Elements

It’s 10 o’clock on Saturday morning, and I’m sitting on my patio to let my hair dry in the breeze. The heat wave finally broke yesterday and this morning it’s sunny and cool but not chilly. This afternoon it will be warm but not hot. We’re not expecting storms or floods or stifling heat for the next few days. I like the heat, but this is a nice break for people who don’t. 

Yesterday, it was overcast and gray and cool - no warmer than 72 or so even at midday. I worked from home, and then I went swimming. During last week’s heat wave, the pool water had warmed to literal bathwater temperature. It was too warm, and if the water is too warm for me then it’s too warm for pretty much anyone. I was still swimming in it, of course, but swimming laps in 85 degree water is exhausting. 

But after Thursday’s storms and Friday’s cool temperatures, the water cooled a few degrees. It was still very warm, though, and of all swimming scenarios, warm water on a cool cloudy day is my very favorite. I finished work at 445 or so, and was in the water by 5. It was the best 45 minutes of the entire week. 

*****

It’s Sunday now. Yesterday was one of the quietest weekend days of this summer - the first in many weeks when I didn't have to do anything or go anywhere. It was lovely. I read a lot, and napped a little bit, and went swimming. Of course I also went grocery shopping, and did laundry, and cleaned the house and made a simple dinner. I need to have things ship-shape, even on a day off, and I do not have a staff. 

*****

I’ve been shopping too much. It’s like 2020 again, when waiting for packages was the highlight of my lockdown week. “Out for Delivery” - I loved clicking on a tracking number and seeing the Out for Delivery status.  And then there was the fun of opening the package and trying on a new sweater or moving all my stuff into a new purse. And believe it or not, the excess shopping didn’t hurt my finances at all, really. I was saving a lot of money elsewhere - I hardly ever needed gas, and we didn’t go out because there was no way to go - and even with weekly donations to food banks and shelters and other causes, I always felt like I had money to spend. 

Fast forward to 2025. My income has increased very slightly but my expenses have increased rather dramatically (although now we’re back to just one child in college, so that’s something of a relief) but I’m back to my 2020 shopping habits, and it’s time to rein it in a bit. For at least the next three months, I’m not buying anything I don’t need, except books. And I always need books so that’s not even an exception. 

*****

Well, we’ll see. That three-month embargo might start later this month because I’m on vacation next week. We’re only going to the beach (only, she says, as if a week at the beach is not quite good enough) and I might need a new Stone Harbor hoodie or t-shirt. Vacation shopping is very similar to vacation eating. It does not count. Check back with me on August 19. 

Yes, August 19 is a Tuesday, because for the first time ever, I am taking an extra day of vacation after we return from our trip. I’ve always wanted to do this, and now I have the time, and I’m going to do it. I have a lot to do so I’ll probably spend it running errands and catching up on everything I neglected during my week away, but that’s as good a way to spend a day as any other. Sometimes it’s nice to just have a day that’s just a day, especially in the summer, and especially when the summer is winding down so fast. The child who just came home for the summer (and who has been out and about every day and night as I suppose he should be) is returning to school on August 24. Labor Day and the Autumnal Equinox are meaningless - as far as I’m concerned, summer is over the moment a kid has to return to school. 

*****

As much as I hate the end of summer, I am also developing a grudging, slight affection for certain aspects of fall. The college swim season starts early this year, with an away meet against Duke and Boston College. A little weekend trip to North Carolina will be fun. I couldn’t care less about football, but I love hockey, and post-season baseball is fun, too. I like fall foliage. I like to sit next to an outdoor fire. I like to wear sweaters and jackets. And I love Thanksgiving

And that’s about it, really. Summer is the best, and it’s not even close. More than the warm weather and sunshine and swimming and long days, I love the freedom of summer, even if it’s illusory freedom. And it IS illusory freedom. It’s not like I take the summer off or anything. It’s not like I have a maid from May to September. It’s not like I stop being me. In fact, with one kid out of school altogether and the other in college and no longer in need of rides to school and practice and games and meets, I’m really no less free in the winter than in the summer. Summer just feels more relaxed. 

*****

It’s Thursday night now and vacation is just a day away. I’m very much looking forward to a week at the beach. My sister and her family and my sister-in-law and her family and my friend and neighbor and her family will all be there too. Separate houses, thankfully, because that would probably be more togetherness than I could take. Because I am the one person connected with everyone in this group, I expect to be pretty popular next week; even more so than usual, that is. The last time we were all at the beach together, I’d be on the deck having coffee at 8 AM or so, and my phone would start blowing up with messages about dinner plans. I learned quickly to just not answer those texts because I’d see everyone later that morning on the beach, and we could just figure it out then. Maybe I should just block everyone. 

*****

Friday, 5 PM. I’m officially on vacation now, kind of. “Kind of” because something hit the proverbial fan today and I’ll probably need to work for a bit on and off over the weekend, and maybe for an hour or two here or there during the week. It happens. It’s not the end of the world. 

Meanwhile, I’m done for today until or unless something else happens, so I’m trying to decide between a walk and a swim. Normally, this is the easiest decision in the world. Swimming is pretty much always the answer. But the temperatures have dropped quite a bit during this last week, and the water temperatures have fallen too. I swam on Wednesday after a couple of days away from the pool, and it was a slight shock to my system, which has become accustomed to swimming in Jacuzzi-like water. But I adjusted, and it was lovely. It’s no warmer today, but it’s been sunny all day so maybe the water has warmed up a degree or two. At the least, maybe it hasn’t gotten any colder. I think I just made my decision. I think I talked myself into the pool. I’ll report back later. 

Black Widows and Cul de Sacs

As planned, I read Leslie Gray Streeter’s Black Widow and Louise Kennedy’s The End of the World is a Cul de Sac; and as promised, I am reporting back. Unsurprisingly, both books are very good. Surprisingly, they have something in common even though the former is a memoir by a Black American woman and the latter is a collection of short stories by an Irish woman. 

