- Published on
Having attended a small, all-girls mostly boarding school, perhaps it's not surprising I made a decision about where to go to college based on how cute the guys on the ski team were. A foreshadowing of the prim teenager metamorphosing into a hippy party girl, using college as the Witness Protection Program. The smorgasbord of unbridled fun and freedom led to excess, which in turn led to Babson gently suggesting I take a year off to think about my future. I knew I'd never go back.
Returning to the NY suburbs where I had grown up never entered my mind, and I was to be on my own financially. So I headed with great enthusiasm to Filene's Basement where I put together a smashing interview outfit that consisted of an inappropriately short, off-white wide-wail corduroy skirt (A size too big. My mother was still buying me clothes I would "grow into"), a grey wool turtleneck, that bad orangey flesh color of L'Eggs panty hose we all wore, and beige Gucci almost-stilettos (a size too small but I couldn't resist those bridle bits). Although I had studied the map about where my first interview would take place, I didn't know Boston and ended up walking up and down and around Beacon Hill until my new shoes were covering nothing more than bloody stumps.
Somehow I got the job and became a secretary in a tax office at a wealth management company. My job was to type in numbers on tax forms, organize files and maintain the copy machine. If you know me well, you may be wondering how that worked out. I had a rusty ashtray on my desk and often craved putting my head down on my typewriter for a wee nap after a somewhat liquid lunch. Living in Needham and working downtown with no car, I travelled an hour each way on the commuter bus. I was going to say that my time on the bus gave me a lot of time to think, and it did, but whenever I rewind to those days, what comes to mind is my falling asleep and waking myself up with a loud snort, only to perceive everyone staring at me, trying to withhold laughter.
What I saw on that bus were women a little older than me with real work outfits and brief cases, which no doubt meant they had legitimate, mentally challenging jobs that would lead somewhere. I knew that mine was serving no purpose other than supporting me and that I was stuck, feeling overwhelmed and frozen, but didn't know where to go or what to do.
As a result, I've always felt a strong connection to young women (because there is a gender disparity) in their early twenties encountering a cereal aisle with too many choices and the impossibility of reading all the ingredients and checking all the prices. The expectation hangs heavy that they will dive brilliantly into a new and complex world, reassuring their parents that that second mortgage they took out to cover college tuition was a good idea. If they score a job, shortly after drinking Fireballs at college graduation they're expected to know how to address a board member, speak up appropriately in a meeting and understand all the unspoken rules of a their new place of work.
It's a hard reality that clashes with the long-held dreams that have carried them to where they are. At the Symphony, I met New England Conservatory grads who had spent their lives dedicated to playing an instrument, only to realize they would always be good, but were never going to make a top 10 orchestra, thus pay their bills. At the Gardner it was Art History majors who found out that it takes 20 years and being published many times to become a curator. It's a lot for a 22-year old to take in.
So when I began to work with an organization in which I was one of only a few people over 30, I found my HR visitor chair often filled by committed and competent youg women trying to figure out how to negotiate their jobs at an organization they believed in, led by a driven, on-the-spectrum Executive Director whose managerial style skewed towards intimidation and shame. I did what I could but knew I was oil to his water. After leaving, I stayed in touch with quite a few people, two of whom have become good friends.
One was the joy in the room. Always a smile, laughter, warmth, she knew the right thing to say to calm someone down. Everyone loved her, smart as all get out (What does that even mean?) at a wide variety of things; equally competent with a complex spreadsheet as with an awkward person-to-person negotiation. With a curiosity about life, she brought enthusiam to whatever was happening, every time. But maybe she wasn't appreciated by her boss. And maybe she had been stuck in the same job for too long. And maybe she was a little unsure of where she was going.
The other woman was driven, so driven. She was continually given more responsibility, rose to every challenge and accomplished, accomplished, accomplished. She was the rising star, loved by the tyrant, meeting all his deadlines, super organized, comfortable bringing up unaddressed issues. And always with a plan for the next week, next month, next career. She was busy, she was wired. But her jaw hurt, she didn't sleep well, she wasn't having any fun. She got upset a lot.
While they were both exceedingly different, and at the time, not friends, they shared a sense of uncertainty about which direction to go in that I identified with from a long time ago. When COVID hit, they were in their mid-twenties and while we no longer worked together, the three of us began meeting outside in my back yard to talk about various life-related things. We developed a pod, a cone of silence between the three of us that became an unjudgemental place that allowed us to talk about dreams, fears, frustrations. We read books, held each other accountable, reported back, gossiped, laughed and cried.. Through it all, one moved to another state and negotiated a remote job, achieved significant life goals that had previously been out of her grasp, started painting again, took up soccer again, learned to be a better advocate for herself. The other met and then let go of a boyfriend, reconciled with her mother, put up boundaries with her father, got a new job without a tyrant, got a therapist, met her life love, took up hobbies. And I got the courage to take the next step and become single again.
I get so angry when I hear my generation complain about millenials or Gen Zers being lazy, uncommitted, sloppy, selfish, whatever the other negative traits that are thrown about. That is not my experience at all. We are a funny threesome, unlikely as you can imagine, but I'm incredibly grateful to them both for sharing their challenges and showing me how to bravely face life head on and deal with it, how to make hard but right choices. At our dinner last week, I was shocked to realize that time had marched on and they're no longer post-collegiates, but moving into the next phase of life, with friends getting married, moving to the burbs, having kids. It's my hope that I can continue to learn from these women and be inspired by them as they continue their colorful life journeys.
Returning to the NY suburbs where I had grown up never entered my mind, and I was to be on my own financially. So I headed with great enthusiasm to Filene's Basement where I put together a smashing interview outfit that consisted of an inappropriately short, off-white wide-wail corduroy skirt (A size too big. My mother was still buying me clothes I would "grow into"), a grey wool turtleneck, that bad orangey flesh color of L'Eggs panty hose we all wore, and beige Gucci almost-stilettos (a size too small but I couldn't resist those bridle bits). Although I had studied the map about where my first interview would take place, I didn't know Boston and ended up walking up and down and around Beacon Hill until my new shoes were covering nothing more than bloody stumps.
Somehow I got the job and became a secretary in a tax office at a wealth management company. My job was to type in numbers on tax forms, organize files and maintain the copy machine. If you know me well, you may be wondering how that worked out. I had a rusty ashtray on my desk and often craved putting my head down on my typewriter for a wee nap after a somewhat liquid lunch. Living in Needham and working downtown with no car, I travelled an hour each way on the commuter bus. I was going to say that my time on the bus gave me a lot of time to think, and it did, but whenever I rewind to those days, what comes to mind is my falling asleep and waking myself up with a loud snort, only to perceive everyone staring at me, trying to withhold laughter.
What I saw on that bus were women a little older than me with real work outfits and brief cases, which no doubt meant they had legitimate, mentally challenging jobs that would lead somewhere. I knew that mine was serving no purpose other than supporting me and that I was stuck, feeling overwhelmed and frozen, but didn't know where to go or what to do.
As a result, I've always felt a strong connection to young women (because there is a gender disparity) in their early twenties encountering a cereal aisle with too many choices and the impossibility of reading all the ingredients and checking all the prices. The expectation hangs heavy that they will dive brilliantly into a new and complex world, reassuring their parents that that second mortgage they took out to cover college tuition was a good idea. If they score a job, shortly after drinking Fireballs at college graduation they're expected to know how to address a board member, speak up appropriately in a meeting and understand all the unspoken rules of a their new place of work.
It's a hard reality that clashes with the long-held dreams that have carried them to where they are. At the Symphony, I met New England Conservatory grads who had spent their lives dedicated to playing an instrument, only to realize they would always be good, but were never going to make a top 10 orchestra, thus pay their bills. At the Gardner it was Art History majors who found out that it takes 20 years and being published many times to become a curator. It's a lot for a 22-year old to take in.
So when I began to work with an organization in which I was one of only a few people over 30, I found my HR visitor chair often filled by committed and competent youg women trying to figure out how to negotiate their jobs at an organization they believed in, led by a driven, on-the-spectrum Executive Director whose managerial style skewed towards intimidation and shame. I did what I could but knew I was oil to his water. After leaving, I stayed in touch with quite a few people, two of whom have become good friends.
One was the joy in the room. Always a smile, laughter, warmth, she knew the right thing to say to calm someone down. Everyone loved her, smart as all get out (What does that even mean?) at a wide variety of things; equally competent with a complex spreadsheet as with an awkward person-to-person negotiation. With a curiosity about life, she brought enthusiam to whatever was happening, every time. But maybe she wasn't appreciated by her boss. And maybe she had been stuck in the same job for too long. And maybe she was a little unsure of where she was going.
The other woman was driven, so driven. She was continually given more responsibility, rose to every challenge and accomplished, accomplished, accomplished. She was the rising star, loved by the tyrant, meeting all his deadlines, super organized, comfortable bringing up unaddressed issues. And always with a plan for the next week, next month, next career. She was busy, she was wired. But her jaw hurt, she didn't sleep well, she wasn't having any fun. She got upset a lot.
While they were both exceedingly different, and at the time, not friends, they shared a sense of uncertainty about which direction to go in that I identified with from a long time ago. When COVID hit, they were in their mid-twenties and while we no longer worked together, the three of us began meeting outside in my back yard to talk about various life-related things. We developed a pod, a cone of silence between the three of us that became an unjudgemental place that allowed us to talk about dreams, fears, frustrations. We read books, held each other accountable, reported back, gossiped, laughed and cried.. Through it all, one moved to another state and negotiated a remote job, achieved significant life goals that had previously been out of her grasp, started painting again, took up soccer again, learned to be a better advocate for herself. The other met and then let go of a boyfriend, reconciled with her mother, put up boundaries with her father, got a new job without a tyrant, got a therapist, met her life love, took up hobbies. And I got the courage to take the next step and become single again.
I get so angry when I hear my generation complain about millenials or Gen Zers being lazy, uncommitted, sloppy, selfish, whatever the other negative traits that are thrown about. That is not my experience at all. We are a funny threesome, unlikely as you can imagine, but I'm incredibly grateful to them both for sharing their challenges and showing me how to bravely face life head on and deal with it, how to make hard but right choices. At our dinner last week, I was shocked to realize that time had marched on and they're no longer post-collegiates, but moving into the next phase of life, with friends getting married, moving to the burbs, having kids. It's my hope that I can continue to learn from these women and be inspired by them as they continue their colorful life journeys.
- Published on
We had been looking forward to Connor and Molly's wedding in Provence for many months, but true to form, Nat and I had left a long list for the last minute, creating a week of sturm und drang. Our formal dresses were only ready a few days prior, and then there were the "wine country casual" outfits, shawls and shoes that weren't from the Addidas or Birkenstock families. As if that weren't enough for these non-retail peeps, there were also white sneakers that needed to be purchased for our stopover at the Monte Carlo Tennis Club. With much stress and reprioritizing café life for shopping life, we did it, melting into our seats on the plane but all ready to jump in when we got to France.
