As I mentioned here, I read Say Nothing this summer. As I also mentioned to all three of you who eagerly await my critical opinion, I wrote a whole post about it. So here it is.
*****
I went to Ireland in March. In one of the many supreme ironies that make up my life, I cannot stop thinking about the place that I had absolutely no desire to visit in the first place. Like many Irish-Americans, I grew up with sentimental Irish-Catholic parents who overdid St. Patrick’s Day and hung Cead Mile Failte signs on the front door and had 26+6=1 bumper stickers on their cars. My mother still has that bumper sticker on her car. By the time I reached my twenties, I had developed a hard shell of dismissive cynicism about what I thought of as my so-called Irish roots. So, no, I didn’t want to go to Ireland; and I really didn’t want to go to Ireland on St. Patrick’s Day, which is what we did. And then when I finally went, I loved the place and felt more at home there than in any place I’ve ever been. And I miss it and I can’t wait to go back. Oh, the irony.
So anyway, I have been reading more about Ireland, north and south, in sort of a piecemeal, whatever-looks-interesting way. In addition to being about Ireland, Say Nothing is also a critical-mass kind of book--I kept hearing about it until there was no longer any way to avoid it.
The author, Patrick Radden Keefe (who is American) appeared on the Chris Hayes show on MSNBC. I have been avoiding political media, especially TV, but one night as critical mass for this book was still building, I flipped past MSNBC only to flip right back when I noticed the words “Author of Say Nothing” on the lower third of the screen. Keefe was Hayes’s guest.
I had to turn the show off after just a few minutes of listening to these two American thought leaders recoiling in horror at the primitive Irish-Catholic way of life in which families simply accept as many children as they’re given without resort to contraception or other forms of family planning, as Jean McConville and her family apparently did. I don’t criticize anyone who wants to limit their family size. I have only two children and sometimes they’re two more than I can handle. And I would not want to live in Divis Flats or anything like it. But the materialistic worldview that believes that too many children and not enough comfort leads inevitably to misery is just so boring and tiresome.
But I digress. You should be used to that.
*****
If you had any doubt that race is a factor in how the world judges wrongdoing, then any history of the IRA should make you reconsider. If like me, you grew up in an Irish-Catholic neighborhood in a northeastern city of the United States - - Philadelphia in my case, but New York or Providence or (of course) Boston will do just as well - - then perhaps you had parents or grandparents who had a "yes but…" attitude toward the IRA. "Aren't they terrorists?" you might have asked. "Yes but…" insert excuse about religious persecution and civil rights.
And they had a point of course, to the extent that stops short of murder. Catholics in Northern Ireland endured ridiculous discrimination and persecution at the hands of the Protestant majority, who were empowered and enabled by the British. They had every right to be outraged. But the same Americans who despise Islamic terrorists excuse the IRA terrorists, who were just as murderous and just as fanatical, but also white and poetic and wryly funny and Aran sweater-clad and so just romantic enough that Irish-Americans could excuse or at least understand their cruelty and violence. If only al-Qaeda terrorists quoted Yeats or Joyce. If only ISIS looked good in cable knit.
*****
Extreme dedication to a political cause can overcome a person’s humanity. In communist countries, children were taught to betray their families in loyalty to the state. In the United States in 2019, people end friendships or stop speaking to parents and siblings who support Trump (or who don’t). In Northern Ireland in 1972, a mother of ten, a recent widow, was abducted from her home in front of her children, driven to a secret location, and then shot dead and buried in a shallow grave, because she was believed to have betrayed the IRA. Her body was found 30 years later. Her children grew up not knowing what had happened to her, wondering if she had disappeared, wondering if they’d ever see her alive again. What cause justifies a heartless cold-blooded murder without even the comfort of the dead body to bury and give certainty of the loved one’s death? How do the murderers live with the dreadful suffering of 10 orphaned children?
Gerry Adams is the main villain of Say Nothing, though not the only one. The book firmly dismisses Adams' claim that he was never an IRA member, and also partially blames him for the deaths of six of the 1981 hunger strikers. It also confirms Brendan Hughes' and Dolours Price's assertion that Adams alone ordered the abduction and murder of Jean McConville. Hughes and Price are treated with more understanding but their moral responsibility for the murder (and several other murders) is also clear. Other than Jean McConville and her poor children, Hughes is the saddest figure in the book. To his death, he defended the decision to kill McConville. He claimed to be certain that she was an informer, and like many other IRA soldiers, he believed that death was the only reasonable punishment for informers.