Black Widow is the story of Leslie Gray Streeter’s husband’s sudden and untimely death and its aftermath, including overwhelming grief and the risk of losing her child because she and her husband had been in the middle of adopting the child when he died of a heart attack. Spoiler alert - Gray Streeter succeeds in completing the adoption on her own. The story ends in a Baltimore courtroom in July 2016, just a year after her husband’s death, with a judge declaring her to be the adoptive mother of the child whom she and her husband had cared for together for over a year. 

*****

The book is very sad and very funny - sad because it’s a memoir of grief, and funny because Leslie Gray Streeter is just funny. It’s also very honest about the practical aspects of spousal grief. You had a partner; someone who helped with the children or took care of the finances or the cars or handled the housework or the cooking - every marriage has its own division of labor. And then all of a sudden, everything falls on you, at a time when you’re not even able to handle your own share of the work. 

As Streeter tells it, grief isn’t just one thing - it’s the sadness and the loss and missing the person who’s gone. It’s the fond memories, remembering the things about that person and about your life together that were happy and fun and funny. And it’s exhausting, knowing that the person you shared the load with is gone and the burden is yours alone now. She is very honest about that last part - as a reader, I could almost feel her exhaustion as she tried to take care of herself and her child amid household moves and funeral arrangements and adoption hiccups - things that are hard enough anyway and that become almost impossible when you lose your literal other half. 

*****

Black Widow is a true story and The End of the World is fiction (short stories). Most of the stories’ main characters are women - married, single, mothers, childless - and all of them seem connected to the land even when they live in the city or the suburbs. These stories are alive with natural beauty - flowers and plant life, sunlight and clouds, water. Louise Kennedy has a real understanding of the natural world and its effects on people, and she uses outdoor settings - beaches and cliffs and forests and farmland - to great effect. Her characters know the land - they understand the soil and they can identify any and every flower and tree and bird. They can read the sky. They understand creation in a way that has always baffled me, a city girl. 

*****

But I said that there was a connection between these two books, didn’t I? It comes back to grief. In most of the stories, a character has lost someone - a child, a spouse, an almost-fiance - and they are trying to figure out how to continue living in the aftermath of the loss. And just like Leslie Gray Streeter in Black Widow, they must navigate what the world thinks of as grief - the tears and the sadness and the loneliness for the person lost - and the practical aspects of loss, like how to manage the things that the person lost used to take care of, and how to handle the paperwork and the administrative details of death.

And of course, the grieving person must also take care of others who are grieving the same loss. In “Powder,” a young woman named Eithne escorts the American mother of her late fiancee on a tour of her son’s favorite places in Ireland. Only at the end (spoiler alert) do we learn that the two had never actually been engaged - the man had told his mother that he was going to be married, but had never actually gotten around to proposing. The mother, Sandy, assumes that the two had been engaged, and Eithne doesn’t have the heart or the energy to disabuse her of that notion. Eithne’s grief is real and in some ways harder than the grief of a widow or fiancee because she thinks that she doesn't deserve to grieve. 

*****

I loved both of these books. I don’t think I’d have seen any connection between them, though, if I hadn’t read the authors’ other books, Family and Other Calamities, Streeter’s novel; and Kennedy’s Trespasses, which also had something in common. I looked for another common theme because I like connections. I like symmetry. 

Not a drill

Right around this time last year, I wrote about a fire drill at the Navy base where I work. It happened on a beautiful August day, and we all took our time strolling away from our desks. We gathered in our own good time on the ball field behind the library, teasing each other about how nonchalant we all were. “What would you people do if it was a real fire?” Several people predicted, correctly, that our very poor performance on this drill pretty much guaranteed that another drill would follow soon. We did much better the second time. 

It’s 11 in the morning now, on a hot sunny Thursday, the last day in July, and this time it’s not a drill. And it’s not a fire. There’s an active shooter on the base, and I’m sitting in a locked office with the window blinds closed and my phone on silent. The only noise is the faint hum of an air purifier and the repeated warnings from the “Big Voice” system, muffled through the locked doors. 

What in the actual hell? That’s all I can think of right now. Well, I’m also thinking about food, because I’m hungry and didn’t bring lunch today and can’t go to the cafeteria to get lunch. At least I have a banana. 

*****

It’s Friday night now, the day after the almost-active shooter incident. “Almost” because the person was real and the incident was real and not a drill, but the gun was fake. If that isn’t a metaphor for 2025, the literal dumbest year on record, then I don’t know what is. 

The whole thing was over in 45 minutes. My husband, who is a detective with Montgomery County Police, texted me when the “suspect” was arrested, and the Navy police gave the all-clear about 15 minutes later. We were all relieved, of course, but I think we all felt a little silly afterward. I felt a little silly afterward, anyway. And I wasn’t even scared - concerned, but not scared. The building where the person was first reported was far enough from my building that the shooter (as we believed him to be) would need a few minutes to get to us, and by then, he’d have been caught. And believe it or not, I’m not afraid of a person with a gun. Tell me that there’s a rat or a rabid coyote or an ax-wielding madman on the loose, and I’ll be properly terrified. But I’d try to tackle a shooter, or beat him with my 45-pound Tory Burch work tote. 

Still, it’s just as well that I didn’t have to. We all opened our doors and our window blinds, and we went about the rest of our day as though nothing happened, and I suppose that nothing did happen. I even got to eat my favorite cafeteria chicken Caesar wrap. 

Mystery solved

So as I mentioned in my last post, my old lady (yes, she is mine - it is way too late to return her) is still alive thank God, and in a rehab facility after a short hospitalization, just as I suspected. She called me one day, out of the blue, from an unfamiliar number. I must have known on some level that it was she who was calling because I do not answer calls from unknown numbers. 

I was glad to hear her voice and glad to see that she wasn’t mad at me, not that I’d have cared much because what complaint could she possibly have against me? But it did cross my mind that she might have blamed me for calling the ambulance. I wasn’t the person who called the ambulance, but I did call the police when she didn’t answer the phone or the door for two straight days.  

