In Praise of Essays

By Randon Billings Noble Yesterday afternoon the twins were napping, rain was just starting to prattle through the leaves outside my window, and I was curled up with a cup of tea and a collection of The Best American Essays.

This is when I realized:  Something happens when I read essays---something that doesn't happen when I read novels or short stories or even memoirs.  I feel . . . enlarged.

The essay in this collection that brought my attention to this feeling was  "After the Ice" by Paul Crenshaw.  I won't write much about the content of the essay---I'd rather you read it yourself and let it unfold for you---but here is a passage that starts to show what I'm talking about:

"After the funeral, while my family gathered in the living room of my grandmother's house and some of the men stood on the front porch and talked of violence, I walked through the woods on my grandmother's land.  It was stifling inside the house, and loud with the sounds that accompany death, but outside it was cold and still.  The air hovered right around freezing, and the light mist that fell could not decide whether it wanted to be snow or rain.  Late in the afternoon, the dark came early, and by the time I turned around to walk back only the porch light was visible.  The rain had finally made a decision, and the only sound around me was ice on frozen leaves."

Nothing really happens in this passage.  But something does.  A boy leaves a crowded house and walks in the woods.  Something elusive but meaningful shifts during this walk, even though we never learn exactly what: the passage ends with a section break, and on the other side of that white space a new line of thought begins.  But the moment is captured.  A dilated moment of meaning.

When I finished reading I sat for a while.  The rain was coming down hard and steady, filling the room with its fresh green smell, and there was thunder in the distance.  This moment---this moment on my couch with the tea cold at my elbow and the rain outside and the feeling of this essay settling in my mind and somehow lightly tingeing it forever---this moment felt enlarged.  It felt important.  It felt connected to the moments that Crenshaw describes, walking through the woods after the funeral or driving by an empty house or standing in the backyard at night after a snowfall.  And it promised me that my own future moments---tonight holding one of the twins after a nightmare, later this summer looking out a window in New Hampshire, years from now running my hand absently along a stalk in a field of lavender---these moments would have the same largeness, the same sense of importance, even if I never wrote them down.

And maybe that's what essays do: they call attention to moments---real, lived moments---and that's all that is needed.  Attention.  Attending.  We notice and we wait and we serve the silent shift that marks the internal change from "then" to "now and forever after."

A moment in the woods.  In the dark backyard.  On the couch with a hard summer rain falling outside.  Sometimes that's all it takes to know that our course has been subtly shifted---to whatever our new future holds.

Lovely illustration by Akiko Kato 

In Lieu of a Tandem Bicycle

My fiancé commutes by bike most days. Roundtrip, it’s a five-mile ride, and from what I can tell, it’s uphill both ways. When I moved here to Atlanta from Boston in June, he’d been riding this route nearly every day for a year. Before that, he’d been riding in Boston, unphased by snow and ice and rain and groceries. There, he taught me how to ride in the city and waited patiently while I freaked out about traffic and potholes.

On Sunday, I surveyed the unfamiliar bike that had been borrowed on my behalf---I’d left my rusty Schwinn in Boston---and agreed to come along on his daily route. For the past few weeks, I’ve been busy trying to carve out a place for myself in this new-to-me city. In countless interviews and new-girl conversations, I’ve been trying to find a way to explain that I belong here too, as an individual, even though we’re in this together.

Finally, on Sunday, I decided it was time to catch a glimpse of the shape of his life---those mysterious pockets of “his life” scattered at the periphery of “our life,” which we’ve been working so diligently to arrange, together.

For him, riding is a way to get where you’re going, and fast. It’s about independence and shortcuts and bypassing traffic jams. For me, riding a bike is something I did as a child, meandering around the block, keeping to the sidewalk, never traveling much faster than a jog.

I have visions of the two us riding off into the sunset on our bikes. It’s a vision that’s soft around the edges, and in it, I’m wearing a chambray sundress that somehow never flies up or gets stuck in the wheels. Somehow I never have trouble keeping up with my handsome partner, and I certainly never sweat.

Our real life Sunday ride turned out to be a vision of another kind. Stephen cruised along effortlessly, perfectly suited up in his bike gear. I lagged behind, sweating and huffing the whole way, silently cursing the gods who created bicycles, and even worse, hills. My imaginary self would have made pleasant conversation (“What a lovely morning!”), but my real self could only muster the occasional pathetic squeak in response to check-ins as to whether I was still alive.

He looked at me with concern and a bit of remorse as I dragged myself and my bike up the very last hill.

“Maybe we should have started with a shorter ride?” He wondered out loud.

I quit panting long enough to shrug my shoulders. “Might be more fun on a tandem bike,” I offered, wading through the thickening summer heat.

Often it feels important and necessary to test my own limits and prove my own strength. Perhaps sometimes it’s simpler, though, and sweeter, to partner up, pedal in sync, and push through the hills and valleys together.

What Are You Reading (Offline, that is)?

Liz Moody, a freelance writer and former newspaper columnist, now runs a lifestyle blog, Things That Make Us.  Her posts about sex, love, travel and being a 20something in this crazy world (and, of course, the Point of Writing series) can be found at http://www.thingsthatmakeus.com.  Follow her on Twitter at @lizcmoody.  I spend a lot of time (too much!) thinking about the point of the written word, what function writing serves in the world at large.  Through my blog, I’ve gotten the opportunity to ask some amazing writers, and have received incredibly diverse and insightful responses.  “Writing allows the spotlight’s beam to cast outward into our society, then begin to illuminate ills and joys in ways we hadn’t allowed before,” says Kevin Salwen, author of The Power of Half (and my uncle).  My friend Hannah thinks that writing expands people’s capacity for empathy, while my other friend Chris thinks:  “Being able to feel from another person’s vantage point turns out to be nothing but intense self-examination.  What you’re doing, really, is finding out what it means to be you.”

I, of course, ask other people because I haven’t yet decided what my thoughts on the matter are.  The purpose has morphed over time, from the large type books I read when I was first learning how to interpret words on a page to the perfect world of Sweet Valley that I hid my face in as I walked to and from elementary school, on the bus and on the playground to avoid the less than perfect awkwardness of talking to real people.  There were the books I read in college to gain literary street cred, able to drop names with the pretentiousness one goes to college to learn.  Now, though, I’m free to read books for purely my personal relationship with them, free of other necessities or circumstances.  If I were to say what, right now, I believe the purpose of writing is, it would simply: to make us feel things.   If I close a book with my belly sore from laughter, it’s accomplished its purpose.  If I close a book with tears streaming down my face, all the better.  These are a few of the books that have made me feel the most:

Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion The opening essay, “Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream,” radiantly captures the optimism of California gone awry.  It tells one story of one family in one town, in a way that is both incredibly intimate and incredibly universal.  It always leaves me with an eerie feeling, where I’m unable to talk to people or feel completely settled in whatever environment I’m in.

A taste:  “I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind's door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends.”

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides Beginning as a Greek epic, seguing into a tale of an immigrant family’s American dream, and brilliantly interweaving a coming-of-age story, Middlesex, to me, is about figuring out what it means to be oneself. The book manages to be incredibly complex and lyrically written while maintaining an easy read, page-turner quality.  I alternated between sobbing and feeling incredibly uplifted, in between wondering:  how did someone write this?

A taste:  “Emotions, in my experience, aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in "sadness," "joy," or "regret." … I'd like to have a word for "the sadness inspired by failing restaurants" as well as for "the excitement of getting a room with a minibar." I've never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I've entered my story, I need them more than ever. ”

When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris While I love all of Sedaris’s books, this one is where I feel he really hit his stride.  I read an interview with him where someone asked if he worried he was going to run out of material (Sedaris writes nonfiction, often mining his past).   Sedaris answered that the more he wrote, the less “big” things he wrote about, and the more he liked his pieces for it.  This book is often about the subtle moments that matter in the every day.  It veers from don’t-read-in-public laughter worthy (a Neanderthal take on the college experience) to incredibly poignant insights on family and friendships.  This will be the funniest death-themed book you’ll ever read.