Well wouldn't you know it. Ms "I've Never Had COVID and I'm Likely Immuned To It" got a shock after, feeling a little under the weather, testing positive. Which set everything to a screeching halt; the informal socializing, wine soiree, wedding, poolside brunch, trip to Monte Carlo, long, late night chats with Nat's friends. Cancelled, cancelled, cancelled. Seriously.
Around one of their thirtieth birthdays, I was having a conversation with my two young friends about how there are good things about getting older. They stared back with a mixture of skepticism and curiosity. I inarticulately tried to explain how "the gift of time" makes it easier to deal with difficult things, having more expeirence to shape the way we choose to respond to things. There develops if not a confidence, an understanding that this too shall pass and that eventuaally all would be OK. I told them the story about my bosses boss, the sexual harasser who held so much sway over me for some years, his subsequent fall from grace and then my complete understanding of how miserable I'd allowed him to make me when I saw his old man toe nails hanging out of those cheap Made in China sandals. And that the lesson helped me internalize that while some things in the moment might seem unbearable, we always have a choice about how much credence to give them.
What I learned last week is that some people who are still in their twenties have that ability already. It took a day to mourn implications of missing the festivities, as well as banishing the frustration of all the fruitless running around we'd done, but after that, we began to accept our situation and sort out how to best manage our days. We picked up Nat's friends, who had travelled almost 24 hours straight to get to us, with car windows open and masks on, and stayed that way for the rest of the week. We ate outside with a table that had a COVID and a non-COVID end. We wandered through markets masked, found restaurants with outdoor dining, spent a day at the pool, and who knows what else. It was at times awkward, tiring, dreary and annoying. But Nat and her friends, who were more than somewhat trapped in our house of sickness (Nat eventually succumbed), held us to a higher standard by handling the situation with poise flexibility, compassion.
And while we didn't attend the wedding reception, Nat and I did stand at the back of the ceremony, which was beautiful and very special.
But on our last day, we struck it rich. Arriving in the Luberon valley on what we had been told was going to be an unpleasant mistral day, we took directions from a random website to walk from the hill town village of Bonnieux to the next one, Lacoste. On what turned out to instead be the most perfectly sunny day with a light breeze, we followed a wildflower laden path through gardens, past olive groves, into cherry trees, where we feasted until our bellies hurt. Then early season grape vines, lavender just about to pop and up the hill through poppies to a spot where we picnicked and admired the view of all we'd traversed. We later climbed to the top of Lacoste, which is as medieval as villages get, and perplexingly mostly occupied by Savannah College of Art and Design.
We looped back a different way, and while we may have walked more than we wanted, we were all, in our own ways, filled to the brim with what the day had laid out for us. While the week had thrown challenges, we ended with enough of a feeling of fulfillment and connection to negate any headaches that came before. A big thank you to three intelligent, funny, curious and all around lovely young people for making what could have been a most depressing week memorable.
Well wouldn't you know it. Ms "I've Never Had COVID and I'm Likely Immuned To It" got a shock after, feeling a little under the weather, testing positive. Which set everything to a screeching halt; the informal socializing, wine soiree, wedding, poolside brunch, trip to Monte Carlo, long, late night chats with Nat's friends. Cancelled, cancelled, cancelled. Seriously.
Around one of their thirtieth birthdays, I was having a conversation with my two young friends about how there are good things about getting older. They stared back with a mixture of skepticism and curiosity. I inarticulately tried to explain how "the gift of time" makes it easier to deal with difficult things, having more expeirence to shape the way we choose to respond to things. There develops if not a confidence, an understanding that this too shall pass and that eventuaally all would be OK. I told them the story about my bosses boss, the sexual harasser who held so much sway over me for some years, his subsequent fall from grace and then my complete understanding of how miserable I'd allowed him to make me when I saw his old man toe nails hanging out of those cheap Made in China sandals. And that the lesson helped me internalize that while some things in the moment might seem unbearable, we always have a choice about how much credence to give them.
What I learned last week is that some people who are still in their twenties have that ability already. It took a day to mourn implications of missing the festivities, as well as banishing the frustration of all the fruitless running around we'd done, but after that, we began to accept our situation and sort out how to best manage our days. We picked up Nat's friends, who had travelled almost 24 hours straight to get to us, with car windows open and masks on, and stayed that way for the rest of the week. We ate outside with a table that had a COVID and a non-COVID end. We wandered through markets masked, found restaurants with outdoor dining, spent a day at the pool, and who knows what else. It was at times awkward, tiring, dreary and annoying. But Nat and her friends, who were more than somewhat trapped in our house of sickness (Nat eventually succumbed), held us to a higher standard by handling the situation with poise flexibility, compassion.
And while we didn't attend the wedding reception, Nat and I did stand at the back of the ceremony, which was beautiful and very special.
But on our last day, we struck it rich. Arriving in the Luberon valley on what we had been told was going to be an unpleasant mistral day, we took directions from a random website to walk from the hill town village of Bonnieux to the next one, Lacoste. On what turned out to instead be the most perfectly sunny day with a light breeze, we followed a wildflower laden path through gardens, past olive groves, into cherry trees, where we feasted until our bellies hurt. Then early season grape vines, lavender just about to pop and up the hill through poppies to a spot where we picnicked and admired the view of all we'd traversed. We later climbed to the top of Lacoste, which is as medieval as villages get, and perplexingly mostly occupied by Savannah College of Art and Design.
We looped back a different way, and while we may have walked more than we wanted, we were all, in our own ways, filled to the brim with what the day had laid out for us. While the week had thrown challenges, we ended with enough of a feeling of fulfillment and connection to negate any headaches that came before. A big thank you to three intelligent, funny, curious and all around lovely young people for making what could have been a most depressing week memorable.
- Published on
No weefee in France so some catching up to do.
Living at Ank's house and walking to the most scenic village in the world to buy supplies for daily life makes it easy to redefine oneself as a local, despite some minor language challenges. And as the days go on, the feeling only gets stronger. The black and white cat on the wall that will engage in a staring contest, an unidentified flower that has gone from bud to bloom, repeated viewings of the old man who walks around like a spectre dressed in white. Markers of life happening and being some part of it.
There are so many Americans here, it's easy to sense we all want to have a feeling of belonging more than others, whether business travelers, bikers riding through, weekend visitors, university students or young, grubby men who have lost their way and speak English with Acquired International Dialect Syndrome, their accent sounding like a Dutch person speaking English. Because we're treated graciously by our hosts, we may lose sight of our status as guests.
Moving across town for a few nights to the Russian brutalist hotel near the train station was a reminder we're all just tourists, part of the daily or weekly churn these beautiful places engender. Nothing like a glass of mint water and a key card as a reminder. Dinner at a chain restaurant in the mall? I guess...
After a few days with a fitness center, too much air conditioning and a view of all the ants on bikes below, Nat and I set off for Marseille. Despite feeling incredibly tired and rundown, it was an easy flight through Charles de Gaulle, and honestly, the sandwich served in a plastic sealed bag on Air France might have been better than anything I ate in the Netherlands. Multi-grain bread, perhaps a tiny bit of cream cheese and one slice of Emmental. Simple perfection.
We arrived late at night, to a terminal that is heavily enough under constrctuion that there are light bulbs hanging from wires, plaster board and confusingly, inadequate signage. It took us a while, many up and down steps with our bags, but we eventually found our way into a hybrid Renault that sped us down the A7 to Carpentras, where we arrived around 2 am. Despite our hostess and her husband being north of 75 years old, there they were with their flashlights, waving us on like the baton holders who help jets approach their gate. It was down a pretty grass covered lane, lined by blooming broom, poppies, shrubs and ornamental grasses. No big deal, they said. Claudette tried to help me with my luggage while her husband figured out how to restart the car so that we could move it to a better place.
Theirs is a very old farmhouse, with walls a foot thick, poppy fields on one side, a lush and cultivated garden that has an eating area with overhanging vines, a clean and warm pool, and fruit trees dotting the property. In the fridge was a gargantuan basket of local strawberries, for which Carpentras is famous, along with a bevvy of breakfast treats, milk in the fridge and coffee ready to go. Despite the hour, we couldn't have been happier to be there, and with these kind folk. We said goodnight and quickly found our way to bed, closing the shutters to ensure a good long slumber that would revive some tired old bones. The quiet like no other allowed us to immediately become accustomed to the ways of this new place. Tourists? Naaah.
Living at Ank's house and walking to the most scenic village in the world to buy supplies for daily life makes it easy to redefine oneself as a local, despite some minor language challenges. And as the days go on, the feeling only gets stronger. The black and white cat on the wall that will engage in a staring contest, an unidentified flower that has gone from bud to bloom, repeated viewings of the old man who walks around like a spectre dressed in white. Markers of life happening and being some part of it.
There are so many Americans here, it's easy to sense we all want to have a feeling of belonging more than others, whether business travelers, bikers riding through, weekend visitors, university students or young, grubby men who have lost their way and speak English with Acquired International Dialect Syndrome, their accent sounding like a Dutch person speaking English. Because we're treated graciously by our hosts, we may lose sight of our status as guests.
Moving across town for a few nights to the Russian brutalist hotel near the train station was a reminder we're all just tourists, part of the daily or weekly churn these beautiful places engender. Nothing like a glass of mint water and a key card as a reminder. Dinner at a chain restaurant in the mall? I guess...
After a few days with a fitness center, too much air conditioning and a view of all the ants on bikes below, Nat and I set off for Marseille. Despite feeling incredibly tired and rundown, it was an easy flight through Charles de Gaulle, and honestly, the sandwich served in a plastic sealed bag on Air France might have been better than anything I ate in the Netherlands. Multi-grain bread, perhaps a tiny bit of cream cheese and one slice of Emmental. Simple perfection.
We arrived late at night, to a terminal that is heavily enough under constrctuion that there are light bulbs hanging from wires, plaster board and confusingly, inadequate signage. It took us a while, many up and down steps with our bags, but we eventually found our way into a hybrid Renault that sped us down the A7 to Carpentras, where we arrived around 2 am. Despite our hostess and her husband being north of 75 years old, there they were with their flashlights, waving us on like the baton holders who help jets approach their gate. It was down a pretty grass covered lane, lined by blooming broom, poppies, shrubs and ornamental grasses. No big deal, they said. Claudette tried to help me with my luggage while her husband figured out how to restart the car so that we could move it to a better place.
