Unsweetened tea

Absence

2011-07-15T13:51:00.001-04:00

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED on Facebook, May 8, 2011

"Happy My Day," you say to your kids upon waking up on this bright May Sunday. But despite the successful laugh line, you know it's not true. This day is hers, and she's not here.

The photo of Mom you put up on Facebook took your breath away, in fact. The familiarity. That facial expression, her blend of humor, pride, and a little bit of on-guard. Because you were not easy to guide, and you and she were emotionally dissimilar--a practical soloist versus a blindly gregarious optimist. But as your adulthood finally took hold, you frequently supplied things the other lacked (usually by telephone, but that was the negotiated landscape).

Her eyes are looking right out at you in this scanned Kodak moment. It's the moment, a signature capture commemorating her triumph that, somehow, you did not flunk out of the prestigious college she had prayed, yearned, demanded you would attend. You're a dazed mess, because graduation was held on a humid, stormy day inside a gym on campus. (You had never been in that gym, ever, before the day you graduated in it. Which is a hilarious little digression. And the hangover. Oh, the hangover.)

Your path and hers diverged so completely after this day. You stayed behind in that town, that state, and she returned to her New York City existence--the loner in a sea of people, sounds, and visual arrays. She liked it that way, like a cork bobbed on a wavy, ceaseless sea. Punch in her numbers on the first telephone you ever owned (brown, with that big dumbbell handle you could cradle under your neck for efficient multi-tasking) and she would be there, always. You could see her in your mind's eye where she sat. You couldn't bear her aloneness, yet you couldn't fix it. And her maternal voice would flip on as soon as you had a crisis. Maybe you couldn't fix things for her, but she frequently did so for you.

On My Day, you get up and dress for a social outing with your family. Maine's still damply chilly despite the new springtime, so it's sweater and jeans time. Your afterthought, after the jewelry and the combed hair, is one of her scarves. There can be no greater symbol, really, of Mom's New York existence than these filmy, silky, satiny relics of her work life. Saks Fifth Avenue, B. Altman, Bloomingdale's, Bergdorf's--her colleagues bought clothing there, but Mom could only afford scarves. Almost all of her scarves, which you've inherited, are prints and colors that you would never ever select. And there's something 1970s about them that feels unreachable. But when you twist them, roll them, and knot them loosely around your neck, they become a little more you. And tucked underneath a sweater collar, they are subtle.

It's on you now, today's scarf. Some kind of comic-book burst of color, you don't even know what's pictured. But here's your My Day present: it smells exactly like her. Six years this month that she left this earth, and her scarves still bear her scent as though you just opened the drawer in her bedroom and stole something for a night out in Manhattan.

And as you write this piece, your youngest comes into your office and hands you an essay, trilling "Happy Mother's Day!" Unbelievably unique prose, and an overwhelmingly optimistic sentiment expressed in the piece, which is called--not making this up--"The Energy Given From Others." It is Your Day, it is Her Day, and it's His Day too. Revel in your fortunes, and hold your mother close.

An Alzheimer's poem

2011-07-15T13:49:00.002-04:00

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED on Facebook, April 27, 2011

I just remembered this poem that I wrote 7 years ago about a dear family friend who had recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Re-read it just now, and I'm so glad I wrote it when I did...

Jeannette

Voice calmer than the lake at evening,

that horizon line, flat and true.

Eyes the same: clear pure blue.

You guide.

A mother of four—

five, when I needed one—

a force never forcing.

Empathy personified:

at funeral gatherings

your crockpot simmered;

for every occasion, a card in the mail—

your consummate cursive

conveying a sentiment and sharing news

in generous paragraphs.

One night at your summer home,

you and I looked out the black window

towards the invisible lake,

chairs rocking, telling stories and watching fireflies,

hundreds of them—tiny green lights here,

there, there, here, an inexhaustible supply

dancing to mate and satisfy,

unhurried. Patient.

My baby slept at my side;

brought to you as infants,

my children were always your pride.

As a baby, I lived with you and your family

while a divorce wracked my mother.

I’ve been enveloped in those arms ever since:

needed, not a by-product of conflict

but a person on my own, nurtured.

Now, as with my nana—

another angel of French descent,

barely five feet tall, haloed in lovely grey curls—

you are worried, fragmenting,

forgetting and upsetting.

I seek your gaze to find the real you

in that ever-knowing watercolor blue.

NBR 11/26/04

God bless the child

2011-07-15T13:45:00.000-04:00

ORIGINALLY POSTED on Facebook, March 28, 2011

She is slender and suddenly taller, as in: you look at her and are jolted. Whoa! when did she get that tall?! By which you are secretly saying, when did she get that grown-up. For, now, the childish rounded cheeks are attractively shaping, the nonchalant dirty blonde hair is styled and distinctive, the womanly figure is pre-ripening. And her brown-eyed gaze, always sharp and aware, is gaining an amused wiseness.

Also, I write with pride, these days her words are sorting themselves into more careful statements. Lydia has ever struggled with verbal expression. Not that she was incapable, but she just seems to shape her thoughts and ideas differently. I could write a book about how she writes and speaks in her own way. You could say she marches to her own beat. That's precisely it. And her parents are responsible for keeping her in the parade, regardless of that difference.

I have been amazed by Lydia since the moment she emerged, bellowing heartily. In my arms, protesting and red-faced, she looked offended that her term safely in utero had been brought to abrupt closure by dreadful muscular contractions not of her choosing. How do you not admire a newborn with that kind of chutzpah? We ceded our household to her at that moment. Tell us what to do, Miss Lydia. Because, really, no one else in our home has that kind of willpower and spark. She did not steer us wrong, our unfailingly polite diva. At age 1, a favorite activity was to sit in her highchair after dinner, the white tray set before her grandly, wiped of its meal leavings...and she would begin to tap on the tray, or wave her hands, or pat her head, and we would all do the same thing once she set the pace: two sibs, two parents, precisely imitating her actions. She would watch us with indulged good humor, while we all laughed--because her stamina for this activity was boundless. So was ours.

Really, it's this: I trust her. For nearly a decade, we've weathered storms of academe: extra help offered at school that we deemed useful, versus overly solicitous concerns that Peter and I were not willing to share and act upon. Never easy, those school meetings, but Pete and I are united. Throughout, I have placed my trust in that steady gaze of Lydia's, that determination. I remember a night as I was tucking her in, and we discussed some reading issue she was having. First grade. I explained to her what the teacher was concerned about, and then I explained to her that I didn't think the teacher understood that Lydia was well capable of whatever activity was being discussed. I said to Lydia, passionately, "I know you can do this, honey. Show them that you can do this." The brown eyes filled with tears, and she hugged me tightly. My trust, again, not disappointed.

Second grade is when our elementary school opens the world of music to children who wish to participate in an orchestra. I never attended a school that offered music as part of its curriculum, and as each Reifsnyder child grips a violin and starts learning, I appreciate so much what that means. Well, it turned out, Lydia did not really like the violin. Instead, she confided one night, she wanted to learn to play guitar.

Play guitar!?! You can only imagine how rock 'n roll Mumma Nessa rejoiced. And so Weslea Sidon began coming to our home every Monday night, an experienced teacher, writer, artist, and fellow NYer in exile. She "got" Lydia immediately--and while Lyd was by no means a natural at the instrument, she eagerly greeted that hour of intensive learning. Two years later, when Lydia transitioned at school from violin to (finally free!) trumpet, Weslea and we realized that Lydia's enthusiasm for the horn was outstripping her efforts on the timeworn acoustic guitar. But what a foundation had been laid, both at school and at home.

Lydia is a jazz musician now. You hear me, Mom?! She loves, craves, embraces jazz. She clutches that trumpet like a boss, and she plays it with that determined look I adore. Mount Desert Elementary School loves jazz, too, and what an opportunity our children receive in the jazz band: two phenomenal teacher/directors whose expectations are high, but gently imparted. They know these children are capable of extraordinary musicianship, and they give them the environment and the early-morning, pre-class time to master challenging arrangements. Lydia rarely oversleeps the 6:30 a.m. alarm that's required of her for jazz band practice. Dresses herself, feeds herself, gets the lunch ready, out the door.

Every spring, those early mornings bear beautiful fruit. Say what you will about Maine's bad press re: education costs and struggles; this state welcomes and nurtures music from a young age through high school. (Shout-out to the Maine Music Educators Association!) In the 1940s my mother was a direct beneficiary of that; today, my children draw strength and skill from it. On Saturday, Peter and I traced the endless gray ribbon of I-95 up to Mom's hometown for the Middle School Instrumental Jazz Finals. Last year, I was not able to attend, and Mount Desert won first place. This year, I closed my shop for the day. Lydia's personal investment in this activity has become even stronger, so we made the trek gladly. Saturday morning, I walked through the portals of a building that used to host my Brownie Girl Scout troop, the year I'd lived in Millinocket: I got my wings in that school auditorium. Even more so, my mom got her wings in that small town, becoming a musician with purpose.

If you watched the video I posted, you know the outcome. Ned Ferm and Heather Graves did it again, guiding the MDES Jazz Band to another first-place year. The band's music selections fairly pulsed with emotion and nuance. I could not believe these children were middle schoolers. And there was my girl, wielding that brass horn, perfect posture, composed, playing her heart out. My sense of family in that room was overwhelming...how I wished Mom and Nana and Grampy could have seen and heard this. Well, truly, my belief system tells me that they did, but to have had them physically present would have been even better.

After the awards were given out, Peter and I made our way through the crowd to congratulate our girl. I was still wiping away tears inspired by the performance and the circumstances. Down the bleachers she scrambled, and she pulled me into a typically fervent Lydia hug. Her hugs are different these days...our heads tuck next to each other. Equal heights. It's even more comforting. As we separated, her brown eyes were large with emotion. Crying. In her own words, she told me that she just felt so...much...and so happy.

Exactly what I was going to say. Two hugs, this time.

Pension

2011-07-15T13:43:00.001-04:00

ORIGINALLY POSTED on Facebook, March 3, 2011

Fred Arnold did not make it past eighth grade. He was a scrapper, honed by pick-up hockey on the ice of the Nashwaak River and the competitive pushing of six older brothers whose exploits were always larger than his. (Fred did not envy them their military service, however...he felt eternally fortunate to have been too young for the First World War and too old for the Second.) As he grew up, Fred's mother told him many times that as the seventh son, she believed he had a gift, and he should become a physician. She cited his mathematics ability, his competence, and his good heart. He glowed with her confidence, but somehow, school was not a venue where Fred could fulfill her hopes. His teachers compared him unfavorably to his brothers, and his schoolmates often had better clothing and a calmer home life, all of which Fred resented deeply. Day to day, Fred rebelled enough to have his nose broken against a blackboard at one brutal teacher's hand. Later in life, the tendons of his palms crinkled inwards where teachers had smacked them repeatedly with 12-inch rulers. These childhood flashpoints did not dim his seething determination.

When Fred's mother died--in the midst of his grade 7 school year, and with little forewarning to her youngest son--the die was cast. His already pugnacious persona became hardened and exasperated. He battled his way into grade 8, hated every minute, and jumped off the academic track for good. During that same dreadful year, his father remarried, and Fred left home to live with his beloved uncle, who lived in the same town. It is a grace note in Fred's life that no one intervened in his departure. Even today, to imagine his 12-year-old turmoil is almost unbearable.

The early 20th century was Dickensian in its cruelties. In modern times, "survival of the fittest" conjures abstract evolutionary happenings among lower animals. For our forebears, it was the name of the game. Fred survived, oh you betcha. He left Atlantic Canada for Maine, where a new railroad was enabling unprecedented travel and commerce in the northern counties. In this, he followed in his beloved brother Mel's footsteps. Most recently, Mel had served with bravery as part of the Canadian Expeditionary Force in two theaters of WW1, signing up before his 18th birthday and lying shamelessly about his age. This, too, was in the horrible aftermath of their mother's death...I can almost feel the hot tears behind Mel's eyes, not emerging, as he gritted his teeth and signed on the dotted line for service and sacrifice. What the hell did he have to lose? His mother had been taken just three months prior. His father already showed signs of moving on. What remained but death or glory?

Mel was a signaller in the war. A mustard-gassing in Russia (and multiple medals for bravery) finally convinced him to give up the fight and come home. Thence, he parlayed his war experiences into a career as a railroad telegrapher. As Fred joined him in Maine, Mel taught his eager young brother everything he knew about this most crucial means of communication. The Bangor and Aroostook Railroad hired Fred in the mid-1920s, and he was officially an adult. Courtship, marriage and a newborn followed.

Fred's professional life led him to the Great Northern Paper Company, the largest employer in his newly adopted hometown of Millinocket. He hated leaving the railroad, but a supervisor questioned his integrity over some transaction he'd processed, and Fred bristled. With his newfound sense of adult stability, he cut and ran. That the GNP hired him so readily is a testimony to his evident intellect and assertive personality; in fact, despite his lack of a high school diploma, he never worked on the factory floor, instead taking part in the end-stage aspects of the paper production process.

Fred retired in 1962 as the supervisor of the Finishing Room. He was 58 years old. From that moment until the day he died, he received a monthly pension check and guaranteed health insurance from the GNP and its successor owners. He and his wife lived frugally, but they never wanted for a thing. Both nearly made it to age 90, so their financial comfort is especially noteworthy. Think of it: no stock investments, a house worth $20,000, SSI checks, health plan, pension. That's all. Yet they were provided for by a system that our country shaped carefully as a reaction to the privations of the Great Depression, and the shortages and strifes of two major wars.

Was Fred fulfilled by his work? Well, as his close confidante in later years, I can tell you that tapping out myriad messages on a telegraph set under deadline stress was his greatest professional joy. Sitting at that station desk and waiting for the shadow of a locomotive to cross the window, bearing the fruits of his labors--that was his idea of a happy routine. But Fred also took subsequent pride in the papers he helped make, the men whose careers took place under his supervision, and the tiny town that bustled with work and camaraderie, where literally everybody knew your name.

I think about Fred constantly in these messed-up, terrifying, bewildering economic times. I can see him at his home desk, carefully and competently tending his modest household finances. During my youth, my own mother confronted numerous financial hurdles, and Fred--her father--never failed to provide when asked. Because that's what you do. The fact that he could do it was what he expected after a long, productive work life, faithful to one company. Even moreso: it was the WHY behind his full-time efforts. When local people in a similar situation recently lost their pensions and insurance a few years before retirement, I felt bereft and infuriated on their behalves. Forty years of toil, and now: nothing awaits. The world has changed, you see. Your company does not value you as an individual American anymore. And God forbid your rights as a worker should be valued, protected, and propagated.

Fred, I long to hear your words, in your voice, from your living-room armchair of observation. You would be moved to copious outbursts of fury, and bless you, I know you would be picking up the phone and blasting every representative, every official whose turncoat ways led us to this hour. "This is Fred H. Arnold," you would begin--as you did every time you called anyone to complain about anything. You weren't shy, and you persisted until your way was clear. And you felt that stating your identity at the outset was worthy, that they owed you their attention.

I'm tempted to quote Wordsworth and his "Milton! Thou shouldst be living at this hour." But that's not quite it. I am horrified at the thought of bringing my grandfather back to see this world that is the upside-down-wrong version of what he strove for and achieved.

Still, Wordsworth stated his generation's ire beautifully, so here 'tis. Grampy would have loved to hear me read it to him, the fulfillment of that college education he paid for--the betterment of his descendants always his highest goal.

LONDON, 1802.

Milton! thou should'st be living at this hour:

England hath need of thee: she is a fen

Of stagnant waters: altar, sword and pen,

Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,

Have forfeited their ancient English dower

Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;

Oh! raise us up, return to us again;

And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.

Thy soul was like a Star and dwelt apart:

Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea;

Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,

So didst thou travel on life's common way,

In chearful godliness; and yet thy heart

The lowliest duties on itself did lay.

After the hurricane

2011-07-15T13:40:00.001-04:00

ORIGINALLY POSTED on Facebook, February 26, 2011

(Honestly, I'm not all grim all the time. Not even like 10% of the time. But sad things have happened, and I am driven to write about them...to gain understanding, mastery; to give shape.) So:

It's a famous case. There's a popular movie with an Oscar-winning actor, and a Bob Dylan song beloved and believed by people all over the world. I found out today there's a new autobiography by the man who claims he was falsely accused and framed. Nelson Mandela wrote the foreword.

45 years later, and I still yearn for a woman I can't remember, my grandmother, whose life was tangled up in a dark, evil night, and there destroyed. The details of her wounding and death were horrific; given the subsequent literal hurricane of accusations, court papers, slippery evidence, conflicting testimonies, and raging controversy, Hazel's murder will never be solved. I accept that I will never know who did this to her, and I embrace the peace of that. But today, cnn.com commenters are debating all over again the innocence or guilt of the convicted man. And someone actually posted: "... after all this time, not sure it matters anymore."

What matters, then: Hazel was beautiful, truly. She had a lilting singing voice, coupled with a mischievous smile and a winning personality. She parented lovingly and fiercely, after a childhood of abandonment and poverty. She was mine, and I'll never have her. Needing my grandmother is one of the reasons I embarked on my genealogical journey in 2000. Piece by piece, and never with ease, I've reassembled and claimed her fragmented life story. Dates, names, places, from France to Québec, New England to New Jersey. Found the love, and the sadnesses too. Made my family whole.

The poem I wrote about her a few years ago came out of me like water wrung from a cloth. It needed to happen, but it wrenched. I'm posting it now because this wound keeps getting seared open, and the poem is as close as I can come to wailing: STOP. Let her rest. Let her be Hazel. Give her back to us.

--------------------------------------------------------------

"Grandmother, Lost"

Fingering the corner of a faded photo,

I find myself in Hazel:

eyes that light and scrinch with grins,

appled cheeks, shy teeth,

chin, softly doubling,

dark wavy hair.

I've been told she feared aging

yet laughed uproariously and kidded often—

sardonic bend of her Jersey voice teasing,

sway of ample hips knowing as she walked away

carrying a loaded tray of food and drinks,

serving at a country club.

Dad kicked us out when I was four months old.

A family in shards, swept up,

discarded; then I was

shielded from everyone sharing my surname,

that lingering verb: Burns.

So Hazel dwelled in handlebars, silver as a mirror,

on the gleaming blue tricycle she'd given me

(only, living in the city, I maybe got to ride it once)—

cool sheen of the handlebars' curve

under my baby-plump palm, a tricycle

hopelessly parked indoors, new black tires

ready to move.

Today I move a smooth mouse, pointing

on the Internet, finding

an image when I search on her name:

the window of the Lafayette Bar and Grill, 1966,

"Rheingold" spelled in neon script

with a bullethole in the upper corner,

glass cracked like a twinkled star.

That's Hazel's bullet, one of five

that pierced her and left her for dead,

blasting from shotguns wielded by strangers.

And I am one of ten grandchildren:

a club that never met.

Sweetheart

2011-07-15T13:16:00.004-04:00

ORIGINALLY POSTED on Facebook, February 12, 2011

An imagining from last night.

In an alternate universe, in Queens, NY, there was a Father-Daughter Dance. Let's say, February of 1978. Valentine's Day week, festooned with red and pink paper silhouettes of cupids, hearts, and arrows. A crowded gym, a deejay playing shiny records he stored upright in milk crates. A veritable swirl of girls' skirts and heeled feet...every color imaginable, all heights, toddler to preteen. Dads in suits, some of which looked like office clothing repurposed for the event...others who were stiff in more fancywear than their blue-collar jobs would ever merit. And then the fathers, boisterous, in brightly floral polyester shirts, chains glinting inside the wide collars, and flare-leg slacks with platform shoes: the dads who "got" disco.

Not my date. My father wore a simple suit, almost '60s throwback. He didn't draw attention to himself, but he looked right for the occasion--even though I knew his tie was too narrow and his collars too subtle. My dress came from Lerner's, a clothing mecca right up the street from my house. I wandered Lerner's for hours to find it, circling through and around the spinning silver racks, a dizzying obstacle course of preteen fashion. Touching every single fabric as I passed them, musing, mulling. I decided on this one because of its pink and beige color combination--soft and different. I liked it on my Irish-pale skin. Long sleeves, because it was winter, but they were puffy floral cotton with elastic at the cuffs. The bodice was shirred and puckered all over, with a rectangular lacy neckline, and the skirt was full. No ruffle at the bottom: felt like a ladies' dress. Mom finally let me wear the wedge-heeled sandals from her closet that I always tried on, because now they fit me for real. With nylons, sheer ones. I had to wear snow boots over to the gym, though; they joined a marching battalion of fur-cuffed footwear near the doorway. My stockinged feet were still icy from the trudge over.

Dad and I were not the types of people to fully buy into the concept of a Father-Daughter Dance. A little too ironically distant, we, and both of us burned by our mutual, unpopular reality: we were eggheads. Never quite in the mainstream. Always suspecting mockery from gaggles of our peers. But we agreed to do this because some of my friends from class got their dads to go--and, as submerged as I kept it, I really did want to feel popular, somehow.

Dad was a jazz drummer, but surprisingly able to dance nonetheless. This was another trait we shared. Early on in the evening, the deejay picked up on the overwhelming craze for all things Bee Gees, and spun "Night Fever". The room, predictably, erupted. Dad never indicated any particular affection for this music as it thumped from my homework-strewn bedroom, but he definitely allowed himself to dance to it, and I found myself grinning--which I did not expect, not at all. In fact, the gym was pervaded by a temporary dismantling of preteen embarrassment about our parents and their uncoolness. I stole glances around as Dad and I, yeah, boogied, and everyone else seemed equally unaware that if the overhead lights were on, we'd be fleeing from this dance floor faster than you could say "get down tonight".