A taste:  “I think about death all the time, but only in a romantic, self-serving way, beginning, most often, with my tragic illness and ending with my funeral. I see my brother squatting beside my grave, so racked by guilt that he’s unable to stand. “If only I’d paid him back that twenty-five thousand dollars I borrowed,” he says. I see Hugh, drying his eyes on the sleeve of his suit jacket, then crying even harder when he remembers I bought it for him.”

Delicate Edible Birds by Lauren Groff A collection of short stories wherein each story has the emotional payoff of a novel is not an easy thing to come by.  I often had to set down the book as I finished a story, in order to let the story properly marinate in my head.  The pieces are wildly diverse: a baton twirler’s path to motherhood and meaning, a polio victim and her unlikely lover, the role of water in the world, and in one life.  While the form, particularly, allows Groff to tug on a wide range of emotions, the one I felt most acutely was a sense of loss, a pang in my stomach and chest of something I was now missing that I didn’t know was gone.

A taste:  “There is no ending, no neatness to this story. There never really is where water is concerned. It is wild, febrile, kind, ambiguous; it is dark and carries the mud, and it is clear and the cleanest thing. Too much of it kills us, and not enough kills us, and it is what makes us, mostly. Water is the cleverest substance, wily beyond the stretch of our mortal imaginations. And no matter where it is pent, no matter if it is air or liquid or solid, it will someday, inevitably, find its way out.”

Are you, like me, seeking emotion as you turn pages, or do you read for another reason? What do you think is the purpose of books?

You can go home again.

At least twice a year, I come back to my hometown in California for a visit.  The goal is to get back here every quarter, which, in the math of our crowded lives typically translates into every six months.  These trips take on significance beyond a vacation.  They are a form of meditation for me, a head-clearing journey back in time. While many people avoid visceral reminders of the person they have been, I seek them out whenever possible.  In the movies, characters often return home to revisit glories from their youth or to avenge some wrong that they carry into adulthood.  This is not my story---it is nothing so black and white.  I do, however, perform some touchstone rituals that allow me to take stock.

Along with every German backpacker and family from Minnetonka, I pay a visit to the seals at the Cove.  I stand on the wall above the beach where, as a child, I spent hours diving to examine sea creatures and baking on the course sand.  I watch the slippery, spotted beasts cuddling close in the sun and am reminded of piling onto the roof of the car with my brother to watch a drive-in movie on a summer evening.  I walk up the hill along the water to a patch of grass that saw a friend’s mother’s psychotic break, a cottage that was the site of a first date turned into a marriage turned into an excruciating divorce and a cliff where I learned to bring my battered heart to the ocean.

As with so many aspects of my life, all this revisiting is at once healthy and productive and also like repeatedly running my tongue over a sore tooth.  I am afforded multiple opportunities to process the wounds and confusion of childhood and make some adult sense of things.  I am flooded with the sugar rush of memories from a mostly charmed young existence.  I call up primal fear and devastation and then forgive myself and everyone else.  I hit up every frozen yogurt joint in America’s Finest City because it just tastes better here.

Back home in New York, I have rituals, but they are rooted in keeping my present life manageable.  I fold the towels in the kitchen just so.  I put pacifiers in every room, ensuring I always have one at-the-ready.  I put ice cubes in Ruby’s dog bowl in the morning hoping her water will stay chilled for a few hours.  I approach the apartment through Fort Greene on my way home so I feel like I live in a nicer neighborhood.  The million and one things like this that comprise and organize my days feel like some version of a lifeline and I suppose have some relationship to my identity.  I don’t cook, but I like a clean kitchen.  I am a mother to child and bulldog, alike.  I worry about the shady dudes on my street corner.  But without a periodic anchoring to the chapters that have come before, I start to feel adrift.

I wonder whether moments in time will come to have the same power in my new(er) city.  In that place, I am collecting formative experiences all the time.  And I know that someday I will trot my daughter around and show her the block where her father first made me swoon on the walk back to the apartment that would become my home.  I will take her to the stoplight where we sat idling with her three-day-old, tiny, chicken of a self stuffed into a carseat on the way home from the hospital while they played that one song on the radio that it seemed like we must have willed them to play.  I will sit her on the Great Lawn and describe a hazy afternoon when we talked about books and politics for hours and I realized I could see myself moving back here so that this conversation would continue on forever.

The snapshots of life are more convoluted now.  They are messier portraits, built on layers of knowledge that temper the way they imprint on the psyche.  Perhaps coming back here and slogging through ancient history is a therapist’s version of escapism?  It is infinitely easier to solve the puzzles of the past than it is to do the complicated work of the present.  Still, I like the idea of looping back around again and again to find new twists on the narrative.  Each round brings me closer to this moment, where I have the chance to re-engage my story with a few extra insights.

Outdoor Movies

I’ve never been to a drive-in movie. This is surprising, mostly, because given the chance to partake in anything that smacks even remotely of another era, I’ll be the first to sign up. I know I can’t be the only one daydreaming of necking while the latest sci-fi thriller goes unwatched in the background. I keep telling myself, one day.

In my own defense, active drive-ins are increasingly difficult to find. While I won’t claim to be an expert on the subject, I think we can probably blame increased land values and the incredible ease with which we can all watch movies from the comfort of our homes. Surely, there’s something wise to be said about an increased cultural tendency to turn inward and something else about folks’ unwillingness to pass a cozy evening surrounded by their favorite and least favorite neighbors.

While the drive-in movie might be largely a relic from another time, there’s an alternative to be found in movies playing in outdoors in city parks. Judging from the crowds at these cinematic evenings, I’d hazard the guess that more people than we realize relish the opportunity for some quality time surrounded by other humans under an open sky.

Last week, my fiance James and I joined throngs of our fellow New Yorkers to watch To Kill A Mockingbird in Brooklyn Bridge Park. The scene was impressive. The lawn was full to overflowing with families and friends and, in the case of the duo in front of us, very amorous young couples. Many of them packed dinner picnics and set up a hodge-podge of sleek picnic blankets and dirty beach towels to take in the film and the sunset over the East River. I imagine half the crew was seeking refuge from their overly air-conditioned offices and the other half sought the cool breeze coming off the river after a day of sweating it out without any.

Whatever the reason for being there, it was utterly delightful to be surrounded by so many happy movie-goers. The sun setting behind lower Manhattan alone would have been worth the walk down to the park, but seeing so many people enjoying it together, well, that just about got me choked up. If you’ve got a hankering for a little summertime movie adventure, or are feeling bummed out about a summer in the city, I heartily recommend trying to catch an outdoor movie or two. If you’re not in New York, never you fear. There are outdoor movies screening in cities all across the globe. Check out your local listings and make a pact to go. It'll be worth it.

YWRB: What We Rebel For

By Amanda Page Essays were written. We collected them and took them to the head of the English department. We handed him our short stack and waited. We waited for his reaction, for his feedback. We stood in his office, terrified, exhilarated, proud of ourselves for taking this on, scared of ourselves for the same reason.

Maybe we wanted his approval. Instead, we received, with apprehension, a question: what does rebellion mean to you? He didn’t want to disappoint us, that much was clear. But he wanted us to understand that something was missing.

“Right now,” he said, “all I’m reading is several stories about drinking in bars and meeting boys.”

It was early in the project and we were in our early twenties. Drinking in bars and meeting boys was a significant slice of our collective experience.  He went on to say that we needed to have a point, a reason to rebel. We knew he was right, but we challenged him anyway. My memory wants to share a moment where one of us (Amy) dared him to see past the surface to what we were really saying. I don’t remember exactly, and it both kills me and relieves me. I want to say that he responded by daring us to do the same.

We were orbiting the point, just discovering the lesson.

I don’t remember where we found it or who gave it to us, but we happened upon the Marlon Brando quote from The Wild Ones. A girl asks him, “What are you rebelling against?”

He answers, “What have you got?”

Well, we had plenty.