Theirs is a very old farmhouse, with walls a foot thick, poppy fields on one side, a lush and cultivated garden that has an eating area with overhanging vines, a clean and warm pool, and fruit trees dotting the property. In the fridge was a gargantuan basket of local strawberries, for which Carpentras is famous, along with a bevvy of breakfast treats, milk in the fridge and coffee ready to go. Despite the hour, we couldn't have been happier to be there, and with these kind folk. We said goodnight and quickly found our way to bed, closing the shutters to ensure a good long slumber that would revive some tired old bones. The quiet like no other allowed us to immediately become accustomed to the ways of this new place. Tourists? Naaah.
- Published on
I suppose things fall into a pattern after repeat visits somewhere, especially if they're for durations exceeding a "regular" vacation. Days become an odd amalgamation of leisure, work and personal business, lines I never would have blurred when younger and more vehement. So an Amsterdam museum visit, toilet paper purchase and midnight meeting with a search committee? Why not?
Don't get me wrong, there’s nothing better than the lack of responsibility, expanded horizons and fresh vision that come with a bonafide vacation. But there is a positive side to not having one: I am funding the girl's and my cafe life, can now undo both locks on a bike in way less than a minute, and have nailed differentiating yogurt from cream at the grocery store. It may no longer be fresh eyes I'm seeing through, but I'm half way to getting on the path that leads to the road to being quasi-knowledgeable.
No coherent story this week, instead, some random reports.
BIKING
Although biking is a huge part of life here in the biking capital of the world, there seems to be little or no bike ego. Almost all are black, exceedingly heavy, bashed up and either have foot brakes or just a few speeds. No one wears gear or helmets, and it all seems to work brilliantly. Natives don’t brake at blind intersections, rather sail through with impressive confidence in their collision avoidance skills. In fact there’s a way, at an intersection of bikes, pedestrians and cars, that everyone seems to weave together in something that to my eyes must have been choreographed. Very old women who wear heavy black corrective shoes to help their waddling bow legs can be seen on bikes, sometimes wizzing by with no fear of speed, e-bike or no e-bike. Did you know there are two bikes for every person in the Netherlands? Yet perplexingly, bike stealing of these old junkers is rampant. It’s hard to understand the correlation.
PEOPLE
While you'll see a curmudgeonly old man with a weathered face here and there, in general people are happy. There is a sense of relaxation that pervades most interactions I've seen.
While bells ring all the time, I haven't seen anyone who actually goes into any of the churches to worship. Despite that, today, Whit Monday, is the second Christian holiday in two weeks. The other of course being Ascension Day. How do people observe Whit Monday, you ask? I heard fireworks an hour ago.
FLOWER PORN
People are even happier at the flower market, which falls nicely on Saturday mornings. It has the same energy as an ice cream store in summer; customers excitedly deliberating about which treat to choose.
AMSTERDAM
A few Sundays ago when Sandy was still here, the three of us were deliberating about how to spend the day when we came up with a plan to go to Zaanse Schans. Just like the time the girls and I were on the Cape and no one copped to putting the strawberries in the fridge, none of us owned being the engine that got us there. But go we did, first train, then crowded bus, in the heat with no a/c. I, who claim avoiding Disney World as my most significant maternal accomplishment, was disheartened to see all the families with small, unhappy children, men on cell phones and grandparents heading towards a desination shared with us. The place is visually interesting and a good idea, but we realized it was Mother's Day and lost any desire to forge on. After an hour and some bad fries and soft serve ice cream, we found ourselves sitting on a bench when Sandy and Nat made the brave decision to bail. We couldn't get out of there fast enough, finding our way to a less touristy part of Amsterdam, where we had the most perfect meal, sitting outside and being us again.
Speaking of Amsterdam, if you ever have Amsterdam museums on your To Do list, it's good to know that you can avoid walking through the gauntlet of literal and figurative detritus that surrounds Centraal train station by getting off at Amstel instead. It's a leisurely and scenic walk along houseboats with chickens and bathing in the river, rather than gangs of buzzed British boys out for a spin. I spent a few happy hours at FOAM, a photography museum that currently has an exhibit by Janette Beckman about hip hop and punk musicians as rebels of their times. Different from the Gardner, Facilities people had erected a scaffolding in the main exhibit hall and were busy doing electrical work in the ceiling while we visitors browsed below, weaving in and out of their ladders and platform. I suppose fewer lawyers and insurance companies lead to different outcomes here. Along the same lines, at a cafe on a canal where people drink a lot, we were next to tables about 6 inches from the canal edge, no exaggeration. That's some murky, brown water.
Yesterday Nat and I had the opportunity to play tennis at a 120-year old club in Vondelpark called Festina. A thatched roof on the clubhouse and 9 or so beautifully maintained red clay courts, well-loved flower beds with the alluring sound of bongo drums and smell of weed in the background. We checked in with the Secretariat, got on a court and started hitting. After about 10 minutes, the sprinklers turned on, wetting us, our stuff and the court. We moved. I guess that's just the way things work there. 10 year waiting list to join.
THE HAGUE
On the advice of an instragram post, we wandered to The Hague for a visit to a book and antique market, held in a tree-lined town square. There we saw a wooden statue of a bull dog, a World War II helmet, Buddhas with long ears, hat moulds, many many maps, silver utensils, illustrations of weapons and smoking equipment and awkward oil painted seascapes. It was like a dream providing compelling and random things to entertain. Interesting as it was, the market was no match for our hand-pulled noodle lunch at Xi'an Foods, the deliciousness of which I will remember for a long time. They were chewy and starchy and really quite perfect, served with slivered vegetables and chili hot oil.
The seat of the EU, The Hague is only an hour from Amsterdam on the train, but feels much more French or Belgian, with bigger, more regal buildings. It seems better equipped to hold current day tourists like us, with plenty of large piazzas, yet also has the feel of somewhere where serious and intelligent people work in suits on important matters, giving us the message that the city is not really for tourists.
Time to get serious and put my suit on.
Don't get me wrong, there’s nothing better than the lack of responsibility, expanded horizons and fresh vision that come with a bonafide vacation. But there is a positive side to not having one: I am funding the girl's and my cafe life, can now undo both locks on a bike in way less than a minute, and have nailed differentiating yogurt from cream at the grocery store. It may no longer be fresh eyes I'm seeing through, but I'm half way to getting on the path that leads to the road to being quasi-knowledgeable.
No coherent story this week, instead, some random reports.
BIKING
Although biking is a huge part of life here in the biking capital of the world, there seems to be little or no bike ego. Almost all are black, exceedingly heavy, bashed up and either have foot brakes or just a few speeds. No one wears gear or helmets, and it all seems to work brilliantly. Natives don’t brake at blind intersections, rather sail through with impressive confidence in their collision avoidance skills. In fact there’s a way, at an intersection of bikes, pedestrians and cars, that everyone seems to weave together in something that to my eyes must have been choreographed. Very old women who wear heavy black corrective shoes to help their waddling bow legs can be seen on bikes, sometimes wizzing by with no fear of speed, e-bike or no e-bike. Did you know there are two bikes for every person in the Netherlands? Yet perplexingly, bike stealing of these old junkers is rampant. It’s hard to understand the correlation.
PEOPLE
While you'll see a curmudgeonly old man with a weathered face here and there, in general people are happy. There is a sense of relaxation that pervades most interactions I've seen.
- While Nat and I were banging away at a tennis ball, as hard as we possibly could while sweating and gasping for air, two guys in their early thirties next to us were playfully sailing the ball back and forth, reminding us that it's a game, not an act of exorcism.
- Last night at 11ish, we were taking the train back from Amsterdam when a hopped-up three year old girl began hounding two teenage boys sitting in front of her. Perhaps having younger sisters themselves, they cheerfully went along with her requests for information, chatting her up as an equal, laughing at her jokes. They left the train smiling.
- While waiting at the train station, a well coiffed mother and sulk-aged teenage girl approached the turnstiles. The girl attempted to get her chip card from her back pocket and instead, dropped cards and cash all over the floor. They both broke out in unrestrained laughter, picking things up together.
- Where do I sign up to be like that?
While bells ring all the time, I haven't seen anyone who actually goes into any of the churches to worship. Despite that, today, Whit Monday, is the second Christian holiday in two weeks. The other of course being Ascension Day. How do people observe Whit Monday, you ask? I heard fireworks an hour ago.
FLOWER PORN
People are even happier at the flower market, which falls nicely on Saturday mornings. It has the same energy as an ice cream store in summer; customers excitedly deliberating about which treat to choose.
AMSTERDAM
A few Sundays ago when Sandy was still here, the three of us were deliberating about how to spend the day when we came up with a plan to go to Zaanse Schans. Just like the time the girls and I were on the Cape and no one copped to putting the strawberries in the fridge, none of us owned being the engine that got us there. But go we did, first train, then crowded bus, in the heat with no a/c. I, who claim avoiding Disney World as my most significant maternal accomplishment, was disheartened to see all the families with small, unhappy children, men on cell phones and grandparents heading towards a desination shared with us. The place is visually interesting and a good idea, but we realized it was Mother's Day and lost any desire to forge on. After an hour and some bad fries and soft serve ice cream, we found ourselves sitting on a bench when Sandy and Nat made the brave decision to bail. We couldn't get out of there fast enough, finding our way to a less touristy part of Amsterdam, where we had the most perfect meal, sitting outside and being us again.
Speaking of Amsterdam, if you ever have Amsterdam museums on your To Do list, it's good to know that you can avoid walking through the gauntlet of literal and figurative detritus that surrounds Centraal train station by getting off at Amstel instead. It's a leisurely and scenic walk along houseboats with chickens and bathing in the river, rather than gangs of buzzed British boys out for a spin. I spent a few happy hours at FOAM, a photography museum that currently has an exhibit by Janette Beckman about hip hop and punk musicians as rebels of their times. Different from the Gardner, Facilities people had erected a scaffolding in the main exhibit hall and were busy doing electrical work in the ceiling while we visitors browsed below, weaving in and out of their ladders and platform. I suppose fewer lawyers and insurance companies lead to different outcomes here. Along the same lines, at a cafe on a canal where people drink a lot, we were next to tables about 6 inches from the canal edge, no exaggeration. That's some murky, brown water.
Yesterday Nat and I had the opportunity to play tennis at a 120-year old club in Vondelpark called Festina. A thatched roof on the clubhouse and 9 or so beautifully maintained red clay courts, well-loved flower beds with the alluring sound of bongo drums and smell of weed in the background. We checked in with the Secretariat, got on a court and started hitting. After about 10 minutes, the sprinklers turned on, wetting us, our stuff and the court. We moved. I guess that's just the way things work there. 10 year waiting list to join.