After "Night Fever," the deejay pulled out "Love Is (Thicker Than Water)," which kind of called for a closer dancing posture (and had an uncertain beat, besides). I asked Dad if he wanted punch, and he nodded, so we made for the paper-covered table, loaded up on red sugar fluid and pink cookies, and found steely folding chairs to sit in. The gym was so cavernous that we could converse and hear each other, just.

"I can't believe I'll be graduating in this room, like, 5 months from now."

"I can't believe it either, sweetheart," Dad said. He sipped the punch and grimaced, making a sound something like "grack". "Even in my boozing days I wouldn't have choked back something like this," he said wryly, setting the cup far away.

I was always relieved when he made a comment that placed alcohol in his rear-view mirror, so I smiled happily, even though I agreed the punch was putrid.

"So is this," he paused, "disco the kind of music they'll be playing all night?"

"I don't know," I replied, honestly. "I hope they play a little rock, at least."

He nodded assent and bit a heart-cookie. I looked over as the song ended and the deejay flipped on the next turntable. "Native New Yorker". Shook my head at Dad. Although I did love this song, I just didn't want to dance to it. He didn't seem interested either.

"Do you feel ready for your high-school entrance exams?" he asked. Just the thought of them made me stomach cramp.

"Sure," I lied, hoping my lack of words might kill the topic.

"How many do you have to take, again?" (No such luck.)

"Four," I squeaked. "The overall exam, and then three schools have their own."

"I know you'll do fine," he said with a hand-squeeze. I gulped, cookie crumbs chafing my throat. Then I smiled again to cover it.

People had been making requests; I could see shadowy goings-on at the deejay table. The next song kicked on and I was initially stunned--Led Zeppelin...?

"'Misty Mountain Hop'!" Dad crowed. "Let's go!"

We were still holding hands, so we made our way in tandem into the dance throng. Dad's enthusiasm over Led Zeppelin had me astonished (and he knew the name of the song! I never did, with Zeppelin), but here we were, rocking out, almost choosing the same moves. Robert Plant's vocals pealed and shrieked over the crowd, and the deejay must have had a subwoofer, because the drums and bass were shaking the floor. Dad did not shout "woooooo!" the way some of the wilder fathers were doing, nor did I jump up and down as some of the frilly girls were doing, but we were into it nonetheless.

And then there was a slow song, throwing the mood sideways. Bee Gees again (was that a sigh I heard around the gym?) "How Deep is Your Love". Which I swooned over nightly--not thinking about my father, of course, but wishing for a boyfriend like some of my classmates had. Still, Dad went into his 1950s arms-bent, dancing-with-a-lady posture, and that was fine. Before we started moving, he leaned over and whispered in my ear: "John Bonham on the drums, that last song. Killer." I had to laugh a little, because he was such a music nerd. (And he was right about Bonham, but I didn't grasp that fully until later.) We let the Bee Gees' harmonized warbles wash around us and we swayed with it, twinkling lights along the walls seeming to flow with the melody.

It seems so trivial in the writing: this alternate universe, this father-daughter spot carved into a cold February night, this gym that would revert to a sweaty game space with Sunday sunlight, all guided by the music that mattered to me (and ever evokes my eighth-grade year). Whereas, in the universe I actually lived in, I honestly did not know that I yearned for such moments--because I wouldn't have known to imagine them. I never, ever saw my father, until I was an adult myself.

Now, every year, as a mom and wife, and even moreso as a deejay, I experience a local Father-Daughter Dance and I see in countless other couples what could have been; what was right to expect; what pure happiness and fun looks like; what touches the heart and bonds the daughter to the daddy, and vice versa. Placing 1978 Nessa and Dad in that scenario...absent the many, many reasons that I did not know him at that time in my life, stripping away what was negative, while keeping our essences...this is a healing, rightful vision.

Because, I can attest, it is painfully possible to miss what you never had.

How to Save a Life

2011-07-15T13:12:00.001-04:00

ORIGINALLY POSTED on Facebook, January 29, 2011

First, find a girl. Not just any girl—no, this girl is the nerdiest urchin you’ll ever meet, and her home life is, well, frayed. (Pause to relish unintentional title-pun.)

This girl is keenly pining for something, anything. She thinks it’s a boyfriend she needs—because, cue Brothers Grimm, he will rescue her from the rapunzeltower of her sixth-floor bedroom window. She’s always attracted to young men’s arms: their enfolding, swooping-up, holding and protecting powers draw her magnetically. (She wonders if these boys notice her noticing them, but probably they don’t, because she is nondescript, a veritable vacuole of brown-haired plainness.)

You don’t actually know this, but she sits in that sixth-floor window every chance she gets—its square frame supporting her entire body, scrunched into a C sitting shape. She leans her head against the screen, headphones clamped over her ears, craving escape from the stepfatherly rage occurring behind her, in the smoky living room of the apartment. Music swirls into her mind and becomes woven there, as a protective garment. She breathes street air and watches the transition from daylight to dusk like a sworn witness, night after night. She feels as if everything beyond the tiny gray screen squares is potentially magical, as sooty and city-streety as it is. See? isn’t that a vivid green tree down there amidst the blocks of sidewalk, just burst into spring bloom and jazz-handing the sky? Don’t the airplanes landing over at LaGuardia, just beyond her neighborhood, glimmer in the darkening sky like moving stars? She watches, all the time wordless, but pleading. Someone, anyone.

But wait: there are two of you. Two princes, and not rivals—no, you’re staunchest allies. You’ve already saved each other’s lives myriad ways, through a friendship that started in the doggiest days of grammar school…greasy hair, glasses with tape, braces, zits, and brutal teasing from classmates. Now you are high school sophomores who have crested awkwardness and are full-steaming towards awesomeness, exuding confidence that was forged in shared battles and common experiences. Not only does Nerdy Urchin Girl need you…she is a lot like you in temperament and intellect. But she doesn’t believe it. Yet.

Prince #1 will meet the Girl in the deepest recesses of a cave. Well, all right, it’s the New York City subway system, 59th Street station. As though a fairy’s wand has blinged this dingy place, the sheer fact of your meeting will cause the Girl to feel an upswell of hope and anticipation in this subterranean waystation for years to come. What are the odds, that—after years of attending the same grammar school as she, and never crossing paths—you appear on the (grimy gray) steed of the Number 6 uptown local, are introduced to the Girl by a mutual friend, and instantly become a gallant and constant companion on the arduous (truly, yes, arduous) weekday journey to high school? You, Prince, are indeed gallant, and never in the snide James Joycean sense. Your demeanor is ever respectful (well, of the Girl—everything else is fair game for the constant joking wordplay between you both). You stay positive in almost every situation. Do you know that, before she met you, the Girl found her freshman-year subway journeys terrifying in their unknown randomness? Any given day, who knew what horrors could happen on the screeching, graffiti-ridden trains—or even standing in the station, waiting for the next tube to barrel in and fearing someone could push her onto the tracks in its path? (She read the New York Post, y’know. That happened uncomfortably often back then.) Yet now she gains a faithful fellow traveler. He banishes boredom with crisp sarcastic commentary, he shares poetry without irony (and encourages sharing of hers, releasing the catch on a cage), he adores all the music that fills her headphones, and his very presence makes her sigh with safety.

Prince #1, you probably knew within minutes that the Girl was smitten. Or perhaps you still nursed some uncertainties deep within, which obscure her looks of adoration. However long it takes, this Prince will finally recognize the Girl’s ardor, and here he shall make life-saving gesture the firsteth: he understands that she needs him as a friend more than as a quick-burning early teen boyfriend. He rejects her without in any way rejecting her, with calm and sincere words. The Girl will take years to grasp these wisdoms; she is, as stated above, needy and immature. Yet as a grown woman, she will finally grasp the profound good sense that Prince #1 showed to her. Could not their hearts be connected, their destinies joined, without the iffiness and tanglings of a romance? You prove it so, Prince #1.

But see, even her hopefulness, that deep-seated infatuation the Girl bears all throughout that school year…even those months of wanting are a potent gift. Something to strive for. A reason to try new hairstyles, and dress herself with newfound attention. A reason to want to attend school dances. And seriously, a reason to get up in the mornings. Because Prince #1 meets her on the corner of 30th Street and Broadway like 7:50 am clockwork, and together they climb the long dual stairwells of the RR station and head for the Upper East Side, where their respective brownstone schools open for them “a whole new world” a la Aladdin. One block away from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the verdant wonders of Central Park…avenues of bookstores, movie houses, and old-timey Yorkville neighborhood fixtures like Schubert Hall. (Schubert Hall? the reader asks. A musical conservatory? a society devoted to the works of Franz Schubert? Ummm, no. An old-man bar that serves the high-school masses and has the best jukebox ever, anywhere. A welcoming harbor; a teenage Cheers.)

The Girl’s adult self pauses to assure you that, as culturally wrong as it’s now deemed to be, in that era she benefitted from the occasional alcohol escape valve. Her homelife was indeed that painful, her self-esteem that fragile. She was by no means an afterschool special in the making; she was just trying desperately to grow wings. Prince #1 contributed untold amounts of wisdom and daring to her wing-growth: gleeful decadence combined with savvy self-preservation. Fun first, responsibility constant, boredom never. She learned, emulated, and survived. Prince #1’s tools for living become clanging, practical old mainstays in her toolbelt. (He also was a fantastic kisser, which he kindly proved to the Girl on a starry March night. A few heady times, and no more. Just enough to know and move along to a new adventure. The Girl is eternally grateful.)

We promised two princes, and it is thus. Prince #2 will enter the Girl’s life in an equally dramatic manner: they will approach each other in the orange-streetlight mist, as though crossing a moor or a mystical bridge. Rain had fallen all day, and was evaporating all around them. The Girl had boldly contacted Prince #2 by telephone, never having met him, because another friend had explained to her that Prince #2 might hold keys that could help decipher and release Prince #1’s ardor. At this stage, she will take whatever she can get. But also, on subway mornings she’s been told tales of Prince #2’s wry sense of humor, his undying friendship, and his wondrous garage replete with pool table, stained-glass hanging light fixture, and bar. He sounds like a hoot. The Girl arranged the meeting, and Prince #2—undoubtedly having heard things about her himself—readily agreed.

And so they approach each other on 37th Street. The Girl is tasked with procuring her parents’ Friday-night Chinese takeout, and Prince #2 says he will walk her there and home. She notes immediately upon his coming into focus that he has very cool permed hair and awesomely chunky Frye boots, and he walks purposefully. This Prince decides that the Girl is not as nondescript and mousy as he had been given to believe, and for a short while—a few months, maybe—he pines for her. But now it is the Girl who will comprehend that romance is not their shared destiny: bonded, total friendship is. (Appreciation accrues to Prince #1 for that knowledge, clearly.) Some details play out the same: they share poetry, mercilessly joke and banter, protect each other’s interests fiercely. But this Prince is actually acquainted with the stepfather who terrorizes the Girl’s homelife, a fact she does not realize until they meet. Thenceforth, Prince #2 double-bolsters her sense of safety by demystifying this domestic dragon gradually and completely. The Princely garage, the supreme hangout that is just as cool as described, becomes a safe haven. In fact, his entire demeanor—the way Prince #2 is game to talk about anything, anytime, and the way he empathizes with the Girl at every turn…his universe of friendship is another life-saver. Also, Prince and Girl watch and savor the same soap operas. Do not underestimate the unifying power of The Stories.

To this day, if the Girl cradles her hand into a telephone grip, she imagines his sweet, sassified voice awaiting her ear. Over years and years, in talks that range over hours of long-distance time, there is nothing she will not tell him, and he the same. O, the rocks that their tentative boats could have crashed upon in tempests past! the surging, unpredictable waves of fate and post-adolescent choices! yet their support of one another guides them like beacons. And the mishaps that did happen…the Prince and the Girl knew all and helped each other fervently.

It’s a long fairytale, this. The Princes and the Girl all depart their homeland kingdom of Queens. They become teacher, hairdresser, and (eventually) shopowner in three different corners of the United States. Marriages, parenthood, losses, misadventures and actual adventures abound. Prince #2 dies, and his survivors’ hearts suffer ever in his absence. But the Girl knows, and will never forget, that but for her meeting these pivotal men, she might not have escaped the window and the kingdom. Would she have found her writerly voice? perhaps, but never as surely as she did with their eager reading and encouragement. She also ditched the mousy urchin persona and embraced honest bravery, in appearance as well as the spoken word. In short, the Girl cannot imagine her self as it exists without the Princes who rescued her. You are worthy, they showed her (instead of telling). And you are valiant, she herewith proclaims in response.

the season of aloneness

2011-07-15T13:11:00.000-04:00

ORIGINALLY POSTED on Facebook, November 28, 2010

I have a trove of teenage poems exploring my dire emotional winter landscape...it was a time of intense creativity for me, even as it was despairingly lonesome because of home-life factors and the repetitive failure of my h.s. relationships to make it past Thanksgiving. Anyway, unlike some folks who despise their adolescent written voices, I'm an unabashed fan of my own, even as I acknowledge my naivete and creaky language choices....

"the season of aloneness"

and you,

shed like crisp autumn leaves--

still fragrant, still reminding;

summer wasn't so long ago...

painless, timeless, hopeless,

a curious reminiscence--

full of romance and

our temporary innocence

lost:

love, leaves, summer, warmth;

memories guarded

like a brilliant fallen leaf

and our friendship preserved.

gingerly possessed

as we drift into winter

the season of aloneness

NBR 11/30/81

A Mother's Day Gift

2011-07-15T13:09:00.001-04:00

ORIGINALLY POSTED on Facebook, May 9, 2010

I woke up this morning thinking about this text, and decided to post it as a gift and dedication to all of my friends, just as once it was an amazing gift to me. Here's the context:

In 2003, for Zoe's 13th birthday, I launched a tradition: we ask friends and family to submit writings, images, poems, whatever they like to welcome our child to the teen years. Among the contributions we received was a submission from my best friend, D.J. When I first read this piece on my e-mail, it took my breath away and made me weep. D.J. died two years after this book had been done, so I am immensely grateful that he participated. His voice and his spirit in my life changed everything, and it's so hard to be without him.

Blessings to everyone who gives of herself as a mom, sister, daughter, friend.

Written by Daniel D'Antonio, Jr., Long Island, New York, May 4, 2003

Dear Zoë:

When your Mom asked for contributions to this book for your birthday, I wrestled for quite some time with what I could possibly offer. I'm not a writer or poet. I'm not artistic or particularly imaginative (but please don't tell that to any of my haircutting clients!). I had the distinct impression that you may receive your fair share of cat photos, and when it came to a discussion of literary classics, I pretty much figured you could dance on my head with that topic. Anyway, I decided I would just share what I have learned from my own experience with entering and navigating the teen years because as you will see, we have something very important in common.

Teen years are tough, yet exciting. Scary, yet wondrous. Things we never paid much mind to suddenly become our every waking thought. Fortunately for you, as for me, we have something that some people don't. Your Mother. I spent a fair share of my early teen years feeling alone and fighting to bring this mystery of "growing up" into focus. One day, I met a girl, not just an ordinary girl, a lady. Someone different than I had ever known. I came to learn that she had demons and battles completely opposite of my own, yet somehow she made me feel like she knew exactly what I was going through. She made me feel loved, special and most importantly, less alone.

The longer I got to know my new friend, the more I came to learn about where she came from and how hard life was for her. Yet somehow when we were together she shined like the sun. She saw the beauty in life and passed it along. She could always put her own troubles aside to listen to mine and make me feel better about anything. I always hoped that I returned the favor to her over the years and that she somehow knew that I was there for her too, but even if I failed, she didn’t seem to mind. She still has the time for me with all her adult responsibilities. She's a lady and she's my friend.

So how does this relate to your birthday, Zoë? Well, I'm just letting you know that we all think our parents are "too old" or "too out of it" to understand what we are feeling or what we are going thru while trying to move thru the murky teen years, but you would be mistaken. You have a very special woman by your side, prepared to do anything for you. I just want you to know how great she is and how comforting she can be. You are a lucky girl, destined to be a special lady yourself. Learn from her. Go to her when things feel strange, she won’t steer you wrong. I should know. She raised me first.

Happy Birthday.

Love,
D.J

M'athair

2011-07-15T13:07:00.000-04:00

ORIGINALLY POSTED on Facebook, April 8, 2010

[Edited from an old blog entry, and prompted by a friend's comment about not knowing my father.]

Until I was 22 years old, I never called anyone Dad. In fact, when I said the word aloud as a kid, it felt weird, like a new word I was supposed to memorize for French class. I cringed like I wasn't pronouncing it correctly...like no one who heard it would understand what I was talking about. "Dad." Gulp, try again. "Dad." Thudding consonants with a short a in the middle. Foreign.

On the first day of kindergarten, I came to realize what an effective social tool this fact could be. Seated at the blue table (bright blue-gingham circle pasted in the center of a cool, smooth wood surface), the assembled kids were offering snippets of their life stories and talking about what their dads did for a living. As always, this irked me. Wait, I thought.Just wait for your chance. And then Warren, at my left, said, "My father is a mechanic."

"I don't have a father," I announced brightly.

Eyes bugged; little voices said, "Huh?" "What?" "You have to have a father!"

"Nope," I said. I savored my big word: "My parents are divorced."

"Oo-ooo-ooh"'s went around the blue table, as divorce was still relatively rare in 1969. My classmates looked at once admiring and wary. I've elicited that facial expression many, many times since. Call it a pioneer's survival skill. Maybe even a badge of honor. It's who I was for years and years: a searching, fatherless child.

Mom tried not to talk about him--and eventually, my stepfather didn't allow her to. Any discussions Mom and I had about my father were furtive and gloomy, and there was never a chance to bring it up again later; each conversation was self-contained, so I had to get my questions in immediately. The factoids I gleaned about his drinking, his anger, and his irresponsibility as a parent were no more enlightening than the National Enquirer. Meanwhile, my stepfather's comments about my father were pretty clear: "That a--hole has no right to see you. I'd kick the sh-t out of him if he came anywhere near here."

I called my stepfather by his first name, because calling him "Dad" would have been like bestowing "Your Highness" on Miss USA; the two just don't equate. He had no clue that, deep in the recesses of my bedroom closet, I hoarded the single photo album that showed my parents together, sometimes even looking happy. My mother had no idea how often I plied the album's yellowing paper pages, onto which scores of black-and-white photos had been rubber-cemented. The album smelled like a lost past, keen and musty. The photos still shone, crisply focused by my father's photographic skill. Rarely, his own image surfaced in there, and I scrutinized it like a detective for signs of similarity to mine. So close to the face in the photo...as if I could start a conversation with it.

We never saw my father's family members; they were cut out of my life before I was old enough to know who they were. I have a gauzy memory of seeing a crowd of them at some event; I recently surmised that it must have been after my paternal grandmother's funeral in New Jersey. Tall, talking adults drifting around a kitchen, far above my bewildered two-year-old head; a screen door and blurry green trees beyond it...pressing my nose up against the screen. I remember watching a cousin playing on a swingset outside, but my tentative attempt to join her was interrupted by a bee scouting the yard. I was outlandishly afraid of bees, so I stayed inside. My father must have been there, but I had no reason to recognize him amongst all the similarly featured Burnses. People spoke loudly as the afternoon dragged on, and I cringed as I always did at adult voices being raised.

So, I was consigned to rummaging in the closet, shooting glances over my shoulder to make sure no one opened my bedroom door. Carefully pulling out the album--Mom actually put these pictures in a nice one, not some cheapo plastic thing. This album had a leathery cover, black, with gold embossed on it. The pages were supple and organized chronologically. Once, I guess Mom figured she would want to look back.

I'm the only one who wanted to look back, as it turned out. Do I look like him? Would I have liked him? ran through my head as I flipped through the precious five pages of pictures where my father appeared (the rest of the album was taken up by baby pictures of my brother, a bonanza of images that dwindled as the marriage listed sideways...and then the album goes to Kodacolor and I'm born. A few pages to cover five years of my life, then...done).

Try as I might, I could never connect the black-and-white pictures with 3-D reality. In them, Dad's smiles and gestures are frozen. He's not a whole person, just miniature moods on film that don't change. (Mostly good moods, when you looked.) And he was young...goofily, affectlessly young. I suspected that I looked like him, but I never had anyone in the room to second me on that. And whenever I asked my maternal grandparents (in the safe haven of Maine), as kindly as they were, they would immediately rush in to reassure me. "No, dahlin', you don't look anything like him. You don't want anything to do with his people. You are just you, that's all, and we are so glad of that."

They wanted me to feel loved and cherished...I don't think they realized I was yearning for them to link me up with the Burnses. And knowing how much they disliked my father (in fact, had never liked him from the first meeting, and continued to compile a list of offenses that would not let any positive feelings creep in)...well, I did not want to challenge them further, forcing them to remember him too vividly.

I did come upon one other fragment of my father's life. The third drawer in my bedroom dresser was stuffed with papers and documents: the legalese story of my family's life. (In a three-room apartment, no one truly has a room or even a dresser to herself.) Left to my own devices, I adored pawing through that drawer, even then showing signs of a budding obsession with genealogy. Awkwardly shoved into the space was a folded stack of photostatic copies (dimly grey, shiny, smelly pre-Xeroxes). Mom must have copied these pages in some office setting, probably before I was born. They were poems--a meticulous, lofty manuscript. The faint typewriterly words seethed with anger and intellectual disdain.My father was a poet. This revelation came to me after my own writer's voice had made itself known, rendering the discovery ever more magical. For years, I puzzled over his works, which were denser than T.S. Eliot in places, positively Joycean in others. I had no idea what this man was ranting on about, but he was difficult to cleave to; his casually dropped Gaelic and classical references were not exactly bread to Gretel. It was not until high school that I could begin to decipher the verse-heavy, word-laden works. Quickie summary: that residual anger my mom was carting around about him? He flung his own back at her, fueled by a wounded youth and penchant for infidelity. This poetry, even as it became more comprehensible, still left me at sea.