It’s too easy to look back and assign ourselves things to rebel against. I also think that we weren’t rebelling against things. Our rebellion didn’t look like rebellion, which could be seen as a type of rebellion. But we weren’t protesting, we weren’t overtly political, we didn’t have one particular issue that pushed us or for us to push back.

I like to think that we were rebelling in the service of something. We were rebelling for something, not so much against. The idea was to share some instruction on how to rebel, how to live, how to be a young woman writer. We were writing it in real time.

It’s clear to me now, that our rebellion was an attempt to figure out how to live our lives authentically---how to live an authentic life. Every act of authenticity is an act of rebellion. If we rebelled against anything, it was the script. When you’re about to graduate from college, your options can feel limited. You can be overwhelmed with choices, and paralyzed by the pressure to choose. We fought against that pressure, those expectations, often from well-meaning family and friends and professors and advisors.

The most we could hope for was to make interesting lives for ourselves. And at that point, the interesting stuff was boys and bars.

Of course, there was more. By claiming any kind of power over our own lives, we were rebelling against many things: parental expectations, societal expectations, what we’d been taught and what we’d been told to expect for ourselves.

That’s where essays served us most. We claimed our power by claiming our stories. By owning our experiences, through how we wrote them, we created respect for them. I learned to respect my own stories. I learned the power in having a story, and in telling it. The YWRB project made my stories matter at a time when no one wants you to trust yourself. But I trusted my stories. I trusted Amy’s stories. I believed our stories mattered. Our stories mattered. That’s all anyone can ever hope for. That’s what we were trying to say to other young women: Your story matters.

That’s what I rebelled for.

Alone

“Run the marathon with me,” says my best friend (who also happens to be my business partner), “I don’t want to train for it alone.” At the time, her husband is contemplating taking a job 3,000 miles away, in our hometown. We are both hoping to move back in a few years—this city is the bullseye of our 30’s. Our lives are so intertwined that when she mentions him interviewing for it, the job isn’t even contained within the realm of possible. I take it as seriously as if she had told me he was buying a unicorn. I sign up for the marathon on a whim; running a marathon is on my bucket list, and who wants to do anything alone? We are going to train together, to run together. This marathon is to be another check on our list of things that we’ve done, together. We’ve built our business on the principles of wellness and prioritize making time for our friendship amongst our busy days. Our love of running (and ability to run together--no small feat for two lone-wolf runners) binds us; of course this would be something we would tackle together.

I get the message while I am finishing up some work for the evening: “He got the job.” And then within a matter of days, it’s final: my best friend is moving away. Far, far away. I feel happiness for her (she’ll be so close to her family) and deep, deep grief for the moments that I realize may not come the way we had expected them to (We always bring our girls to see Santa together, I worry about her kids not remembering me). At the core, below it all, I am desperately afraid of being left alone.

We were fast friends, bonded by our California roots and our preppy east coast husbands. Running together early on was a test of the potential in our friendship. Our first run together took us over a sun-dappled gravel path that smelled of decaying wood and fresh undergrowth in New Hampshire. It was the summer I got married, before spending our time together in the summer was happily consumed by organizing activities for our sunscreen-slathered children with impossible blonde highlights. She was training for a marathon. Before we started running, I had visions of being left far behind, huffing and puffing in an embarrassing attempt to catch up. That melted away once we started out. Our steps fell into synch, our paces compatible. This, I thought, could be a great friend. Towards the end, as our conversation waned and our breathing and footsteps were all that broke the silence, we realized that we had both stopped sweating, not for lack of exertion. This found us begging for water at a local bar. It was cool and perfect, and we clinked the plastic cups they had given us in a toast to our inevitable closeness.

She has been my steadfast company in a tumultuous time. Through my husband’s surgical training, where he works countless hours, through the birth of my daughter and the growth of our business, she has been my constant. I am as entwined into her family as I am into my own. I love her kids with the unrelenting ferocity of a blood relative; her little sister makes me feel like less of an only child. In fact, her family is the primary reason that though my husband spends far more hours at work than he does at home, I (and my daughter) have felt neither lonely nor alone. Now, during my runs, I have a desperate and sinking feeling. My brain repeats over and over, “I don’t want to do this alone.” What, exactly, I am afraid of doing alone eludes me. Perhaps this is an indication of the hole that she will leave when she moves.

For the first time, I am running and crying at the same time. With our training for the marathon, I am spending more time on the road. Mostly alone, since our routine has been so upended by this move. Running for me has always been a release, and the metaphor until this point has been of the yogic variety: finding comfort in discomfort, pushing through, knowing when to yield. I ran through teaching special education in the Bronx, through the abject terror of my father’s cancer, through the life-swallowing grief following my grandfather’s death. In these times of hardship, I turned to running to be my constant companion, found solace in its repetitive simplicity. Left, right, repeat. All without tears. To stop the tears, even. With this move comes a new metaphor in my running: I don’t want to do this alone. I’ve always run alone, save for runs with very close friends (I have exactly two people with whom I like to run, not including my dad's running club, many of whom I have known and run with since I started coming home from college). What is it about this time in my life that brings the tears every time I lace up? Running had, for so many years, been my companion; now its companionship reminds me of the one I am losing. This marathon, this move, solidifies for me the simple fact that good company is at the heart of what we all want in life. Yes, misery loves it, but so does joy.

It’s all anyone really wants, isn’t it? A friend to synch steps with; company for life’s path. We look for, and find, companionship in the oddest places. Online, in bars, in friends’ social networks. We find drinking buddies, lovers, friends, husbands, confidants. We curate relationships that we hope will prevent us from being alone---truly alone---on our journey. But, I’m learning (as an unwilling student), interludes of aloneness are inevitable, even with the most loving cultivation of relationships. More than not wanting to face her leaving me, I don’t want to face it alone. A cruel irony. The fact is that it’s only her and me inhabiting our friendship; when she shifts a bit, there is nothing to fill that space, except dull sadness and the fear that she has something to fill the space that I will leave.

A few weeks ago, my left quadriceps started to ache. It was unstretchable, unrestable, unmassageable. Gnawing. I chalked it up to getting older. Then, last week, my right leg began to ache behind my knee, a twinge with each step. As if one leg was incapable of working without the other. Left, right, repeat.

What Are You Reading (Offline, that is)?

This space is usually reserved for books, sometimes magazines, but always the printed word. At risk of romanticizing the tactile pleasure of physically marking where you’ve left off (are you a corner-folder or a book marker?), feeling the right side lighten with every page flip, or getting the perfect crease in the newspaper allowing you to hold it with one hand while balancing a coffee in the other, I will say that print will always be cozier—in my mind, friendlier—than digital words. But some print publications are fleeting and I feel incredibly lucky to live in a time when an article I’ve read, dog-eared, carried with me even, can be shared via the internet.

***

I love books. I’ve loved them unrelentingly since my first wobbly attempts at reading—maybe closer to memorization—when I was still small enough to be afraid of the dark and was, thus, the proud owner of a flashlight, perfect for illuminating pages under my covers. In elementary school, I once got into mild trouble for reading a too-good-to-put-down-for-an-entire-school-day novel on my lap during an unnecessarily long lesson on soil erosion. So you can imagine my surprise when during a particularly tumultuous time in my life, I’ve found myself unable to give a book my full attention or to still my thoughts long enough to form my own sentences.

It was only during this past year that I truly released the notion that we would move west. We renovated our apartment to include an office big enough for daily work sessions with my business partner/best friend and co-worker/sister, settled our daughter in an adorable preschool, found a nanny for our son who puts Mary Poppins to shame, and helped my sister move from an apartment upstairs to one literally right next door. Life being what it is, we had only just settled into this routine that felt worthy of forever when my husband got a job offer in San Francisco—at a company he’d admired for years, doing exactly what he wants to do, with people who could aptly be described as awesome.