She seemed much better than she had been the last few times we’d spoken. She acknowledged that she was feeling better but she didn’t (nor will she ever) connect the improvement in her health with the medical attention - as far as she’s concerned, she’d have gotten better on her own. Meanwhile, she had authorized her attorney to hire a cleaning service and some contractors to get her house back in shape during her convalescence, and she was outraged that they had spent over $10,000. Having seen that house, I can tell you that $10,000 would be an absolute bargain. The cleaning alone had to cost at least half of that. But this happens when people get old - their financial memories are fixed at a point in the distant past, and nothing should cost more than it did at that time. I’m guessing that this lady’s fixed point is sometime around 1985. That’s where my mom’s financial memory is stuck, and they’re about the same age. My mom is shocked every time she buys a coffee and it costs more than a dollar. 

*****

She called me again a few days later. She still doesn’t have a date for her return home but wanted to see if I would be willing to get some groceries for her. And yes, I am willing to do this but I’m not willing to follow ever more arcane and difficult and confusing instructions for how the items should be bagged and organized and placed on her doorstep. Nor am I willing to enter her house when she’s not home. She spent 15 minutes complaining to me about “perfectly good” luggage and household items that the cleaning crews had apparently discarded. She was sure that valuables will also have gone missing, and she said that she’d be looking carefully through her house and making a list of items that the cleaners and her attorney would need to account for. And then in the very next breath, she said that she’d call me in the next few days with a grocery list, and that the house was unlocked and that I could just go right inside and put everything in the kitchen so that it would be there when she arrived home. 

Needless to say, I nixed that plan immediately. Much to her disappointment, I told her that I’d wait until she was actually home, and that I’d drop the groceries off out front like I used to do. She told me that if I “didn’t feel comfortable” going in the house by myself, that I could call her neighbor to come and help me. I’m sure that this neighbor, whoever they might be, would be no more enthusiastic about this suggestion than I was, and I politely but firmly reiterated my refusal to enter her house without her in it. I don't want to go in that house even when she's home but I'm certainly not going in there when she's not home so that she can later accuse me of stealing her Hummels or her 1977 Samsonite luggage. 

And so we wait. As I said, she sounded much better when we spoke than she had earlier in the spring. But she also gave me some background on the health issues that put her in the rehab in the first place and so I don’t think she’s coming home quite as soon as she thought. I wish her a full recovery, and will be happy to resume my weekly shopping trips as soon as she’s back up and around. 

Una semana de verano

It’s Saturday afternoon, hot and sunny with no immediate threat of storms, and I just finished a lovely swim. The neighborhood swim team’s Divisional championship was this morning, and it was fun to be there as a spectator with no jobs to do. The team did well - they came close to a win but we only got one of the relays. Relays are worth a lot of points, and if the Dolphins had won all five relays or even four of the five, they would have been assured of a victory. There’s always next year. 

We are leaving shortly for a quick visit to Philadelphia. My sister is having a midsummer party, with a “Jaws” theme in honor of the movie’s 50th anniversary. I’m wearing red white and blue because “It’s the Fourth of July, for Christ’s sake.” We’re going to the beach next month, and my sister wants us all to go to a special “Jaws” screening. I swim in the ocean, and I’m not excited about the idea of watching “Jaws” and then getting in the water the next day. My sister never goes in the water past her ankles, so she’s not worried about it. 

*****

We're on our way back home now. It's Sunday morning, 10 AM, and I'm in the passenger seat this time. It was a fun summer get together. The weather is unsettled, as usual. This summer is going to live in memory for a lot of reasons, mostly bad, including this absolute cluster of Old Testament weather. Terrible weather, middle aged white people caught cheating on their spouses at a Coldplay concert, and Trump's swollen ankles. Just ridiculous. The very stupidest of all stupid timelines, as they say on the Internet. 

*****

I lost my Wordle streak a few days ago, and not on the word that everyone was complaining about. It was just one of those letter combinations that could have been any word and I ran out of guesses. I had a 177 game streak and had hoped to pass 200 but it wasn't to be. But my win percentage remains 99% and I have a new streak underway. 

*****

I have to give a speech this week, which makes it one of those weeks that I just need to get through. The first half of this week is going to be a bit chaotic for a lot of reasons. It'll be fine. And I don’t love the idea of wishing away several days of my life, but I will be glad when Friday is here. 

*****

Since we’re covering the sports and weather, I’ll also update you on the news. My old lady is alive and well; rather, she’s as well as can be expected. As I wrote here, I knew that she had been taken to the hospital, and I thought that she’d gone from the hospital to a rehab facility but I didn’t know which one, and the ones that I called denied all knowledge of a resident by her name. After a few weeks, I stopped calling her and checking at her house. I Googled her name every so often wondering if she had died, but there was no obituary. It was a mystery. 

Then last week, I got a call from an unfamiliar local number, and I actually picked up the phone. I usually ignore calls from unknown numbers. And there she was, calling from a rehab facility in Rockville. There’s lots more to this, of course, and I’ll share it with you in great detail and at considerable length, but right now I’m going to just keep documenting this odd little week. 

*****

It’s Wednesday now. I have a house full of electricians working on my husband’s crazy pet project of electrifying the gazebo on our patio. I absolutely don’t need electricity in that gazebo, but my husband is very excited about this. And I don’t mind except that I do wish that he’d schedule contractors to come at a time when he’s going to be at home. They never fail to ask me questions that I cannot answer. 

My speech is written and it's longer than I planned, but it’s very good if I say so myself. I’m pretty sure I’m going to bring the house down. I’d still so much rather be in the audience listening to someone else give this speech. I’d rather be pretty much anywhere other than in the spotlight. But I’m sure I’ll feel differently once I get the first laugh. 

*****

I killed that speech. I know it’s boastful to say that but first of all, who is reading this and second of all, I’m not the only person who thinks the speech was good. Many people complimented me. My children complimented me. It’s so nice when a thing that I dreaded turns out better than I expected, and it’s also nice that the whole thing is over. 

And the electrical work is done, too. Tuesday and Wednesday just felt like very chaotic days - I had an overnight guest, which was lovely; and I had contractors stomping in and out and making noise all the livelong day, which was not; and of course I had that speech hanging over my head like the sword of what’s-his-name. But it’s Thursday now, and everything is quiet and back in order. No one was home tonight, so I didn’t have to cook. The work week is winding down and I have a no-plans weekend for the first time in many weeks. I have volunteer work to do and the house isn’t going to compulsively clean itself but I will get a day or so of down time, just in time. 