Some years later, the fall after I graduated from college, my mom called me--I lived in Maine full time by then. She said, completely apropos of nothing, "Do you want to speak to your father?"

For a bewildered second I thought she was about to hand the phone to him or something--after all, the stepfather was long gone. But, no, she had decided to track his number down because I was an adult now, and it was up to me what I went and did with it. This was pre-Internet--it's a miracle she found him at all. In California, no less. (And what a classic Mom thing to do: practical, emotionless, just thrusting the ball at me: here.) Shall I define mind-blown for you? Mom's question pretty much clinches it. I practically swayed. To this day I can still picture the room I was in as I clutched the phone and let Mom's deed fully dawn on me, breaking across my mental shore in waves.

I might have waited one night before I made the fateful phone call...maybe. Despite my terrified nerves, uncertainties bubbling in my brain, wild imaginings about how wrong this could go...I punched in the numbers Mom gave me. He came to the phone immediately and I swear to you, I knew his voice. The man of poetic, liquored fury had been domesticated and sobered by his third wife, and was now a wry, productive eighth-grade English teacher (talk about penance!). Thus began a relationship that closed so many books, opened my mind, and made me whole. Also, it placed into my mouth a word I had always deserved: Dad. And in his mouth, a word that made a girl of me: "Sweetheart."

We called each other weekly and wrote epic letters to bring each other up to speed on lives that had never intersected. We exchanged pictures--expanding my visions of him a hundred times over, and giving him something tangible of his daughter. Peter was new in my life then, and Dad wholeheartedly approved. This had not been the case with all of my relatives, who warmed to my eventual spouse a little more slowly. Dad knew personally how the right person could alter the course of your life, leading you to better choices and happier days (and nights). Not for nothing did my own sobriety coincide with all of these events.

After five years of phone calls and the aforementioned barrage of correspondence, we finally met in 1992. I was pregnant with a son, and Dad had just been diagnosed with cancer. Being together in-person was suddenly urgent--and how fortunate, indeed, that I could make the trip, as it was the first and last time we ever spent time together. Dad's treatments had just begun, and he was vigorous and engaged by my visit. For my part, I tried to adjust to the alien landscape of Los Angeles in February, and hugged this man as often as I could. Our stomachs--mine swelled with six months of fetus, and his swelled with 56 years of living--would bump, and we'd giggle. We spent hours tucked into plaid-cushioned chairs across from one another, talking, comparing notes, absorbing. Every night, I puttered in his kitchen and made dinner Reifsnyder-style, since his treatments mandated extra nutrition.

One afternoon, Dad told me about the day of my birth, and that may have meant more to me than anything else he said in our time together, because it was vivid and true and connected me to him as never before.

It was the day after the Beatles had arrived in New York City, and Manhattan was swirling with screaming hordes and bemused journalists. The city winter cold was charged with an undeniable cultural electricity. Meanwhile, in a delivery room on the Upper West Side, my father's head swirled with a vicious red-wine hangover, the result of a Friday night house party my parents had hosted. The hospital staff insisted he wear a surgical mask while he watched Mom give birth to me; now, the wine fumes steamed from his mouth up to his nose, recycling, fueling the hangover. Still, he hung in there and witnessed my emergence, gamely.

Joy glimmered into the pain when Mom's female obstetrician displayed me to Dad immediately after my delivery, flawed and bloodied and human, his daughter. Dr. Ammann had allowed Dad to bypass the smoke-choked waiting room, the soundproof glass, the tightly blanketed infant in nurse's arms and the empty congratulations. This was rarely done in that era--I know Dad must have really wanted to be there. Perhaps we even bonded, in the parlance of latter-day infant researchers. Did his eyes--bleary above the mask line, but proud--meet my steady newborn gaze, that deceptive moment of lucidity before the long first nap sets in? Did he reach for me? Enraptured by his words, I forgot to ask him.

I had been conceived in a spirit of detente between my parents, I was told. A one-last-try for the marriage, an upswell of love and loving. But despite that auspicious beginning in the delivery room, Dad was out of my life within weeks. Vanished. By his own confused, conflicted, alcoholic choice. And my family unit sealed up behind him, to stanch the pain.

Had I never found Dad and gotten to know him, I know I would never have become fully adult. Some part of me would have stayed girl...a keening, unanswered invitation. Robert Leo McAllister Burns: I look like him, I laugh like him, and I write like him. It's my pride and distinction to call him Dad.

The Answer

2011-07-15T13:02:00.001-04:00

ORIGINALLY POSTED on Facebook, March 25, 2010

I wrote this while on the road, and wanted to let it simmer for awhile before I typed it up. It's about as open as I can get...which is pretty scarily, guilelessly open. So be nice to me. :) I dedicate it to everyone I've met along the way who knows....
----------------------
"How could you see anyone in concert more than twice? I wouldn't want to see God in concert more than twice!" --my brother Sean, pondering my John Mayer concert plans for late winter 2010

Here's my Sunday-morning, legs-aching, post-show answer, live from the Indiana farm kitchen of my dear friend Gret (a person I would never, ever have met, were it not for John Mayer). It consists of multiple strands:
The elusive connections and total abandon of youth.
The desire to be outrageously female and sassy, which finds no safe haven in a small hometown, but blissfully blossoms on the road.
The window-staring wanderlust of a lifelong bus-train-plane passenger.
The say-anything recklessness of a solid friendship (or 20).
The anticipation of planning, the revelation of discovering (cities, people, food, you name it).
The nerve-wracking experience of stalking tickets online, literally seconds after they've come on sale...frantically inputting codes and waiting with held breath to see what row comes up, all without leaving the mundane homeport of your office desk. Then triumphantly and abruptly scoring seats that will place you a few scant yards away from THAT GUY.

See, I've already managed to fill a paragraph with deeply felt reasons, and it's not even about John Mayer yet. Well, until the THAT GUY part. Because FL1 Row E Seat 4 is a satellite to the planet of his whirling, expanding career. I've had a hard-won seat for his trajectory since 2003, and I'm not about to stop now. Another strand: The moment when the stage lights blast on, and a roar swells behind me and washes over the stage, where at the center mic is that affable face, the tumbled waves of dark boy hair, the acute angle of that guitar neck, and his hands plying the instrument surely and knowingly, even as he acknowledges the roar with humility. At that opening-song reveal, every time he's standing in front of me, I think: There he is again...those precise words; and each time, I feel the same expression cross my face: fortunate, joyful fondness.

John Mayer's music got into my bloodstream starting in August 2002. Back-to-school shopping with Zoë and friends, in someone else's minivan, radio waves beamed out his voice. Do I know this guy...? I wondered from my passenger seat, monitoring the grey highway horizon. I bought Mayer's first album not long after, feeling like I needed to hear more than the single. It was instant DNA music (credit Zoë for that term). His lyrics knew things that I already knew, but framed and elevated those things so that they could be shared and comprehended. As I stood then at the portal of 40, pondering who I was after decades of being someone for others, Mayer started handing me keys. Just as you don't know what you've got 'till it's gone, sometimes you don't know what you need 'till you get it. Then, finding myself in a community of fellow travelers experiencing such epiphanies was a blessing beyond imagining. From my lonely island lifestyle, my occupation wearing thin, with losses of authority figures piling up, I found rescue.

But, really. John Mayer: easy on the eyes. Check. A band that wields collective power to make me dance my ass off every single show, left sweating and thankful. Check. These items are heady and freeing. Check. Undoubtedly, I needed these things.

On this rainy farm morning after show #25, I've just grasped yet another powerful answer for all these shows. I felt it so profoundly last night that it seems to emphatically underscore all of the above. Here is the fact: I am an unrelenting, ravenous, lifelong music fanatic. Never endowed with the skill to create my own music, instead I seek it and bond with it. I will admit that I have an astonishing capacity to embrace multiple genres, and all of that music burns within me. In fact, Peter and I merged lives with this same urgent instinct as one of our strongest connections.

I learned that John Mayer was the same kind of polyglot music freak when I first heard the audio commentary on his DVD, Any GIven Thursday. (That's right, he and a buddy provide narration over his own concert performance, hilariously.) Not only did his self-deprecating, endlessly referential banter sound completely familiar to me, but out of nowhere Mayer talked about Jimmy Smith. I listened, I paused, I rewound: seriously, did I just hear that?!Yes, I did.

Many people don't know who Jimmy was. That's all right--most people didn't grow up with a jazz musician mom. She exposed me to a universe of hip players, all of whose talents reeled out, literally, on a reel-to-reel tape player in our living room. You carefully threaded the slender brown tape into that 1960s luxury, then engaged a chunky "play" button that pulled up the shiny strand and started the music flowing. It was a ritual, as was the process of determining which LP would fill the apartment. Jimmy Smith was a go-to choice for me, and even as a preschooler, I clutched his tape cover like a teenybopper swooning over Meet the Beatles. Jimmy bridged the trad jazz world with wicked West Coast funk. (Well, I didn't know that then, but maybe I sensed it.) Simply stated, Jimmy Smith was the best jazz organist ever. He brought startling emotions to a staid, churchy instrument: nuances and nudges, jubilance and full-throated wails. And rhythm.

John Mayer knew who Jimmy Smith was, and quite plainly adored him. I was floored. When someone gets what I get, I want to know them. In that way, my life's been like an all-embracing music club, with numerous friends and family already in it..and I felt driven, watching Any GIven Thursday, to add John. (No cheesy Hangover wolf-pack jokes, s'il te plaît.) Because it wasn't just John's music that felt like common ground, I realized...it was a huge range of music that we listen to and absorb, performed by others.

Last night, at show #25, new ground was broken. John was covering a song from my AM-radio youth, "Ain't No Sunshine". Mayer does not play this song straight--he interprets it like a jazzman, injecting levels of personal emotion that transcend Bill Withers' original Top 40 recording. I watch John avidly when he's off on these tangents, drawing energy from it. (People say I dance like a musician, which is not necessarily flattering, although it's better than The Elaine.) I would have done the same if I could have seen Jimmy Smith in his prime, I promise you.

There's a bridge in this song when Bill Withers intones a mantra: "I know, I know, I know, I kno-ow, I know..." Trying to convince himself; wishing he were wrong. I have my own emotional landscape for this song; Mayer obviously has his. After a blistering solo, Mayer began playing this bridge on his guitar, far from the microphone. I instantly knew he was riffing the bridge, and I started moving along with the insistent "I know" repetition, and singing it over his guitar notes, reveling. I was dancing up on my tiptoes, seeing my way clear over a few rows of tall people. Mayer made his way to the mic, still riffing, and started singing too: "I know, I know, I know." We locked eyes at that moment and started moving in unison as we both sang that heartfelt mantra, over and over. I stayed with it no matter how he syncopated it, and kept looking right at him, and he at me.

You know, I've had some transcendent moments in my 30 years of concertgoing, but nothing approaches the physical and mental high of being that musically in sync with someone who, yes, knows what I know. I certainly lost any inhibitions I might have been dragging around, and at the climactic end of that bridge, "YEAH I'm gonna LEAVE your thing alone, ain't no sunshine when she's gone...", the energy generated by that singing and moving left me in a cloudburst.

Unforgettable. Bracing. Mine.

So, brother o' mine, I haven't seen God 25 times in concert. But I have experienced strong emotions, bathed in fortifying music, and learned life-altering things about myself and my potential. I share the road with amazing friends from all over the continent. I never fathomed that my 40s could bring me so many gifts. And ultimately, it all boils down to pronouns and a verb: I know, he knows, they know, we know.

And one more thing, the obvious: he never plays a song the same way twice.

Stranded at LaGuardia, March 2010

2011-07-15T13:00:00.001-04:00

ORIGINALLY POSTED on Facebook, March 16, 2010

Slumped in a seat--
grey vinyl, pressed smooth by
ceaseless travelers--
confronting, confronted by
a sea of window
Triboro Bridge floats beyond this
grey field of tarmac at my feet
listening to "Assassin"
pounding loud
in black foam headphones
while
left to right,
regional jets
pierce the sky:
needles seeking cotton

NBR 3/15/10
for Karen, whose plane took off as I wrote this

The Hands

2011-07-15T12:59:00.001-04:00

ORIGINALLY POSTED on Facebook, February 10, 2010

They were the hands of a worker. A laundress, maybe, or a housekeeper. She always lamented how short and ruddy her fingers were, as she pushed on the emerald and opal rings that she loved to wear. Her knuckles were formidable, and the gold bands had to be slid over them just so. The rest of Maryann's skin was palest white with scatterings of Irish freckles, but her hands were reddened.

Facing a long row of white piano keys split by shadow lines and minor black rectangles, Maryann's hands became muscular, precise tools. She had a finger spread that spanned an octave without strain. Her left hand brought bass chords to life in accurate sync with the melody. And she was able to inject softness, nuance, and emotion along with the emphasis. Her hands were made to speak; they were servants to the spirit of jazz music. She realized this before she was 10 years old, in fact: the tunes of popular American song were destined to pour through her hands as entertainment for others. No need for sheet music; she could hear it and reproduce it. Maryann surrendered to that knowledge, transporting herself to a place of balance and peace whenever she played. Her life beyond the smooth wood box of a piano was often dissonant, as though she repeatedly and suddenly became a stranger in the face of everyday events...but the piano was her harbor.

She would gladly have forfeited attending smalltown parties in her youth, but there was an expectation that she would play for the gatherings, and Maryann was very good at living up to her responsibilities. Small talk made her uneasy, and although she had lifelong female friends who always included her in their fun, Maryann could never shake the feeling of being apart. The call to "Play something for us, Maryann!" was a relief even as it was a nuisance (because the partygoers would inevitably tell her what to play, demandingly, and then only half-listen as their small talk and smoking raved on). In the Northern Lights Class of 1950 yearbook, they nicknamed her "Paderewski".

Her graduation gift from her parents was an extravagance that befitted her nickname: a baby grand piano. Dark sepia wood, with lighter swirls of grain...beyond furniture, it was practically a planet in her parents' modest living room. An anchor in the harbor, you might say. An enticement, even...a plea for this golden only child not to leave.

It didn't work. She departed easily, plunging into the swelter of New York City summer. Maryann's hands ventured to nightclubs on Manhattan's fabled 52nd Street, where larger and even noisier crowds listened as the redhead coaxed the standards to swing and emote. Places like the Hickory House and the Embers, whose names evoked steak and smoke. By day, she was a radio station page, to pay her rent at the YWCA. Her nights glittered and simmered. Maryann found a community of fellow-travelers in the city...players from nowherevilles all over the world, for whom a musical instrument was equally effortless and all-consuming. Their lingua franca was their coolness, their ability to instinctively bend music so that it became something more shining than its original form.

She began dating a fellow-traveler named Bob Burns, late of the storied US Navy Band, a drummer whose conflicts and demons made Maryann's moments of social estrangement seem tame. He burned to play like she did (surname pun ruefully acknowledged), but there were gaps in his groove. Maybe his methodical intellect blocked him from giving over to the art. Bob ached to possess Maryann as his wife, perhaps to absorb some of her light, but ultimately, he snuffed it out with mundane duties. It was the 1950s, and Maryann was well aware of what she was expected to do: make this man a home, give birth to children. Wear an apron and have dinner ready. Their early married life in an urban apartment was not so dull, if the black-and-white photos are to be believed. But Maryann was certainly not sitting in at nightclubs on Wednesdays at midnight, and Bob had become a university student on the GI Bill...living out his own version of what-was-expected.

Bob and Maryann's jazz world must always be viewed through the amber glow of alcohol. It may well have enabled their muses to emerge fully flowered, without inhibitions, but as their marriage encompassed parenthood and salaries, it robbed them of any sense of settled contentment. Bob became bitterly angry, his tirades insensible. When infidelity was added to his list of domestic sins, Maryann scooped up her young children, returned north to her small town of birth, and left New York to him. The baby grand had awaited her in its living room berth, and it slowly reawakened her soul.

I have staccato memories of early childhood which linger far more vividly than most people's. My mother's elusive persona, her tether to a piano while my grandparents guided me through toddlerhood...it's all right at the fringes of my psyche, shards of places and events. Eventually, our family returned triumphantly to New York City, as Maryann got the gig of a lifetime: playing piano every night onstage in a hit Broadway show, Cabaret. Every night, some older woman--my nana, a babysitter--tucked me in while Maryann performed and brought home the bacon. I never minded her absence, but I jealously guarded her presence whenever I got it.

I stlll recall preschool afternoons when she would fill our apartment living room with the sound of the Steinway upright she'd purchased for herself. I stood to the right of her bench, eye-level to the keys, wanting to be as close as possible. I could stand there all day, watching the blur and pause of her hands. The music, I remember, was surprisingly louder from that vantage point, resonating through the wood. The wood itself had a scent, a deep sweetness. I knew, without being told, that my mother was phenomenally talented; that the songs she played were just as good as the jazz LPs in rotation on the stereo in that same room: Count Basie, Marian McPartland, Oscar Peterson, Horace Silver. Maryann's mantra to her children differed from other mothers'; it was "Sssssh. Sssssh. Listen."

As Maryann's hands ranged over the keys, larger-than-life in that proximity, I was inevitably seized with a temptation: to strike a key with my childish index finger. I wanted to be swept up into the music, become part of it, not just her bystander. I could never deny the urge, and soon my hand would approach; my finger would choose a key. Most of the time the note was a lemon against whatever song she was playing. I knew that, could hear the note's high-pitched awfulness...but I would plink it again and again, listening to how it stood out, alone on a rich tapestry of beauty. Maryann did not stop me.

Among my genealogical treasures are the receipts for her baby grand and her Steinway, fluttering pink reminders of her time, her sound, what made her free.

O Pioneers

2011-07-15T12:55:00.001-04:00

ORIGINALLY POSTED on Facebook, January 13, 2010

This whole retro week on Facebook got me thinking this morning. For most of my friends here (whether peers or younger than I), 20 years ago was still a time of carefree youth. Peter and I were among only a handful of people in our group of friends/family who made the decision to marry and procreate whilst in our early 20s. We were the youngest sibs in our families, but we birthed the first grandchild on both sides. Peter was literally fresh out of college...he was by far the first in his class to become a father.

These decisions were not made by us momentously--that is to say, we were still carefree enough to see our marriage and life together as a flow, and we just went with it. We started out with the proverbial nothing, and added to our early days of frugality was the sudden responsibility of caring for my grampy, who came to live with us two months after the wedding. We learned as we went along in every way, because we really didn't know anyone else dealing with the circumstances we faced. Grampy was experiencing physical hardships that required a lot of supervision; Peter had to bathe him and help him get up from a sitting position at times, while I had to cut his nails and hair, clean his dentures, feed him, clothe him, entertain him (a lot of "Golden Girls" and "Murder, She Wrote"), and generally help him understand why our roles were suddenly tipped over after decades of the reverse. His mind was impaired in unpredictable ways--he knew who I was, and who Peter was, but he couldn't recall why he had had to come live with us, and was mortified that his handwriting had been impaired enough that I had to pay his bills for him. I would be writing the check for his Blue Cross payment, and he would be sitting alongside me saying, "Here, now, what are you doing that for??" and I would say, "Grampy, you can't write just yet, remember?"

(As if I knew anything about Blue Cross, back then. Talk about baptism by fire. Don't even get me started about the Medicare snarls, the hospitalizations, the desperate attempts to keep psychotropic drugs off his doctors' prescription pads...)

But let's go to the happy place of that retro era. The place where, at age 25 and juggling this brand-new hybrid household, I was surprised to find myself pregnant. Only surprised, in hindsight, because I'd staved it off so well during my wild college years, yet when Peter and I thought we'd experiment with not staving...well, kerwango. I stood alone in the kitchen with the telltale stick, Pete's laughter echoing on the porch as he left for work, and Grampy still waiting for his breakfast (not to mention, an explanation...that was delicate). I had no other family within a 500-mile radius. In fact, we had only lived in that house--our first real rental--for a month-and-a-half. After getting Grampy situated, I went across the lawn to my next-door neighbor's house. Her name was Fran, and she was a 60-something mom of 4 boys who had the least flappable demeanor you can imagine. An oasis of no-nonsense womanhood, and none too fussy about housework, all of which endeared me to her.

Fran and I sat down at her '50s metal kitchen table and perused the Ellsworth phone book to try and figure out who the OB/GYNs were nowadays. We chose a doctor and I made the appointment right there, on Fran's rotary wall phone. Having Fran's company and advice on that bewildering day was everything. I stumbled home in a daze to call my mom and deal with reality.

No Internets, my pets...we are talking retro days. In my usual way, I obsessed about what the heck was going to happen to my body, myself. Lacking health sites to peruse on a glowing screen late at night, I was left to take long walks to the local bookstore, where I ruminated on all the books on pregnancy and childbirth as I stood in the aisle. This was an extravagant purchase for us back then, so I had to be choosy. Ultimately, I decided on three books:

--Dr. Spock, mais oui (and did that ever get a workout).
--Sheila Kitzinger's Book of Pregnancy and Childbirth--because she had given birth five times without drugs, and she said labor felt like standing in front of an oven door and having sudden whooshes of heat and sensation come over you. Plus, her week-by-week descriptions of gestation were stellar.
--some 1980s-era, first-person motherhood narrative that was like having a knowledgeable older friend whose writing style you liked.