In some ways this move is a no-brainer. Even putting aside my husband’s opportunity, there is a lifetime of reasons why our family should settle in San Francisco. One of the first things that people learn upon meeting me is that I’m a Northern Californian. My husband and I got married in Napa. Our dog is named Tahoe. I refer to the Bay Area as “home” (I also happen to refer to New York as home, but that’s fodder for another time). My huge extended family spans the west coast from San Jose to Seattle, with three quarters of them living in the Bay Area; our holiday gatherings have been described as epic. But it was sudden and I’m sad (which is a huge step up from the first few weeks after this news when I would have said heartbroken).

While books, even some of my forever-favorites, haven’t soothed my anxiety or even temporarily diverted my attention from this looming change, essays and articles that seem to have been written with me in mind have found their way into my purse. I pull them out—all crumpled and soft from the friction of my wallet, phone, and stray chapsticks—and read snippets when I’m feeling particularly heartsick. They’re worry stones for my mind.

***

I’ve always been a loyalist—none of that flitting around from thing to thing for me. I excel at commitment. My upcoming move wasn’t even a topic of conversation when I came upon this article, “The Joys of Staying Put,” over a year ago. Apparently, there are people who live in their New York apartments for a lifetime, generations even (see also “100 Years of Staying Put”). These are my people, my tribe. This article may have been the catalyst for my decision to live not just in the same city or same neighborhood, but the same apartment . . . forever.

The funny thing is, our apartment isn’t even that great. I mean it’s reasonably sized by Manhattan standards, it’s a duplex, and it has a backyard. Oh, and our rent is below market in a neighborhood we love. It’s also what a good realtor would call “charming” or “full of character,” meaning it’s old, creaky, and will always have a thin veil of dirt, no matter how hard you scrub. None of that really matters though because we hear the birds chirp every morning and one of the neighbors with an adjacent yard plays classical music on his outdoor speakers most afternoons (though everyone on the backside of our block, at one point or another, thought we lived in listening distance of a great pianist). Only one other person seems to understand: the late and great Nora Ephron. Her brilliant essay, “Moving On,” about falling in love and leaving an apartment, is everything I feel. Like one of her movies, I read this piece and find myself laughing through my tears.

Now I’m in what Thomas Beller calls the “In-Between Days.” We technically still live in New York, but we’ve been traveling to and from San Francisco. Our count of the New York days we have left is close to single digits. Every experience has the potential of being characterized as “the last”—last impromptu backyard grill party, last day of pounding lattes and never watching videos of animals doing funny things in the office, last run up the Great Hill. Then there are the saddest ones of all—last stroll through an empty wing of the Museum of Natural History while our daughter makes up elaborate stories about the exhibits and our son interjects with animal noises, last family walk during off-leash hours where our little ones scramble up the rock they’ve termed “the mountain,” and the kids’ last ride on the double-swing my husband hung in our backyard (the one baby Jack is only just big enough to hold on to himself). There’s a real danger of letting every moment become too precious to be real.

Despite my temptation to squeeze the life out of our last days in the only home I’ve known for my adult life and to document everything we do prior to our move for posterity, I’m trying to remember that I don’t have to. I should be marveling at my luck. Unlike Joyce Maynard, I’ve fallen in love with a place that in all likelihood will remain right where it is for the entirety of my life and my kids’ lives too. In Maynard’s essay, “Paradise Lost,” she describes her grief and finally acceptance when rising waters slowly submerged her home and haven on Lake Atitlán. Her surrender to the reality of life came when she realized "The idea that any of what we have will last forever is a dream." If we hadn't changed our life by deciding to move across the country some other circumstances would have. We'll cry, we'll move, and then we'll visit an ever-changing New York through our ever-changing eyes.

Lessons from traveling...

Dearest Clara, We are still on the move---one week into a seventeen day trip.  This time around we have been taking you on a bit of a sentimental journey though you are much too young to remember these places or even understand their significance.  But don’t worry, one day we will certainly take you again.  In the meantime, we will take lots of pictures for you to remember this by.

We travel a lot, whether for fun or for work---it is a bit the nature of the job we signed up to do.  But even if we hadn’t, I have a feeling we would continue to move about anyway.  Traveling can open up the mind to so much, but it certainly can be draining as well.  Keep these things in mind when you find yourself on the go---my bet is that you’ll take after your parents.

• Don’t pack more than you can carry: I think this is rule number one.  If you yourself can’t carry it, you probably don’t need it.  My rule of thumb is one roller board and a folded duffle inside for the trip home (inevitably, you always come back with more).  But remember, you shouldn’t be dependent on anyone when it comes to just carrying stuff.
• Ask for help when you need it: That being said, ask for help when you need it.  Some days, your bag will be too heavy, or you’ll find yourself lost.  I always avoided services that booked taxis or brought bags or any countless number of other things, insisting that I do it myself.  That’s a good way to start and a good way to learn, but at some point, it’s okay to get some assistance.  It’s how others make a living, and sometimes, a few dollars more can save you lots of time and frustration and back ache.
• Move around with confidence: You won’t always know where you’re going, but you should always look like it.  You will build confidence in your own abilities to get to where you need to go, but you’ll also stave off any unwelcome attention that finds its way to the lost and unaccompanied.
• Be a gracious traveling companion:  No doubt you will come across myriad of personalities while traveling, and not all of them the nicest.  But traveling brings out funny things in people: some might be sad, upset, coming from or going to a place they would rather not.  Give people the benefit of the doubt and the space they need, and don’t take travel outbursts personally.  Be as gracious and patient as you can, the day will come when you need the same from others.
• Remember your documents and your wallet: I used to worry the entire way to the airport whether I had packed everything.  But my mother always used to ask if I had my passport and my wallet,  and then told me not to worry, anything else you can buy.  Always be able to identify yourself, and always have a couple of ways to get money where you’re going and you’ll always be set.
• Leave something to come back for: When you really love and enjoy a place you’ve visited, leave a little something to return for.  A museum unseen, a picture not taken, a personal item you forgot, a coin in the fountain . . . my mother always said that you should always “leave something to come back for”.

Over the years, you’ll find all of your own little bits of advice to make traveling easier.  You can always start out by laying out what you would like to take, and then taking half the clothes and twice the money.  Drink lots of water, travel with a shawl, and wash your hands a lot.  And of course, send your mother lots of postcards.

All my love,

Mom

He'd have me at Atwood.

Tell me, if you would, what each of these lists has in common.

1984, The Odyssey, Infinite Jest, Super Sad True Love Story. Lots of non-fiction, typically covering: history, science, or art/art theory. Neil deGrasse Tyson/Brian Greene/Richard Feynman. And biographies/autobiographies.

Just finished Nick Flynn's Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, which is incredible. I am sappily fond of David Foster Wallace for many many reasons.

Confederacy of Dunces, Girl Curious Hair (surprised, wanted to really hate him), everything Salinger or Kundera.

Currently reading Life by Keith Richards and miscellaneous repair manuals. Some favorites: White Noise, Libra, Assassination Vacation, Shop Class as Soulcraft, Outliers.

All the Kings Men, The Man in the High Castle, 100 Years of Solitude, The Odyssey, Who Censored Roger Rabbit, The 1,001 Nights, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Catullus.

They are lists of books, it's true. And they're charmingly eclectic, up to a point. I mean, you have to admit that there's something adorable about a list that includes works by both Homer and Neil deGrasse Tyson. But look a little closer, and you might notice something missing: not one of these lists of favorite books includes a single novel written by a woman.

The common thread uniting these? They all herald from the OKCupid profiles of men who've either emailed me or caught my attention in the last few weeks. I haven't met any of these gentlemen in person yet, but they all seem perfectly nice, bright and open-minded. They are men who claim, either in their profiles or in the answers to their questions, a certain level of liberalism---even feminism. But nary a one lists a single book by a woman---not even a freaking short story---as among their favorites.