*****

The longed-for Friday brought a return of the intense heat, which I happen to like, but only because I have air conditioning at home and at work and in my car, and I have a swimming pool around the corner from my house. I’m pretty sure that I wouldn’t like the heat so much if I had to endure it without the ability to escape into a cooled space or jump into lovely blue water. 

But the summer is winding down now. Now that I no longer live by the swim team calendar, the crepe myrtle are my signal of the beginning of the end. It’s hard to complain, though, when you live in a neighborhood filled with crepe myrtle trees because they are just so beautiful, bursting with pink and magenta and white and red flowers. And even though their presence is a daily reminder that we’re about to be strapped onto a freight train that begins on Labor Day and goes top speed with very few stops until Christmas, we still have about six weeks of swimming and evening daylight. I’ll take it. 

Mansfield Park

I read Mansfield Park for the first time this summer. I like Jane Austen as well as the next reader but I’m not a fanatic. I have never even read Pride and Prejudice, but I have read Emma, Persuasion (my favorite), and Sense and Sensibility. When it comes to Victorian fiction, I prefer Dickens and George Eliot. Jane Austen isn’t Victorian, of course, but she was a big influence on Dickens and Eliot and many other 19th century English writers. 

But back to our story. Mansfield Park’s protagonist Fanny Price arrives at the titular Mansfield Park as a young girl, adopted by her rich aunt and uncle as an act of charity. At first she is miserable, and completely overwhelmed by her wealthy relatives’ lavish lifestyle and their sophisticated manners. The oldest girl of a large and impoverished family, Fanny is shy and timid and sweet-natured and she misses her parents and her brothers and sisters. Her spoiled and privileged girl cousins Maria and Julia are disdainful toward poorly dressed and poorly educated Fanny. Their own beautiful clothes and accomplishments and horsemanship they believe to be the product of their natural superiority, and nothing to do with their wealth and privilege. 

Fast forward to a few years later: Fanny, of course, turns out to be the most beautiful of the girls and she ends up attracting the rich and handsome and high-born young man coveted by Maria and Julia. Does this sound familiar? Fanny isn’t exactly mistreated - not as a servant would have been - but as a young girl, she is kept firmly in her place. Her aunt and uncle Lady and Lord Bertram treat her with distant kindness, congratulating themselves on their generosity; but Fanny’s Aunt Norris never misses an opportunity to remind her that she’s not the equal of her privileged cousins, and that she must always remain humble and grateful. Fanny’s clothes are not quite as nice as her cousins’ and her room is without a fire. She is permitted to ride a family horse when it is available in contrast with her cousins who all have their own horses. The Wikipedia entry for Cinderella lists dozens of books, stories, plays, ballets, and other works of art inspired by the original Cinderella story, but it does not mention Mansfield Park. But I’m sure that Jane Austen was thinking about Cinderella or Rhodopis when she wrote the character of Fanny Price. There’s even a ball. 

*****

I liked Mansfield Park a lot. Fanny is a less-than-perfect heroine, which is kind of a nice change from Dickens, whose Agnes Wickfield and Amy Dorrit are such paragons of virtue that it’s hard to love them. I admire Agnes and Amy (especially Agnes) but I don’t think I could be friends with them. Fanny Price is also mostly a virtuous heroine, at least in some respects. She remains true to her principles, refusing to participate in the amateur theatricals, which she knows that her absent uncle would not approve of. She will not consider marrying her rich and handsome and accomplished suitor because she doesn’t love him and because she suspects (correctly) that he is morally corrupt. 

But Fanny also has some faults - some endearing and some considerably less so. Occasionally, she gives way to feelings of resentment against her spoiled cousins - quite understandable. She is jealous of Mary Crawford, another rich and beautiful girl (and the sister of Henry Crawford, the man who loves Fanny) - not because of Mary’s  wealth and beauty but because Fanny’s beloved cousin Edmund worships her. Later, Fanny realizes that Mary shares her brother’s squishy morals, and she tries to convince herself that she’d seen this flaw in Mary all along, but the reader knows better. When Fanny returns to Portsmouth to visit her parents and siblings, we see that Mansfield has spoiled her completely. The child Fanny had been terribly homesick for her family and her home in Portsmouth; but at 18, Fanny is ashamed of her parents’ poverty and lack of refinement, and she longs for the beauty and grandeur of Mansfield Park. This too is understandable, since Mansfield had become her home, but Fanny’s inner dialogue shows us that she believes that her childhood home is beneath her and that she belongs at Mansfield. Not only has she forgotten that she is a product of the humble house in Portsmouth, she is also blithely unconcerned about the source of her uncle’s great wealth, which is a sugar plantation in Trinidad. Lord Bertram is a slaveholder; and even Fanny and Edmund, the moral hearts of the story, don’t give a thought to the enslaved people who work to maintain the lifestyle of Mansfield Park. 

*****

I won’t give away the ending. There were just enough twists and turns that I wasn’t sure how everything would shake out until almost the very end. Jane Austen was a great storyteller, and I have to wonder what contemporary readers thought of her subtle commentary on wealth inequality and social hierarchies and privilege. She was way ahead of her time. Jane Austen was reminding rich people to check their privilege long before anyone knew that privilege was a thing that should be checked. 

Full House

My mom is here for the week. With my sons also at home for the summer, it’s a full house. I’m working from home for the entire week because I don’t like to leave my mom alone. She’s not too steady on her feet and when she gets stiff, she has a hard time getting up on her own. I fuss over her a lot when she’s here, and she doesn’t seem to mind. I think she likes it, really. 

We’ve been doing this - having her stay here for a week at a time -  for about two years now, and there’s a routine. My mom arrives on Sunday, late morning or early afternoon. My brother, who drives her here, stays for about five minutes and then he hits the road for the return trip. My mom stows all of her stuff, ⅔ of which she will not use, in the spare bedroom. I sit with her on the patio when it’s nice and in the family room when it’s not, and I keep her company while she watches her favorite TV shows. I make breakfast and lunch. Sometimes I make dinner and sometimes we go out and sometimes we pick up dinner to go. In the spring and fall and winter, I take about 45 minutes during the day to walk. In the summer, I run out to the pool to swim laps. We spend the evening together, and then I go to bed at about 11. My mom stays up late. I usually wake up at around 2, and find her sound asleep in a chair, and I make her go to bed. 