Apparently, no evidence exists that would prove that Jean McConville was an informer; and the circumstantial evidence--she was a widowed mother of 10 children, poorly educated, overwhelmed, not well-connected, not political--seems to suggest strongly that she wasn't. Brendan Hughes suffered from PTSD and alcoholism and remained a believer in the republican cause until he died. Maybe he really believed that Jean McConville was an informer and that she deserved to die. Or maybe he had to convince himself that she was, in order to live with the guilt of murdering her and leaving her 10 children to the tender mercies of the Northern Irish social welfare system.
Dolours Price was more complicated. Like Hughes, she rejected the Good Friday Agreement and condemned Gerry Adams and the other establishment figures who agreed to abandon the armed struggle. But she was motivated by something other than politics, too. She was proud of the hunger strike; proud of her determination and endurance. Keefe writes that Price “retained a ferocious pride in her own headlong personal history. When an American graduate student named Tara Keenan visited her in 2003, Price said, ‘I would like to think that what I did was to illustrate to the world the ability of any regular human being to push themselves to the limits and beyond, physically and mentally, because of some deeply felt belief.’”
In another life, Dolours Price might have been a great athlete or scholar or something else that requires extreme dedication and self-discipline. Of course, by participating in the murder of the widowed mother of ten children, she also pushed herself past the limits of human compassion and decency. The hunger strike ruined her body, and the flashbacks from the murders she committed ruined her mind and she died alone, addicted to drugs and alcohol. Maybe she found peace and reconciliation with God before she died. Maybe Brendan Hughes did, too. I hope so.
*****
"Now and in time to be
Wherever green is worn
All changed, changed utterly
A terrible beauty is born."
(W. B. Yeats, “Easter 1916”)
Yeats was an idiot, for lots of reasons other than this stupid poem. I can’t think about what happened to Jean McConville, nor the sad and broken-down later lives and deaths of Dolours Price and Brendan Hughes and reconcile the words “terrible” and “beauty.” There was no beauty in Jean McConville’s murder, no beauty in the abuse that her orphaned children endured, no beauty in the self-destruction of Brendan Hughes and Dolours Price and so many others who sacrificed their humanity to the Republican cause. It was only terrible. Terrible and a waste and not noble at all.
I have only been to Ireland once, 21 years after the Good Friday agreement. The country that I became acquainted with is peaceful and prosperous and happy, and that’s the only experience I have of Ireland. It's hard for me to reconcile the green and happy place that I loved at first sight with the dark maze of menace and secrets and violence and fear that was Northern Ireland in the 1970s.
There are grown people on both sides of the border who don't remember the Troubles, who only really know Ireland as it is now. But they have parents and grandparents who do remember the past, and who know that it could happen again. It’s happening again already.
*****
I finally finished the book. I was so absorbed in the story that it was hard to pull myself back to Maryland in 2019. And I found myself as angry with Gerry Adams as Dolours Price and Brendan Hughes were and more sympathetic toward Price and Hughes than any reasonable person should have been. Another day or so and I'd probably have burned a Union Jack and bought a 26+6=1 bumper sticker.
This is probably why I resisted going to Ireland for so long. There was always the danger that I would get attached. There was always the possibility that I'd go native.
*****
After I finished Say Nothing, I read Can You Ever Forgive Me? I’ll write about that later. Then I read Thatcher, a biography of one of the IRA’s greatest nemeses.
Last week, I had to take a selfie. I was the employee of the week at my job (I went from employee of the year to employee of the week--how the mighty have fallen) and HR wanted to post a picture of me on the company social media accounts. I was working from home and no one else was around to take a picture of me, so I had to do it myself. It was a mess. I took one really, really good one--my hair looked amazing, and the light must have been just right because my face was clear and unlined and glowing. I could have passed for 35 in that picture. Unfortunately, I took it in front of the bathroom door, and I didn’t want to send a picture that had a toilet as a backdrop. So I took another one from another angle, and it was horrifying. I looked like Barbara Bush, God rest her soul.