I needed so desperately to know what all of this was going to feel like, what were the potential complications, was I going to be able to breastfeed, and how could I make sure I wouldn't get drugs during labor (in 1989, midwifery and natural childbirth were still not the norm). Those books were companions that I read, reread, and read again for months.

Aside from these concerns, Peter and I were faced with clothing a baby and setting up our household on a single starter-level salary. That was the era when credit cards were fairly easy to come by, so we began our lifelong tango with debt and repayment. Nevertheless, money was still very tight, so we became connoisseurs of rummage and yard sales. Every Thursday we snagged the Ellsworth American and the Bar Harbor Times, heading straight for the classifieds. Our objectives were actually trifold:

--check to see if we could find a better house rental
--check to see if there were any jobs for book editors or writers (ummmm, no)
--review the listings of yard sales

This latter exercise was the sole means by which we became familiar with downeast Maine. Starting out first thing on a Saturday morning (and without GPS), we would clutch a map and compare it to the two-line sales ads, plotting out a logical circuit from one sale to the next. Obviously, we sought sales that specified baby clothes and goods; fortunately, there were many of those. Those early spring forays are burned into my memory...meeting other families, sorting through cardboard boxes or pawing over long tables in a church basement, and assembling everything we could have needed for our baby-to-be. I can still remember where I bought well-loved items that went on to be worn by all four Reifsnyder babies. I was (and am) firmly of the belief that a good hot water washing and drying will take care of almost anything and make it wearable, and most of the sellers had taken good care of the stuff, anyway. Pete and I also benefitted from generous friends and co-workers who shared bags of clothes with us--not just for our first baby, but the ones to follow. We were blessed in every way.

I look back on that era and recall that my overriding emotion was wonderment. Peter and I found ourselves in the land of New, as surely as if we had taken a covered wagon to get there. Behind us were urban childhoods, elite high schools and a prestigious college. I swear to you that neither of us regretted pushing forward into this spousal, parental, semi-rural lifestyle, and though we never discussed it as such, we fashioned our own way of living and parenting that has endured for 20 years.

When Zoë arrived, the light in our lives got brighter. We never stopped venturing out and learning; we just added another passenger who was just as curious as we were. Both Pete and I adapted to baby tasks in that flow-going way, and Zoë helped immensely by being about as even-tempered and manageable as a baby can be.

Venite Adoremus

2011-07-15T12:52:00.002-04:00

ORIGINALLY POSTED on Facebook, December 8, 2009

Starting in fourth grade, I spent a lot of time on the altar of my home church. Not as an altar server--sheesh, that was my Holy Grail back then, to wear that puffy white cotton gown-with-undergown and ring the little golden bell. But in the 1970s, girls were not altar servers. Instead, through a turn of events I can no longer remember, I became a lector.

Fourth grade. The same age as my youngest, who still frequently stammers through a sentence with childlike enthusiasm. Somehow, at age 10, I was instilled with the awesome power of the responsorial psalm and expected to deliver the words calmly and understandably. An entire parish lifted its myriad faces to me, awaiting my instructions as to what they would say in response to the interspersed psalm content I had to read, cold, from a big fat ponderous book. Yes, cold--I was handed the text upon arrival each Sunday.

Did I audition for this role? It's lost to the mists. There must have been some kind of try-outs, although knowing my parochial school, it's just as likely I was drafted because of my grades or my aptitude or the suspicion that I'd had "the calling". (Pause to recall the day that a nun told me that. Pause also to recall that I stammered when I answered Sister Maureen with some bland platitude, dancing around saying what I really meant: "Ohhh, I like boys WAY too much for that.")

Lectoring meant that weekly Mass was a must for me, and I didn't get to choose which Mass I was compelled to attend. I had to dress up, and I often used this as an excuse to borrow my mom's wedge-heeled sandals because "nothing I have matches with this skirt, Ma." How I walked across that massive marble-floored stage without wobbling, I do not know. I was shivery inside, and maybe my voice quavered as I intoned the psalm, but the huge silver mic always covered for me and boomed my words out into the massive church hall. (One of those retro-looking mics, rounded silver square with the horizontal cutouts. Ever cool.)

My nerves calmed as my lectoring career went on. One of the greatest gifts I ever got from my tenure at Most Precious Blood School, in fact, is my ability to speak in front of a crowd without hesitating. And here's an incredible true fact: my mom never came to a single Mass where I lectored. She was completely alienated from her faith at that point, and not inclined to use up Sunday leisure time on accompanying me to a service that would distress her. So, while that might seem cold-hearted and dismissive as you ponder it, what it really meant was this: at a young age, I was handed a major weekly responsibility that was mine alone to fulfill. No mom to comfort me if I made a mistake or got nervous...buck up and do it, young Nessa. Say what you will, my mother molded a fiercely independent spirit. For all I know, I advised her not to bother coming anyway.

Mom did, however, attend Midnight Mass with me and my brother, as my other altar-centered stint was the school choir. Those auditions, I do remember. Being in the choir meant everything to me. I strived for it, and each year I fretted that I might mess up my audition and not get in. The choir's base of operations was the Lower Church of Most Precious Blood, home of the infamous and kid-beloved Folk Mass (acoustic guitars! John Denver songs! feel-good liturgy!) The ceiling was lower down there, indeed; the lighting a fascinating peachy beige that warmed me inside. Sliding into the worn wood of those chestnut pews, feeling their grain under my fingertips...I spent hours upon hours there.

Our leader was a modernistic, charismatic young priest named Fr. Rucando. (So modernistic was he that, on Saturdays, you might see him in the neighborhood wearing beige slacks and a brown collared shirt!) Fr. Rucando was as good a music instructor as anyone I have ever seen. He was exacting yet pleasant, knowledgeable but accessible, and I would have probably leapt off a ledge if he told me that was the way to hit a note accurately. Our choir was about 50 kids strong. We rehearsed after school in the Lower Church, preparing for the big debut (either Christmas Eve or Easter Sunday, depending on the season). That debut performance would relocate us, you guessed it, onto the marble floor of the Upper Church's altar. We would line up by height along the length of the altar, so different from the casual weeks we had spent in pews downstairs. Our voices made a blended sound that stunned us: a lofty, soaring, magical hymnfest. Father selected unusual Christmas fare: "We Three Kings," "There's A Star in the East," "O Come O Come Emanuel." The program was always tinged with melancholy, culminating in our much-rehearsed "Silent Night." Fr. Rucando took "Silent Night" very seriously. He derided the way that popular singers dragged out "heavenly peeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEACE," asking us instead to leap carefully between the two segments of the word, according some dignity to the moment and the emotion. Singing to his specifications, I felt as spiritually engaged as could ever be possible. As though I were an instrument to convey important messages. A muse for faith.

Walking to Midnight Mass, my stomach felt jumpy and excitable. Surely the knowledge that presents would soon materialize was part of that; also, dinner was long since digested, so my stomach was a little demanding. But even moreso, I was immersed in the night-ness of it all, and that never ceased to thrill me. The streets of Astoria were dipped in an inky midnight blue, punctuated by the occasional orange streetlight's benevolent glow. As we approached the church, a life-size Nativity was posted at the corner, constructed so that you could walk "into" the manger and feel that much closer to the Christmas miracle. And my mother was walking alongside me, which (independent girl must admit) meant the world to me. When your mother's an accomplished musician, your musical endeavors essentially become offertories.

The choir's repertoire would be sung before the Mass. Then, a great thrill: after the singing, we were herded up the stairs into the choir loft--by far, the coolest place in the whole church. From the bird's-eye vantage point, we watched the Mass so far below. The entire church was luminous from that spot, with vivid poinsettias winking all over the room. Also, every time the presiding priest waved the jangling censer, and its musky sweet incense wafted out, the concentrated scent would wreathe the choir loft with especial intensity. I reveled in its festivity; the censer only appeared for certain services.

Our choir was called upon during the Mass once more, to lead the congregation in "Adeste Fideles". That was fun, because we had not been taught this hymn during the course of our rehearsals--instead, we were expected to pick up the hymnals and deliver it cold. Of course we knew the tune, but the Latin danced on my tongue, a fizzly delight, unfamiliar even as I knew what the lyrics really meant.

On the way home, invariably my family would tease me because I was a little too "into it" as I sang. Moving my head around, keeping time. So sue me; I'm the daughter of musicians, I can't stand still when I perform. I knew they had been watching me, and that's all that mattered. It was my thing, my offering, and they were there.

What awaited us at home was usually not a happy holiday. Christmas brought stark conflicts between the adults in our home. Luckily we had usually freed our presents of their wrappings before then, so at least that part was sacrosanct. And no matter what happened on the 25th and beyond, my Christmas always had its shining, holy introductory eve, festooned in music and hope. And here's a nifty coda about Fr. Rucando: I always went to him for Confession, because he knew me so well. In what was then the new, daring, face-to-face Confessional method, I used to sit with him and seek advice and solace about my turbulent home life. That man never failed to help, a balm to my young spirit. Coupled with the instruction and joy of his musical teachings, I was deeply fortunate to know him when I did.

What I did for Brotherly Love

2011-07-15T12:48:00.001-04:00

ORIGINALLY POSTED on Facebook, October 29, 2009

(Man, there's like four entendres in that title.)

This week marks 24 years since I became a phan of Philly. Not the currently ballyhooed team, but the city, as embodied by a gangly and lustful young Quaker. Falling in love with Pete was my first real acquaintance with the City of Brotherly Love, and I, ahem, loved it. Philly may sprawl a little more haphazardly than my Queens home turf, but there's neighborhood vibes abounding. Fantastical stone architecture that screams Cradle of Liberty. The afore-mentioned Quakers, whose faith spoke to me wordlessly right from the start. The Hooters, sonic accompaniment to our romance. The late, lamented Third Street Jazz and Rock, where our mutual adoration of dusty vinyl took root. Driving fast along the Schuylkill while blasting the Nazz. The Franklin Institute. And...cheesesteaks.

Inspired by today's http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/29/on-the-question-of-cheese-steaks , which seems to get a lot of it wrong, and in honor of 24 adventurous years with Peter, I thought I would share my own personal cheesesteak recipe. I crafted this a few years ago without consulting any cookbooks...it's straight from my sense memories of the amazing taste of D'Allesandro's cheesesteaks (NOT Geno's, puh-leeze). Now, it's not like my marriage needed saving and I brought out the big Philly phood guns to save it. In fact, we weren't even bored with our usual home, well, phare. (End of clever "ph"s.) We were just missing the taste of a Philly cheesesteak, and I thought maybe I could nail it.

Multiple Philly-native Reifsnyders have told me I got it right. Who's to say. I just love eating the danged things.

Mt. Airy Cheesesteaks

Ingredients:
One 16-steak box of frozen Hannaford Sandwich Steaks (or your store's equivalent...see image below)
One 15-oz can of Tomato Sauce (plain, not preseasoned)
One 16-oz container of Fresh Mushrooms
One Onion
Dried Oregano
Garlic Powder
Onion Powder
Salt, Pepper, Sugar
One 12-oz package Kraft finely shredded Italian-blend Five Cheese (contains provolone, mozzarella, asiago, parmesan and romano)
About 2 cups more of Shredded Mozzarella
NOTE: I never use reduced fat anything, so I don't know what this would taste like with that option.
Package of 6 sub sandwich rolls (aim for something soft, not crusty)

*Serves 6 ravenous Reifsnyders

STEP 1: The sauce
Pour the Tomato Sauce into a saucepan; place on med-low flame. Add a couple of shakes of Oregano, a pinch each of Garlic and Onion Powders, a little Salt and Pepper, and--VERY key--a couple of teaspoons of Sugar. Stir it up and let it simmer on low while you do the rest of the prep.

STEP 2: The meat
In a large bowl, separate the frozen sheets of Steak and break them into pieces. Your hands will be achy-cold. It's a small price to pay. Note: You will NOT be thawing the meat!! It's meant to be cooked frozen.

STEP 3: The veggies
Slice the Mushrooms into a bowl (or buy presliced). Halve the Onion, then cut it into thin half-moon slices; add to the mushrooms.

STEP 4: The cheeses
Combine all Cheeses in an oversized bowl (you'll need double the space in this bowl, because you'll be adding the cooked steak to it soon).

STEP 5: Cook the meat
Preheat a high-sided skillet on med-high (if it's not non-stick, you might add a smidge of cooking oil). Add the frozen Steak pieces after about a minute of preheating. Sauté the pieces, turning over frequently and chopping up as you go. As the steak finally begins to transition away from pinkness, add the Mushrooms and Onions and sauté them along with the steak.

STEP 6: Prep the rolls
Slice open the Rolls and plate them. You want to keep the subs sealed on the bottom, if you can.

STEP 7: Combine meat and cheeses
Once the Steak and Veggies are done to your liking (usually takes ~8 minutes), use a slotted spatula to transfer the mixture into the Cheese bowl. Try to avoid transferring fatty oil as much as you can. You want to do this while the steak is plenty hot. Mix it all together so that the cheeses start to melt and blend thoroughly with the meat.

STEP 8: Assemble the sandwiches
Put an ample amount of the meat-cheese mixture into the split sub. Then, carefully spoon some of the simmered sauce along the top of the meat. This is a trial-and-error thing...you don't want to make an inedibly messy sub, but you need enough so that you get a burst of sauce with every bite.

Press the sandwich together gently. If the rolls are long, cut in half to make it easier to pick up.

NOW EAT!

The viewing

2011-07-15T12:46:00.000-04:00

ORIGINALLY POSTED on Facebook, October 5, 2009

It was a viewing at the funeral home, on a drizzly and chill gray morning. The family walked in nearly on tiptoe, their footfalls further hushed by bland carpeting and sympathetic wallpaper. They were almost comically all-sized, from the eldest sister--equal in height to her mother--to the next in line, whose towering awkwardness mimicked his father's, and then the two youngers, one suddenly a head taller than the other. Semi-formal clothing constrained their movements to jerkiness as they sought to relax in the somber glow of the room.

The room tunneled to an endpoint where their elderly cousin rested, in view, pastel colors all around her. The children did not want to approach the casket, and their parents were not about to insist on it. As they all milled about, a safe distance away, they saw a lone figure approaching by the sprays of flowers. His movements were made tentative by his age and deep sorrow. In front of him, laid out in peace, was his sister, the last direct family member in his line. He had never married; she had never married. For awhile, the children had thought that these two relatives, who welcomed them so fondly with each visit, were another set of grandparents. There had been no need to disavow them of that, back then; the simple mistake brought universal joy.

The family found a semicircle of seats in the room's entryway and sat. A few hushed words were exchanged back and forth, and the younger ones leaned on their parents' jacketed arms. As the weight of minutes passed, and cousin Bill remained near his sister Dottie, the older son suddenly began to weep. Then the older daughter, the younger son, the younger daughter...a chain reaction of raw grief. The mother saw it happen, abashed by the intensity of their mourning. She dispensed hugs to each, stroked their hair, whispered reassurances; their slender shapes were warm in her arms, but disconsolate. A Kleenex box was passed, and the four children's reddened faces were shielded as they tried to stem the tears. How extraordinary, their mother thought, and how foolish that she had not anticipated this emotional surge.

The children cried because they knew, all four of them, what a sibling bond means. How no one will ever know you the way your sibling does. How you will do anything for a sister, a brother. They knew from their parents' conversations all week that Bill had been tasked with making final arrangements for a woman who had once been a girl, whose toys he had shared, whom he'd teased and probably exasperated--he being the youngest. And even from a distance, they could see that the face in the casket was not anything like the person they had known...she was truly gone.

First cousins of Bill and Dottie began to arrive; there were not many of them left. From the entryway, watching her distant relatives greet each other in front of the coffin, the mother saw how much these men and women resembled the previous generation: their parents, her great uncles and aunts. Seeing their faces in profile, eyeglasses glinting in the light, it was uncanny. This branch of the family was slight in stature, and though they wavered and hesitated with age, their pride remained fierce. She was witnessing time, manifested. Her own mother was once one of them.

This was the weekend that her decision to come to Maine, to retrace her mother's path, became right and true and fixed. Her place, her home, her people. How much she had gained...and now, her children, too.

The confluence

2011-07-15T12:43:00.002-04:00

ORIGINALLY POSTED on Facebook, June 22, 2009

Finally, a poem. It's been MONTHS. This one overtook me like a wave...like an instruction. I've written others similarly themed, but never about this person. I am officially moved.

“The confluence”

Tonight
as I type your data
I listen to piano-voice-guitar-echo music
spiny and ethereal at once
it reachesmmmme to you
suddenlymma cloud bridge
vapors of familiarity
lost only to time
we are bloodmmmeven though you are not flesh
we are blood
and so I love you
arrière-arrière-grand-père de Lowell
faceless to me
too poor for photography
but in this mist
this swirl of song
I see you
and you approve
because
you want to be known
to linger at the edges
of our mindsmmmyour descendants
your successes
your leavings
I embrace air
so that I may hold you here
I transcribe your years
and I own you

NBR 6/22/09

Thirty years ago this month...

2011-07-15T12:38:00.001-04:00

ORIGINALLY POSTED on Facebook, May 6, 2009

....my life changed. I hope you don't mind if I repost a 2006 blog to tell the story, in honor of my unforgettable, irrepressible, irreverent, traditionalist, trivia-mastering, bad-music-adoring, life-saving best friend, D.J.
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This is partly blog as catharsis, and partly my need for the world to know someone whom they will never know if I don't write about him. It's soaked in tears. I apologize.

How do I miss thee? Let me count the ways.

I miss your raucous, scratchy, knowing laugh, roughened by smoke and years of wicked humor.

I miss that you called me "doll" and "darling" and "baby" and "honey" and "bitch". Words I am not likely to hear spoken in reference to myself again.

I miss the way you knew my every instinct, my failings, and the way you cheer-led every positive thing about me. I believed those things through you. Now, I am unsure, lonesome, more shrill in my need for guidance.

I miss your knowledge of soap operas. Dammit, who else would crow like me: Noah and Scorpio are BOTH back on GH!! Can Anna be far behind?! Are you engineering this from the beyond?? If not, dear God, I hope they have SoapNet up on those clouds.

I miss the TV shows you would select for me, tape and send, because you perpetually worried that I didn't get enough down time. The reality shows that we mocked. The dramas that we became hooked on (and dished about, as if those characters lived down the street). The Kathy Griffin outrageousness that was just an extension of our own. The porn you threatened to provide, but never made good on.

I miss talking to you about our friends and our families. Sharing the good stories, or raking over the coals as merited.

I miss telling you when Peter and I have had ecstatic sex. Eagerly. And I miss that you're the one whose encouragement helped me get to that suggestive self who still entices the man I love.

I miss describing women's health issues until you beg for mercy. And my triumph that you actually had a boundary that I crossed.

I miss the f*cking phone. Honest to God, no one ever calls me. I guess I crammed in a lifetime of seated, hours-long, receiver-clutching conversations with you.

I miss worrying about you, because I desperately wanted to help you get healthy enough for obesity surgery. And worrying was hope, after all. I also miss giving advice that you would gleefully harass your doctors with. Makes me proud, e.g.: I advised you not to take Fen-Phen. Now, when I read about improvements to bariatric surgery, or about some promising finding in a lab, I'm pissed off and thwarted.

I miss blabbing about the 70s with you. We both had the exact same outlook on that ridiculous, wide-collared decade. And our worlds both got shaken up by the decade that followed it. Only you know how much.

I miss complaining about my mom to you, because she's gone too, dammit, and I'd give anything to have something to say about her, to anyone, but especially to you.

I miss the relish in your voice whenever I told you about my diva Lydia. I know your spirit of impish rebellion and fashion sense has passed into her, but I wish I could update you on exactly how that's manifesting.

I miss the New York tang of your voice. The impatience of your tone, keeping the dang conversation moving. The microwave beep that meant your tea was ready. The intake of breath that meant your cig was lit.

I miss your advice. F*ck that, I crave your advice. How can I possibly contemplate my future without your input? How can I know if I'm totally crazy thinking something, without you telling me so? Because, honestly, most of the time when you told me that, it was news to me. My psyche needed your take on it.

I miss you reading my latest anything. I hate like hell that this blog phenomenon emerged after your passing. I wish you could have started one, too.

I miss hearing about your exploits. Your sense of daring outstripped anything I could ever imagine, much less would have ever attempted (or wanted to).

I miss the pride in my voice when I told someone about my "best friend." Because you were that, from the first time we met. Remember when we chat-roomed about that a couple of years ago? I saved it, baby, because it made me feel so good:

DJ: I thought you were stunning, and lest we forget you were wearing those boots the night we met...grrrrrrr

Nessa: Those boots, the Lil Abners!?

DJ: You were wearing these sort of mohagony colored boots up the knee....High boots drive me wild....I'm sure I commented that night

Nessa: I have NO recollection of them! Oh man. Did they have spurs? I had spur boots with a spike heel back then....But they were not past the knee. I never would have been allowed.

DJ: No spurs to my memory, but there were boots and those pants....what were they called?

Nessa: Gauchos??

DJ: No, to the knee
DJ: YES!

Nessa: I wore gauchos and boots. Geez, maybe I was a babe! LOL!!

It was like this: I walked up to you on 37th Street. It had rained for hours, and the evening streets were steamy and misty with it, making the orange streetlights glow brighter. We had never seen each other before, but your friend Tom was my burning crush, and I desperately needed intel.

So initially I had cold-called you, which scared me half to death at age 15 (I never did stuff like that). And we talked about music--always my raison d'etre--and you said you loved disco and hated the Beatles.

"WHAAAT??" I yelped into the phone, mortally offended. "What is there about the Beatles that anyone could hate??" (You didn't know it then, but they were my heroes.)