Whenever I get an email from a promising guy, I dread scrolling down to this part of his profile, knowing that pretty much every time I'm going to feel a twinge of disappointment in a man I otherwise find interesting. Why is it, I ask myself, that none of these men can be bothered to include a woman among their favorite authors? The likely answer, of course, is that they probably haven't read anything by a woman---with the possible exception of Doris Kearns Goodwin---since college. (Habits developed in childhood---which we've discussed before---follow people for life, kids.)

By contrast, here are the favorite books of some awesome, single, straight ladies in the same age range and geography:

A Visit From the Goon Squad (Jennifer Egan), Super Sad True Love Story (Gary Shteyngart), The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (Michael Chabon), The Unnamed (Joshua Ferris).

I have favourites ranging from the Hitchhiker's Guide books to Jane Austen (cliche I know) to Stephen Fry's books.

Beckett, Plath, Hughes, Jack London, Brontës, Poe, Camus, Anthony Minghella's radio plays, Donne, Dostoevsky, Gogol, Strindberg, Thoreau, Marx, artists' journals (especially Munch), T.S. Eliot, Braudel, Benjamin.

Nabokov. Wells Tower. Lorrie Moore. Jennifer Egan. (Writing a list of books could take me forever and would only look boring on screen.)

The Handmaid's Tale, Middlesex, House of Mirth, I Capture The Castle, Persuasion, Grimm's Fairy Tales

This is hardly a scientific survey. But I can't help but think that when men---especially supposedly progressive, liberal, worth-dating men---can't be bothered to read women's writing (or, if nothing else, to cop to it online), we have yet another symptom of our still-yawning gender gap. (On the flip side of things, note the woman who feels the need to temper her love of Austen, one of the Western canon's greatest social satirists, with an aside noting how cliche her admiration is.)

I truly believe that "small" things like this are just the bubbles popping on the surface of a roiling body of sexist water, seemingly benign indicators of the ongoing wage gap (even more notable for women of color), the constant, unending street harassment women face on a daily basis, the one in four women who will be raped in their lifetimes---and on, and on, and on.

Plus, these dudes are missing out on some seriously awesome writing. Margaret Atwood is for real, bros. And would guarantee a reply email, to boot.

Inside the White Picket Fence

By Marni Zarr I met him in sophomore geometry. My head in the clouds over his best friend, the subject of which made easy fodder for conversation. Our instructor happened to be his basketball coach which miraculously made me privy to over the shoulder glances at his correct answers during tests thus saving me from failing. Happy that I had this advantage I was big on smiles and loved conversing with this insider who knew everything I wanted to know about my not so secret crush on his goofy yet charming friend.  In between the hand holding and break ups between his friend and I, the two of us grew into good pals. Hours spent with him on the phone, nothing said in coded whispers as was required with other friends.  I wasn’t afraid of my parent’s overhearing me as I spoke to him through the avocado kitchen rotary, only that our phone time would be cut off before I was ready to say good-bye. The curly cord a slinky in my hand, I’d wind it’s twisting loops through my toes while talking and daydream about compliments from the older girls in the P.E. locker room. One insisted I should be a foot model. The perfect shape and always polished, the only blemish a growing bunion on the right side, enough to squash that idea. My self doting thoughts were suddenly interrupted by his innocent question, “So what about going to the movies with me this weekend?”

My parents prejudices were a good cover-up for my own fear. I wasn’t totally comfortable with the thought of going on a date, although I considered him a friend, a black guy. Would people think he was my boyfriend? Would they stare and tag me with another accessory like my religion that I wasn’t comfortable carrying around? Did I want to say no but blame my parents prejudices as a shield for my own? How could I decline without hurting his feelings? All of these thoughts swirled in my head like an alphabet soup of questions whirring audibly in a blender, a jumble of words and feelings that in the end was so thick and unrecognizable my thoughts a messy mush. and then, the honest answer rose to the top, “ I can’t, I have to be sixteen to date.” Although valid, we both communicated the understood underlying truth with an awkward moment of silence.

Who knows what would have happened if I had been allowed to experience my first date with him. I could sense his feelings for me were different than mine for him, but his character spoke only of respect. I could have breached my parent’s rules and told them I was going to a movie with a girlfriend and met him there but didn’t. Instead I packed the incident neatly away, we stayed friends, I denied my feelings, and life went on with the blame pinned to my parents, folding my confusion neatly away to be dealt with later.

We remained friends while the dating excuse covered the dark truth until late winter. Still three months shy of my 16th birthday I successfully convinced my parents to lift the dating rule, “just this once.”  The most popular boy in high school, a year ahead of me had asked me out on a Valentine’s date.  Possessing perfect all American good boy looks with mischievous sparkly blue eyes and a California like carelessness to his confident athletic walk, he was the stud of the school. How I was chosen to be his valentine crush was never clear . . . to anyone. He was the boy on a pedestal. The one that everyone remembers.

All nerves electric at the sound of the doorbell, awkward introductions were made and off we went down the front walkway to his pristine truck where he opened the door politely and I raised myself up and sat on the soft burnished brown velour seat. First stop, a weathered liquor store in a strip mall just outside the cozy confines of his country club community. I waited while he confidently strutted in and came out minutes later with a six-pack, gum and a pink plastic comb which became my souvenir of the evening.  I loved how he played with my hair and teased me with it as we listened to “The Cars”  cassette on his fancy stereo and drank the lukewarm bottled beer in the theatre parking lot. Three for him, two for me, time for the movie. We each popped a fresh stick of doublemint gum in our mouths and before getting out to walk around and open my door, hand resting softly on my thigh, he asked me to reach into his glove compartment so he could reapply more of his “Polo” cologne. My senses heightened to the first hints of sexual tension the scent was forever branded on my memory so that years later I could smell our song whenever it played and feel his hand as it went up my shirt.

After the movie, fully clothed but rolling in the cool winter grass of the church on the corner, we kissed and I assumed it was true love forever, hearts floating in my head I went home to dream about our wedding and how envious everyone would be as I walked down the aisle with the dream god of the high school universe.  Two weeks later, as the deities of high school often do, he moved on to new and easier waters. My elevated ego smarted from the fall, but I had the song “Just What I Needed” by The Cars and my light pink comb for comfort. Even if never allowed to pray at the feet of his graven image again I knew I had earned his blessing and to me that was timeless.

A few years ago I ran into a former high school friend at a neighborhood restaurant as I walked out the door. Turning at my name there was instant recognition in the hint of a smile, the way you see through someone’s voice and facial expressions and it transports you back in time. We started talking about our current lives, family, kids, jobs etc., the creamy pre-prepared information filling the space between high school graduation and now. The conversation turned to people we occasionally ran into from school and we shared short clips of what we knew or had heard.  His son was on the high school football team at a small school in California and being coached by another former classmate’s younger brother, small world. The topic of football sparked my curiosity about my long ago crush and the question rolled off my tongue with a wistful lilt. His face fell as he told me what he had heard a while back. This boy who many of us had assumed would go on to have it all, just as he did in school, grew up and had taken his own life. I couldn’t help but wonder if every one of us who had assisted him in rising to that highest spot of teen-age stardom hadn’t somehow contributed to his fall.

On Coming Back

There can be heartache in city living, especially in the summertime. For someone who grew up as a country mouse, summertime has always been the backdrop for my most sensory memories: the smell of freshly mown grass and charcoal barbecues, the sound of airplanes crossing a lazy summer sky, choruses of peepers and cicadas, the sharp crack of baseball bats, the feeling of bare toes in sand and the hot prickle of a sunburn. In the city, the smells and sounds are different, even when they’re the same. The smell of barbecue wafting from our neighbors’  balcony feels invasive when it’s not paired with sounds of cicadas and the soft hum of a garden sprinkler. Airplanes that cross the city sky compete with sirens and car alarms for aural dominance and all but disappear before I’ve even noticed them. Our neighbors' air conditioner now drowns out the sounds of the birds I spent the spring listening to. Last week, we spent two glorious days in Maine. We drove seven hours up and back for the priviledge of walking barefoot in tall grass and having mosquitos bite our legs into near oblivion.  The trip was worth every single itchy red bump. While we were there, mostly, we relished the space and the quiet and the company. Now we’re back and the city feels stifling and smelly by comparison. The places where I normally seek refuge aren’t working their usual magic. Our tiny apartment feels tinier. The smell of Sunday night’s garbage sitting out for Monday’s pickup is oppressive. I'm the first to admit, I'm the worst kind of grumpy. There is so much to love about summer in the city, and I know I’ll get back into the rhythm of things, but for now, it’s hard to be back.