*****
I ended up finding a picture of myself from 2018 that was not terribly flattering, but not hideous either. It kind of looked like I actually look. It was as close to the truth as a picture can get, And somewhere in between Margaret Thatcher and Dolours Price, there might be something close to the truth about the Northern Ireland and the Troubles.. I won’t actually get to that truth by reading two books, but it’s a start. One question that anyone who has ever studied Northern Ireland must ask is who can ever understand anything, ever? Who but God can ever know the whole truth?
Thursday, August 29, 2019
Wednesday, August 21, 2019
Waiting for the hammer to fall
It’s Friday night, the first Friday night in months when I haven’t had anything to do, so I’m sitting on my couch and watching “In the Name of the Father,” a movie that I really can’t believe that I”ve never seen before. Just another night of The Troubles, here in Silver Spring, Maryland in 2019. Catch yourself on.
Did I mention before that I have too many handbags? I think I did. Well I also have too many products. Too many creams and lotions and serums and lotions and stupid too many lipsticks. Stupid. So now I have a project. I’m going to use everything up. I finished one lipstick today, and I’m at the very end of a container of facial cleanser. It’s very satisfying to dispose of the empty containers. It’s like crossing something off a list, and I do love to cross things off a list.
It’s 9 PM now. The movie’s over, and that’s enough for today, because the kitchen isn’t going to compulsively clean itself. It won’t take long. It’s not that dirty.
*****
So now it's Saturday and I'm at Nationals Park, waiting for the Nats game to begin. It's my first Nats game of the season. They're playing the Brewers. Game time in 35 minutes or so.
We're in section 109, just a few rows back from the field, on the shady side of the stadium. They're really good seats. I was a Phillies fan when I was young, and I used to dream about the day when I'd be able to afford seats like these. If this was a Phillies game circa 1984 or so, I'd be sitting in the 400 level of Veterans' Stadium. And we wouldn't be playing the Brewers because in those days (I love being old enough to say or write that without sounding ridiculous) the only inter-league play was during the World Series. But of course, this isn't an inter-league game anyway, because the Brewers are National League now. Time marches resolutely on.
*****
It's nice being here early. It's a bobblehead night and my husband insists that we arrive early on bobblehead nights. They might run out. So we have our Patrick Corbin bobbleheads, our drinks, and plenty of legroom. My 14-year-old son is standing at the rail, watching the pregame warm-up. He said that he wants to use his kid advantage to catch a player's eye and maybe get a ball. He's small for his age. But he's getting taller and he'll be 15 soon. Like most things, the kid advantage does not last forever. One day you're a cute little kid and the next day you're just another punk-ass teenager. The march of time continues.
*****
Sunday afternoon. I think I mentioned once before that when I go to a baseball game, it tends to be an eventful one. Last night was no exception. First of all, it was extraordinarily hot, even in the evening, even on the shady side of the stadium. I think I suffered a little bit of heatstroke, and I’m pretty heat-proof. The players must have really suffered, especially since the game went for 14 innings (we left after 9). The Nats lost 15-14. Not only was it a marathon game, but a fan sitting four rows in front of us got beaned by a foul ball. Rumor has it that his jaw is broken. I can’t find a story about it online because there have been so many foul ball vs. fan incidents at Nats Park this year that this one seems to have fallen off the radar. But it happened. I saw it and heard it.
We listened to more of the game on the way home, and then watched the end on TV, well after midnight. The Nats literally ran out of relief pitchers (and they don’t have that many to begin with). With a temperature of 85 degrees at midnight, it was a war of attrition more than anything else. That might be my last baseball game this year. It’s almost hockey season.
In other news, Operation Use it Up proceeds apace. Do you know how long it takes to use up a Bonne Bell Lipsmacker? Do you have any idea why a middle-aged lady even has a Bonne Bell Lipsmacker? I have two. I don’t know why. I don’t remember acquiring these articles, but there they are and I’m going to use them up if it’s the last thing I do. It might be the last thing I do.
*****
Monday
“What the hell are we fighting for?
Ah, just surrender and it won't hurt at all
You just got time to say your prayers
Yeah, while you're waiting for the hammer to, hammer to fall.”
--Queen, “Hammer to Fall”
It’s 8:45. I just cleaned up dinner. I made pork chops in orange juice, which I haven’t made since 2014. It wasn’t very good. I suppose this is why I haven’t made it for five years. Now I’m watching the end of “Bohemian Rhapsody.” I love Queen. God rest Freddie Mercury’s soul.