And you didn't back down to impress me, get flustered, or try to be cool. No, you said right back at me over that tinny Queens phone line, flatly: "They can't sing."

Such hubris. No one I knew preferred disco to the Beatles. And your VOICE. It was mesmerizing, dear. Even then, you could have hosted a radio show with that purring, opinionated, bitch-masculine voice.

And so we had decided to meet. And my anticipation was palpable. My hands shook, my heart pounded, I wore my fave of-the-moment clothes (see above). And while there was girl-guy electricity as we drew nearer to each other, coming into focus the closer we got...there was moreso a sense of relief, souls in the same orbit, yin to the yang. A conversation began immediately, no hesitation, and it was a shining thread that never ended until November 3, 2005.

Ahhhhh, life goes on, hon. All the ways I miss you are blunted by the busyness of my days. I must nurture my kids, work at a desk [no! in a store! :) ] for pay, and deepen my love for Peter (an ever-renewing resource, as you well were aware). And I must be the person you always knew I was. Because I am. And I love you forever because you found that person in 1979, and walked with her into the future on a foggy, mysterious spring night.
-----------------------------------------------------------------

I have found that when the person who helped guide your decisions dies, you painfully, soul-searchingly adjust. And when you trust yourself and go for it, you can feel him at your side suddenly, a hand on your back, a smile that tells you that daring is fun, and fun can lead to fulfillment and success, if you manage it right.

He was my guardian even in life. He still is.

Ask Des and Lyd

2011-07-15T12:37:00.002-04:00

ORIGINALLY POSTED on Facebook, March 16, 2009

Ask your kids. Share! Today!

Desmond, age 9, and Lydia, age 10, say...

1. What is something Mumma always says to you?
D: Ummmm....hmmmmm...I dunno. "Hi."
L: "Do your homework!"

2. What makes Mumma happy?
D: When I do my homework.
L: Listening to old records.

3. What makes Mumma sad?
D: Watching TV. [I think he means, him watching TV, not me sitting there and blubbering. But who's to say.]
L: If someone in her family dies.

4. What does your Mumma do that makes you laugh?
D: I don't think I remember anything.
L: Comment on weird things.

5. What was your Mumma like as a child?
D: I don't know.
L: No glasses, short...that's all I can think of.

6. How old is your Mumma?
D: 44...?
L: 45!

7. How tall is your Mumma?
D: 53 inches. [Yeaah.]
L: 5 foot 2? [Still, no.]

8. What is her favorite thing to do?
D: Make quilts.
L: Lie around and sleep, and watch "General Hospital."

9. What does your Mumma do when you're not around?
D: Talk to adults.
L: Sleep. And work.

10. If your Mumma becomes famous, what will it be for?
D: Making quilts.
L: For being a great genealogist, I think.

11. What is your Mumma really good at?
D: Cooking.
L: Cooking dinner.

12. What is your Mumma not very good at?
D: Chopping down trees.
L: Playing sports.

13. What does your Mumma do for a job?
D: Work at a store.
L: Work at a fabric and scrapbooking store.

14. What is your Mumma's favorite food?
D: Pizza.
L: Yodels and tea.

15.What makes you proud of your Mumma?
D: There's so many things!
L: Proud that she's my mom.

16. If your Mumma were a cartoon character, who would she be?
D: Truffles from "Chowder."
L: Truffles, because she's cranky and old--sorry to say that--and she has glasses.

17. What do you and your Mumma do together?
D: Make scrapbooks.
L: Look up the past of our ancestors.

18. How are you and your Mumma the same?
D: We both watch TV...
L: We're both girls...and I have the same eye color as her.

19. How are you and your Mumma different?
D: She makes dinner.
L: I don't wear glasses, but she does.

20. How do you know your Mumma loves you?
D: Because she hugs me.
L: Because I am her child and she loves me very much.

21. Where is your Mumma's favorite place?
D: Bowdoin.
L: New Jersey or New York because her brother lives there and she used to.

Getting the Knack

2011-07-15T12:25:00.001-04:00

ORIGINALLY POSTED on Facebook, Tuesday, March 10, 2009

A three-room apartment, the embodiment of claustrophobia. Somehow there was never enough light in that place--it was as though the eternal gray layer of city dust filtered out pure light, as well. Four of us lived there, with one bedroom shared by myself and my older brother, and the living room's pull-out sofa the designated domain of Mom and her boyfriend (we called him a stepfather, for propriety's sake). There was a pervasive unease about that living room, because it was the site of unpredictable outbursts by my stepfather. Usually these were late-night, though not always; typically they were provoked by alcohol; frequently the blasting verbal barrage would be followed up by slaps, punches, or outright hurls of my mother's birdlike form from one side of the small room to another. How she never broke a bone remains a mystery. If there were bruises, she managed to conceal them and retain her 9-to-5 secretarial post without anyone being the wiser.

Incredibly, considering the dearth of space in our home, the single bedroom was rarely entered by my mom, and never by my stepfather. It was lighter in there, and it had a magical escape pod: the back window. No ordinary window, this was a prewar portal about five feet tall. Its width perfectly cradled my sitting form...thus, I would sit at my sixth-floor perch, big Radio Shack headphones clamped on my head, staring out over the patchwork roofs, sparse trees, and sidewalks of Astoria, Queens. Behind me was a scuttled scrap pile of domesticity. Ahead of me was the world of my neighborhood, shimmering in dusk light or glinting in sunshine. My senses were wide-opened by this window vision: breezes nuzzled me; interspersed trees popped a brilliant green into the grays and browns of city life; I smelled other people's food, sweet outdoors air, the occasional hint of exhaust...

...and what did I hear, planted in that window, gazing and escaping? Well, in 1979, among many of my favorite artists, I heard the Knack. And the Knack became the shining sound of my freedom.

My heart lifts even now when I think of Get the Knack. I had long since established myself as a Beatles fan, and suddenly a band of my era was building something new and edgy on that familiar power pop foundation. That made me feel championed and upswept into my own hopeful now. The album's packaging was slick black-and-white, with its black portions gleaming just like the inner circle of vinyl. The band photos and even the rainbow Capitol record label mimicked the Beatles' heyday, at once parody and homage. As such, this LP was easily dismissed upon its (admittedly hyped) release; I recall many jaded critics and even my own brother giving it the one-handed brush-off. That only fueled my ardor. Not for nothing did the band title their second album ...But the Little Girls Understand. The men didn't know, indeed.

Plunked onto the turntable, the Knack's sound was percussion-driven and propulsive right from the get-go. (Bruce Gary was vastly underrated.) Berton Averre's guitar rang clear, banging and clangy. Prescott Niles' bass bottom was thick and supportive. And there was Doug Fieger's indelible voice, by turns bratty and manly. He teased, yearned, scored. The band's lyrics conveyed impatient sexuality and a simmering anger that spoke volumes to my 15-year-old thwarted self. I had a knowing inside me that was--I can say now--deeper than many of my peers'. Forged by my home's strife, perhaps, but also by my voracious reading habit and my writer's sensibility. I gathered shreds of learning and quilted them immediately. And oh, I wanted wanted wanted.

A fatherless girl (my stepfather was a straw man, and my own father long disappeared), I craved touch, warmth, and companionship. I wanted to learn someone else's ways, and thereby, to believe there was a better life to be had than what was behind me in that apartment. I wanted to be understood, surely, but even more so, I wanted to understand someone else completely. Immerse. Leave.

As such, I was governed by crushes that burned hot at the front of my mind. Not unlike the Knack's protagonists, who sang things like:

I don't expect you to understand
The thrill I feel when I hold your hand
But this is something I never planned
You're thinking of me as just a friend
My heart is breaking, I can't pretend...

and

I don't want much, uh-uh,
I don't wanna be her boyfriend forever...
I just wanna...touch

and

She's gonna take you by the hand, lead you to the promised land
She'll make you weak and out of breath, feeling like you're done to death
Oh, I wanna hold you
Oh, and then enfold you....
She'll be pulling the string
But she'll tie it in a knot before she'll give you anything!

(Yeah, go ahead, replace the she's with he's. Worked for me.)

I listened and memorized and craved for weeks. And then I experienced a Knack-engineered moment that was transcendent.

The place: my friend D.J.'s garage. D.J. had what most of us Queensites lacked: a full-sized, freestanding house. Its two-car garage had been made over into a 1970s extravaganza of a wood-paneled bar, complete with pool table and a real pinball machine. As I think back, I can't understand why I didn't just buy a sleeping bag and move in. But whenever I could, I would loose the tether of home and hang out in that den of easy laughter and play.

We were a crowd of friends, back then, each with our own demons to wrestle (again, something I can say now...then, I might have wondered, but mostly never considered it). Among us was a boy I desired mightily. He and I were friends on an intellectual level--not to sound overstuffed, but we discoursed about poetry, politics, and religion along with our pop-cultural musings. Yea verily, I had crushes abounding, but he was my strongest focus, the catch I strained to yank into the boat.

D.J. was a man of disco and cheesepop, but somehow one afternoon as we gathered in celebration of Labor Day, Get the Knack was successfully slipped into his boom box cassette player. Wooo! As a pool game lazily unrolled, and the conversation with it, I rocked around the room to the first few cuts on the album (no single among them, yet I knew them each by heart). Cut number five was the first resting moment, a true ballad that I had taken to heart with desperation, always pining for this crush-boy:

I don't know why I never said it before
I dont know why i waited so long to be sure
but I...everything's humming,
Something is coming, maybe tonight....
Funny to think I had to clown and pretend
You never knew I saw you as more than a friend
but I...come hold me tighter, come make it right,
maybe tonight, oh maybe tonight....

Of course I knew every word. And for some reason, I dared myself to sing this track out loud, there among my best friends. It felt liberating...and far more so, as I heard crush-boy's voice singing with equal fervor alongside mine. My heart raced and my mind wobbled, but I stayed cool and sang it out with him.

Did he touch me that night? Well, no...not for a couple of years, at that, and even then only fleetingly. But it didn't matter, and it still doesn't matter. That song has silken threads woven around it to this day. You could say, I started to grow a wing right then, in D.J.'s garage. That would be entirely true.

Freedom. I'm indebted to the Knack for helping foster that. And I escaped, oh yes...largely unscathed, and fully myself.

There's a further Knack-related coda to this story. How many of us have the good fortune to gather new best friends in our full-on adulthood? I know it hasn't happened often for me; after the safe haven of D.J.'s garage and the all-embracing arms of college, I haven't connected with many people. Adulthood's definitely had more of a lonely cast about it, which I guess accompanies responsibilities like dinner and paycheck and nurturing. Not so much freedom to be discovered in those, moreover.

Well, five years ago, I came to know a group of wonderful women on, of all things, John Mayer's fan club message board. (I'm sure my family's memories of that year involve the staccato tapdance of my PC's keyboard as I kept up with messages and tales from all over the U.S., literally from friends I had not met.) One by one, these women had been meeting up at concerts (where, I might add, they managed to score amazing seats right in front of Mayer). Those meet-ups were then retold on the board, and they sounded exhiliratingly fun. I dithered for awhile about whether I should head out on a Mayerventure...and in so doing, crest years of fear about airplane flight. 'Cause to be sure, Johnny boy wasn't hitting up the state of Maine.

In September of 2004, one of our friends tragically lost her husband to a horrible industrial accident. The Mayer friends banded together as we had been doing for other sad situations among us, sharing messages of support on the boards. From our disparate locations, we each began crafting quilt squares to express our feelings and share love with Mary Ann. Later that fall, the quilt was to be delivered in Chicago.

Never been to Chicago. Hmmm. And one of the Mayer friends, Karen, was a southern Mainer who wanted me to fly out with her. We had never met in real life, despite our relative geographical proximity. I knew she had recently lost her mom and was really looking forward to a little escapism after a sad, painful year. I pondered for a few days, and did not manage to persuade Karen that maybe we could drive...? No, she said firmly on the phone, we are NOT driving halfway across the country in December. I guess the train...? NO.

So...I gave in, leaping into quite an unknown. We flew. Got to know each other through revealing conversations, crammed next to each other in commuter jets. On one of the flights we were seated at the rear, and after we landed, there was a lull in the crowded line waiting to disembark.

"Let me out," I sang impatiently under my breath.

Karen was right alongside me. Her deep brown eyes went large, and then she smiled knowingly. She sang back: "Let me out, come and get me out, 'cause I've been stuck in for too long."

Now it was my eyes that bugged. That was the opening lyric of the Get the Knack album, a jaunty ode to, yes, escape. It turned out that Karen had accompanied her own emergent adolescence with the selfsame soundtrack.

We'd been enjoying each other's company, before. Now, we were insta-bonded. Karen is the Lobsta with whom I've since ranged all over the map in search of microbursts of freedom, to decorate our motherhood lives. And because of her, I found the innate bravery to fly south to New York multiple times the following spring, caring for my mother in her final illness. Karen always knew exactly what I was feeling...a gift that still hasn't stopped giving.

I was moved to write this by the generosity and artistry of Doug Fieger and Berton Averre, who've friended me on this amazing planet called Facebook. Thank you, thank you, for also knowing exactly how I was feeling, spanning three decades and going strong.

"You should write a book."

2009-06-08T22:21:00.003-04:00

The year that I lived with my grandparents, age 8, I was given my first-ever weekly allowance. There really wouldn't have been any reason for me to get $1 a week back home in Queens, because I couldn't go shopping alone in the big city. But in Millinocket, Maine, I was free to walk from our house to the compact district known as "down street." I can still remember the sweaty feel of the dollar bill (or two, or three) that lay folded inside my pocket. The greeny scent that my hand carried when I brought it back upwards. And the planning, my thoughts of what-to-buy-this-time following the rhythmic pattern of my feet on the sidewalk.

At Newberry's, I'd become attached to series-type books like Trixie Belden, and I was always up for paper dolls or junk jewelry. I loved Barbies and coloring books and even office supplies (so I could pretend to be a secretary, like my mom). As I think back now, I can't recall when the seismic shift in my priorities took place...but there was, indeed, a climactic point in that third-grade year when it dawned on me that my life's ambition was to be an author. And immediately connected to that realization was a new use for my allowance money: now, I'd stride past Newberry's towards a pharmacy/stationer's called The Big L, because they had the best display of school supplies in town. Fingering the bills in my pocket, I'd deliberate in that aisle over binders, looseleaf, and pencils. The tools for this trade had to be just right. I craved the most inspiring blank piece of lined paper I could obtain, and I wanted the binder that encased it to be a heady combo of workmanlike and appealing. It had to feel right in my hands.

Once home, I would snap open the silver rings of the binder with care, slide the looseleaf sheets out of the plastic, and thread those three rings with the white poundage of possibility. And after this meticulous ceremony, I promise you, I wrote and wrote and wrote. I spent hours alone in my playroom writing, while hours flew past like a time-lapse film where the sun arcs over the house...morning, to day, to evening. My pencil penmanship on the lines smoothly conveyed my imagined stories, without much hesitation. Adult Nessa will tell you: that was magic.

Last weekend I was brought back to these third-grade reveries with a jolt. My kids wanted to stop at the B. Dalton bookstore, and I wandered in with them. They fanned out to their favorite spots, and I looked around aimlessly. Spreading before me, coming into collective focus, were piles and piles of remaindered, unwanted books...all colors and shapes, all topics and themes, all meticulously designed and hopeful. Some agent sold them, some editor bought them, and now some publishing house was whapping its forehead over the wastefulness of these paper-hogging tomes (if not dropping to its knees in the worst economy ever for the printed word). Of course, my heart sank for the writers who believed that people would eagerly read their stories, even as I experienced my familiar clanging jealousy that these authors got published. (Cue the moment where I berate myself for failing to achieve what I set out to do as a girl...the self-flagellation that ensues at every bookstore I enter.)

I lingered for a time at the young-adult section, the genre I settled upon decades ago as my writerly quarry. Twilight-inspired novels sprouted all over those shelves like some out-of-control black rosebush. Alongside the vamps and virgins, I spied another genre: books that centered on Internet chats, texting, and other clever communication devices of this age we live in. Not something I can imagine penning, even though I'm as much a net-izen as anyone. And I'm not a supernaturalist, either.

I veered away from YA, past manga abounding (my daughter's realm), and caught up with Willis reading a guidebook about insects. (He had seen a massive one the night before and was intently discerning what it was.) He sat bathed in a bright overhead light, and I sat next to him. I doubt he even recalls what I said--he was pretty engrossed in the insect manual--but I was overwhelmed, and had to voice what I was thinking to someone.

"Willis, I just realized..." My voice weakened, but then I said it. "When I was a little girl, you know, I decided I was going to write books someday. And just now, looking at all these books in this store that no one's gonna buy...you know, I have to accept...that is not going to happen."

He didn't say anything, but I went on. "People are always telling me, 'you should write a book,' and that's really wonderful of them, but there aren't ever going to be enough people who would want to read anything I'd write." There was this weird breathless feeling in my chest: part lifting of burden, and part airlessness left behind because I'd let go of something that had always felt so hopeful and pure and true. Oddly for me, I didn't cry. I just felt transformed, desolated.

I know my friends' intentions are supportive and honest when they say that I should write a book. I love them for it, and I wish I could believe what they believe. But adding to that sea of remainders...even being considered worthy enough to maybe join that sea of remainders...my childhood dream seems like a shedded carapace, and the me that has been inside it is tender, emerged, older and wiser.

I'm not saying I'll never be a writer...that's not my point. (I can't not write. It's breath to me.) It is my original childhood vision that has altered: that clutching of a book in my hands that has my name on the cover and my words arranged in orderly font, line after line, on an enviable thick block of pages. It feels yesterday, and wanting it hurts too much in the face of reality.

Risking my life for the blues

2009-02-23T23:02:00.003-05:00

The weather forecast could have gone either way, really. Rain...or snow. (Well, I guess it could have gone three ways, this being Maine...the third option being the dreaded mix.) Lobsta and I perused yesterday's weather websites like trained meteorologists, scrutinized the New England map with swirling green/pink menaces bearing down, looked at the iffy temps, shrugged, and pretty much ignored all of it.

Because it's Buddy Guy and BB King. And Lobsta scored these tickets Friday after weeks of prodding Ticketmaster.com to no avail. You know the drill: tickets not currently available try again closer to the date of show x 100, and then improbably, she snagged floor tickets. GA, scramble for position...our favorite kind. Even better: at the brand-new Boston House of Blues (which used to be the Avalon, scene of one of our great John Mayer Trio escapades).

Let me briefly pause this narrative. The blues did not come to me via my storied musical DNA. I cannot recall any instance where my mother extolled this genre, except when one of her heroes performed blues in a shinier, more glamorous jazz context (cf. "C Jam Blues"). Truth be told, I think the blues were too soaked and earthy for her. Not to mention, the electric guitar was never a clarion call to her musical ears.

I have come to the blues entirely on my own. Clarion call, siren, seducer, compulsion: the myriad tones of a wailing electric guitar are all of these for me, and muse besides. When those tones are slowed, bent, and rhythmically pounded in service to blues music, I am literally physically moved (Lobsta, Marcy, and Gret would correct that to mov-ing. Herewith a quickie public apology for making them endure my dancing, swaying self.)

I feel like I've backed into the blues, though. Accessed them through a nondescript side door that whiteboy rockers opened to me, from Cream to Zep, Hot Tuna to Stevie Ray, and then this whole John Mayer thing. Over the course of 20 shows since 2003, Mayer has spoken to me most clearly in his blues voice of guitar rambles and strokes that lay bare raw emotion. I've come to understand how that voice is something he learned from others, whose output and stories I should know better.

Back in 2005, Lobsta and I were blessed to have attended a John Mayer Trio show in Chicago with an unannounced special guest: Buddy Guy. I knew who Buddy was, but it was in a distant, yes-he's-a-legend way. Seeing Buddy perform snapped me right to attention. "The woman I love, man, you know she's kinda big and fat. And what I like about the woman is kinda...gooood like that." Toss the skilled guitar work in with those lyrics, et voila: sex on a stick! I was galvanized. And grooving in my GA floor space, you bet.

Given the opportunity to see Buddy again--and with BB King added in, a stone legend--I was thrilled. Ergo (back to the narrative), pffffft to the weather, let's get into Daisy (Lobsta's trusty VW Bug) and point her south.

We arrived just 30 minutes before the doors opened. Quite a long line already snaked outside the venue despite the drizzly, freezly rain, and we added ourselves to the end. (This constrasts with various JM Trio outings, when we arrived by noon in order to be as close to first-in-line as possible.) Circumstances hadn't allowed us to get there any earlier, so we were fine with that--just to be in the room and witnessing these players was going to be enough.

Fast-forward to showtime. For reasons I still can't quite get my head around (as they did not involve pushing, elbowing, or even insinuating), Lobsta and I ended up one person away from the stage, immediately to the right of the mic. As close as you can get without touching wood, as I like to say. This was always a good-luck spot for our GA Mayer shows, and Lobsta and I stood there incredulous to have scored it at this more-historic blues moment. Buddy Guy and his band took the stage, and we were looking right in Buddy's eyes, watching his hands work the guitar neck and strings, in his space. Buddy combines leer with lilt, aggression with caress, insouciance with authority. Sometimes he howls, and other times he brings up his fists and oooooweeees with glee. And he's agelessly sexy, something I first witnessed in Chicago, but realized more fully last night.