On Inequality

The night before my son was born, my wife and I were in the hospital at the beginning of a very long process. It was June 24, 2011, and the New York state legislature was preparing for a vote on a bill that would legalize same-sex marriage in our adopted home state. The timing was pretty remarkable. My wife and I have been married since 2008, when our immediate families joined us at City Hall in Toronto, Ontario for our wedding. It was a funny limbo to live in, to be married in Canada, but not at home in New York. When we drove into Massachusetts, and said “married!” it often caused us to chuckle darkly. It’s weird enough to be able to buy beer in grocery stores in one state and not another, but to have your own family status legally change based on state boundaries is beyond weird.

The vote in the legislature was going to be close, and both of us had contacted our state senator, Steven Saland, a Republican, to state our hopes that he would vote for equality. In fact, I had called that very day while my wife packed up the last of her things for the hospital. I felt as though he might not even believe me, leaving a voice mail saying, “I’d like my son to be born to two married parents and you could make this happen.”

Of course, the ending of this story is well known.  The bill did in fact pass, and Senator Saland was one of the swing votes. His wife of forty-six years, according to him, “certainly lobbied him,” reported the New York Daily News. How fitting that my marriage was legally recognized partially because of the bond and influence within another marriage?

The moment when the bill passed, as we were up late in the hospital room felt almost ethereal.  Our son was about to enter the world at a remarkable moment in history, and not just History-with-a-capital-H but in our personal history. It felt fated, and I don’t feel that way very often, but even my cynicism couldn’t deny a certain sense of destiny.

Now that a year has passed, however, I no longer feel the blissful surprise of the legislature’s decision. I’m not satisfied with feeling as though I only have a handful of states in this country I can ever live in, with so many others officially off limits (I’m not taking that particular step backward). I realize how quickly this year passed and I know that the years will keep flying by and soon my son will have questions.

There’s no easy way to explain inequality. Why do some people have so much and others so little? Why do women still not make as much money as men for the same jobs? I teach Elie Wiesel’s Night to tenth graders every year and there’s always at least one who asks, “but why?” as the concept of a Jewish ghetto is introduced.  I have honed an answer to that question over time, but it never feels convincing. How will I explain to my son that our state sees us as a family, but our country does not?

I suppose I could show him all of the various tax returns that we had to have prepared: separate federal returns (which mean that my wife, in the eyes of the federal government, is a single mother), a joint “dummy” federal return to inform state returns, and a joint New York return.  I could explain that many people have had to endure a lack of family equality for as long as the United States has existed. We could talk about the Loving v. Virginia decision that will likely inform any decision the Supreme Court makes on the issue.

Fortunately for me, our little boy is not yet concerned with such things, not when there is water to splash and trucks to make go “vroom-vroom.” Someday, though, he will be. I am grateful to Governor Cuomo and New York’s lawmakers for validating our family and setting an example for the rest of the country, but I hope that this inequality, one that is anathema to what I believe to be “American,” is rectified before today’s children are adults who are appalled by the generations before.

What Are You Reading (Offline, That Is)?

Yes, I have a love affair with books. My relationship with them is passionate, compulsive, sometimes even compromising. Books have shaped my life since I’ve been born – naming me Alice, my mother fatally bound me to a destiny of being a day and night dreamer, and I soon started to accept the responsibilities carried by my name, letting myself be won over by an alluring and beguiling world called Wonderland. And once upon a time, when I was 25 (well, I’m 30 now!), I did find my Wonderland---it actually feels like my Neverland, too---in a country (America) I deeply love and consider the one where I can get lost, and found, and I always feel myself at my best potential. I indeed tumbled into Brooklyn, a borough I fell in love with, a very special spot that takes thousands different shapes and smells thousands different smells. A place where I hope to live again soon.

So these are some of the books that have inspired and influenced my love for Brooklyn, and that have somehow contributed to shape my idea of a unique place.

A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN. By Betty Smith. LOVED IT BECAUSE it made me want to go back in time, wander around the streets of Williamsburg and meet Francie Nolan, a character I feel deeply attached to. Francie looks for simple pleasures in life, like being allowed to sleep in the front room of her house on Saturday nights, watching the busy streets below. Like her beloved tree, she is ready to burst into bloom. This novel paints a portrait of Brooklyn at the turn of the twentieth century, and it goes far beyond mere description. It made all of my senses came alive and helped me feel what it was like to live in Williamsburg back then.  A classic, a must read.

“It’s mysterious here in Brooklyn. It’s like – yes – like a dream. The houses and streets don’t seem real. Neither do the people.”

THE BROOKLYN FOLLIES. By Paul Auster. LOVED IT BECAUSE I lived in Park Slope, Brooklyn, not far from where this story takes place. The novel feels and sounds like the borough, and Auster's native Brooklyn is painted with affection. I liked Nathan Glass, a man who retires to Brooklyn to recover from lung cancer (and his divorce). And I liked his project entitled The Book of Human Folly, a chronicle of his unique mishaps, misunderstandings, foibles and foolishness, where he actually begins the process of authoring his own true existence.

“Kafka wrote his first story in one night. Stendhal wrote The Charterhouse of Parma in forty-nine days. Melville wrote Moby- Dick in sixteen months. Flaubert spent five years on Madame Bovary. Musil worked for eighteen years on The Man Without Qualities and died before he could finish. Do we care about any of that now?”

BROOKLYN. By Colm Tòibìn. LOVED IT BECAUSE this is ultimately an optimistic novel, and on many occasions it actually made me smile. Eilis comes from a small town in Ireland, and in the 50’s she crosses the ocean to find a new life. She has to learn to live in a new culture away from the only home she has ever known. I feel like she could have been more curious about Brooklyn though, and if I ever meet her in Wonderland I’ll tell her!

"She had been keeping the thought of home out of her mind, letting it come to her only when she wrote or received letters or when she woke from a dream in which her mother or father or Rose . . . appeared. She thought it strange that the mere sensation of savouring the prospect of something could make her think for a while that it must be the prospect of home."

BROOKLYN WAS MINE. Edited by Chris Knutsen and Valerie Steiker. LOVED IT BECAUSE it’s a collection of essays that gives some of my favorite authors (and today’s best writers) an opportunity to pay a tribute to Brooklyn. Its literary history runs deep, and also in recent years the borough has seen a growing concentration of bestselling novelists, memoirists, poets, journalists. Contributors include Emily Barton, Jennifer Egan, Alexandra Styron, Darin Strauss, Jonathan Lethem.

“... but this life, we have to admit - this endless throwing and retrieving of a ball, this endless cycle of shade trees to acorns to the winter hiatus from which our kidst burst, metamorphosed completely, while we try to believe we ourselves haven't aged - is the real life: the repetitive rhythm, the onrush of time.”

“There are moments when a city can suddenly acquire all the kinetic qualities of a human being, a person's moods and expressions, so that she becomes a character of some kind - like a large woman, I often think, half asleep on her side. You find yourself talking to her, asking her questions, pestering her. And living in such a city is a long, monogamous affair, or else a marriage one abandons from time to time. Cities are rarely causual flings.”

Only, I don’t feel Brooklyn WAS mine. It IS mine! And WILL always be mine!

Alice runs “alice + wonderland”, her new blog. She is now a copy editor at Rizzoli Publishing, in Milan, and a former Italian lecturer in New York and Washington DC. Alice is passionate about books, travelling, taking pictures, vintage clothing, and of course Brooklyn ❤ Tweets @pluswonderland.