THE HAGUE
On the advice of an instragram post, we wandered to The Hague for a visit to a book and antique market, held in a tree-lined town square. There we saw a wooden statue of a bull dog, a World War II helmet, Buddhas with long ears, hat moulds, many many maps, silver utensils, illustrations of weapons and smoking equipment and awkward oil painted seascapes. It was like a dream providing compelling and random things to entertain. Interesting as it was, the market was no match for our hand-pulled noodle lunch at Xi'an Foods, the deliciousness of which I will remember for a long time. They were chewy and starchy and really quite perfect, served with slivered vegetables and chili hot oil.
The seat of the EU, The Hague is only an hour from Amsterdam on the train, but feels much more French or Belgian, with bigger, more regal buildings. It seems better equipped to hold current day tourists like us, with plenty of large piazzas, yet also has the feel of somewhere where serious and intelligent people work in suits on important matters, giving us the message that the city is not really for tourists.
Time to get serious and put my suit on.
- Published on
Whenever I think of the word Amsterdam, I imagine my Dutch friend Pieter pronouncing Amstel as Omshtel. I then transfer that to Omshterdom, which is actually how the train announcers say it. But still haven't got the hang, even in my head, of how to deal with Utrecht, to say nothing of the street we're on, Schalkwijkstraat, despite Ank's patient repetitions. Oh well, an obvious tourist I will remain here for a very long time. Actually, based on my height, more like forever. Did you know that Dutch men are the tallest in the world, the average height being 6 feet? The inferiority complex is real.
I have been travelling to Europe more lately, and maybe I get a little cocky about how "experienced" I have become. If you hear me say "I've got this time change thing down" and that I don't understand how people can't adjust immediately, feel free to roll your eyes and commence a nap. What I thought was my tried and true; morning arrival, mid-morning nap, power through till 9 or 10, fresh as a daisy the next day, didn't work this time. For whatever reason, I woke up on day 2, sleep deprived and disoriented. Not to worry, it was a the beginning of a trip and my friend was arriving from JFK, fresh faced and perky, thinking nothing of dumping her luggage in a locker and heading off with us into the canals of Amsterdam. If she could do that, I could drag my sorry ass along too.
Thinking our friend may not need to see the weed paraphernalia stores, sex shops and for some weird reason, Argentinian steak houses, we took off to the right from Centraal and wandered through the quieter neighborhoods to 9 Streets, known for it's scenic canals, bridges, cafes and stores selling a huge variety of cheeses that are all basically the same. Harking back to happier days long ago when the Vermont Country Store provided an ample cheese buffet of samples, we hopped into this Dutch equivalent and began grazing. The sample pieces were about 1/4 inch, so we may have begun taking a few more than one at each station, trying aged gouda, young gouda, medium gouda, sheep milk gouda. But then we realized there were many more sample areas further back and recalibrated, switching to a single cube per flavor. Still, there was garlic, pesto, asparagus, cumin, mustard, chive and truffle gouda, really it went on and on and on. When we finally left, Nat mentioned her relief as she was starting to cramp up.
I didn't mention the oddness of the day. It was sunny. And rather warm. We ambled, stopping at vintage stores, taking photographs of scenery, stopping for a drink when we became hotter and tireder. Our goal of a lie in the grass at Museumplein was shattered when we saw all the construction, so being the brave soldiers we were, we forged ahead. Bathroom and rest would have to wait.
We, well, maybe I is more accurate, practically staggered to Albert Cuyp market, miraculously finding a modicum of strength when the smell of pofertjies wafted by. The market was brimming with life and twice as long as usual, with bike locks, smoothies, clingy dresses, Polish pottery, phone cases, space brownies, "best chicken", Surinamese rotis, Indian print fabrics, porny underwear, stroopwafels, spices, teas and incense, it never seemed to end. But we were committed to powering all the way through before making our final food decision, familiar as we were with jumping in too quickly and experiencing the abject disappointment of entrée envy.
We finally made it to the end, where there was a guy from Doha aggressively hawking fruity drinks by handing out samples. We tried, we liked, we bought. Thirst quenching with just enough sugar to help me crawl back to the Gozlëme stand. But first, I had to sit down. Just for a few minutes. I felt old as I desperately looked around , my companions happily standing and chatting away. There was a table with some chairs, but every surface was taken with similarly tired people. Sitting down on the sidewalk for a brief rest was starting to seem reasonable. Ah, there's my answer! A bulwark, one of those that rise out of the street to protect things like crowded markets from truck bombs. Perfect location, allowing me to enjoy my drink and observe transactions, but most importantly, a place to plant my sorry ass for just a few minutes.
So, there I sat, enjoying my minty sour lemonade, finally taking a load off, watching the different nationalities doing their thing, taking in the warmth. I was starting to feel hopeful about life when rather quickly, the stanchion retreated back down into the road, pulling the chair out from under my tired ass. Now I was quite sure it had been a rather graceful roll onto the ground that I did. Well maybe my feet were in the air for a brief second, and there might have been some liquid flying, but overall, while unexpected, a low key and smooth maneuver. Then why were not only my people, but many others laughing so hard there were tears in their eyes and hands on their stomachs? Wish I had thought to take a bow. Time to go home.
I have been travelling to Europe more lately, and maybe I get a little cocky about how "experienced" I have become. If you hear me say "I've got this time change thing down" and that I don't understand how people can't adjust immediately, feel free to roll your eyes and commence a nap. What I thought was my tried and true; morning arrival, mid-morning nap, power through till 9 or 10, fresh as a daisy the next day, didn't work this time. For whatever reason, I woke up on day 2, sleep deprived and disoriented. Not to worry, it was a the beginning of a trip and my friend was arriving from JFK, fresh faced and perky, thinking nothing of dumping her luggage in a locker and heading off with us into the canals of Amsterdam. If she could do that, I could drag my sorry ass along too.
Thinking our friend may not need to see the weed paraphernalia stores, sex shops and for some weird reason, Argentinian steak houses, we took off to the right from Centraal and wandered through the quieter neighborhoods to 9 Streets, known for it's scenic canals, bridges, cafes and stores selling a huge variety of cheeses that are all basically the same. Harking back to happier days long ago when the Vermont Country Store provided an ample cheese buffet of samples, we hopped into this Dutch equivalent and began grazing. The sample pieces were about 1/4 inch, so we may have begun taking a few more than one at each station, trying aged gouda, young gouda, medium gouda, sheep milk gouda. But then we realized there were many more sample areas further back and recalibrated, switching to a single cube per flavor. Still, there was garlic, pesto, asparagus, cumin, mustard, chive and truffle gouda, really it went on and on and on. When we finally left, Nat mentioned her relief as she was starting to cramp up.
I didn't mention the oddness of the day. It was sunny. And rather warm. We ambled, stopping at vintage stores, taking photographs of scenery, stopping for a drink when we became hotter and tireder. Our goal of a lie in the grass at Museumplein was shattered when we saw all the construction, so being the brave soldiers we were, we forged ahead. Bathroom and rest would have to wait.
We, well, maybe I is more accurate, practically staggered to Albert Cuyp market, miraculously finding a modicum of strength when the smell of pofertjies wafted by. The market was brimming with life and twice as long as usual, with bike locks, smoothies, clingy dresses, Polish pottery, phone cases, space brownies, "best chicken", Surinamese rotis, Indian print fabrics, porny underwear, stroopwafels, spices, teas and incense, it never seemed to end. But we were committed to powering all the way through before making our final food decision, familiar as we were with jumping in too quickly and experiencing the abject disappointment of entrée envy.
We finally made it to the end, where there was a guy from Doha aggressively hawking fruity drinks by handing out samples. We tried, we liked, we bought. Thirst quenching with just enough sugar to help me crawl back to the Gozlëme stand. But first, I had to sit down. Just for a few minutes. I felt old as I desperately looked around , my companions happily standing and chatting away. There was a table with some chairs, but every surface was taken with similarly tired people. Sitting down on the sidewalk for a brief rest was starting to seem reasonable. Ah, there's my answer! A bulwark, one of those that rise out of the street to protect things like crowded markets from truck bombs. Perfect location, allowing me to enjoy my drink and observe transactions, but most importantly, a place to plant my sorry ass for just a few minutes.
So, there I sat, enjoying my minty sour lemonade, finally taking a load off, watching the different nationalities doing their thing, taking in the warmth. I was starting to feel hopeful about life when rather quickly, the stanchion retreated back down into the road, pulling the chair out from under my tired ass. Now I was quite sure it had been a rather graceful roll onto the ground that I did. Well maybe my feet were in the air for a brief second, and there might have been some liquid flying, but overall, while unexpected, a low key and smooth maneuver. Then why were not only my people, but many others laughing so hard there were tears in their eyes and hands on their stomachs? Wish I had thought to take a bow. Time to go home.
- Published on
For much of our time together, #1 Ex and I were close physically and emotionally. Things began to fall apart after a miscarriage and my subsequent deep sadness*. I was angry at the challenge I faced, treading through the mire of my despondency while having to work while he was accountable to no one. That last summer at Tanglewood gave us an excuse to retreat to our separate corners of the state, beating our dead horses of self-justification.
We continued blindly with therapy; individual, together, group, but one Monday evening in October, I arrived home to see him nervously standing under the street lamp outside our home with his friend Mark, who was always bad news. They had cleared everything that was his out of the apartment, removed my access to our Schwab account, taken the only car we had, and left me with $500. No, I did not want to continue couples therapy. There were a panoply of strong emotions, all mixed up and shooting out of every part of me, the most significant being shock.
Gradually, gradually, this new reality set in. But it took a while before my body was able to process this unexpected present and future, its implications. There were things that helped. My dear friend, despite having two young children, was at my side. The flexeral that had been prescribed for a back pain ensured sleep. And that little voice which often sounds like a drill sergeant but I know is always out to protect me, told me to get up, shower, and go to work, keep moving.
Among the detritus he left was a Barbour motorcycle jacket, a light brown torn up backpack with oldyfashiony pins of ski mountains in Switzerland, the Turkish illustrations we had bought together, and a book meant to help creatives, as he deemed himself, get unblocked. The composer who had given it to him, a sympathetic man, encouraged me to have a go, despite my creative expression extending no further than my wardrobe and movie choices. And so I did, and slowly, day by day, I saw more light and good in a world that had felt overwhelming and uncertain. Almost 30 years later, I still turn to this book that spurs optimism, engagement, excitement in me. Whether I do it alone, in a group or facilitating, working with this book has led me to a more meaningful life.
Friends on each coast recently decided they were ready to do the exercises, so I began again, quickly being warmed by a feeling of strong connection to the rest of the physcial and spiritual world. The three of us do the exercises, check in, are enthusiastic. We are learning, we are becoming clearer, we are enjoying ourselves. They didn't know, but I knew, Chapter 3 was lurking out there, Reading Deprivation. One friend, who does crossword puzzles and word games, wondered if it would be hard to give them up for 7 days. The other relaxes playing Scrabble and can't imagine not playing.