His set included "Love Her With a Feeling," "Best Damn Fool," "Someone Else is Steppin' In," and "Feels Like Rain" (the latter is a song that Lobsta and I both associate with our mothers' passing, and his emotive performance brought us to to tears). He played "Skin Deep," the thoughtful title track to his newest LP, and there was reverent silence in the capacity-filled House of Blues. But after about an hour of burning up the stage with his tight band, he added one more player: a 9-year-old prodigy named Quinn Sullivan. "Who's Gonna Fill Those Shoes" is the duet they play together, but Buddy backed off many times and let an unassuming, fantastically gifted boy own the spotlight and the crowd. This extended what I've already seen with Mayer and Guy together, and I can assure you it's not about master and student. It's about legacy and camaraderie, and hope besides. I was able to look Quinn in the eyes just as easily as I'd been doing with Buddy, and as I grooved along to his playing, I could see an endearing acknowledgement on Quinn's part that he was having an effect on the crowd. He was authentic, not a show pony.

One last tidbit from the Buddy portion of the show: he noticed me and my ceaseless, blues-fueled dancing. I may not be a looker in traditional ways, but it's fair to say I do have fine rhythm. So I'm proud to report that Buddy sang this bit to me: "I'm the one and only...I'm the one man that you won't forget. I can make a bulldog kiss a pussycat, I'm the best damn fool you ever met." Awww yeah.

When Buddy's set was done, the stage crew effected a rapid and surprising transformation to get ready for BB. I didn't have any foreknowledge of BB's concerts, so I didn't realize there'd be a horn section and a formal feel to the unit. Every player to a man was attired in a bespoke suit or a tux. The atmosphere in the club shifted, and I'm not sure I can explain quite why. Buddy commands a roadhouse, to be sure. For BB, something closer to a concert hall takes shape around his stage. What I did know to expect was the folding chair that his crew member placed exactly in front of me. What a thrill just seeing that!

I wondered whether BB might be diminished these days. I had just seen him on the Grammys, and he hung back a tad that night, letting fellow soloists have more axe time. Well, wonder no more. He was an astonishment from the second he took the stage. Among my surprises were the timbre of his voice--rounded, nuanced, not rattled by age at all--and the tastiness and invention of his playing. (Very Count Basie, that.) And again, the eyes had it--I could see them so well from my vantage point. Not dimmed, his eyes flash when he's passionate (and he delivered a few monologues in addition to his singing). And his eyes frequently warm with sentiment. He has a fatherly bearing, and his joy is evident.

BB's band was smoking. His rhythm section was funked up and supple, and the horn players are locked together. His keyboardist was not as audible from my side of the stage, but he looks to be a contemporary of BB's, and he played some sweet solos. My mom's chief complaint against classic blues might involve a statement like, "It doesn't swing" (she unpacked that one a lot). Well, BB's band swings, syncopates, and jumps. I wish Mom could have heard it (but from much farther away--the volume where I stood would have overwhelmed her).

Another thing that surprised me about BB: his sexiness factor is right up there with Buddy. When he sings about how to love a woman, a lifetime of learning-by-doing is in his voice and on his face. The guitar licks that accompany him are knowing indeed. And the fact that he must sit to play means nothing, nothing at all.

At one point, BB enticed the entire crowd into singing along with him, and the choice of song was stunning...a lullaby. He explained that this song is how he feels about the woman he loves.

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine,
you make me happy when skies are gray.
You'll never know, dear, how much I love you,
please don't take my sunshine away.

Hearing a full house of jaded concertgoers sing so sweetly, and so surely, was amazing. The fact that this was a set piece, as are many of BB's asides and monologues, does not undercut its power.

BB moved me the most with a Blind Lemon cover, "See That My Grave is Kept Clean". His delivery reminded me of other elders I've known whose relationship with mortality was honest and unsparing. BB brought that home by acknowledging that his children do not like to hear him play this song. It is the distilled essence of blues.

At 11:15, more than three hours after the show started, BB stood up with assistance, and slowly bade the crowd farewell. His band filed off the stage, and the room emptied remarkably rapidly. Lobsta and I stood around for about ten minutes, dazed at the expanse of concrete that had moments ago held scores and scores of people. We felt privileged to have experienced this show at such close range. Gradually, we made our way to Daisy, and commenced a death-defying drive north into a full-on blizzard. The roads were chunky with a layer of ice, then coated with blowy, greasy snow. Eighteen-wheelers and 4WD trucks swept past us at ridiculous high speeds, as Lobsta kept the speed at 40 and gripped the wheel. Getting from Boston back to Portland took us four agonizing hours. We saw multiple accidents and did not see many plows or sanders. Hence, the title of this piece is as true as the music I'm honoring. And it was worth the trip...in every sense.

I Expected

2009-01-31T14:29:00.004-05:00

I'm at work on a winter Saturday, which means I'm basically alone and idle. Additionally, this means that I am Web-surfing like a fiend. I just had a sojourn at people.com where I stumbled onto a photo gallery of pregnant stars, starlets, and unknown star-spouses. (The title hook: "Who's Next to Deliver?") Click the mouse: new photo, another sideways-view of a magnificently rounded womb belonging to a beaming celeb (very few of whom seem to have gained the kind of poundage I did at that juncture).

Prior to the People pregnancy parade, I'd been at cnn.com reading up on the famed octuplets lady of California (who now finds herself a single mother of 14, living at her parents' house. My mind boggles.) That article prompted me to check the Duggars' website--in case you haven't heard of them, their 18th was born in December, in a televised special. They rushed that birth show to broadcast, and I'd noticed that Michelle Duggar--the indefatigable mumma, whose spirit and serenity I admire--seemed in physical distress during and after the C-section that brought her and Jim their ninth daughter. I've been wondering if all is well, but their website lacks updates since that time.

Soooo, motherhood's on my brain again. Specifically, the contrast between starlet pregnancies (conceived in households of too much plenty, with mumma's tummy concealed in designer cling, and baby's togs similarly priced out-of-reach) and the regular-Jane pregnancies of the rest of us. People does a disservice, perhaps. Pregnancy is hard work. Sometimes dangerous, and possibly even ill-advised. Don't even start me about the economic repercussions.

Issues of pregnancy still feel immediate and urgent to me for a reason: I got pregnant in September. I know, what are the odds, right? Just launched an all-consuming business, with four kids (one of whom we had just sent off to college), and seriously, I'm 44 years old. Saturated with changes already. Nevertheless, just after Zoë left home, some teasing symptoms arrived, unmistakable and strong. I am pretty much an expert when it comes to the subtle shifts and signs that nudge my brain into counting back and wondering if something might have, um, happened.

When I saw that diagnostic second pink line on the test stick--assertive and sure--I was impressed that my middle-aged physiology could piece together the logic of pregnancy, assembling the hormones and rallying the troops, as it were. Truly, I'd been convinced I was deep into perimenopause, well beyond the fertility gate. But along with the amazement, I was wrapped in a muted bewilderment, a veil of disbelief that did not clear up until mid-November. That was when the OB--a kindly, encouraging man--wielded an ultrasound wand and showed us on a flickering black-and-white screen that my egg--see the sac, there?--was not actually viable. The sac was a tiny, empty space...a vestige. Not a surprising circumstance for a woman of my age and in the early weeks, so my response was, basically, "Mmmm, uh-huh. Yes, I see. Yes. Um, thank you."

In between the pink line and the vestige, I will admit that I had plunged into this experience far more enthusiastically than I'd expected (and, truthfully, more than I knew was prudent). My pregnancy seemed to repudiate the recent losses I've suffered--namely, Mom and my best friend, D.J. I felt triumphant to have unwittingly generated a new life with Pete, exactly nineteen years after we had done so with Zoë. It was like an oh-ho! to (and from) the universe. Moreover, now that my genealogical family tree is completely filled in--with a passel of ancestors who bore children in their forties, I might add--I felt like my lost loved ones were alongside me, awaiting news.

Physically, I recognized the shifts instantly, and basked in them. Craved cereal and oatmeal and milk, saw my figure boosted (ahem), indulged my tiredness as much as possible, and started changing out the tight jeans on my shelf for the ultra-comfort ones. Queasiness and digestive sluggishness plagued me, but I could live with that ::: braaaaap ::: . Been there, done that plenty. I adjusted my sleeping position for heartburn and started silent communications with the fetus inside, willing it to be strong, welcoming it to my inner world.

Before I saw the OB in November, I'd been impatiently 'net-searching on a stream of keywords: midlife, pregnancy, perimenopause, spotting, progesterone, levels, 5 weeks. Let me tell you, the Web is jammed with voices of moms experiencing every possible symptom and the accompanying waves of emotion and fear. They pose vexing, plaintive questions and other moms find their messages somehow, answer them, or share similar experiences in fellowship and comfort. I never posted anywhere or interacted with anyone, but it helped me immeasurably to visit those cyber rooms and eavesdrop on scores of conversations. I learned a lot about what can go wrong with a middle-aged pregnancy, and about the daily hurdles that many women surmount to bring a new life into the world.

I knew full well that a 44-year-old pregnancy was practically miraculous, so feeling it coming to an end was a little less poignant than it might have been if I wasn't so blindsided in the first place. Of course, I already have four sweet children--with four birth stories to match. And I never had such doubts shadowing me during any of those pregnancies. This time, I couldn't throw off the black cloak of worry--until I miscarried.

It took awhile after the OB's diagnosis for the actual miscarriage to happen. I'd been spotting pretty much the whole time, but our childbearing machinery must be hardwired to hold on for success against all odds...it was blunted to the signals of non-viability for much longer than I would have anticipated. But I was equally fascinated by the unceremonious reversal of those familiar symptoms that caused me to reach for the home pregnancy test in the first place. One day you're subconsciously guarding a bump as you squeeze between a chair and a bookshelf; the next day your jeans fit better than they did before, and so does your bra. Just: over.

I miscarried without complications. I went into an odd mini-labor at dinnertime, a few days before Thanksgiving. I found myself restless and irritable, and even a shower did not warm my clammy skin. And then I had a few stark contractions, which felt very strange: reminiscent of earlier pregnancies, and yet totally alien. One of the labor pains made me grip a chair as I stood in the kitchen. In hindsight, why was I so surprised? Well, the answer to that is simple: I had no idea what to expect. All the reading, all the worrying...I just didn't know. The OB had no advice for me, because it's different for every woman.

About an hour into the mini-labor, I delivered my non-viable egg intact, as well as the tiny placenta, then provided those to my doc for analysis. (The pathologist deliberated over some possible complications suggested by the samples...finally, a few weeks ago, those issues were ruled out. More Web-cramming, followed by a bigtime whew!)

As December began, I walked around emotionally numb for awhile, and then as the holidays cranked up, pulled myself into now. For awhile, my usual tears about Mom's unfair absence (typically prompted by music, which squeezes me in a vise of nostalgia and regret) mingled with spasms of mourning for a tiny almost-life, and for a cascade of emotions that I never expected to have again.

Today's Web deliberations signaled to me that I haven't lost that insistent inner voice that was really pretty excited about another child, another new experience. All the rounded stomachs I saw online made me keen, a little, with wishing and hoping. (Call it uterus envy.) But the realist in me read each of those celeb captions from a distance, and paused at the mom's ages. Read them, absorbed them. They are each younger than I am.

I don't envy them their youth; I am happy with the stage I've reached. But I feel a funny tug, knowing that for a little window of time, I stepped back into their realm of fertility. Perimenopause has not overspread me yet. Regardless, as Peter said to me with evident relief as we drove away from the OB's office, "We're not going to do that again."

His cloak of worry had been cast aside, too.

Grand City

2009-01-28T13:07:00.003-05:00

In my college days, when I wanted a dose of real life--separate from the enclosure of Bowdoin's quad and the sometimes stifling atmosphere therein--I headed downtown. I was an inveterate shopper anyway, having grown up in a Queens neighborhood that was hemmed in by shopping thoroughfares on all four sides. And in my grandparents' hometown of Millinocket, Maine, I loved nothing more than an idle stroll through the J.J. Newberry's on Penobscot Avenue, clutching my allowance and deliberating on that week's toy purchase.

Downtown Brunswick, in the 1980s, had two stores that were instantly familiar to me upon my freshman arrival: a J.J. Newberry's, and Grand City. Back then, Grand City was perched at the periphery of a Shop 'n Save parking lot. Years before, it had been a W.T. Grant's--and when that national chain went under, employees preserved the store and renamed it Grand City. I believe they selected this name because it allowed them to continue using the existing store signage--all they did was eliminate the "T'S" from GRANT'S, replacing it with a "D" and then a circle that held the word "City".

Grand City was close enough to my campus home that I could easily walk it, even on a dark subzero February evening. I made that trek innumerable times. Upon arrival, one's nose would be greeted with a smell that I cannot describe. Roasted nuts mingled with merchandise and candy? Hard to say. It was a smell that triggered instantaneous shopping behavior in me, I know that.

Everything I could possibly want was in that department store. A lamp, underwear, earrings, candy, jeans, bean-bag chairs, board games, picture frames, yarn and needles, silverware, stationery, shampoo, mittens. And socks. I love buying socks, and I'm fussy about them. In Maine's climate, you need warm socks, and Grand City never disappointed--they had some kind of arrangement with a factory which meant they had piles of seconds in lots of styles. So my college-student budget could buy socks and socks.

Awaiting me at the registers were memeres....French-Canadian nanas. Back then, I had no idea a) how French I really am, and b) that I had numerous distant cousins in Brunswick. No matter--I always felt like I belonged among the ladies who worked the registers, and genealogy ultimately showed me why.

After I graduated from Bowdoin, Grand City remained a go-to for setting up my first apartment in Brunswick. Some years later, the J.J. Newberry's went under, and Grand City pounced on this opportunity to get a more intown slice of real estate. (Then the Shop 'n Save overspread their original footprint.) I'd left town by then, but I return to Brunswick often enough that I was relieved to know I could still rely on Grand City's presence...for, well, socks. And whatever other bargains I might come upon. So I've remained a patron. As did a lot of Brunswick residents, especially the retirees (can't speak for College students, because by the 1990s, Brunswick's ratio of big box stores had started to soar, and Bowdoin had greatly expanded its on-campus store as well).

You know where this is going, don't you? Grand City's lease came up for renewal last fall. The owner decided that between the economic forecast and his own sense of burnout, he would have to close. Thus, yet another store that triggers deep memories for me was fated to disappear. I lament the lack of photographic evidence of places I loved to shop (Freese's and Sears in Bangor, Newberry's in Millinocket and Ellsworth, among many.) So this time I was determined to capture Grand City before its demise.

During an October 2008 visit (Parents Weekend for my daughter, talk about rites of passage!), I ranged all over Grand City and took pictures without anyone even noticing. I wondered if maybe I was not the first. Whatever the case, the longer I snapped away, the more tearful I became. It's not the store, my friends. It's the ghostly presence of my mom and my nana and so many others of a generation that is sliding away. The objects they would be drawn to in a place like this...so many things. The community that existed because this mercantile is what it is.

The photos haunt me. They comfort me with what they captured, but they also sadden me. I won't caption them because geezum, I have blathered enough, and you can go ahead and get whatever you would like out of them. I already have.

As I stood here for the last picture I took, I could almost hear the word: Goodbye.

Accelerant

2008-07-27T11:40:00.007-04:00

I have a lot of friends with kids. Sibs with kids, too. Only here's the thing: Peter and I were pretty much the first among us to have a child. So I feel compelled to share with you all that I am currently in the throes of what feels like a solar wind (you know, that phenom of waves that engulf the Earth and cause Northern lights?) Like, a momentary swirl of energy that seems to be changing everything. And in my case, accelerating it.

I have a son who is taller than me. He's grown 6 inches in 6 months, blink and you'll miss it. I just flipped through a bunch of photos I had posted on Facebook, and in none of them is he taller than me (or his older sister, for that matter). Suddenly, now: young man. Will shares a bunk bed with the thankfully-still-small Des, and when I go in to check on Des before I go to bed...there's this hulking guy whose feet don't fit in the lower bunk! Ack! Oh. Right.

Then there's this college business. I know, I wrote about this before. I've written a lot about Zoe this year. But from the slow, tortuous agony of getting applications in and visiting campuses and whatnot, I find myself the mom of a young woman ready to go to the next stage. She's not chomping at the bit, nor is she packing yet (she's my daughter, after all). But I tell you she is ready. Composed, whole, and so prepared to immerse herself in art-making and learning. This summer, she's juggling two jobs. In light of my own work-juggling life, this means we are the proverbial passing ships. I'm shaking my head because, again, it's as though a wand had been waved. Swoosh! Presto-chango.

And about those two youngers who are perpetually called youngers? Lydia is getting astonishingly tall and self-confident. She is comfortable with herself. I find myself wondering now whether that is the quality that sent all of her care providers into a she-needs-to-be-tested mode. She's just not like any of her peers. Never was, never will be. And as she ages, she inhabits that knowledge beautifully. There's awkwardness about her, don't get me wrong. But I am filled with pride at her emergence.

Desmond is still my "huggy!" guy. Unlike the others, his growth spurts have been modest (although size 6 pants are waaay in the past now). When he hugs me, he's still at my waist. His tangle of curls is right at the level of my hand to tousle it. He loves it when I do that. Still, stay tuned. The potential energy in him is vast. :)

I am changing, too. (That's the understatement of the year.) It roils me and thrills me. But as with the Northern lights, my bursts of color and creating feel as though they are out of my direct control...they're happening because they must. Also, to complete the family-unit analysis, none of my life changes can occur without the complaint-free adaptations of Peter. He is demonstrating grace and quiet support that I have seen many, many times: with my grandfather; in the labor room; during Mom's illness (and before it became obvious); pretty much every day, dealing with an absorbed, spacey, enthusiastic, broody wife. Peter = rock. I learned that in CCD, and it's still the truth.

Inspiration station

2008-07-01T13:03:00.013-04:00

So far I've thought of a few clever catchphrases to launch this entry. I will share them in the aggregate, because I don't think any single one is clever enough to carry the weight:

I started a store, that started the whole world...shopping....
When the going gets tough, the tough open a store.
Nessa Reifsnyder: writer, editor...business owner.

Perhaps that last one is the best summation of what I'm trying to say here. With a business partner named Erin whose enthusiasm is, paradoxically, calming; and a collection of ideas that are designed to spark creativity in others (and in us); I have been incredibly fortunate enough to become a small-business owner.

Presenting...our logo:

Supplies, kits, workshops, ideas, digital printing, genealogy/heritage projects, support, inspiration: that's our business plan in a nutshell.

I think it's safe to say that I've never felt the mix of emotions that are brewed by this entreprenurial activity. I'm composed and serene, while also roiling with concern and anticipation. I'm ready and, simultaneously, unprepared. My creativity is feeling colorfully and texturally stimulated, yet my left-brain is wide awake (with columns of numbers and tax-code laws dutifully lining up to be analyzed and tabulated).

Erin and I went on a buying trip last week (feels like last month, that's how crammed every day is right now!) On the Internet, I had found this fantastic resource for fabric and goodies in Paterson, NJ:

Needlecraft is a wholesaler with 77,000 bolts of fabric and a helpful, supportive staff presence in their warehouse. We spent a whole day there, selecting fabrics and notions, learning about many different lines and designers, and discussing the business with Sam, Paul, and Jen.

Paterson is also the city where my grandmother Hazel resided for a number of years until her death in 1966. So I was able to merge this buying trip with some much-needed genealogy...setting my heart right, so to speak.

At day's end, Erin and I had three cartloads of fabrics:

(Incidentally, we have toyed with calling the store Naivete. And our secret superhero identity: Chicks with Bungees.)

Yesterday the wealth of fabric arrived at our store space, representing our first influx of stock. Nothing else to say about that, except yay yay yay!

I called this post "Inspiration station" because our enterprise is located in a remodeled gas station (at left). I adore that incongruity...but maybe it's not so incongruous: a building that sits at the center of our village, which for decades served a deeply practical and unifying function, is now repurposed--yet still has the potential to unify and lead to tangible outcomes. Okay, so art/craftmaking is not always practical, but when you set about gathering materials into a new object--and that object was created using your memories, emotions, and skills that have been handed down over centuries...well, yeah. Not a gassed-up or repaired vehicle, but it might take you places anyway. And quilts can sure warm you up come January.

Leap, and the net will appear

2008-06-17T21:46:00.005-04:00

I haven't posted a blog in months, because I unexpectedly became preoccupied with my occupation. It happened like this: suddenly in April, I learned that I was no longer classified as a writer/editor at my full-time, 14-years job. Instead, I was placed in a middle-management kind of slot, unceremoniously, with one boss instead of the variety of co-workers who've traditionally asked me for written pieces or editorial help. (And when I say variety, I mean it. I used to thrive on that constant swirl of interactions and work styles. I crave writing in different voices, for different audiences.)

This change-of-circumstances walloped me hard. I was stunned, actually, by the intensity of my emotions. I kept wondering: Who am I, really, to think that I should have any say in my professional fate? People get reassigned--and worse, downsized--all the time. I should be glad they want me at all; who cares what the position is. Right?

But it did not work that way. Try as I might, I could not convince myself that I was all right with this abrupt shift. I agonized, I seethed, and I felt bereft. And it took me weeks to really grasp why. I had held on in this office setting for 14 long years, through 10 bosses, unbelievable dramas, grueling deadlines, and demanding fundraising goals. At every turn, during each upper-level shake-up--and there were plenty--I was the one who would advise my co-workers, "Hold the boat." I'd say that with calmness and reassurance, and I meant it--because back then, I was a writer. Not the kind of writer that my kid-self had vowed to become...but at least I was a writer. Having made a career out of that skill was important to me and my self-esteem, down to my core. My surety had been grounded in it.

As this spring went along, it was clear that the change in my job was non-negotiable, and I despaired. I confided in some folks I know in our hometown, who don't work for my employer, and they described other professional opportunities that I, quite simply, had not allowed myself to consider. Liberating opportunities. Daring, also. And with no warning, I knew in an instant: I was ready.

