickly as possible.

When someone tells me they don't drink coffee because they don't like the taste, I always say "tastes bad, feels good."  I get my personality from a bean. It makes my words flow, unsticks them from the tired places.  It makes my heart go and my pee smell.  Always keep my bag stocked with Listerine strips to wipe off the tongue filth it leaves behind, so I can speak to the bus driver or the man at Borders without broadcasting my preferences or my afternoon whereabouts.

I used to call bad days at work "40-ouncers." Two Starbucks ventis from the Senate Chef: morning and afternoon.  They were days I couldn't afford to go without the fight-or-flight feeling to carry me through the news cycle and into the night. 

Sitting in the coffee shop, music piped in and a cup on my table, I feel like an artist, a visionary.  It drags me out of my own brain.  It feels like a reason to live.

2006 July

I am sitting in an outdoor café waiting for a car to hit me.  Or: a bomb to explode right now, incinerating newspapers, cigarette butts and the stray page from some organization’s strategic plan that’s been blowing between the sidewalk cracks. 

I’m out this Saturday afternoon looking like a cancer patient – all dark undereye circles and unwashed hair.  I’ve stopped caring that these jeans are a little too short for flip flops and the zit on my right cheekbone isn’t adequately concealed. 

At least I walked out of the apartment building, down N Street to this corner Starbucks which is full of Europeans hanging around the flat screen TV cheering loudly for Germany, now battling Portugal for third place. 

At least I bought a newspaper and new sunglasses to replace my beloved Target pair from the beginning of the summer.  I must have left them behind on a shelf of the dressing room at Banana Republic.  Stupid, I call myself.  But then, more gently – this is what life is all about.  We get things, we lose things.  And so I make an unscheduled stop at Filene’s for a subpar substitute pair.  They don’t block my eyes as much as the lost ones.  I don’t feel as fashionably distant. 

I had planned to walk up 16^th Street to Meridian Hill Park to read, drink iced coffee and maybe meditate a little.  Even though I don’t technically know how to meditate.  I was thinking I’d just sit on some grass and close my eyes or something. 

But after the sunglasses selection and purchase, I felt exhausted, almost defeated, and in great danger of going home and getting back into bed.  After all of my getting out of the house struggle earlier today – the fight to get my feet moving toward downtown and a bra on my chest in the first place – I can’t let that happen.  So it’s here, outside.  

Reading the Style section – “former Governor Mark Warner dined Friday night with some friends at Oya downtown.  They shared appetizers, entrees and bottles of wine.” Oh god.  Something about this fills me with dreadful sadness.  Dinner with friends.  Bottles of wine. 

I put my head down on the table.  OK, now this looks a little crazy, I tell myself.  Why do you have your head down like a sleepy Kindergartener?  This makes my eyes well up.  Well for fuck’s sake.  Crying?  Crying outside at the Starbucks?  There is a car stopped at the stoplight right next to you.  I can hear the car stereo through the open windows.  Why can’t you put your head up so those people know you’re ok? 

Crying at Starbucks.  Well this is pretty low, isn’t it?  I finally sit up and my whole spine aches like I have finished some impressive workout.  The lifting up makes the tears actually squeeze out of my eyes like slippery puppies – down my cheeks before I can restrain them. 

Great.  Now it’s not that I’m tired or dizzy, I’m the girl crying in public.  Again.  There is one man at a table behind me.  What if he asks me if I’m OK?  What will I tell him?   

I start rubbing my temple and the third eye spot as soon as I’ve got the teariness under control.  Headache.  You know these migraines – how they jump out at you from nowhere.  That’s what I’m telling the people who may or may not be staring at me from the Starbucks inside.  Carry on.  Nothing to see here.

Sweaty

Days like this, I want to take off  my skin and leave it piled on the closet floor for the cats to nap on.  I want to peel off my muscles and shake out my organs, then run -- all bones-- lightly through the streets.