While I never look forward to the week, life in the past has been hectic enough that I've appreciated the break from screens, newspapers, books, using the time to tidy and get rid of things, buy or find new stuff, have old school phone calls with friends, draw, take photographs, go to new places, roam the neighborhood to chat. But this time, there have been a few pretty heavy things going on, leaving my energy depleted and enthusiasm for starting anything new, minimal. So, on the first day without my "pacifier", I was mad, really mad, feeling as though someone had maliciously taken something away from me, leaving me powerless. One of the stages of grief? Maybe.
So there I was that first night, lying on the couch, watching the buds on the sugar maple grow...... I got up, roamed around, had a glass of water, ate some chocolate and went back to the couch. Still annoyed, I got up again, at some level believing that moving around physically would help me avoid complicated and depressing feelings. Ot maybe help find a distraction. Yeah, not happening. Every 15 minutes or so, I checked the time, looking forward to bedtime when I would be put out of my misery. Finally, there was nothing left to do but relent. I put on Brahms 4 and said to myself, "OK feelings, come on at me, what do you have for me?" While it wasn't fun, it wasn't as bad as a root canal and I felt better after. That I ended up also listening to the Requiem (yes, it was that kind of night) and maybe doing a little couch conducting tells me it wasn't all bad.
The next days were prophylactically full of plans. But I was exhausted like a sick person but not sick, not quite making it to the ICA, instead sitting outside at Tatte, blankly staring at passersby while eating a monstrous slice of coffee cake in the spring sun. After a few days, things got better, an equilibrium was established and I began to appreciate details I may not have noticed in a different week. For example I noticed a lot of the in-shape kids at the gym don't lift much more than me on the machines. I wonder why? They certainly are able.
I'm not sure why a week of deprivation is important, but it is. Perhaps it serves a similar purpose as Ramadan and Yom Kippur do to Muslims and Jews, a reminder of what we have, and a challenge to see what we can live without. It's also a commitment to being with oneself, listening to oneself, making time, making plans. I may be cured of a recent junky TV watching problem and am back to reading hungrily. Currently a re-read of The Unbearable Lightness of Being (not surprisingly in previous post about this book, I conflated details but got the overall vibe right) and Proof of Heaven, a book about a neurosurgeon who was all science until he fell into a coma and met God.
Looking back at the brutal post- Ex#1 era, I have thought so many times of how much less interesting, enjoyable, spontaneous, creative and fun my life would have been had that not happened. As odd as it may seem, I'm profoundly grateful for where it got me.
*I had to take a few weeks off work to gather myself and was mildly entertained when I returned to find out that no one knew I had had a miscarriage, the general rumor was that I had been in jail.
UPDATES
Random update: I have moved the gym tag to the more appropriate water bottle and life is easier and drier. I also have a plan to ask a friend who is very handy to help me with the lights.
Happy update: Our guy has left the ICU and was been deemed by his nurses to be "highly motivated" about getting better. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
We continued blindly with therapy; individual, together, group, but one Monday evening in October, I arrived home to see him nervously standing under the street lamp outside our home with his friend Mark, who was always bad news. They had cleared everything that was his out of the apartment, removed my access to our Schwab account, taken the only car we had, and left me with $500. No, I did not want to continue couples therapy. There were a panoply of strong emotions, all mixed up and shooting out of every part of me, the most significant being shock.
Gradually, gradually, this new reality set in. But it took a while before my body was able to process this unexpected present and future, its implications. There were things that helped. My dear friend, despite having two young children, was at my side. The flexeral that had been prescribed for a back pain ensured sleep. And that little voice which often sounds like a drill sergeant but I know is always out to protect me, told me to get up, shower, and go to work, keep moving.
Among the detritus he left was a Barbour motorcycle jacket, a light brown torn up backpack with oldyfashiony pins of ski mountains in Switzerland, the Turkish illustrations we had bought together, and a book meant to help creatives, as he deemed himself, get unblocked. The composer who had given it to him, a sympathetic man, encouraged me to have a go, despite my creative expression extending no further than my wardrobe and movie choices. And so I did, and slowly, day by day, I saw more light and good in a world that had felt overwhelming and uncertain. Almost 30 years later, I still turn to this book that spurs optimism, engagement, excitement in me. Whether I do it alone, in a group or facilitating, working with this book has led me to a more meaningful life.
Friends on each coast recently decided they were ready to do the exercises, so I began again, quickly being warmed by a feeling of strong connection to the rest of the physcial and spiritual world. The three of us do the exercises, check in, are enthusiastic. We are learning, we are becoming clearer, we are enjoying ourselves. They didn't know, but I knew, Chapter 3 was lurking out there, Reading Deprivation. One friend, who does crossword puzzles and word games, wondered if it would be hard to give them up for 7 days. The other relaxes playing Scrabble and can't imagine not playing.
While I never look forward to the week, life in the past has been hectic enough that I've appreciated the break from screens, newspapers, books, using the time to tidy and get rid of things, buy or find new stuff, have old school phone calls with friends, draw, take photographs, go to new places, roam the neighborhood to chat. But this time, there have been a few pretty heavy things going on, leaving my energy depleted and enthusiasm for starting anything new, minimal. So, on the first day without my "pacifier", I was mad, really mad, feeling as though someone had maliciously taken something away from me, leaving me powerless. One of the stages of grief? Maybe.
So there I was that first night, lying on the couch, watching the buds on the sugar maple grow...... I got up, roamed around, had a glass of water, ate some chocolate and went back to the couch. Still annoyed, I got up again, at some level believing that moving around physically would help me avoid complicated and depressing feelings. Ot maybe help find a distraction. Yeah, not happening. Every 15 minutes or so, I checked the time, looking forward to bedtime when I would be put out of my misery. Finally, there was nothing left to do but relent. I put on Brahms 4 and said to myself, "OK feelings, come on at me, what do you have for me?" While it wasn't fun, it wasn't as bad as a root canal and I felt better after. That I ended up also listening to the Requiem (yes, it was that kind of night) and maybe doing a little couch conducting tells me it wasn't all bad.
The next days were prophylactically full of plans. But I was exhausted like a sick person but not sick, not quite making it to the ICA, instead sitting outside at Tatte, blankly staring at passersby while eating a monstrous slice of coffee cake in the spring sun. After a few days, things got better, an equilibrium was established and I began to appreciate details I may not have noticed in a different week. For example I noticed a lot of the in-shape kids at the gym don't lift much more than me on the machines. I wonder why? They certainly are able.
I'm not sure why a week of deprivation is important, but it is. Perhaps it serves a similar purpose as Ramadan and Yom Kippur do to Muslims and Jews, a reminder of what we have, and a challenge to see what we can live without. It's also a commitment to being with oneself, listening to oneself, making time, making plans. I may be cured of a recent junky TV watching problem and am back to reading hungrily. Currently a re-read of The Unbearable Lightness of Being (not surprisingly in previous post about this book, I conflated details but got the overall vibe right) and Proof of Heaven, a book about a neurosurgeon who was all science until he fell into a coma and met God.
Looking back at the brutal post- Ex#1 era, I have thought so many times of how much less interesting, enjoyable, spontaneous, creative and fun my life would have been had that not happened. As odd as it may seem, I'm profoundly grateful for where it got me.
*I had to take a few weeks off work to gather myself and was mildly entertained when I returned to find out that no one knew I had had a miscarriage, the general rumor was that I had been in jail.
UPDATES
Random update: I have moved the gym tag to the more appropriate water bottle and life is easier and drier. I also have a plan to ask a friend who is very handy to help me with the lights.
Happy update: Our guy has left the ICU and was been deemed by his nurses to be "highly motivated" about getting better. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
- Published on
I was lunching with a friend, having extended it luxuriously as we sat on a comfortable couch and took in a Saturday, but it was starting to be that time we both knew meant we had to get back to it, she dreading doing laundry because it was in her unfinished basement. It reminded me of when I moved back to my current home, and had to return to a coin op machine, which felt like an evolutionarily gargantuan step backwards. Would the laundromat be next? It took weeks and a depleted underwear drawer for me to finally get a roll of quarters and take action. Logistically for both my friend and me, these hurdles are small, yet somehow take on a life of their own. While it would be easy to put the procrastination label on them, and certainly it is that, there's more.
One of the many benefits of being a paddle player is access to a multitude of water bottles. Some just show up, others are tournament party favors and the nicer ones generous contributions by a fellow player who has access to them. Back when I used to play hard (tennis) singles in the hot sun at the public courts, the water fountain, if working, was shared with dogs and tasted of rusted metal. I knew I needed something bigger than the common litre size so bought a quart sized Nalgene, packed it with ice and was good to go. Challenged at keeping track of things, it became my bottle for the gym, with the zapper tag on there, and then of course migrated to the paddle courts in winter.
It's always been the wrong bottle for the gym, too big. And with a wide mouth, hard to drink out of without water spilling down my neck and shirt (happened today). Since pre-COVID, I've thought about switching the gym zapper tag to that nice Hydrate or Die smaller bottle I have. But it's still in the planning phase.
Why? I wonder why?
When I moved into my newly purchased condo in 1995, it was well-cleaned and empty except for a toy dinosaur in the bathtub that I found welcoming and charming. If you've been to my house since Nat was born, you've likely seen him being ridden by Baby, Nat's first doll, who was naked for some years before having her propriety defended with a colorful lei-based dress.
The water in the shower wasn't regulated, the temperature fluctuating greatly. I learned how to anticipate the surge of scalding water, but never quite the ice bath. When I became pregnant and moved in with Philip, I knew the water variance would be valid grounds for a tenant's personal injury lawsuit, so shot the padlock off my wallet and got a plumber. In an hour and for $125, the problem was alleviated, leaving me questioning why, why, why I hadn't fixed it sooner so that I could also have benefitted. Sigh.
The first light I purchased for my dining room excited me, the way I imagined it looking against white walls, hanging over the dark table. New to working with trades people, I told the guy who came to install it what I wanted and made myself scarce. When I returned, he was gone and all he'd left was the smell of stale cigarette smoke and last night's bar crawl. He'd cut the pendant wire to less than 12 inches and hung it with the fixture close enough to the ceiling that all you could see was the lightbulb, not the actual top or side of the light. Adding insult to injury, he had drilled a square hole in the ceiling for a round socket and not even centered it. I was frustrated by his beyond sloppy work, but realized the light was too big anyway and that two smaller ones would work better. I fell in love with the next ones I bought, appreciating the stark modern against the oldy fashiony moulding.