*****

I have a friend who asks me where my husband is every time I appear in public without him, which is to say all the time. My husband works a lot, and he often works at odd times so I often go places without him. Every time, my friend asks me where he is. 

With my mom here, not only am I constantly asked about my husband every time he’s not in the house; I am also expected to account for the whereabouts of the other members of the household at all hours of the day and night. My sons are 24 and almost 21. The older one has graduated from college, and still lives at home (and is welcome to continue living here for as long as he likes). The younger one is home for the summer, and is coaching two different swim teams while also doing a part-time internship with a minor league baseball team. Both of these boys - men - are employed and busy and free to come and go as they please. They tell me where they’re going and when they’ll be back and when they plan to be away all night, but I don’t give my mom the full report. I just tell her “Don’t worry about them, they’re fine,” and she says “I just like to make sure that everyone is safe.” 

You know all those stories that GenX people tell about running wild all day and night, and not being allowed in the house during the day, and drinking out of the neighbors’ hoses? Yeah, all of that is true, and it’s hilarious that my mother is more worried about the safety of my grown sons much more than she ever worried about me when I was still an actual child. 

*****

On Tuesday evening, I took my mom shopping at Kohl’s. She has mobility issues, and trudging around a department store is difficult for her but I know her tastes and her sizes very well, and we have had a great deal of shopping success when I act as her personal shopper. I find her a chair, she sits down, I ask what type of thing she’s looking for, and I run around and bring stuff back for her to look at. When she was here in May, she got a skirt, two t-shirts, two cardigans, and a rain jacket - all picked by me. Yesterday, she was looking for loungewear, undergarments, and socks. Kohl’s had a wheelchair available, so I put her in the wheelchair so that she could see the entire store. We found everything she wanted, and she had a good time except for my near collision with a clothing rack. You can’t look away to say hello to a neighbor while you’re pushing a wheelchair or it will veer off course. Lesson learned. 

*****

It was stormy on Wednesday night. It was stormy on Tuesday night, too, but those storms passed through quickly, and Wednesday’s storms lingered throughout the night. A great deal of rain has fallen here in the last few days, but it’s more humid now, not less. Maryland’s climate has already changed. It’s tropical here now. We’re like Florida with a little bit more winter and a lot less fascism. 

My mom kept looking out the windows on Wednesday night. “Are your cushions OK?” she’d ask. “Do you need to put your furniture away? Is stuff going to blow away?” A crash of thunder, and she’d say “Where are the boys? Are they out driving in this? They’re not out driving in this, are they?” It’s absolutely hilarious that I am the one out here saying “Don’t worry about it. Everything is fine. Everyone is fine.” “Don’t worry about it” is not my line. We’re in Opposite World. We’re in an alternate timeline. 

*****

Muriel Spark’s Memento Mori, one of my favorite novels, is about a group of very old people in postwar Britain who receive anonymous notes and phone calls from a series of mysterious strangers. The messengers and the medium vary but the message is always the same “Remember you must die.” I won’t give away the plot other than to say that there’s a murder, but the murder has nothing to do with the anonymous messages, which are reminders, not threats. We all must die, so the memento mori “Remember you must die” is just the plain truth. 

I don’t have the book in front of me so I’ll paraphrase except for the phrase “potent distillations” - the characters have all reached the age at which they no longer try to subdue their personalities. The filter is gone. They have become “potent distillations” of themselves, more intensified and concentrated versions of the people they have always been, for better or for worse. 

This is just a random literary observation, apropos of absolutely nothing. 

*****

It’s Saturday morning now. My mom is leaving tomorrow. I’m not sure what we’ll do today. With her limited mobility, my mom can’t walk long distances or really any distance at all. She’d like to go to a flea market and although I would not normally choose to visit a flea market, I certainly wouldn’t mind doing that. There are a few flea markets and farmers’ markets in the area but finding parking literally next to the venue with little or no walking required would be challenging. We’ll see. 

My mom is sitting next to me right now. She doesn’t know that I’m writing about her. LOL. My poor sister spent the entire week cleaning her hoarder house, and not only is my mother messaging a Facebook contact right now about purchasing even more Byers Choice carolers (IYKYK and if you don’t then count your fucking blessings) but she will spend the next week complaining about the house because she likes her clutter the way it is. And if she lived by herself and could take care of herself then it wouldn’t be any of our business. But my sister lives with her and takes care of her and the clutter and mess drive her insane. I don’t know how she does it. And now I’m thinking that a flea market is exactly where my mother doesn’t need to go because she doesn’t need to buy any more junk. We’ll find a farmer’s market instead. 

*****

It’s Sunday afternoon now. I took my mom home this morning; or rather, I took her to the Maryland House and handed her off to my brother, who took her home to Philadelphia. I’m always sad when she goes home, even though she drives me crazy and her visits leave me exhausted. But it will be nice to have my house in order again. She’s just as messy here as she is at home. I will not miss seeing mom stuff on every flat surface in the house. 

We did end up going to a farmer’s market yesterday, which was rather difficult given the heat and lack of shade and lack of close-by parking. But we managed. We took our time walking from my car to the market, and I was able to borrow a chair from a kind vendor so that she could sit for a few minutes, and she seemed to have a good time. We had lunch in one of our favorite neighborhood restaurants; and when we finally got home and out of the sun, my mom napped on the couch in the dark cool family room with “Father Brown” on TV in the background. She’s not low-maintenance but she doesn’t ask for much when it comes to entertainment, either - a farmer’s market and lunch and a couple of quick errands is a nice busy day for her. 

I’m hoping to swim today but the weather is unsettled. I experienced at least 10 weather events on my way to and from the Maryland House today; a total of about 3.5 hours round trip. Maybe things will settle down a bit. But meanwhile, I’m going to catch up on laundry and get my house back in order and get ready for a new week. My mom’s next visit will probably be in September. I’ll provide a full report. 