I Have My Hands Full

by Jennifer Moore People always smile at me when I am with all three girls.  A baby on my right hip and the two older girls both holding part of my left hand. They say nice things. They say, in a kind way, "You have your hands full." I smile back. I look into their eyes and I feel like I can see them thinking . . . of Back When or of Some Day. I feel blessed and I feel like I never want this time to pass.

I let the girls play outside in the mud and the wet grass and puddles, between rain showers Saturday afternoon. I opened the kitchen window to converse with them while I was making dinner. Elizabeth, my five year old,  showed me it was raining again, her tongue stuck out to catch the drops. Maren, my toddler, ate sliced cheese from an ice cream bowl and then left it by the birdbath, her jacket out front by the wilted petunias.

Tonight, with the older two mostly in bed, I sat in the rocking chair with baby Vivie. She fell asleep in my arms. I had been up since 6:22 am. I had cleaned numerous potty training tinkle puddles, run last minute errands, managed a timely birthday party drop off and pick up with all three, coordinated most of 3 meals for 4 or 5 mouths, searched for unicorns and unicorn crowns and horse reins and American Girl hairbrushes, soothed tears and even discussed, a bit, where lightening comes from.

We sat in the rocking chair, baby Vivie and I, in that green grey light of 8:42 pm on May 26th and the birds were chirping still, a bit too loud, as if their mother would be shaking her head, "Girls, girls, it's quiet time, let's slow down, no flying, no singing . . ."  I decided not to get down on myself for that basket of clean laundry still sitting in the corner. Instead, I focused on her breathing, the rhythm of her little baby sweaty chest against mine. The thumb in her mouth made that sweet sucking noise and her other fingers stroked the ridge of my collarbone from time to time, little reflex nudges checking to make sure I was there.

Fifteen minutes later I got up, put the baby in her crib. I grabbed the five pairs of "da da da da Dora" underpants the toddler had worked through from the hamper, hand washed them in the bathroom sink. From her bedroom, Maren screamed, "I have an orange thing on my arm!" It was the skinned elbow from the other day in the park, on the play date, on which she wore a dress and her big sister's rain boots on the wrong feet and she fell on the paved path, running with half a peanut butter sandwich, which, when I went to rescue her, had asphalt rocks mixed into it. The scab looked dark orange in the almost dark room. I fetched a Band Aid and after I put it on her, she clutched my hand so hard, loving, like she was holding a baby bunny, and in her wonderful, trademark, scratchy voice, "Mom, your hands cold, you okay?" She didn't let go, concern. "Oh Bug, it's just from the water, Mommy washed your underpants. It's okay." And then I felt tears welling up---the happy sad kind. "It's okay, Mommy." Oh my perceptive one.  "Thank you, Bug. I love you." "I love you, too, Mommy." The sweetest sleepy smile, her Great Grandma Zora gap front teeth peeping through.

Yes, I have my hands full. Heart, too.

(Image: Mary Cassatt, Mother and Child, 1890)

From The Sound of Music....

Dearest Clara, We're having a bit of a homecoming this week you might say . . . Vienna, Salzburg, the mountains, the lakes: all of our Austrian favorites are on tap as we head off for vacation.  When Americans come to Austria, they can't help but think of the Sound of Music, much to the bafflement of many Austrians.  They just don't get why we like that movie so much, but how can you not? Love stories, hero stories, gorgeus mountains, all set to cheery music? It's the recipe for a winner.

I've been watching this movie at least once a year since the age of five.  I remember when I first saw it, I could barely make it through the first half, and most of the storyline was lost on me.  But so much more comes out of that movie when you get older---not only does Captain Von Trapp become more and more handsome, you start to notice different characters in a new way.  Here is what I've learned over the years from this movie:

• Some parts of a party are for children, and some parts of the party are for adults: I am always almost as excited as Gretl when she exclaims "My first party!".  The Captain lets them attend and perform, but when the guests are seated at dinner, the children sing their way upstairs, which always struck me as a nice balance for everyone involved.  So please don't be upset if mommy tells you to go to bed halfway through a party.
• Bow out gracefully: Unlike many people, I think the Baroness von Schraeder gets a bit of a bum rap.  And as I've gotten older, I've actually started to feel for her---after all, she thought everything was going swimmingly until a would-be peasant nun from the hills, half her age waltzs in and turns everything upside down.  I give the Baroness a lot of credit for putting up a battle for the Captain, but more so, for bowing out gracefully when she sees the battle is lost.  She is, even in heartbreak, a pretty decent lady.  And she's got some of the best lines in the movie.
• Sometimes those closest to you will hurt you the most: We want to love and trust those closest to us, it makes natural sense.  But sometimes those we love and trust turn out to be influenced by something else more than us.  Between Liesl and Rolf, and the Captain and the Butler, we see that it is sometimes those closest to us that can hurt us the most.
• Your favorite things will be your most comforting things: When the dog bites . . . when the bee stings . . . all things that can make us cry.  But I love how Maria and the children sing of simple things that they love, like brown paper packages tied up strings, and schnitzels, and ponies. Keep a list of those things that make you smile, you can call on those memories when you can't call on me to keep you company when things might be a little saddier or lonelier.
• If you're afraid of something, you should probably go back and face it: I always loved how Mother Superior calls out Maria for hiding in the convent.  She tells her that if she joins the religious life, it must be for the right reasons.  She makes her face her fears and really explore what she was meant to do, even if it meant a loss to her convent.  I think everyone should be so lucky to have a mentor that really makes us look at what we want and need out of life, and then helps us find the courage to face it.

All my love,

Mom

New Normal

by Alison Schramm

My parents – and especially my mom - have always made extra-ordinary efforts to visit me and my husband in New York. I’ll admit that I’m skilled at lining up visits regardless of the occasion, but truthfully, my mom never really needed any convincing. Occasionally she flew, but more often than not she drove, always with her handwritten directions taped to the dashboard. She drove down with my dad, with my sisters, with friends, and because nothing was going to get in between visits with her baby, she even drove the oftentimes torturous 350 miles from Rochester by herself. The car was typically loaded with groceries – always with some type of pork product, as my husband loved to point out – and beer and wine. I joked with her, “Mom, it’s New York, there are grocery stores here,” but it was wasted breath. She came to help us move, to help celebrate birthdays, for girls’ weekends, and for everything in between. All of these visits were variable, but there was one that was more or less set in stone each year.

For the last six or seven years, my parents have made a summer trip to New York. If you’re sitting there thinking what an awful time to visit NYC, what with the tourists and the humidity and the smelly garbage, you’d be right. But for my dad, this trip is about one thing: going to a Yankees game. To say my dad has a healthy appreciation for sports is an understatement. The Browns, the Yankees, Syracuse basketball, Notre Dame football, anyone holding a golf club - the man does not only watch, but truly enjoys most sporting events, a trait shared wholeheartedly by my husband.

My mom, on the other hand, was a sports fan in that way many wives are, myself included. The Yankees play approximately 162 games per season, and my mom probably watched close to 150 by virtue of living with my dad, or as she liked to put it, being a hostage in her own house. Despite this love/hate relationship, she could rattle off the starting lineup for the Yankees on a moment’s notice and liked to provide her own color commentary on each of the players and their personal lives. I was home one Wednesday night and somehow wrestled the remote from my dad, just in time to catch Modern Family. I was shocked when my mom told me she had never watched an episode, but in her now infamous words, ”If it doesn’t have a ball, we don’t watch it.”

Last weekend marked our first Yankees outing since my mom died. A small milestone, comparatively speaking, but I missed her every step of the way. Before the game, we stopped for lunch at Dominick’s, an Italian restaurant on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx, and truthfully, the real highlight of the day for me. Dominick’s is the kind of restaurant where the waiters recite for you the menu, where the red sauce is the star, where the table clothes are plastic, but most importantly to me on that day, the kind of restaurant my mom would have loved.