I leapt.

Today was my last full-time day at the new-old job. I drifted through a day of mundane meetings, notes, hallway conversations, and strategizing. I didn't cry until I started writing this. But even though I'm sad to have moved on from a workplace as familiar as my own house, I'm proud that I made a momentous choice. Moreover, my family is supportive in every possible way, especially my older kids, whose own artistic selves are watching me closely. I won't describe my next-steps in detail, because it's all so new and evolving. Suffice it to say, creativity is at the heart of every choice I've made. My creativity. That was the net that was waiting for me, which I did not know when I decided to leap.

Manifesto

2008-04-02T11:13:00.005-04:00

Page one: I am a mom. I look at any one of my children and my heart immediately fills with warmth and reaching, nurturance and ridiculous pride. This particular page has been written four times, in the whirling effort of labor and delivery. It was forged under fluorescent hospital lights, where a tone of worry and protectiveness was overlaid. It drives me like no other compulsion. On a weeknight, weary from the working world, it pushes me to stand at the stove, and when my children eat with gusto, this page’s work is momentarily done. It is the hunter-gatherer seeking affordable clothing that will be just cool enough.

Page two: I am an authority figure. More to the point: I’m like a football coach. In my head at all times is a game plan for each child (maybe not with all those x’s and o’s and arrows—though it would be cool if their lives were diagrammable like that). Strategy, rationale, the urgent need for success: all of these are in my mind with every parental mandate I deliver. And I’m not an easy coach, I know that. Sometimes my dictates seem far too frequent and pitched for my liking: I mean, fussing over fourth-grade homework assignments? Page three (see below) really does not want to care whether a kid achieves dominance over tricky mathematical word problems. Lord knows I never did. But it’s all part of the plan, isn’t it? What gates must my child go through before s/he can be deemed whole, successful, ready for adulthood? Which scouts does s/he need to impress? Which linebacker might take my child down? (See, this is where the football analogy may crumble, because I can’t say for sure if linebackers are those massive tackle-delivering guys, or what.)

Page three: I am a friend. Each one of my children’s faces inspires automatic, companionable devotion. I pine for their happiness and their satisfaction, and above all—because this is a guiding principle for me—I want them to seek joy and eschew strife. I love spending time with them as a friend would—you know, at the beauty salon with a daughter; at a museum with a dinosaur-loving son; on a train with every one of them (because we’re all train geeks). I love that we laugh at the same goofy things. I love that my iPod reflects their musical tastes as well as mine, and that there’s more overlap there than I ever imagined possible. I will offer advice as a friend whenever and however asked. I believe that each one of them knows this, but I understand that not always can they take me up on it. So in a sense, this friendship has vulnerabilities and potential pitfalls, because rejection is entirely possible. I am not deterred.

Page four: I am a writer. I watch the lives of four young people take shape, emerge, shift and grow, and as with everything else I encounter (literally), I am constantly taking notes. These people fascinate me. I know the genetic legacies they’re carrying—the personalities and appearances that resonate up from previous generations—and I’m just watching it all unreel with amazement and interest. The previous pages all lean on this page, though. They demand that I attempt to intervene and help lead these four stories. And with tearful intensity, they desire a happy ending for each. I wish they understood that once I sit down to write, I have no idea what will happen to my characters.

Page five is the person I was before these children were born. Before I met their father, even. It’s less a page than it is a film of places, people, times, and motivations that are quaint and nostalgic, now. The ill-starred fashion choices! The bumbling attempts at romance! The conversations with people I don’t see anymore! In a number of cases, in fact, those people are dead now, and I’m left to change and adapt. Thus, all of the above pages now lack the backup of some of my closest advisers and loved ones. I am forced to draw from reserves of strength that, in my youth, I had no reason to believe I would have.

All of this reflection has been prompted by a rejection letter from a college to my treasured oldest daughter. Every page of my being is challenged and affronted by this turn of events. Even more so, because the college decision and its implications for my daughter’s future—well, it’s not my game. It’s hers. I have to sigh and hope and believe (and I'm experienced in all of these). But there are tears in my eyes, regardless.

Proud

2008-03-22T09:48:00.002-04:00

Yesterday was one of the proudest days of my life, both maternally and personally. Let me explain....

This weekend, I am a con mom. I've traveled to Boston with Zoe as she makes her debut at the Artists Alley of Anime Boston (http://www.animeboston.com/)--a huge annual gathering of the tribes (i.e., tens of thousands of costumed, role-playing aficionados of Japanese manga and anime, 98% teenaged). Artists Alley is a selling-place for amateur artists, and Zoe has been working for months on her wares...posters, buttons, postcards, all featuring her art. Yesterday morning the piece de resistance arrived here from the printer's: Mahou Shounen, an actual 20-pp booklet (she calls it a mini-manga) with her own original story, characters, and inventive, accomplished artwork. The moment that we huddled together over the box and extracted the first book is engraved on my memory. (I meant to keep that first copy, but later on I showed it to another con mom in the hotel elevator and she bought it on the spot!) So we finally have a published person in our family. Self-published, in this case, but that doesn't detract at all from the achievement therein...and in fact, it allowed us a great deal of quality control and editorial say-so. I'm so proud of my artist-girl!

Originally, we were planning to send Zoe down here solo. This past week, though, it became abundantly clear that mountains of details and the heft of her baggage were going to defeat that idea. Hence, my (expensive but necessary) presence in Boston. While we are plunked right in the middle of the city's tastiest retail district, I really wasn't looking forward to a weekend of H&M envy (you know, that wistful cruising through stores whose merchandise is priced above my head and sewn below my size?) A little pre-trip websurfing, though, reassured me that I would have another option: the New England Historic Genealogical Society is a few blocks away from here.

So I spent yesterday afternoon in my element, idly paging through dusty books in search of nuggets. To access this library, it's most cost-effective to join the Society, so I signed up onsite for an annual membership. (Speaking of proud, this means I'm now a member of two noteworthy genea-orgs...the other being the Association of Professional Genealogists. Ooh, I quiver just writing that!)

I perused books and basked in the researchiness of it all, then came back to the hotel. After awhile, I logged onto the NEHGS' website to look over their databases, which the membership coordinator had mentioned to me earlier. Turns out that therein lurked the final pieces of my most resistant genea-puzzle: the early marriage days of my great-grandparents, Blanche Guillotte and William Paquin. Peter has brought me to so many town halls and archives trying to recapture the stories of their lives...but this was a "brick wall" with shame and discord for mortar, so breaking through it has been near-impossible. Their daughter, my Auntie Winnie, sat with me for an interview 10 years ago (which I blessedly have on tape), but she remembered little of the father who'd abandoned them, and the mother who did the same by tossing her five kids into orphanages when money got tight. Winnie gave me surreal half-tales, and I've spent the ensuing decade giving bones to that flesh, slowly but determinedly.

The NEHGS database brought me closure, as I finally, finally found Blanche and William's marriage record (under William's alias, William J. Benson), and then, amazingly, the birth record of their first child, a stillborn son, two months after the wedding day. Winnie remembered hearing about that son and even visiting his grave as a little girl, but she knew nothing about when or where he was born. Well, the "when" is actually a key part of the story, for he was obviously conceived out of wedlock, and he was born and died, tragically, on Christmas Day 1908.

What bitterness and grief did that engender? How did such a horrible loss on a usually joyous holiday mark Blanche and William for life? And did it feel, deep down, as though their union might be cursed? because from that point on, the stories I've heard suggest that it was.

In a brief blog setting, I can't begin to tell you the sadnesses I've discovered on both sides of my dad's family. Untimely deaths, poverty, alcoholism, thwarted dreams, loveless marriages. But I can tell you that I have been driven, urged, pushed to seek and find. I realized fairly early into this that no one else in my family was going to be able to find the facts and stitch the quilt. I don't mean that to be self-aggrandizing; it's just that for most of my life leading up to these discoveries, I've been unwittingly assembling a series of skill sets that I now can deploy to find the answers. Somewhere inside me, I know now that that those answers want to be found. Last night's puzzle pieces convinced me of that. The ancestors speak, many genealogists say. They guide us. What I would add is: They want us to know them and understand them. To tell their stories. Their sadnesses and life lessons must never be for naught.

I am proud to know them.

Who Am I?

2008-03-16T14:03:00.007-04:00

Last night, the Criterion Theatre (http://www.criteriontheater.com/) hosted a Celtic Music night. I am on the board of this theatre and I felt a certain responsibility to attend, let's say (because, while I'm a huge consumer of Irishness in general, I sometimes feel that the whole Celtic subculture can be a shade inauthentic. Sometimes even exploitative.) Lydia agreed to accompany me because one of her favorite things to do, inexplicably, is clean the theatre after an event. :: shrug :: As a board member, I'd be remiss not taking advantage of that. Plus, I have so few opportunities to bask in Lydia's personality.

Much to my amazement, this evening rocked me to the core, serving up revelation after revelation about myself, my genealogy, my daughter, and my theatre. The artists were Jennifer Armstrong (http://www.jenniferarmstrong.com/) and Ladies of the Lake (http://www.ladiesofthelakemusic.com/). At no point did either act strike an inauthentic nerve--they were interpreting the songs and instruments of the past, not shaming them. And they were all incredibly skilled multi-musicians. I learned:

1) Bagpipes and tin whistles are guaranteed to make me cry. (More about that soon.)

2) Lydia absolutely loves this kind of music, and identifies strongly with female musicians.

3) After the Jacobite Wars of the 18th century, the English banned bagpipes, the Gaelic language, and other cultural mainstays. Because bagpipe melodies had always been conveyed from master to learner as sung phrases--with words standing in for notations--the instrument endured through this ban and was readopted immediately after the ban was lifted, with the songs still handed down intact. Scots women singing as they went about their chores helped sustain the melodies.

4) The Criterion Theatre is inspirational, period. I've been dedicated to it for months now, but as a venue, it's a powerful and historical house.

When I got home from the show, I was a little crazed to capture all the emotions I was hauling around. Scrapbooking? poetry? blog? Couldn't choose. Finally, between 2 a.m. and ten minutes ago, two poems emerged to bring peace to my insides. Indulge me, if you will. It feels so good to have named these feelings that are as familiar as bread.

At the Celtic Music Concert

Bagpipes and tin whistle
make me cry
for people I will not meet
but whose breath I know,
whose blood is mine.
At some point,
every single family line
had this moment:
the ship, the coast,
the home behind,
the uneasy sea,
the unknown ahead.
My French soul,
my Irish heart:
jigs and reels
tug me home
to heal.
------------------------------

Who Am I?

I grew up in the 1970s
when heritage was optional,
when families whose ancestors had only just arrived
chose “Colonial” as a kitchen décor—
not seeing the irony in copper-clad pots
and faux hearths.

Marooned on the desert island
of a tiny Queens apartment,
my mother, brother and me:
sole survivors of a shipwrecked marriage--
another union of Irish and French,
litany of arguments and poverty and drunkenness
relived not conquered we never learn if we don’t grasp the past

They didn’t grasp the past.
Thus I was robbed of my tongues:
mumbled Québécois French
of rosaries and gossip,
crooned Gaelic
of mothers at the sideboard and fathers stumbling home.
Rootless in a neighborhood of new-arrived ethnics.
Strangely blinded to me, myself, I.

And so my search began.
Denied faces, stories and names,
discouraged from connecting,
I quested for them far and wide.
Thirty years later, I am here to report:
I have found them
in scrawled handwritten records, city directories,
and photo albums of distant cousins.
Their souls reach to me.
I feel their troubles, their joys, their births, their journeys
keenly, deeper than my heart, where mothering takes hold.

Genealogy is their embrace,
a compulsion for reunion.
(I will go anywhere to be in a room full of cousins.)
Grass and farm and factory and church.
It is standing where they were baptized
(I have)
and kneeling where they were buried (yes)
my knees dampened by eternal sod.
I am not in Queens anymore.
-----------------------------

Indeed.

Mothering

2008-01-22T00:30:00.000-05:00

Motherhood is on my mind. Perhaps a ludicrous statement coming from a mother of four...but mostly, my mothering is instinctive, without forethought or deep reflection. Well, I'm deep-reflecting because my dear friends Doug and Bridget have just welcomed little Jak-Jak into the world, and coincidentally, I spent hours yesterday flipping through stacks and stacks of old photos. (Remember those? Those slippery rectangular paper moments, shiny in the light, that require some sort of clear-paged album to gather them into a chronology?)

To flip through photos in this house means to revive babyhood for four distinctive personalities. You end up looking at these baldy little people; only their eyes and the occasional familiar facial expression belie who they became later. But of course, beyond that, I'm emotionally yanked there for each picture: The sleep-deprivation. The joy of their first communication (each of our kids first said ahhhh-gooooo before anything else). The ceaseless teething. The napping-on-my-shoulder. All the feedings (cumulatively, I breastfed for nearly 6 years).

Of all my kids, the last child summons the most immediate set of memories. Perhaps that's an of-course thing, but I'd like to use that immediacy here to evoke what it feels like to be a mom. Because I don't often write about it (see above...instinctive.) And because I love my motherhood, every day.

In hindsight, I guess it’s good that I wasn’t fixating on Desmond as my last baby when he was an infant. Because, truly, that thought never entered my mind--and I’m glad, because it might have distracted me from the heady, commonplace joy of mothering him. That rush when I lifted him up under the arms, and his hands and arms reached and circled upwards automatically, so that he could embrace my neck and hold on with chubby hands. That mutual move, of course, leads directly to the baby’s head being right near your face, so you can breathe deeply and take in the intoxicating scent of his softsoft skin, the halo-fuzz of his baby hair right against your nose. Meanwhile, his angled legs and toes in footie pants bounce and kick against your stomach gently. One of your hands is clutching stretchy terry that covers a clowny, plastic-diapered bum. The other feels his shoulder blades, the hollow of his back. You are all protection at this moment: a tiger with a gushing full heart.

When you look at his face, he has the tiniest mouth you’ve ever imagined: an ooh shape that you must supply with milk--and in these early days, the next meal always seems to come sooner than you were expecting it, which keeps you dizzily unhinged from routine and reality. After three breastfed babies, my fourth presented some unique issues. Let’s just say that my feeding vessels were extraordinarily out of size-sync with his wee hungry mouth. Thus, feeding Desmond was a daily ritual of initial searing pain and calming-down gradually; multiple times a day, for four months straight, until I healed and toughened.

Never once did it occur to me to connect the pain of feeding Des to him, personally; nor to give up this wacky breastfeeding idea and go for the instant, mutual gratification of bottles. Never once. It may be that, buried deep in my subconscious, I did know that this was the last hurrah for my feeding capacity--which had served everyone so well for a decade that I wanted to let the glands do what they did best, like a thoroughbred. Plus I adored the flow of communication--that’s truly what it is, silent communication, an exchange of needs and warmth--that occurred between me and this baby.

Des adored it, too. Clearly, any early challenges with his feeding did not affect him. In fact, he refused to have anything to do with any other mode of feeding than me, for almost a full year. Never did a bottle make it past his clenched lips; he wouldn’t consider it. And then, even as solids and sippy-cups dribbled into his life, I remained his go-to for two more years. Sure, it dwindled to just morning and night. No, he never asked for it by name in public, ever, or hoisted my shirt or pointed. But I knew when he needed it...and somehow, he knew I still needed it, too.

At intervals, seeking to be practical, I took "weaning vacations" of 3-5 days’ duration (and if I thought my feeding vessels were sizable before, those vacations swelled them into boulders). Since I went on actual trips--the only way I could break the feeding patterns--those ended up being my first adventurous forays away from home and family in four years. Felt great to tentatively reclaim my identity, but a low buzz of distraction persisted throughout each trip. As soon as I returned home, set down the luggage, and hugged everyone else, Des and I would sit down into the nursing posture (because, according to the clever books, this was the ah-ha moment that I would say, “Sorry, honey, Mumma’s milk is all gone"). I’d brace myself for that inevitability--his disappointment, my apology and the hug that would follow it. Then Desmond's head would cradle against the inside of my elbow, and--shazam!--what?!--a meal would be there again! defying any engineered attempts to alter the timing of weaning.

A few months later, Des’ nursing ended without any fanfare at all. No efforts on my part. Just: done. I believe it was a Monday night, just before bed. He wriggled in my lap in his blanket sleeper, newly turned three, and his eyes looked up and confronted me. He did not angle his head to nurse. He smirked a tiny bit with that familiar mouth. Yup, I get the message, Des. And no boulders afterward, either. So we were both done. Painlessly.

I can never fathom where the years went, between the suspended-in-time early months of Des’ life, and the backpack-toting blond wonderment who clambers onto the bus every morning. But when his gray-blue eyes assess me--when we’re talking or reading or getting pajamas on, and our eyes meet--it’s all there. The connection. The gratitude. And things that don't change, in the midst of childhood growth spurts and inevitable transitions: boy to bigger boy.

Hero

2008-01-15T15:45:00.000-05:00

If you have an older sibling, then you have someone in your life who has known you for as long as you have known yourself. (This becomes more acutely evident when both of your parents are gone.) Furthermore, if you're lucky as I was, your older sibling is your hero.

Youngers everywhere, reminisce with me. Remember that feeling when you were little, and your sib got some awesome toy or other that had pieces you'd probably choke on, or instructions you couldn't comprehend--and you stood alongside breathing that little-kid refrain, "Cooool..." ? Remember trailing after your sib on some mundane errand and copying his stance, his gait, his very bearing? After that, every time your sib wanted to do something or go out, you'd pipe up with those words you had compressed into an urgent tumble: "CanIgotoo?" When your sib was in the room, you worked triple-time to make him laugh. (Really, for a while there I was like his personal clown.) When your sib wasn't in the room, you picked up some more-expensive-than-your-toys possession and imagined yourself old enough to do whatever this object did. In my hand, the tactile memory is of painstakingly constructed gray battleships, with spindly pieces sticking this way and that, labels lined up and stuck down with precision, random parts painted with calm care, everything miniaturized, and so, so tempting to prod with a chubbed-up kiddo finger.

My brother was (and is) cooler than just his toys. He embodied unerring musical taste, the best Levi's jean jacket ever (which I still own), an easy demeanor with his friends, a sensible temperament shot through with a creative spirit, and a steady hand at draftsmanship and drawing, not to mention the most perfect handwriting anywhere. He had teenage ambition, but it was never obnoxious. And his persona: resilient, cheerful, almost always nonplussed. His work ethic surpasses mine (just ask about the difference between a dish rack of his washed dishes, versus mine. I'll give you a hint: mine = iwwwww).

Much of what I am depends on the example he set. I am not implying perfection on his part, because a) I am not a fan of perfection, and b) the best heroes are flawed and human (cf. Han Solo and Mulder). My brother's tribulations, such as they have been, have galvanized him into someone better. Some of the things he's taught me, I learned not to do by his example. But mostly, I selected from his attributes because I admired and emulated them. When I obsess over a quilt square or a scrapbook page, it's my attempt at that model battleship--a hobby that results in something tangible, that says this is me. I made it my business to gather pop-cultural ephemera as a younger person, and it turns out I'm a veritable font of trivia (the next stage of my personal-clown service, basically).

When I left home for college, a handful of dear people were responsible for the wings with which I flew. Mom, obviously. My summer boyfriend, who urged me forward despite his yearnings to keep me home. My best friend D.J., my champion and confidante. My grandparents, whose home state I was headed for, proudly. And then there was Sean. I knew he was encouraging me at every step: "Go, go, go."

I came home a few months later for my first extended vacation. I couldn't get to a record store fast enough to buy King Crimson's Discipline, because it was the soundtrack of my fraternity that fall, and its angular, schizo sound would appeal to my older brother, I just knew it. Well, in fact, he disdained it with a hand flip. Which stunned me. And then, almost instantly, made me feel a little more adult than I had before. Indeed, I had graduated.

Sean came around, by the way, sheepishly admitting that Adrian Belew wasn't as destructively cheesy as he had once thought. I was waiting there, because now my sib and I had become more equal. Friends, with our own spheres that overlap in places. To this day, we fling new bands and TV shows at each other eagerly. I've honed the personal clown thing (ask my husband), and Sean's pretty good at it, too, so we can always crack each other up. We're both parents, and we trade information and advice. Okay, he learned to drive at 30-something, and I've still ducked that. His first vehicle was a bitchin' Camaro (could there be any more of a cool-older-brother car?) I have a bigger iPod, though.

Equals we may be...he's still my hero. In writing this, I'm amazed to see how my brother is threaded through my memories, a constant in many times that needed constancy. I'm still counting myself lucky.

The door

2008-01-09T00:53:00.001-05:00

Posted in honor of my eldest child, who is filling in line after blank line, crafting personal essays, imagining herself on a campus, becoming. And in honor of a friend, whose first-ever spring break is beckoning. While my initial instinct in writing this was to capture specificity for remembrance's sake, I find myself wondering if there is any universality within its lines. And thus...I blog.

The door is painted a gloomy forest green, reminiscent of the ancient, heavy pines that hem in the Bowdoin College campus. At eye level, he has posted a sign, a scrap of wood on which he’s burned deliberate words with his blowtorch. “OFFICE OF THE REV,” it says. And underneath that: “Come in and sin.” For an Irish-Catholic freshman girl, this is too laden with irony to even contemplate. Best not to think about it.