I think it was the Fourth of July

I was six years old when Chicago’s “Saturday in the Park” was a top 40 radio hit. I loved that song. I still do. Eighties “Power of Love” Chicago is trash, but 70s “Saturday in the Park” Chicago is awesome. That’s a pop music hill that I will die on. 

When I was little, I always wondered about the “I think it was the Fourth of July” part. You think it was the Fourth of July? How would you not KNOW? How would you not remember that it was the Fourth of July? July 4th was a big deal in working class 1970s Philadelphia. Our street of tiny rowhouses got very little through traffic; and on the Fourth of July, my uncles set up the barbecue grill right on the sidewalk outside their side yard gate, and they strung a badminton net from their porch to the high stoop across the street. My dad and my uncles grilled hamburgers and hot dogs and my mom and my aunts made potato salad and macaroni salad and the freezer was full of red, white, and blue popsicles. There was a parade through the neighborhood. The parade ended around noon, and the party started soon after, and went well into the evening. We never had real fireworks but we did have sparklers and those little cracky things that you throw down onto the sidewalk. Everyone had flags and bunting on display. July 4th was an occasion. It was an event. It was a legitimate holiday. 

*****

My kids also grew up celebrating the Fourth. Our neighborhood has a little parade with kids on their decorated bikes and scooters; and the neighborhood civic association holds games and a magic show at the pool. The magician, who has been performing in our neighborhood for 20 years or more, used to look like a young Bill Murray. Now he just looks like Bill Murray. Members can bring guests to the pool for free, and it’s the most crazy crowded day of the year. You can’t even find a deck chair. It’s pretty great. 

I still went to the pool on Friday. There was still a parade. The kids still played games and watched the magic show. People still hung flags and bunting. I cut up a watermelon and made some hamburgers. I even made macaroni salad. But it was just July 4th, it wasn’t the Fourth of July. 

*****

I’m not surprised at all at how much damage the Trump regime has done in just six months. They told us what they were going to do and now they’re doing it. In 2020, I told everyone who would listen that the second Trump term would be far worse than the first. And then when he lost (and he did lose), I thought that January 6 would finally put an end to MAGA and that no matter what happened, at least we wouldn’t have another Trump presidency. Anyway, I was right about one thing - the second term is far worse than the first. Even Joe Rogan is starting to wonder aloud if Trump might - just might - be a fascist. Yeah, Joe, he is. Thanks for figuring that out about a year too late. 

*****

America has never been perfect (not even close) and spoiler alert, it never will be. But Trump and his gang are gleefully destroying everything that’s good and deliberately exacerbating everything that’s bad, and it’s going to get worse before it gets better. But I think it will get better. I’m not giving up. The Fourth of July will be back. 

Troubles and Calamities

I just finished reading Leslie Gray Streeter’s Family and Other Calamities, a very funny novel. The author is a Baltimore journalist whose work I follow on social media, and I pre-ordered the book. I like to pre-order books - I buy them and forget about them and then a month later, there’s a nice surprise in my Kindle queue. 

Right after I finished Family, I read Louise Kennedy’s Trespasses, a novel set in Belfast in 1975. Kennedy herself describes it as a story of “star-crossed lovers” during the Troubles, and that’s as good a description as any other. Trespasses is astonishingly good; and even though I guessed exactly what was going to happen and exactly who would be revealed as responsible about halfway through, it was still page-turningly suspenseful until the end. 

When I started reading Trespasses, I knew right away that I’d have to read more of Louise Kennedy’s work, and then I found that she has only published one other book, The End of the World is a Cul de Sac. Louise Kennedy is almost exactly my age, and she spent most of her life working as a chef, with side forays into writing. It’s rare for someone to publish a first novel when they’re in their mid 50s, but Penelope Fitzgerald didn’t publish a book until she was 58, and she was absolutely brilliant. 

****

Family and Other Calamities and Trespasses are two very different books, with a few things in common. Family is kind of a semi-serious comic novel, very funny, with underlying serious themes and a screwball comedy vibe. It’s a beach read with a brain. Trespasses is heavier - tragic and heartbreaking. But there’s a very strong connection between the two. Both novels feature women protagonists whose lives are completely altered by rash youthful decisions that open chasms between the before and the after. In Family, the protagonist runs away from her youthful mistake and only acknowledges many years later that running away might have been a mistake. But we know from the beginning that something happened in the past, and that we'll find out soon enough what it was. This is a comic novel, so the loose ends are tied up and the ending is happy and the people who deserve a comeuppance get it. Trespasses doesn’t really touch the chasm between youth and late middle age until the very end when we revisit Cushla, the young protagonist, who is now a middle-aged woman reckoning with the past, like the rest of 21st century Northern Ireland. And despite the tragedy, there’s also a happier-than-expected - or at least hopeful - ending. 

One more similarity - both of these authors have published two books, in two different genres. Kennedy’s earlier book is a volume of short stories, while Streeter’s is a memoir of the time following her husband’s untimely death, aptly titled Black Widow because she is a Black woman whose husband died. Both of these books are now in my Kindle queue. I will report back later. 

Cruel Summer

On Saturday morning, I was standing on a pool deck waiting for a race to begin as Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe” blared from the announcing table’s sound system, and it felt like 2012 again. 

2012 was a nice summer. The company that I was working for at the time eliminated our entire division in the middle of June, leaving me unemployed; and if you have school age swim team kids, summer is a good time to be unemployed. My kids were 11 and almost 8. We went to swim practice twice a day, with meets on Wednesday nights and Saturday mornings. We went to the library every week, and we went to museums and the County airport, where we watched planes take off and land while eating grilled cheese sandwiches and french fries at the airport lunch counter. We did a lot of hanging around. Kids that age are great company and a lot of fun to hang around with. The hanging around part is what I remember best about that summer. 

My sons are 24 and almost 21 now, but now it’s their cousins’ turn to continue the summer swim team tradition, which means that I still get to go to summer swim meets, but I don’t have to show up early, nor stay late, nor judge stroke and turn infractions. My nephew is 12 and my niece is 8, and they are both very good swimmers. They’re also very good company. 