As we ate, I thought about how my mom would have oooh’ed and aaah’ed over each bite of chicken parm, one of her favorite indulgences. I was reminded of a conversation I had with my sister the week before. She was matter-of-fact, and told me how during a particularly difficult day, and after months of thinking to herself, “Mom would love this,” she decided to change her way of thinking. She said from that point on, she has repeated to herself, “Mom LOVES this,” and it’s changed everything for her. So I tried it on for size, over our Italian feast. And then this past weekend, when we were all together for Father’s Day, with the kids running around in the side yard, I said it again: “Mom LOVES this.”

This is my new normal. Baseball games with my dad and husband, holidays with my family, keeping my head up each and every day. It’s the new and it’s the old and if I’m being honest, I have no idea where it’s taking me some days. But one thing I do know -

Mom loves this.

On Shelling Peas

There’s a rhythm to the ritual of shelling peas. Squeeze the pod between your two thumbs and the seam splits open. Sometimes there are five peas inside, sometimes just two. Almost always they’re smushed right up next to each other so that their roundness is squared off at the sides. Once the seam has split, if you pull just one of your thumbs through the thin shell it will loosen the smushed spheres and the one by one the peas will plonk themselves into the bottom of your bowl. The sound is sharp at first, but it dulls as the pile grows larger. It takes about a half hour to shell a bowl of peas. It’s not a task suitable for multitasking. Your mind can wander, but the action requires two hands. Two for the squeezing, two to speed up the plonking.  If you’re in a rush or not used to a few quiet moments alone with your thoughts, these minutes with your peas might feel like an eternity. This is probably a good thing. A little lesson in patience and sticktoitiveness that finishes with the sweetest reward: a whole bowlful of peas to cook in butter until they’re bright green and bursting with flavor.[gallery link="file", exclude="2086" ]

YWRB: First Impressions

By Amanda Page My first memory of Amy Turn Sharp is crisp and static, like a simple snapshot. She was a girl in a poetry workshop, sitting in one of the chairs beneath the classroom window, scarf around her neck---although it was Spring---and headphones casually slipped from her ears, dangling from her neck where they got lost in the fabric.  It might have been the first day or late in the quarter. But that's when I took notice. She seemed shy as she responded to a question---maybe about her poem. What stands out to me most about that moment is the reserve and timidity she displayed, because I was reserved and timid. I was shy and I didn't like it, but I didn't know how else to be.

Maybe that's why the image sticks. Or maybe I recognized a kindred spirit, but not consciously. Anyway, that was not the woman I started to know on smoke breaks. The Amy Turn I came to know in fifteen-minute bursts was loud, exuberant, and wildly enthusiastic about writing and life.

We weren't fast friends. The quarter ended and I saw her once over the summer, when I saw her on the street and stopped to say hello. Fall came and classes started and there we were in another workshop together. Most of our friends had graduated that summer. We were those rare, at the time, students who kept at it, floating a little, not quite ready to move beyond the classroom, still trying to figure out what we were doing in college, let alone with our lives.

Maybe I'm projecting a little. That's what I was doing: floating. Flailing. When I met Amy Turn, as she was called then, I made a friend to flail with. Amy Turn. I rarely ever heard her called anything but the two names together. She was never just "Amy." I admired that. I was from a place where two names were common, and I'd tried to get one to catch on for myself. It never happened. I wasn't a Bobbi Jo or Barbara Dee. I was just Amanda. Just the one name. And I couldn't quite get the two-first-name version of myself to exist.

We started writing together. We'd sit at the bar or the coffee shop or sometimes at the kitchen table in her apartment and we'd handwrite essays in yellow legal pads, right there on the spot. We thrived on the spontaneous nature of sitting down and writing something complete. We were rebelling against the image of the isolated writer, working in a dim room all alone. The work had more energy, more life, because it was composed quickly, full of vim and whimsy, in the presence of another writer.

Rebelling against the idea of the diligent, lonely writer was exciting. We reminded ourselves that Jack Kerouac wrote On the Road on one long continuous scroll. He couldn't have written it all in isolation. He needed his friends. He needed to be around the "mad ones." And I found myself a mad one in Amy Turn. I liked that my first impression of her was wrong. It gave me hope that I could rebel against first impressions of me. I was more than just a shy girl with a single first name. I was a writer, and that's what I wanted to be known. Amy Turn made it known.

Amy Turn was known. Everyone in town seemed to know her: restaurant owners and convenient store workers and every single bartender in town. It’s hard to not know the girl dancing on your table at the end of the night. Before I knew it, we were known as the writer girls. People expected us to show up with our legal pads and scratch out whole pieces. People knew about our project. That terrified me. But it also made it real.

If you're going to look for a friend with whom to rebel, you can't go wrong with one who pulls you out of your comfort zone, who introduces you to people as the person you want to be, which is not always the person you see yourself as. I started, then, to see myself as a writer. That vision, that version, of myself has wavered through the years. It's good to have a mad one to contact to remind you that you are not the lonely writer.

And it's good to know that the mad ones don't always reveal themselves in your life with that first impression.

We want to know: Do you have a friend who pulls you out of your comfort zone and makes you rebel against the small version of yourself that you sometimes believe yourself to be? How do they pull you out of your comfort zone? How do they prompt you to rebel against that small version of yourself? Email us at amanda@bold-types.com or leave a comment.

Notes on Memory

My earliest childhood memory is from August 18, 1984. I see a reflection of my little self in the large mirror in my parents’ bedroom, sitting on burnt orange carpet with my legs crossed. My face has the shape of a pear; my hair is jet black, long, and straight. I am barefoot, wiggling my tiny toes. “So Cherilynn, how does it feel to be four years old?” my aunt Julie asks. I don't see her; her voice comes from the bathroom.

“It feels the same as being three,” I say as I stare at my reflection.

This memory is intact more than any other childhood memory I have; I replay it in my head like a familiar video clip on loop, and perhaps it would not be so fixed had the mirror not been there. But I don't view this memory as more precious than those memories I can't grasp, that have shapeshifted so drastically. In fact, while I'm grateful to have this memory, as I don't really recall long sequences of moments like this until my third or fourth grade years, its immutability feels unnatural.

* * * * *

I went to the second day of the championship round of the U.S. Open, which took place recently at the Olympic Club just south of San Francisco. I'm not a fan of golf, but I thought it'd be something new and interesting to experience. I was in a bit of a panic, though, reading the championship's rules—no mobile phones, portable email devices, cameras, and anything potentially disruptive.

So I mentally prepared for a day without my iPhone, as phoneless days are rare. Before we left, my boyfriend tweeted that he'd have a ringside seat to watch me self-destruct without it. It sounds silly, but being without that portal in my pocket—not knowing what the rest of the world is doing, or perhaps not being able to tell or show the rest of the world what I am doing—freaks me out a little.

As we wandered the Olympic Club sans phones and cameras, I wanted to take photographs of various tents and pavilions, the rolling hills of green, different holes of the course, and the grassy slope overlooking hole 8—a golf course version of A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte—where we spent a few hours under the sun. But I didn't want to take pictures to record my first golf experience, or to compile an album of the day. I wanted to take photographs mainly to prove I was there. I hinted at this urge in a blog post on the new way I take photographs; now, consuming and owning the present moment has become more important than capturing an experience cohesively, or creating something to add to an archive.

* * * * *

Pictures or it didn't happen.

I've never liked this phrase. Yet I've become a slave to this very mode to self-document and share from moment to moment, and in a way my U.S. Open experience feels incomplete because I have no documented and shared proof that it happened. And so I wonder: What is a memory in this digital age? Why am I beginning to view a memory not photographed or tweeted—one residing solely in my mind—as unattractive? I'm a visual person, so I take mental snapshots of the places I go, keeping these images in my head. But this sort of intangible, mutable evidence seems increasingly inadequate in our world of over-sharing, and on an Internet where our traces are permanent.

It's as if undocumented memories are now less potent.

I wish this wasn't so; elusiveness is the very quality I love about (my) memory. But these days it feels as if I'm doing something wrong—or simply not doing enough—if I'm not experiencing each moment in my day with the intention of documenting and sharing it for all to see.