How did I know that I made pork chops and orange juice in 2014? I’m glad you asked. It’s because I wrote about it, proving (if the entire paragraph about a Bonne Bell Lipsmacker wasn’t proof enough) that there’s no bit of ephemera that’s too trifling for me to document.
I’m about a quarter of the way through Postwar, and it’s instructive. I’m pretty solid on 20th century Europe, so I’m not learning anything new in terms of bare facts. But the blinding-speed cataclysm and upheaval that was Europe from 1914 to 1989 offers useful perspective for those of us who are shocked by how much American political life has changed in just the last three years. It’s helpful and bracingly terrifying to remember that things might well just be getting started; and that a year from now, 2019 might be the good old days.
I’m fun to be around, am I not?
*****
So now it’s Tuesday, one day later; and, this happened. Did I not predict this? Did I not tell you all that something like this was going to happen? Of course, I was thinking that it would happen in the next year or so, not the next 24 hours, but wasn’t that the point? “Blinding speed” was the phrase I used, in fact.
But that’s enough about the march of history. Let’s talk about the half-life of a Bonne Bell Lipsmacker. I’m pretty sure that this one Lipsmacker will take longer to finish than the Conte government was in power. It might outlast NATO and the entire postwar structure of Western Europe. It’s nice to know that some things were made to last. Did I mention that it’s a Starburst-flavored Lipsmacker? Does anyone have any insight whatsoever into why a woman who should be planning for her old age would buy such a thing? What was I thinking? And why do Italian people have all the luck? No heads of government are resigning on this side of the Atlantic, that’s for sure. Non รจ giusto.
*****
It’s Wednesday now and I haven’t seen or heard news all day. I’m going to assume for purposes of this blog that Western Europe is still standing and that no other world governments have fallen since yesterday.
Today I went with my older son to his college orientation. My younger son’s high school orientation is next week. Work is getting busy again, and the summer is drawing to an end. The last few weeks--quiet mornings, slow-paced workdays, evening swims, movies on the couch with my family, reading in bed--have been almost like a vacation. I wish it could last a little longer, but nothing lasts forever, not even a lip balm, and especially not summer.
Did I mention before that I have too many handbags? I think I did. Well I also have too many products. Too many creams and lotions and serums and lotions and stupid too many lipsticks. Stupid. So now I have a project. I’m going to use everything up. I finished one lipstick today, and I’m at the very end of a container of facial cleanser. It’s very satisfying to dispose of the empty containers. It’s like crossing something off a list, and I do love to cross things off a list.
It’s 9 PM now. The movie’s over, and that’s enough for today, because the kitchen isn’t going to compulsively clean itself. It won’t take long. It’s not that dirty.
*****
So now it's Saturday and I'm at Nationals Park, waiting for the Nats game to begin. It's my first Nats game of the season. They're playing the Brewers. Game time in 35 minutes or so.
We're in section 109, just a few rows back from the field, on the shady side of the stadium. They're really good seats. I was a Phillies fan when I was young, and I used to dream about the day when I'd be able to afford seats like these. If this was a Phillies game circa 1984 or so, I'd be sitting in the 400 level of Veterans' Stadium. And we wouldn't be playing the Brewers because in those days (I love being old enough to say or write that without sounding ridiculous) the only inter-league play was during the World Series. But of course, this isn't an inter-league game anyway, because the Brewers are National League now. Time marches resolutely on.
*****
It's nice being here early. It's a bobblehead night and my husband insists that we arrive early on bobblehead nights. They might run out. So we have our Patrick Corbin bobbleheads, our drinks, and plenty of legroom. My 14-year-old son is standing at the rail, watching the pregame warm-up. He said that he wants to use his kid advantage to catch a player's eye and maybe get a ball. He's small for his age. But he's getting taller and he'll be 15 soon. Like most things, the kid advantage does not last forever. One day you're a cute little kid and the next day you're just another punk-ass teenager. The march of time continues.