*****

Today is July 1. July is the real heart of summer, especially in Maryland and the rest of the Mid-Atlantic states. In Maryland, school ends in June, and it starts in August, making July the only month untouched by school unless you count the back-to-school advertising that begins on July 4. 

Last night, I left work at 5. It’s a holiday week, and traffic was blessedly light, and I resolved to go swimming the moment I got home so that I could avoid the threatened thunderstorm. I arrived home just before 5:30 and I was in the pool swimming laps by 5:45. The swim team was on its annual Hersheypark trip, and so the pool was not as crowded as it normally would have been at 5:45 PM, and the air was muggy and hot, and the water was just barely cool. The sun was shining brightly, but a few clouds looked threatening, and the atmosphere felt volatile, like a storm could break open at any minute. A little rain fell, even as the sun was still shining on the water - ideal swimming conditions. Then I came home and pulled some tomatoes off the plants in our garden and sliced them up for salad. The house was peaceful, and the cool of the water stayed with me for hours. It was as perfect a summer evening as I could have asked for. 

*****

Or it would have been. Today is July 2. The new budget bill, the one that’s going to take food away from hungry children, passed the Senate yesterday, right around the time that DHS and their henchmen in Florida cut the ribbon on a brand-new concentration camp in the Everglades. The place, which they’re gleefully calling “Alligator Alcatraz” but which I will only refer to as the Ochopee Concentration Camp, has already flooded on its second day of operation. So that’s fortunate, I suppose - the people imprisoned there will die of dysentery or typhoid or malaria rather than being eaten by alligators or strangled by pythons. A somewhat cruel fate instead of a hideously cruel fate.

And that’s the thing that’s bothering me - that's what's wrong. It’s the cruelty of right now, not the nostalgia for a relatively peaceful time over a decade ago. Even garden tomatoes can’t make this right. Even a swim can’t wash away the sadness. For the first time in my life, I have problems that summer cannot solve. 

Just a girl

It’s been a long week. It’s Saturday now. I worked only four days this week, and work was the least of my worries. The four-day workweek was not because of a holiday but because I was out on Monday for my cousin’s funeral. Just a few days ago, but it seems like ages. 

The funeral was very sad. I’m not especially close to my aunt anymore (thanks Fox News). The man I still refer to as my uncle, who was always exceptionally kind to me when I was a child, is no longer married to my aunt. She remarried many years ago to a man who is pleasant and polite, but also a Trump worshipper, and so I generally avoid conversation with him because there’s nothing you can say about anything that he can’t run through the MAGA filter and throw right back at you. It’s not worth it. 

But my aunt is still my aunt and my Godmother (and she still introduces me as her Godchild) and I still love her. And even if I didn’t, how could I possibly not feel compassion for a 78-year-old woman who just lost her only daughter. At 78, a person must feel that no matter what else goes wrong, at least you’ve passed the danger of outliving a child. Having witnessed it several times, I can confidently say that the saddest thing in the world is watching parents bury their children, no matter the age. 

*****

My cousin was a girly girl. She loved boy bands and makeup and hairstyling and fashion. She didn’t like sports. It’s always easy for men and boys and some women, too, to mock and ridicule girls like her, and my cousin endured quite a bit of that kind of “humor” from her brother and her uncles and cousins. Even in his eulogy, her brother (also my cousin, obviously) joked about her clothes and her ineptitude at softball and her NKOTB fandom. And he loved his sister, and could barely get through his remarks without breaking down, but making fun of a girl because she’s a girl is just part of the language among working class Catholics. Misogyny is both born and bred in our families. The men and boys ridicule us for having two X chromosomes and we have two possible ways to respond: You can get upset, knowing that absolutely no one will defend you and that they will in fact very likely yell at you to “get a sense of humor;” or you can laugh along to show what a “good sport” you are. 

*****

When I was young, I wished that I was the good sport type of girl, the cool girl who rolls with the punches and doesn’t get mad at her sexist classmates and brother and cousins and uncles and dad and grandfather (yeah, it was pretty much everywhere). But I was not a cool girl, and I’m glad now that I wasn’t. I’m glad I got upset every time someone said that I ran like a girl or threw a ball like a girl. I’m glad that I got mad when my brother didn’t have to help with dishes or cooking or laundry or cleaning because “he’s a boy.” I’m glad that I got furious at every boy who pulled up my skirt or snapped my bra strap. I’m glad I knew that none of that was OK. And guess what? The cool girls knew it too. And they were raging the whole time - they just didn’t want anyone to know. 

*****

When she was young, my cousin tried to be a cool girl. We were not contemporaries, really - I am 12 years older - but I saw her often enough when she was a teenager and young woman to know that she wanted to come across as casually cool and nonchalant, like a girl who didn’t care about her hair or her makeup or her reputation. I was old enough to tell her not to pretend to be something she wasn’t, but I didn’t tell her that. Nothing would have been less helpful. No teenage girl wants to hear that she just needs to “be herself.” She’d have bristled at the very idea that she wasn’t 100 percent authentic and real. But as she got older, she became more like herself - feminine in a girly way, vulnerable, even needy. She was the kind of girl and the kind of woman that people describe as “a bit much.” She never married and didn’t have serious relationships, and most people would think that she didn’t have much of a life. Maybe she didn’t. She struggled with drugs and alcohol and was often unhappy. But she had friends. She loved her friends and their children, and she loved animals, and she loved music and fashion and movies and TV and pretty things. I hope she’s at peace now. 

Cousins

It’s Saturday now, a legit hot sunny summer morning in June after weeks of weather better suited for April than June. Two years ago, 9 AM on a Saturday morning in June would have found me on the pool deck with a whistle or stopwatch around my neck, but instead I’m on my patio listening to the cheering and the whistles and the Colorado starter as I sit in my pajamas writing. The pool is just a little more than a block from my house. Other people always told me that you could hear the noise from the meets for a several block radius, and they were right. 