I found a better electrician, had the lights installed with dimmers and from my couch perch, immensely enjoyed how they looked for many a day, before I decided on the yellow chairs and then the Dutch blue wall behind. Ready for a dinner party, I hit the dimmer but nothing happened. When I reached out to the electrician, he told me I had chosen lights that weren't dimmable. Crikey. Immediate solution for that night? Lots of candles and a standing lamp, pendant lights off. Long-term, I thought, well, I can at least put lower wattage bulbs in. Once, while on a work call, I unsuccessfully fiddled with one of them for about 5 seconds and since then, have moved changing the bulbs back to my to do list.
Remember when Hilary Clinton as FLOTUS was quoted as saying you should never touch a piece of paper twice? I took it to heart back when we had in-boxes at work. And truly, there were pieces of paper that I'd ignore with the goal of not touching them again, and not infrequently, they'd become irrelevant. I suppose there's some part of me that has the same attitude about these things I haven't yet done, that the problem will either disappear or become a priority, in which case I'll fix them.
At one of my jobs, I worked with a woman who had undergraduate and graduate degrees from different Ivy League universities. She was incredibly well-spoken, a much loved manager, and one of the most well respected people in her field, nationally. She confessed that she had trouble with procrastination, which I found shocking, asking her if she knew why. Her theory was that she led such a disciplined life and was such a staunch rule follower that a little voice inside would tell her to rebel, putting things off being her version of it.
Well, I certainly can't claim that scenario. And how interesting that I can take a few hours to write about these challenges, but not a few minutes to address them.
PS, Update
Thank you to those of you who have had Rob in your thoughts. He is slowly improving, day by day, we are hopeful. As excruciatingly difficult as it has been for his family (there has been too much painful waiting for outcomes, always taking longer than predicted), they have been nothing short of inspiring over the last week, closing the circle and hunkering down together, looking after each other, showing kindness, consideration, love. I'd be so grateful if you continued to keep him (and them) in your thoughts.
One of the many benefits of being a paddle player is access to a multitude of water bottles. Some just show up, others are tournament party favors and the nicer ones generous contributions by a fellow player who has access to them. Back when I used to play hard (tennis) singles in the hot sun at the public courts, the water fountain, if working, was shared with dogs and tasted of rusted metal. I knew I needed something bigger than the common litre size so bought a quart sized Nalgene, packed it with ice and was good to go. Challenged at keeping track of things, it became my bottle for the gym, with the zapper tag on there, and then of course migrated to the paddle courts in winter.
It's always been the wrong bottle for the gym, too big. And with a wide mouth, hard to drink out of without water spilling down my neck and shirt (happened today). Since pre-COVID, I've thought about switching the gym zapper tag to that nice Hydrate or Die smaller bottle I have. But it's still in the planning phase.
Why? I wonder why?
When I moved into my newly purchased condo in 1995, it was well-cleaned and empty except for a toy dinosaur in the bathtub that I found welcoming and charming. If you've been to my house since Nat was born, you've likely seen him being ridden by Baby, Nat's first doll, who was naked for some years before having her propriety defended with a colorful lei-based dress.
The water in the shower wasn't regulated, the temperature fluctuating greatly. I learned how to anticipate the surge of scalding water, but never quite the ice bath. When I became pregnant and moved in with Philip, I knew the water variance would be valid grounds for a tenant's personal injury lawsuit, so shot the padlock off my wallet and got a plumber. In an hour and for $125, the problem was alleviated, leaving me questioning why, why, why I hadn't fixed it sooner so that I could also have benefitted. Sigh.
The first light I purchased for my dining room excited me, the way I imagined it looking against white walls, hanging over the dark table. New to working with trades people, I told the guy who came to install it what I wanted and made myself scarce. When I returned, he was gone and all he'd left was the smell of stale cigarette smoke and last night's bar crawl. He'd cut the pendant wire to less than 12 inches and hung it with the fixture close enough to the ceiling that all you could see was the lightbulb, not the actual top or side of the light. Adding insult to injury, he had drilled a square hole in the ceiling for a round socket and not even centered it. I was frustrated by his beyond sloppy work, but realized the light was too big anyway and that two smaller ones would work better. I fell in love with the next ones I bought, appreciating the stark modern against the oldy fashiony moulding.
I found a better electrician, had the lights installed with dimmers and from my couch perch, immensely enjoyed how they looked for many a day, before I decided on the yellow chairs and then the Dutch blue wall behind. Ready for a dinner party, I hit the dimmer but nothing happened. When I reached out to the electrician, he told me I had chosen lights that weren't dimmable. Crikey. Immediate solution for that night? Lots of candles and a standing lamp, pendant lights off. Long-term, I thought, well, I can at least put lower wattage bulbs in. Once, while on a work call, I unsuccessfully fiddled with one of them for about 5 seconds and since then, have moved changing the bulbs back to my to do list.
Remember when Hilary Clinton as FLOTUS was quoted as saying you should never touch a piece of paper twice? I took it to heart back when we had in-boxes at work. And truly, there were pieces of paper that I'd ignore with the goal of not touching them again, and not infrequently, they'd become irrelevant. I suppose there's some part of me that has the same attitude about these things I haven't yet done, that the problem will either disappear or become a priority, in which case I'll fix them.
At one of my jobs, I worked with a woman who had undergraduate and graduate degrees from different Ivy League universities. She was incredibly well-spoken, a much loved manager, and one of the most well respected people in her field, nationally. She confessed that she had trouble with procrastination, which I found shocking, asking her if she knew why. Her theory was that she led such a disciplined life and was such a staunch rule follower that a little voice inside would tell her to rebel, putting things off being her version of it.
Well, I certainly can't claim that scenario. And how interesting that I can take a few hours to write about these challenges, but not a few minutes to address them.
PS, Update
Thank you to those of you who have had Rob in your thoughts. He is slowly improving, day by day, we are hopeful. As excruciatingly difficult as it has been for his family (there has been too much painful waiting for outcomes, always taking longer than predicted), they have been nothing short of inspiring over the last week, closing the circle and hunkering down together, looking after each other, showing kindness, consideration, love. I'd be so grateful if you continued to keep him (and them) in your thoughts.
- Published on
Beside myself with excitement about traveling by train through the desert, after being called crazy for taking public transport, I arrived at Union Station, a museum-like building that is meticulously maintained. I needed sunglasses to look at the floors, they were so shiny. Unlike our Amtrak, this branch of the trains is inexpensive, doesn't smell like Egg McMuffin or urine, and has windows that allow you to see the scenery. I'd had wistful feelings flying over the desert the week prior, so returning in person engaged all my senses powerfully, prompting me to listen to the most evocative and perfectly paired theme song from Breaking Bad as the landscape transitioned from grassy green to the washed out sage and and beige.
Starved, I trolled the sidewalk in my too hot black clothes, annoyingly noisy wheelie, straw hat and backpack with tennis racquet, landing at a Greek restaurant on Palm Canyon Drive. Listening to my neighbors (above), my ears perked up when I heard:
"What was. your favorite food in Portugal?"
I visualized charred sardines, potatoes with parsley, a wonderful salad. Maybe some Vinho Verde.
A pause, apologetically
"McDonalds?"
As it was my second year visiting Sandra, I was steeling myself for Adult Camp, worried about my various low-key ailments. Lucky for us, this year she didn't make us bike to a hike after playing tennis and pickle. I think the camper to counselor ratio wasn't right, so we got away with only racquets in various iterations. as participants and spectators, though she did get me to do 20 minutes of yoga.
Indian Wells has a fair claim to being called Tennis Paradise. The weather is sublime (it's a dry heat), the view of the snow covered peaks in the distance breathtaking, the shrimp ceviche in passion fruit a far cry from the hot dogs at Newport, and the access to the pros exciting. I spent the first day planted at the practice courts right up close and personal. Tiafoe, Azarenka, Blinkova (my new favorite), Svitolina (she looks like someone you'd see on the T but her athleticism comes close to that of her husband), Keys, Dolehide (my old favorite. I call her the female Alcaraz) Tsitsipas and probably more I've forgotten. Their drives are so hard, and with each strike, get harder, lower, faster. I was entranced by the way they hunkered down into a shot, repeating it over and over until it was right, the way they helped each other, kidded around, or in one case, suffered visibly under the judgmental criticism of a coach/father. The look on this player's face as he turned to his father after acing his practice partner was heartbreaking, reminding me of a toddler waiting excitedly for an M&M earned for peeing in the toilet. He got nothing.
Already lucky to be surrounded by such great people, I then met up with my Tuesday Paddle girls, minus two who were still on the east coast who will hopefully come next year (you too, Nancy). Of the four of us who met up, one had hightailed it out west in January and another had a partial knee replacement (yes, we're getting to that age), so we hadn't been together for many moons. As usual, I did what I could to avoid talking current events with two of them who are particularly well-informed. We ended up getting them together with Sandra's Adult Camp participants and played some things.
When walking around in the early morning light of La Quinta, I yearned to have a house there and got to thinking about my propensity for always wanting to move to wherever the most recent place is. I guess the good news is that I go to good places but wondered why this cycle keep repeating, and I'm vehement about it. Really, I couldn't see living in the desert, but it tugged on me, this vista, these colors.
Some people like security, I like new, I like to have my views shaken up and reconfigured, and going to new places allows that to happen. and that's a feeling I want replicated, so I guess there's some part of me that believes that I can "move" to it, which of course is unrealistic as I would at some point get used to wherever it is and have to get back to work and some kind of routine which I need to keep things together, but which bores me out of my skull.
Starved, I trolled the sidewalk in my too hot black clothes, annoyingly noisy wheelie, straw hat and backpack with tennis racquet, landing at a Greek restaurant on Palm Canyon Drive. Listening to my neighbors (above), my ears perked up when I heard:
"What was. your favorite food in Portugal?"
I visualized charred sardines, potatoes with parsley, a wonderful salad. Maybe some Vinho Verde.
A pause, apologetically
"McDonalds?"
As it was my second year visiting Sandra, I was steeling myself for Adult Camp, worried about my various low-key ailments. Lucky for us, this year she didn't make us bike to a hike after playing tennis and pickle. I think the camper to counselor ratio wasn't right, so we got away with only racquets in various iterations. as participants and spectators, though she did get me to do 20 minutes of yoga.
Indian Wells has a fair claim to being called Tennis Paradise. The weather is sublime (it's a dry heat), the view of the snow covered peaks in the distance breathtaking, the shrimp ceviche in passion fruit a far cry from the hot dogs at Newport, and the access to the pros exciting. I spent the first day planted at the practice courts right up close and personal. Tiafoe, Azarenka, Blinkova (my new favorite), Svitolina (she looks like someone you'd see on the T but her athleticism comes close to that of her husband), Keys, Dolehide (my old favorite. I call her the female Alcaraz) Tsitsipas and probably more I've forgotten. Their drives are so hard, and with each strike, get harder, lower, faster. I was entranced by the way they hunkered down into a shot, repeating it over and over until it was right, the way they helped each other, kidded around, or in one case, suffered visibly under the judgmental criticism of a coach/father. The look on this player's face as he turned to his father after acing his practice partner was heartbreaking, reminding me of a toddler waiting excitedly for an M&M earned for peeing in the toilet. He got nothing.