And so, as her foot scrapes across the threshold, she doesn’t. Nessa wonders why this mysterious junior has befriended her. He is a biochemistry major, an obvious genius, though he is far too much of a partier to be a true science geek. Also, he’s got a mess of curly red-brown hair which never looks as though it’s been combed (she will learn that it is, in fact, combed diligently each morning after his mandatory wake-up shower…it just springs into disarray as soon as the air starts to dry it). She is not impressed with the hair, at first. She likes Peter Frampton-esque, Rex Smith-y hair, that tumbling-onto-the-shoulders thing. David’s seems too unruly for her lust. It’s only later that she begins to covet its hidden swerves and swirls, lose her fingers in it, adore its nonconformity.

David dabbles in mind-alteration with serious intent. He needs to know; he is a scientist. She avoids such loss of control as seriously, having watched friends and family members melt into uselessness with substance intake. She does, however, drink. Prodigiously. After a party, as she lays in her miserably flat dorm bed, she’s prone to bouts of the spins that make her gleefully giddy. (Silently, of course--it’s a creepy, unwelcoming dorm, after all.) David is the first person who will ever hear her giggling after the party’s over. He’ll sling an arm around her neck and take the joyride with her.

But first, he needs to let her know that he’s interested. And being David, he’s not quite certain that he is. Inscrutability is his hallmark in this fraternity he lives in, and he even finds himself inscrutable on occasion. Oddest of all, he’s fashioned a bedroom out of a storage room down in the basement...right alongside the bar. Easier that way, staying up till all hours and just drifting a few feet over to your bedroom. A number of times since he set up the Office of the Rev, he’s been accompanied by a random woman as he heads for the bed. Now he squints at this, well, inscrutable freshman and wonders if she’ll be next. Nessa has long brown hair, an essential trait for Dave. She smiles all the time, but not in a vapid way--it’s a never-ending string of in-jokes that you just want to be in on. That’s the first thing that’s drawn him in. Oh, and she has a noteworthy ass, which sways in hipster Levi’s.

Here’s what he’s heard about her in the two months since she joined his co-ed fraternity: there’s a boyfriend back home, but it’s pretty much over. Someone in the house says she’s slept around a lot since arriving at Bowdoin. Dave’s studied Nessa these past few weeks, and he doubts it. She definitely was dating another freshman there for awhile--Dave saw her get into his massive ’69 Chevy one Friday evening, and then there was that house party when he saw them dance for hours. At one point they were back to back, swaying in time, heads tossed back with abandon. That made Dave wonder if maybe the rumors were true. But no, she’s Catholic, he heard her say that. He knows the M.O. of the shiksa, and usually it’s never more than pretend, dance floor come-ons. But he wants a try at that move, oh yes. He knows Nessa is more than a tease because he’s talked to her. She’s a storyteller and a deep listener. Not a typical freshman...an old soul.

Here’s what she’s heard about him in the two months since she joined his co-ed fraternity: Dave is a freak. He’s weird and even somewhat dangerous, prone to laboratory explosions and electrical mishaps. This does not jibe with the persona she’s encountered, like that one night when she was upset about Mike, the back-to-back-dancing freshman who had dumped her twice in one month. Broody from rejection, Nessa found Dave lolling around after a party had dissipated, watching TV. He was buzzed nearly beyond recognition, but he listened avidly to what she was saying. And he reassured her, at length. In two months of Bowdoin life, there’s been very little comforting that was delivered as sincerely as that. Also, Nessa knows that David has a cat, a fluffed-out beige male coon cat who comes and goes as he pleases. Malthus, his name is--his fur looks wild, but his eyes are deep. He reminds Nessa completely of his owner, and she’s equally endeared when she thinks of either one of them. No, she can’t believe that a single guy who owns a cat can be all bad, or even half-bad. Nessa thinks David is very sweet, and only a little scary.

And now she’s in his room. Just visiting. She’s asked to see his LP collection, because she’s heard a lot of his music during basement parties--when Dave’s stereo serves as the house sound system. The records are stored in crates at a right angle to his bed. She pulls a few square albums out of the row, and backs up a little--boom, sitting on the bed. A quick glance at the sidetable to her left reveals three things:

—an electric-blanket controller
—a fetal pig in a jar
—a contact lens case

She tries really hard to piece together meaning from these items, but it’s not cohering. Hmmmm. Nessa peruses the albums, flips them one by one. Definitely wants to tape Men at Work and the Police. He recommends the Moody Blues and the Dead. She’ll think about it. She hands him the LPs and picks up the fetal pig, peers into the jar.

“It’s like some kind of weird snow globe,” Nessa says absently. And if you swish the jar just a little, the well-preserved miniature pig swirls around. She stops moving the jar and looks intently at the specimen as it slows. She’s not a scientist, but she is absolutely fascinated by science. The pig’s snout is tiny and perfect, its back rounded as if in slumber--the suggestion of a spine under the skin. And there’s a delicate curlicue of a tail. “Wow,” Nessa says aloud, not meaning to.

She never asks him where this pig came from, and at no point does she ever find it strange that he sees fit to display the pig right next to his bed.

A week elapses. The College is heading into the restlessness of Thanksgiving: students anticipating a quick shot of home life while dreading winter and exams, and drinking more to combat the onset of dark, dark evenings. On one such ink-black night, a Monday, Nessa has wandered over to the fraternity. Schoolwork languishes in a pile on the edge of her desk, and true to form, Nessa is studiously avoiding it. She has vowed that she will not make party nights out of ordinary weekdays, but her college career will, in fact, be marked by her propensity to fashion a party as if twirling a paper wand in a cotton-candy machine. One flick of the wrist--instant festivity.

There is no festivity at Alpha Delta Phi on this doldrums Monday. Nessa sighs as she spots upperclassmen sprawled at tables, on sofas, by the fireplace, actually working. Pencils are poised above books, and eyes are narrowed in concentration. Bah. She makes her way into the TV room, where an uninteresting program flickers on the screen. Parks herself on a couch, because this is better than facing the workload and the dormitory.

A commercial interrupts the police drama, and she sits bolt upright. Pizza. A slice being pulled from a pie, fresh from the oven, cheese stringing. There are a handful of people in this room all facing the screen, and to none of them in particular she says, “Man, I haven’t had good pizza since I left New York.”

David rises and swivels to look at her, which startles her--she didn’t even know he was there. He’s sitting closer to the TV than she. “We’ll go in a little while, then, after I finish this assignment.”

Nessa reels a little but covers it. Instead of “Huh?” she says, “Okay.” She wonders what the others in the room think of his bold statement. No one has noticed.

True to his word, in a half-hour Dave slams shut a book and stands up, turning to face her. “Shall we?”

“W-where?” she manages, standing up slowly.

“Pizza Hut,” he states firmly.

They have to bundle into puffy jackets, for the weather has turned the final corner into stark winter. Somehow this shared activity in the front hallway takes the date-like sheen off the event, and Nessa relaxes. They head out into the night, away from the driveway...she realizes they will be walking. And a long walk it is from the center of town to the outskirts strip where Pizza Hut’s logo looms. They converse as they walk, in a manner that suggests they already know the basics about each other--which they do not, in any way. But Dave seems to believe they’ve crested some hurdle of getting-to-know-you, and Nessa never has trouble speaking openly.

Her hands are jammed into threadbare flannel pockets, craving warmth. He gestures with his hands as he talks--they are sheathed in practical, dense gloves. She finds herself coveting them, envying his seasoned understanding of what a Maine college student should expect on a night like this. A hat wouldn’t have been a bad idea, either. The occasional rush of frigid wind sings in her ears.

Dave has led her to the train tracks, which meander towards the busy drag on the way out of town. Sometimes they balance on the steely rails, then they step along the wooden ties. It feels childlike, though the total darkness belies that notion.

Dave’s steps slow momentarily, and Nessa comes to a stop, wondering. She can’t see his face, really, just the blocky shadow of his outline.

“Do you want to wear my gloves?”

“Yes,” she breathes. They are beyond warm, and her hands slip in with room to spare. “Thank you--I was so cold.”

“I know.”

Ahead of them, setting the sky aglow, are neon signs and streetlights of the main drag. It’s an epic sight, making the whole walk feel like an expedition.

Nessa did not know it was possible to close a Pizza Hut. They sit for three hours in the warm-smelling, deserted restaurant, hands almost touching as they gesture across the red-checked tablecloth. They talk about childhood and ambitions and siblings and trivia. Dave is smiling in an open-hearted way; Nessa feels as though she’s passed through some portal of his persona. She is amazed by what she finds: a companion. Dave is not so amazed, because he meant to connect with her. But he is impressed that his plan has worked so well. In fact, it’s morphed from, well, a come-on, to a bonding of kindred spirits.

After walking back to campus through sleepy intown streets, Nessa and Dave spend the night together. In a computer lab. As if testing her, he has brought her back here while he finishes a problem set. She will do anything to sustain this feeling of contentment, so as he pecks at the chunky keyboard, she sits alongside like an eager Yoko. Illuminated formulas march across a black screen. If she stares, it becomes a monotone Light-Brite pattern. That’s as much meaning as she could ever derive from the advanced math he’s studying, anyway. Above them, buzzing fluorescent tubes betray the hour: 2 a.m. She has never been in this room before, and she will never be in it again.

He walks her home at 4:30--just a little ways across the quad. The air has thickened with a cold fog, and they’re both shivery as she unlocks the door to her room.

It’s a double, actually; her roommate claimed the inner room (more privacy) and Nessa has her bed and a sofa here in the outer room. Anne’s door is closed, which is the most privacy Nessa can get. She leads Dave to the sofa, and they sit next to each other awkwardly, as if it were a porch swing. They speak in phrases, with long silences between them.

“So glad we went for pizza.” Him.

“Can’t believe it’s almost Thanksgiving.” Her.

His hand nudges hers gently, clasps it.

“I’m glad you asked me, um, to go out tonight.” Her, again.

“I am, too.”

Longer silence.

“Would it be all right if--can I kiss you?” Suddenly, he is unsure of himself.

She leans towards him, completing this role-shift, and as she nears, says, “Yes. I...yes.” It’s the most innocent first kiss either one of them has ever had. Still, they manage to make it last for a long time, savoring.

In exhaustion, they gradually recline together on the sofa, fully clothed, warming each other, giggling. This is how Anne finds them at 6:30 a.m., and her face registers disgust as she tracks through Nessa’s room in her slippers and robe, clutching a bucket of toiletries. The outer door slams, and Nessa and Dave giggle more, an in-joke they haven’t even voiced. She reaches up and touches the curve of Dave’s face, then finds his hair, tangling in the curls. A gray dawn begins to limn her things: the bed with its rainbow-striped comforter, her shoes alongside it, the pile of books teetering on the desk. Nessa knows, right now, that she will never need to stay in this room again.

Ravel

2007-12-17T20:59:00.000-05:00

I stole this picture of my mom. And many more like it...I confess. Of course, "stole" is in the past tense, because once Maryann had passed away, I inherited all of her memorabilia. But this one I extracted from her New York apartment before she died, spiriting it back to my home base in the Maine woods so that I could scan it very large, and absorb it. Mom wasn't fond of my obsession with the leavings of her life--I memorized her high-school yearbook as a little girl, I pored over letters and Christmas cards she'd saved, and I burned the chronology of how she looked year-to-year into my mind. I know she thought I was odd for wanting to know so much, and for craving nostalgia from her that did not exist. One of the greatest arguments we ever had, actually, was sparked by my interest in family pictures. She raged at me that I must be crazy wanting to have all those faces up on my walls at home. (Don't worry, her counterpoint never swayed me for a second. It wasn't the first time that our opinions had been so diametrically opposed--no, I had invested decades in doing the opposite of whatever she would.)

This photo lived in her professional scrapbook: an imposing, black-covered, slippery-paged tome that was filled with press clips, telegrams from Broadway openings, 8x10 glossies, and other showbiz detritus. Undeniably, my mother was the least glitzy performer ever. Just look at her up there: she dressed beautifully, I'm not saying that, but look at her posture and her expression...and her nimble, blurred-in-motion hands. It's all about the music. Maryann did not get into playing piano for fame, fortune, or even attention. I'm not sure she even got into it because she wanted to. I believe she began to play piano because she was compelled by a powerful, overwhelming blend of innate talent and deep-seated alienation from the people around her. That doesn't differentiate her from other musicians, I'll grant you--but it sure as hell sets her apart from most people's mothers.

What did she hear in the music that she created? And what of the music that others performed, which she owned in recorded form and treasured? I wish I could ask her, but even if I did, she'd shrug off the question or give me a filmy half-answer. Mom was not a music librarian or completist (that was my rubric), but when she loved a performance, you can bet you'd be hearing it over and over in her household. Fats Waller. Count Basie. Oscar Peterson. Jimmy Smith. Ella Fitzgerald. Peggy Lee. Her chronology, her nostalgia was aural, rarely visual or verbal.

Another thing that set my mom apart from other mothers was her propensity for keeping me awake late. Jazz musicians are nighthawks; thus, much of the musical education she imparted to me was shared long after my peers were tucked in with a teddy. We went to Broadway shows, my dressy patent-leather shoes sliding on red carpets and giving me blisters as we searched for our seats. Sometimes we went to clubs or smoky restaurants to hear one of Mom's old friends play.

Even at home, she would wake me from a sound sleep and implore me to come into the living room to hear something. "You have to hear this, Nessa," she would say. "Listen. Do you hear it?" While her career had largely been forged in jazz, the music she woke me up for was invariably classical. I can still revive my feelings of grumpiness as I shuffled into the dimmed living room, wincing at whatever lamplight there was. "Do I have to?" I would whine, but she ignored me. Respighi, Stravinsky, Ravel...swirls of intoxicating, cascading, now-dissonant, now-resolved orchestral pieces. Romantic--I should say so, to the extreme. Completely contrary to my mother's everyday demeanor of distant practicality. As I snuggled alongside her on the sofa, leaning in a desperately sleeplike posture, she would regale me with stories of the composer's visions whilst writing the piece. She would also describe the revilement of contemporary audiences when some of these pieces debuted. How these composers were misunderstood, untouchable, way ahead of their time.

I remember Daphnis et Chloe most vividly. I never could catch the gist of the romance Ravel was depicting in this piece, no matter how many times Mom explained it. Instead, while I sat there, I was tugged by two distinct emotions: admiration for my mother's full-hearted bliss as she experienced this lush recorded music, and embarrassment that she was so ridiculously fond of it. The music seemed somehow maudlin and unseemly to my kiddie mind. I wanted to feel the swoops in the pit of my stomach as the crescendoes rose and burst, but this extravagant expression of prewar beauty was beyond my ken.

I wonder now if my parents had listened to these classical pieces early in their own romance, before things turned sour and negative. Tucked onto her single-mother sofa, was she revisiting snowy Montreal, the cosmopolitan isolation booth of a city that hosted their few happy years as young marrieds? Was that why her classical listening sessions were dampened by tears, always?

I can't play an instrument. In fact, I resisted Mom's attempts to teach me piano rudiments because I felt above those single-note lessons. She, in turn, steadfastly refused to flip past the first pages in the book, to see if I was somehow more gifted than the average student. I needed a solid foundation before I could start really playing, she insisted. I needed to know which keys were matched to which fingers.

Wasn't gonna happen. I'm too much of a free-associating creative type to follow the marching ants of sheet music. But I did inherit one shining thing: all of my memories are swathed in music. I find artists who speak to my sensibilities, and I return to them again and again. The past is brought vividly back as I listen, and every chance I get, I will see those performers in a live venue.

Yeah, sometimes I cry, too. I apologize to my embarrassed 6-year-old self whenever that happens, but I tell myself: I'm powerless. I can't help it. Give in.

"Just as appetite comes by eating, so work brings inspiration, if inspiration is not discernible at the beginning." --Igor Stravinsky

Internetus Interruptus

2007-12-13T18:12:00.001-05:00

It's astonishing how mind-bending it can feel to be suddenly devoid of an Internet connection. Chez Reifsnyder, we are beholden to a humble sports-bar-like satellite dish in order to be web-connected. We've entered the stormy winter season (a little earlier than the recent usual, so take that, global warming!) and this means that our dish is exposed to all kinds of unruly elements. Sleet, ice, driving snow.... Under these conditions, it sputters, the little modem lights jitter and flicker and then...blackness. Well, modem blackness, anyway. That's been the norm since Tuesday (and yet still I am paying an exhorbitant fee for this non-reliable service HELLOOOOOO?!?).

That's not my beef, though. I mean, I expect to pay a premium, given that I live in a region where stores are not open past 6 pm, you know? We're lucky we actually have phones (and no, that doesn't include cells; they are confounded by our island terrain, apparently). But I'm just bemused by the disembodied feeling when I sit at my home computer and confront the reality--no casual web-surfing for you. No random checking a song lyric to see who performed it...no idle family-tree work...no e-mail, gaaaaah! no e-mail. And no facebook (which sets both me and my teenage son on edge a tad).

End result of this disembodiment: I sleep a little more (not much) and watch TV a little more (SoapNet rocks my world) and try to get all the pre-Christmas tasks done (intermittently successful). And as now, while I sit at my work station, I cram in a smidge of extra net-time to assuage my withdrawal symptoms.

I earnestly hope there is some other 'net solution lurking out there for the denizens of ultrarural America. And a Target within 10 minutes' driving distance would be nice.

Hockey

2007-12-09T23:44:00.000-05:00

Peter and I had an instantaneous attraction when we met 22 years ago, but our relationship really began to take shape in the first few days after we'd realized that attraction. In those brisk fall afternoons and evenings, with classes done for the day, we engaged in an extended conversation about who we were. Families, religions, school experiences, favorite music...I remember those conversations as feverish, a rush to share and compare. And incredulous, as well: everything that one of us offered, the other came up with some parallel. We both loved vacationing at northern lakes. We both, unbelievably, had grandparents with New Brunswick roots--the same town, even! We both had spent childhood winters in cities, and summers in rural places that were not typically touristy. And then we talked about sports.

My affection for sports is from an audience-member distance, and really only goes as far as wondering how the team from New York in any given sport is doing. In this, we differed--Pete had been an enthusiastic athlete for years. He named off the sports he'd played: tennis, golf (my brother played those, I responded), squash (got me there), and hockey--

Hockey. Looking back, this was one of the sharp-focus moments when our coupledom became actual. Turned out that everyone in Pete's family was a rabid hockey fan. Whaddya know, everyone in my family was, too. Many, many nights spent gathered around a (usually black-and-white) television, with the ebbs and swells of crowd noises accompanying the players' ceaseless motions around that little black speck of a puck. Even though I was coolly unconcerned about every other sport...hockey, I took very seriously.

I'll take an indulgent moment to sigh and remember Peter in those days:

from his h.s. yearbook. The sight of him on skates always made, and still makes, my heart swoop.

Anyway. The mutual hockey adoration has been a durable part of our togetherness. Granted, Pete watches 80 times more of it than I do, and he follows teams with that odd statistical insistence that men (and some women, I'm sure) bring to the endeavor. You know, he's cognizant of where each team stands in relation to the others, who's maybe gonna trade someone, who the top scorers are.... Whereas I drift past, sit and watch with him a few minutes, banter about silly player names and bad uniform choices and WHOA that was a good pass, comeoncomeon SHOOT! awwwww. Then off to whatever else I was doing that evening. (Except when the Rangers start getting good. Then I sit down and stay there, and yell just like my mom used to while I root for them.)

Lately we have had the good fortune to befriend season-ticket holders for Alfond Arena, where the University of Maine Black Bears ply their trade. I've always been proud, in the back of my mind, that my home state of choice has such a fantastic collegiate hockey reputation. But in the past few years, we've actually been able to attend some games and see live hockey together for the first time since Bowdoin.

Last night was one of those nights. And we were able to bring our younger kids, Lydia and Desmond. It's rare for us to have quality time with just the two of them, especially so in this year of Zoe's college choices and Willis' singing performances. I found myself in reveries while we sat in the stands, treasuring the echoey sounds of skates and shouts and thudding checks, the slightly misty whiteness of the ice, the mishmash of Mainers in the stands, and the excitement of realizing that I really can tell when a good play is in progress...so that a goal never blindsides me. But also, seeing my children become part of this family continuum pleased me so much. I kept sneaking furtive cell-phone pictures as we watched:

I managed to take pictures when they were aware, too:

I have a fierce sense of pride for the Black Bears now. It's different than what I feel for the pros. It has a regional tinge--I feel like I belong a little more here for knowing about them. There's enormous tradition vibes on the Orono campus, too, and that taps into my genealogical jones. Plus, watching this team is reminiscent of watching Pete play at Bowdoin. I always had this nervy mix of maternal feelings and aggression when he was on the ice. It's powerful.

Last night's game against Merrimack was triumphant: 3-1 Maine, with all three goals scored by a kid from Windham, Matt Duffy. A hat trick. Fifteen minutes before that third goal, we'd bought Lydia a banner in the UMaine swag store between periods, and Des had gotten a baseball cap. He'd been fussing with the cap ever since, wanting it to sit just so on his head. (I know he's emulating his older brother, who's rarely without a cap.) When Duffy's third goal--an empty-netter--sailed in, the usual attendant fan chaos was accompanied by a shower of hats flying out of the stands and skittering on the ice. Des watched, astonished. "When one guy scores three goals, they call it a hat trick," I explained into his ear. He nodded soberly, fussed with his cap, then turned to me. "Should I?" he asked seriously. I could tell he thought it was obligatory. "No!" I yelped. I saw the whew! look pass across his face.

After the game, we finished up some Christmas shopping at Target, and he and Lyd scored Pokemon cards. They opened them in the van, and Des was ecstatic--he'd finally gotten a Mothim. (I'm shrugging, but this was really important to his deck.) "This has been a great day," he said with satisfaction as Pete maneuvered us out of the parking lot and into the late-night blackness of Route 1A.

Didn't take him long to fall asleep. I loved the way his new cap and cards were part of the tableau. It was a great day.