*****

Last week - a week ago today - my cousin died. She was 47. She never married and she never had children, and she had a lot of problems, sadly. She had a hard time with other people - she wasn’t mean or anything - far from it, really. She just didn’t know how to navigate the world. Lots of people are like that, and I wish we could make more room for them. I wish we could all be kinder and more accepting. 

My cousin also had a lot of health problems, some related to mental illness and substance misuse, but not all. She struggled a lot this last year or so. She was hospitalized last year for a bit, and when she got out, I sent her a letter and an Ulta gift card. Her mother, my aunt on my mother’s side, called me to tell me that I could not have picked a better thing to send her because she loves cosmetics and fancy skin care but doesn’t often have the extra money to buy them. I was glad I could make her happy for a little bit. 

I saw her a few months later at my mother’s 80th birthday party. She did not look well, and she was oddly clingy with me. It was almost as if we were children again, me the 14-year-old oldest grandchild and she the two-year-old youngest of the grandchild crew, toddling around after me wherever I went. I stayed with her and brought her snacks and drinks and listened to her complaints about her job and her excited chatter about concerts she was planning to attend. And even though there was something very obviously off about her demeanor, I was glad she still felt comfortable hanging around with me and I enjoyed listening to her. That was the last time I saw her, and I’m glad I spent time with her. I’m glad she had a good time at the party. I hope she’s at peace now. 

*****

I can hear shouts of “GO! GO! GOOOOOOO!” from here. That’s my son cheering for his swimmers. He sounds like a 20-year-old male version of me at a swim meet. And now it’s go time for me. 

*****

Given what happened last week and especially given what happened last night, Saturday was an oddly peaceful day. I dropped into the neighborhood swim meet to see my son coaching his kids, and to say hi to my swim parent friends, and then I went to yet another swim meet, to see my 12-year-old nephew and my 8-year-old niece. They both crushed it - my niece won her freestyle event with an All-Stars qualifying time, and my nephew also did very well. When I ran over to congratulate him after his 50 breaststroke race, he said “I didn’t know you were coming, but I could hear you yelling GOOOOOO!” “You swim like Evan,” I said. This is high praise from me, and high praise to a boy who idolizes his older cousin. 

*****

My younger cousin’s funeral is tomorrow. We’ll go to New Jersey in the morning and come back in the afternoon. We thought about going for a few days but we decided against it. If anything happens, I want to be close to home. 

Mystery

It’s Thursday, which is normally the day when I grocery shop for my crazy old lady. I’ve been doing her shopping for five years now, almost always on Thursday nights. I call her on Wednesday night, I get her list, and then I shop on Thursday after work. But not this week, and not for the last few weeks. 

About a month ago, when I couldn’t reach her on the phone, I walked to her house and banged on the door. I knew she wouldn’t come to the door (I have never actually seen her) - I wanted to just hear her yell back that she was OK. But she didn’t. I called her again, and she didn’t answer and so I called the police to do a wellness check. A short time later, my phone rang. A young police officer told me that the lady had been taken to the hospital a few days earlier following a 911 call from another neighbor. My mom was with me that week, so I didn’t go to visit her right away but when my mom left, I called the hospital to ask about her. She wasn’t there, and they - of course - would not give me any information about whether she’d been there at all, if she’d been discharged, sent to rehab, died, whatever. 

So I called her again, and I stopped at her house and banged on the door and yelled again. Nothing. I’ve continued to call and stop by, at least once a week; and yesterday, I noticed that the grass had been cut. Her house is falling apart, but one thing she always did was to have someone cut the grass once or twice a month, and they’re obviously still doing it. And I am pretty sure she’s not dead because I have checked the obituaries many times. My guess is that she is in a rehab or assisted living facility somewhere - this is what I hope, anyway. We have called a few local places but we haven’t found her. 

*****

The thing is that if she was in a rehab or assisted living place, she would probably call me - I would hope she would, anyway. She has my number, and she probably has it memorized because she uses an old-fashioned landline, so she probably doesn’t have speed dial (a great convenience, but I do miss having tons of phone numbers just memorized). Knowing with some degree of certainty that she’s still alive, and that as recently as six weeks ago she was reasonably lucid (crazy, but lucid), I am thinking about two possibilities. One, she’s injured or sick enough that she doesn’t feel well enough to call me, or she just simply can’t. Another is that she’s mad at me, and doesn’t want to speak to me. 

It sounds ridiculous (and it would be ridiculous) that this lady would be mad at the person who literally kept her alive for the last five years, but she’s a bit of a character, as I have previously established. Last year, when she started to experience health issues, she called me complaining of chest pain and shortness of breath. I told her that I was going to hang up and call 911, and that I could ride with her to the hospital if she wanted a companion. She was furious at the very suggestion. I should have known, apparently, that someone with her (imaginary) condition and sensitivities would be unable to endure even five minutes in a hospital surrounded by machines and radioactive isotopes and Purell. The Purell was a bigger concern than the radioactive isotopes. She was outraged at my ignorance. 

Fear of hospitals is not uncommon among older people and I definitely understand not wanting to get in an ambulance, but I didn’t really see an alternative. I have no medical training whatsoever, and so the emergency room is my only suggestion when someone complains of classic heart attack symptoms. At this point, I was a little upset too, because she all but accused me of trying to kill her. 

She called me again the next day and asked me if I knew of a neighbor who is a nurse. She was thinking about a specific person, and the description did not ring a bell, so I couldn’t supply the name. She asked me to look in the neighborhood directory, which no longer exists, although I do have an old copy. I told her that I’d look when I got home, and that I’d call her back. I didn’t tell her that if we did find a nurse in the neighborhood who was willing to visit, that she would immediately call 911 if she suspected a heart attack. 

It was the day after that when I called and visited and then called the police. Piecing together what I know, I guess that she did finally find the nurse’s name and number, and that she (the nurse) was the neighbor who called the ambulance. Maybe she blames me for that - maybe she thinks that this nursing neighbor and I were plotting to Shanghai her to the hospital. Maybe the nurse denied having made the call. Or maybe my old lady is really sick or otherwise debilitated and not able to call. Or maybe she’s in good hands and doesn’t need to call me because she doesn’t need me anymore. Whatever it is, it would be nice to know what happened. It would be nice to know if she’s OK.