Already lucky to be surrounded by such great people, I then met up with my Tuesday Paddle girls, minus two who were still on the east coast who will hopefully come next year (you too, Nancy). Of the four of us who met up, one had hightailed it out west in January and another had a partial knee replacement (yes, we're getting to that age), so we hadn't been together for many moons. As usual, I did what I could to avoid talking current events with two of them who are particularly well-informed. We ended up getting them together with Sandra's Adult Camp participants and played some things.
When walking around in the early morning light of La Quinta, I yearned to have a house there and got to thinking about my propensity for always wanting to move to wherever the most recent place is. I guess the good news is that I go to good places but wondered why this cycle keep repeating, and I'm vehement about it. Really, I couldn't see living in the desert, but it tugged on me, this vista, these colors.
Some people like security, I like new, I like to have my views shaken up and reconfigured, and going to new places allows that to happen. and that's a feeling I want replicated, so I guess there's some part of me that believes that I can "move" to it, which of course is unrealistic as I would at some point get used to wherever it is and have to get back to work and some kind of routine which I need to keep things together, but which bores me out of my skull.
- Published on
There are many things I love about the friend I was to spend the day with, one being that when I picked her up for our circuitous drive back to LA, she had a solid food plan and little else. So it was off to Shields Date Farm, which I can't say I expected to be across from a strip mall, but hey, it's Southern California.
Her date shake was sweet and thick, the items on offer dates, date cookies, date crystals, date butter, date sugar and grapefruits. Because I didn't want to make you unnecessarily jealous in the last post, I didn't mention the abundance of citrus trees at Adult Camp. Every day we'd pick grapefruit and oranges and have ourselves a nice big glass of fresh squeezed something or other, and one of the ladies made Palomas in the evening So, after having an unending supply every day, seeing shriveled up grapefruits at tourist prices seemed the equivalent of partially burned coal for sale in a Newcastle gift shop.
Entering Joshua Tree National Park from the south, to start in the Sonoran Desert and drive north to the Mojave, we stopped to pay our fare. The kind man delicately asked if any of us were 62 or over, leading to my first senior citizen bargain, when I scored a $20 pass that allows entry to any national park for one year! I could have gone for an $80 lifetime membership, but knew the likelihood of me holding on to one card for a lifetime was less than nil. I'll admit, it was a shock that he targeted me for what I am, an almost senior, as I'm not quite ready to identify myself that way. Fortunately, the hangtag didn't fit on the rearview mirror, but that emblazoned word SENIOR was still painfully easy for anyone with young eyes to see. I anticipate many battles being waged between bargain brain and pride brain.
We drove, we stopped. We began a biblical sort of walk straight into the desert with no water and no food, but after a minute and a half, turned back at my urging. We had just learned that rattlesnakes hide in bushes and strike unsuspecting creatures, so that every hole in the sand we saw, and there were many, looked like a rattlesnake apartment building. Once my imagination gets going, there's really no turning things around.
One summer when working at Tanglewood when I lived on Friar Tuck Drive in Sherwood Forest, a dark and slithery place, someone gave me snake avoidance training. Apparently snakes can't hear, but they react to ground vibrations, so I'd stomp hard from my car, across the lawn and up the wooden stairs to our house on stilts, only to find mouse shit in the silverware drawer, but that's for some reason not as worrying to me. This prior combat training made it possible for us to take a walk in the Cactus Garden, which was crowded enough that other people were doing the stomping for me.
In this garden, there were various helpful things for visitors - defined paths through the cacti, a sign explaining that everything in nature has a purpose except chollas, which are incredibly painful if you get stuck by one, and a little metal box on the ground that was covered with stickers and had a wire attached to it with a pair of pliers. As we watched instagram moments being staged, we heard a woman's blood curdling wail that didn't end. Well of course I thought snake. But as we drew closer, we saw a 20-something girl with two separate balls of these prickers stuck to her hand. She was inconsolable, though her friends tried hard. We mentioned the pliers and when we left, saw her availing herself of them, no less comfortable.
We left the park and were peckish, so decided to try our luck at La Copine, hoping to score walk-in seats. Though located in the desolate community of Yucca Flats, scattered with mobile homes, adult video stores and a Dollar General, one needs to make reservations months in advance to lunch here. Sure enough, there in this arid landscape was a room full of perfectly groomed casual LA people eating many varieties of cute vegetables. No room for us, unfortunately.
I was hungry enough to eat my own hand, or some super hot Doritos from the 7-11, but was saved when my food buddy calmed me down enough to guid us across the road, to a honky tonk sort of place where we sat outside, chatted and watched the world go by, enjoying a fine pizza and salad.
LA traffic is real. The trauma is too fresh to relive just now.
We were separating in LA, she going to Beverly Hills, me to Santa Monica, both staying with Korean friends, so arranged to meet for dinner at Soowon Galbi in Korea Town the next night. Things started to go awry when we realized we hadn't changed the one clock we were relying on for a time to leave. Rushing to this gritty and colorful neighborhood, my friend had trouble parking her shiny fancy car, making me happy for my nondescript VW Golf that few would want. We made an interesting, new friend at dinner and enjoyed japchae and black cod in some kind of kimchiish sauce. Upon leaving, we hit a deep pothole and immediately had a flat tire. Still in a crappy neighborhood, we pulled into the Rite Aid/Burger King parking lot to think about our future. After multiple back and forth calls with the emergency service people, we divined that some cars, including hers, have tires that can be driven on when flat, so after sitting around for ages in the car, got home without incident.
Deb and I have been friends for a long time, and have quite a history together. There's the time we went on a road trip when we didn't phone in one night and our families were convinced we had been arrested in Alabama for possession of weed (not the case, we never got caught), that crazy week in Cozumel, some memorable nights on Newbury Street, a New Years Eve at the Chuck Wagon in Wayne, Maine and lots of laughs in the Penthouse Bar at the Huntley in Santa Monica. So while we're both old and boring and don't really drink anymore, we went back and had a happy hour or two before coming home exhausted from being out two nights in a row!
Do you ever just feel like you are absolutely 100% at the right place at the right time? Thi coffee shop, I could stay there all day and just can't wait to sit there every morning to watch the show. It might be because the room is mostly white, which makes everyone more colorful, but by later in my stay in Santa Monica, I'd actually given up on bringing my notebook to write, which never happens. A little backstory on the vibe there. The cashiers and baristas each wear their uber coolness, including the perhaps 75+ year old Central American man who makes the prettiest coffees, and I did at first get a somewhat frosty reception while seeing they chatted up others. That on my last day there, I got "I'm sorry, I don't recall your name" was a big win, prompting me to contemplate changing my return ticket to Boston.
On my last day there, I scored a prime seat, sitting next to a man I'd seen before who was somewhat untidy looking, perhaps in his 80's, with lots of folded pieces of paper on his table that he diligently wrote on, in pencil. While he didn't ask me if I'd found Jesus, he did ask me if I liked this coffee shop and said it had the spirit of Jesus in it. Now, it's an interesting place, this coffee shop, but more because it's somewhere people who live in $10M houses in carefully chosen tattered clothes or skateboard sneakers or trucker hats go for their coffee runs, not because their hands are calloused from carrying too many buckets of water to folks who need it (not that the two are mutually exclusive). On my neighbor went, making references to the Bible with everything he or I mentioned, though interestingly, not when I told him I was from Boston, which left him speechless. I get it.
So, yeah, back in the Baystate, but the sun's shining, I've talked to my girl, am chatting with a friend soon, have paddle lined up for later today and I'm off to join Saturday. Have a nice weekend, all.
Her date shake was sweet and thick, the items on offer dates, date cookies, date crystals, date butter, date sugar and grapefruits. Because I didn't want to make you unnecessarily jealous in the last post, I didn't mention the abundance of citrus trees at Adult Camp. Every day we'd pick grapefruit and oranges and have ourselves a nice big glass of fresh squeezed something or other, and one of the ladies made Palomas in the evening So, after having an unending supply every day, seeing shriveled up grapefruits at tourist prices seemed the equivalent of partially burned coal for sale in a Newcastle gift shop.
Entering Joshua Tree National Park from the south, to start in the Sonoran Desert and drive north to the Mojave, we stopped to pay our fare. The kind man delicately asked if any of us were 62 or over, leading to my first senior citizen bargain, when I scored a $20 pass that allows entry to any national park for one year! I could have gone for an $80 lifetime membership, but knew the likelihood of me holding on to one card for a lifetime was less than nil. I'll admit, it was a shock that he targeted me for what I am, an almost senior, as I'm not quite ready to identify myself that way. Fortunately, the hangtag didn't fit on the rearview mirror, but that emblazoned word SENIOR was still painfully easy for anyone with young eyes to see. I anticipate many battles being waged between bargain brain and pride brain.
We drove, we stopped. We began a biblical sort of walk straight into the desert with no water and no food, but after a minute and a half, turned back at my urging. We had just learned that rattlesnakes hide in bushes and strike unsuspecting creatures, so that every hole in the sand we saw, and there were many, looked like a rattlesnake apartment building. Once my imagination gets going, there's really no turning things around.
One summer when working at Tanglewood when I lived on Friar Tuck Drive in Sherwood Forest, a dark and slithery place, someone gave me snake avoidance training. Apparently snakes can't hear, but they react to ground vibrations, so I'd stomp hard from my car, across the lawn and up the wooden stairs to our house on stilts, only to find mouse shit in the silverware drawer, but that's for some reason not as worrying to me. This prior combat training made it possible for us to take a walk in the Cactus Garden, which was crowded enough that other people were doing the stomping for me.
In this garden, there were various helpful things for visitors - defined paths through the cacti, a sign explaining that everything in nature has a purpose except chollas, which are incredibly painful if you get stuck by one, and a little metal box on the ground that was covered with stickers and had a wire attached to it with a pair of pliers. As we watched instagram moments being staged, we heard a woman's blood curdling wail that didn't end. Well of course I thought snake. But as we drew closer, we saw a 20-something girl with two separate balls of these prickers stuck to her hand. She was inconsolable, though her friends tried hard. We mentioned the pliers and when we left, saw her availing herself of them, no less comfortable.
We left the park and were peckish, so decided to try our luck at La Copine, hoping to score walk-in seats. Though located in the desolate community of Yucca Flats, scattered with mobile homes, adult video stores and a Dollar General, one needs to make reservations months in advance to lunch here. Sure enough, there in this arid landscape was a room full of perfectly groomed casual LA people eating many varieties of cute vegetables. No room for us, unfortunately.
I was hungry enough to eat my own hand, or some super hot Doritos from the 7-11, but was saved when my food buddy calmed me down enough to guid us across the road, to a honky tonk sort of place where we sat outside, chatted and watched the world go by, enjoying a fine pizza and salad.
LA traffic is real. The trauma is too fresh to relive just now.
We were separating in LA, she going to Beverly Hills, me to Santa Monica, both staying with Korean friends, so arranged to meet for dinner at Soowon Galbi in Korea Town the next night. Things started to go awry when we realized we hadn't changed the one clock we were relying on for a time to leave. Rushing to this gritty and colorful neighborhood, my friend had trouble parking her shiny fancy car, making me happy for my nondescript VW Golf that few would want. We made an interesting, new friend at dinner and enjoyed japchae and black cod in some kind of kimchiish sauce. Upon leaving, we hit a deep pothole and immediately had a flat tire. Still in a crappy neighborhood, we pulled into the Rite Aid/Burger King parking lot to think about our future. After multiple back and forth calls with the emergency service people, we divined that some cars, including hers, have tires that can be driven on when flat, so after sitting around for ages in the car, got home without incident.
Deb and I have been friends for a long time, and have quite a history together. There's the time we went on a road trip when we didn't phone in one night and our families were convinced we had been arrested in Alabama for possession of weed (not the case, we never got caught), that crazy week in Cozumel, some memorable nights on Newbury Street, a New Years Eve at the Chuck Wagon in Wayne, Maine and lots of laughs in the Penthouse Bar at the Huntley in Santa Monica. So while we're both old and boring and don't really drink anymore, we went back and had a happy hour or two before coming home exhausted from being out two nights in a row!
Do you ever just feel like you are absolutely 100% at the right place at the right time? Thi coffee shop, I could stay there all day and just can't wait to sit there every morning to watch the show. It might be because the room is mostly white, which makes everyone more colorful, but by later in my stay in Santa Monica, I'd actually given up on bringing my notebook to write, which never happens. A little backstory on the vibe there. The cashiers and baristas each wear their uber coolness, including the perhaps 75+ year old Central American man who makes the prettiest coffees, and I did at first get a somewhat frosty reception while seeing they chatted up others. That on my last day there, I got "I'm sorry, I don't recall your name" was a big win, prompting me to contemplate changing my return ticket to Boston.
On my last day there, I scored a prime seat, sitting next to a man I'd seen before who was somewhat untidy looking, perhaps in his 80's, with lots of folded pieces of paper on his table that he diligently wrote on, in pencil. While he didn't ask me if I'd found Jesus, he did ask me if I liked this coffee shop and said it had the spirit of Jesus in it. Now, it's an interesting place, this coffee shop, but more because it's somewhere people who live in $10M houses in carefully chosen tattered clothes or skateboard sneakers or trucker hats go for their coffee runs, not because their hands are calloused from carrying too many buckets of water to folks who need it (not that the two are mutually exclusive). On my neighbor went, making references to the Bible with everything he or I mentioned, though interestingly, not when I told him I was from Boston, which left him speechless. I get it.
So, yeah, back in the Baystate, but the sun's shining, I've talked to my girl, am chatting with a friend soon, have paddle lined up for later today and I'm off to join Saturday. Have a nice weekend, all.
- Published on
After graduating high school during COVID, Nat began her university studies online. Because her professors were in Utrecht, her classes began at 3am. She worked in our sombre sage walled guest room with little natural light, negating the hope of her body achieving any kind of rhythm. So we made a plan to get her to the Netherlands by12/31/20, the day before Brexit became official and her UK citizenship could no longer be converted to EU.
It was a difficult time for us to travel, not only due to COVID, but because by then Philip and I had decided to split up but didn't want to drop that bomb on before Nat set off for freshman year in a foreign country during a pandemic. So off the three of us went, each isolated and disoriented in our own ways. Nat's housing wasn't available until early February, so Philip stayed for a week and I until she was moved in.
After Philip left, Nat and I got a little place on the old canal, centrally located near, well, nothing, because there were only grey, shiny cobblestones and a regular pelting rain. The shops were closed except for the supermarket, and there was almost no one on the streets. There was nothing to do, nowhere to go, and no one to talk to, with unknowns about Nat's school and this bad news I was carrying, weighing ever so heavily.
There were bright spots. I was with my favorite child, we had a lot of good one-on-one time before having to say a difficult goodbye. Our flat was sweet, my bedroom was a tiny bit bigger than the twin bed and bedside table it contained, looking out on the canal with a window ledge that held a bunch of muscari in a glass, which contrasted nicely with the all-white room. And there were the many pretty rooftops to admire as we'd both sit and look out the windows, sometimes drawing, talking, listening to the satisfying clackety clack of the occasional squeaky bike moving over the loose bricks down below. There was also the flower market, once a week, but the damp and cold usually pushed us away quickly. It was in Utrecht that my TV addiction began as we watched New Zealand Survivor under the guise of doing research for some fiction I was going to create about characters in our Brookline neighborhood being stuck on an island with their big and odd personalities. Never did get that started...
There were limited ways to celebrate Nat's birthday, but we decided to go to Amsterdam and stay at the Pulitzer Hotel, where some of Ocean's 12 had been filmed. The bright side of the trip was that the hordes of wasted British stags were locked up, the dark side was the lack of bathrooms, as everything was closed. But the hotel was nice and welcoming, four new and different walls.
While I've always found Amsterdam picturesque, even charming, there's always been a feeling of something else going on not related to the tulips, bikes and brown bars, an energy that brings me back to New Orleans and what I remember as the smell of raw meat and humid air noisy with crazy juju. Because Amsterdam was empty of tourists on this visit, it was easier to see locals and what I'll call the seamy underbelly of the city. This led me down a reading rabbit hole, starting with the kidnapping of Freddy Heineken, moved to the incarceration of the two thugs, Cor and William, who kidnapped him, Peter de Vries, the Dutch journalist who was then alive and in touch with these characters, then onto the drug trade that comes through Rotterdam, involuntary sex trade, the penal system and Lordy knows what else. So, it was interesting to add a layer and see my views shift.
Getting ready to go back there at a time when tourists have returned, Nat is at home and I'm sane, I've been wondering what message I'll get and how it will change. Then I got to wondering how the messages I receive from cities compare. If cities were books, here are my titles, yours will surely be different:
Amsterdam: Look But Don't Touch
London: Welcome, Welcome
Lisbon: I Weep For All We Have Lost
Valletta: Father Knows Best
Istanbul: Curse You and Your Whorish Mother*
Stockholm: Live Well and Prosper, Citizen
Rio: Only Today
Rome: Ciao. Bella!
Paris: Seriously?
Boston: Mmmm, We Don't Do That
Brattleboro: You Be You, I Be Me
Chicago: Please, Take, It's For You
DC: Sure, You're Important
Los Angeles: The. Best.
Miami: I'd Love Another, Babe
New Orleans: Careful, careful where you go
New York: Do The Hustle
Palm Springs: Adorbs
Portland, ME: Who The Heck Am I?
San Francisco: Do the Right Thing
*I know, not nice, but been there twice, dressed respectfully, harassed mercilessly. Still loved it
It was a difficult time for us to travel, not only due to COVID, but because by then Philip and I had decided to split up but didn't want to drop that bomb on before Nat set off for freshman year in a foreign country during a pandemic. So off the three of us went, each isolated and disoriented in our own ways. Nat's housing wasn't available until early February, so Philip stayed for a week and I until she was moved in.
After Philip left, Nat and I got a little place on the old canal, centrally located near, well, nothing, because there were only grey, shiny cobblestones and a regular pelting rain. The shops were closed except for the supermarket, and there was almost no one on the streets. There was nothing to do, nowhere to go, and no one to talk to, with unknowns about Nat's school and this bad news I was carrying, weighing ever so heavily.
There were bright spots. I was with my favorite child, we had a lot of good one-on-one time before having to say a difficult goodbye. Our flat was sweet, my bedroom was a tiny bit bigger than the twin bed and bedside table it contained, looking out on the canal with a window ledge that held a bunch of muscari in a glass, which contrasted nicely with the all-white room. And there were the many pretty rooftops to admire as we'd both sit and look out the windows, sometimes drawing, talking, listening to the satisfying clackety clack of the occasional squeaky bike moving over the loose bricks down below. There was also the flower market, once a week, but the damp and cold usually pushed us away quickly. It was in Utrecht that my TV addiction began as we watched New Zealand Survivor under the guise of doing research for some fiction I was going to create about characters in our Brookline neighborhood being stuck on an island with their big and odd personalities. Never did get that started...
There were limited ways to celebrate Nat's birthday, but we decided to go to Amsterdam and stay at the Pulitzer Hotel, where some of Ocean's 12 had been filmed. The bright side of the trip was that the hordes of wasted British stags were locked up, the dark side was the lack of bathrooms, as everything was closed. But the hotel was nice and welcoming, four new and different walls.
While I've always found Amsterdam picturesque, even charming, there's always been a feeling of something else going on not related to the tulips, bikes and brown bars, an energy that brings me back to New Orleans and what I remember as the smell of raw meat and humid air noisy with crazy juju. Because Amsterdam was empty of tourists on this visit, it was easier to see locals and what I'll call the seamy underbelly of the city. This led me down a reading rabbit hole, starting with the kidnapping of Freddy Heineken, moved to the incarceration of the two thugs, Cor and William, who kidnapped him, Peter de Vries, the Dutch journalist who was then alive and in touch with these characters, then onto the drug trade that comes through Rotterdam, involuntary sex trade, the penal system and Lordy knows what else. So, it was interesting to add a layer and see my views shift.
Getting ready to go back there at a time when tourists have returned, Nat is at home and I'm sane, I've been wondering what message I'll get and how it will change. Then I got to wondering how the messages I receive from cities compare. If cities were books, here are my titles, yours will surely be different:
Amsterdam: Look But Don't Touch
London: Welcome, Welcome
Lisbon: I Weep For All We Have Lost
Valletta: Father Knows Best
Istanbul: Curse You and Your Whorish Mother*
Stockholm: Live Well and Prosper, Citizen
Rio: Only Today
Rome: Ciao. Bella!
Paris: Seriously?
Boston: Mmmm, We Don't Do That
Brattleboro: You Be You, I Be Me
Chicago: Please, Take, It's For You
DC: Sure, You're Important
Los Angeles: The. Best.
Miami: I'd Love Another, Babe
New Orleans: Careful, careful where you go
New York: Do The Hustle
Palm Springs: Adorbs
Portland, ME: Who The Heck Am I?
San Francisco: Do the Right Thing
*I know, not nice, but been there twice, dressed respectfully, harassed mercilessly. Still loved it