*****
Sunday afternoon. I think I mentioned once before that when I go to a baseball game, it tends to be an eventful one. Last night was no exception. First of all, it was extraordinarily hot, even in the evening, even on the shady side of the stadium. I think I suffered a little bit of heatstroke, and I’m pretty heat-proof. The players must have really suffered, especially since the game went for 14 innings (we left after 9). The Nats lost 15-14. Not only was it a marathon game, but a fan sitting four rows in front of us got beaned by a foul ball. Rumor has it that his jaw is broken. I can’t find a story about it online because there have been so many foul ball vs. fan incidents at Nats Park this year that this one seems to have fallen off the radar. But it happened. I saw it and heard it.
We listened to more of the game on the way home, and then watched the end on TV, well after midnight. The Nats literally ran out of relief pitchers (and they don’t have that many to begin with). With a temperature of 85 degrees at midnight, it was a war of attrition more than anything else. That might be my last baseball game this year. It’s almost hockey season.
In other news, Operation Use it Up proceeds apace. Do you know how long it takes to use up a Bonne Bell Lipsmacker? Do you have any idea why a middle-aged lady even has a Bonne Bell Lipsmacker? I have two. I don’t know why. I don’t remember acquiring these articles, but there they are and I’m going to use them up if it’s the last thing I do. It might be the last thing I do.
*****
Monday
“What the hell are we fighting for?
Ah, just surrender and it won't hurt at all
You just got time to say your prayers
Yeah, while you're waiting for the hammer to, hammer to fall.”
--Queen, “Hammer to Fall”
It’s 8:45. I just cleaned up dinner. I made pork chops in orange juice, which I haven’t made since 2014. It wasn’t very good. I suppose this is why I haven’t made it for five years. Now I’m watching the end of “Bohemian Rhapsody.” I love Queen. God rest Freddie Mercury’s soul.
How did I know that I made pork chops and orange juice in 2014? I’m glad you asked. It’s because I wrote about it, proving (if the entire paragraph about a Bonne Bell Lipsmacker wasn’t proof enough) that there’s no bit of ephemera that’s too trifling for me to document.
I’m about a quarter of the way through Postwar, and it’s instructive. I’m pretty solid on 20th century Europe, so I’m not learning anything new in terms of bare facts. But the blinding-speed cataclysm and upheaval that was Europe from 1914 to 1989 offers useful perspective for those of us who are shocked by how much American political life has changed in just the last three years. It’s helpful and bracingly terrifying to remember that things might well just be getting started; and that a year from now, 2019 might be the good old days.
I’m fun to be around, am I not?
*****
So now it’s Tuesday, one day later; and, this happened. Did I not predict this? Did I not tell you all that something like this was going to happen? Of course, I was thinking that it would happen in the next year or so, not the next 24 hours, but wasn’t that the point? “Blinding speed” was the phrase I used, in fact.
But that’s enough about the march of history. Let’s talk about the half-life of a Bonne Bell Lipsmacker. I’m pretty sure that this one Lipsmacker will take longer to finish than the Conte government was in power. It might outlast NATO and the entire postwar structure of Western Europe. It’s nice to know that some things were made to last. Did I mention that it’s a Starburst-flavored Lipsmacker? Does anyone have any insight whatsoever into why a woman who should be planning for her old age would buy such a thing? What was I thinking? And why do Italian people have all the luck? No heads of government are resigning on this side of the Atlantic, that’s for sure. Non รจ giusto.
*****
It’s Wednesday now and I haven’t seen or heard news all day. I’m going to assume for purposes of this blog that Western Europe is still standing and that no other world governments have fallen since yesterday.
Today I went with my older son to his college orientation. My younger son’s high school orientation is next week. Work is getting busy again, and the summer is drawing to an end. The last few weeks--quiet mornings, slow-paced workdays, evening swims, movies on the couch with my family, reading in bed--have been almost like a vacation. I wish it could last a little longer, but nothing lasts forever, not even a lip balm, and especially not summer.
Thursday, August 15, 2019
Bookbag
I've been feeling the call of a new tote bag. If you hang around here at all, then you know that this is the last thing I need in the world, so I'm going to stop shopping for a few minutes and catch up on book reviews. I've been reading a lot.
*****
It's not that I need a bag, it's just that the bags that I have don't exactly fulfill all of my bag requirements. Some are too big, and some are too small. My current favorite work bag is almost big enough, but not quite; and it's an open top bag, with no zipper or closure at all. So I can fit a lot in there but then everyone can see everything I'm carrying. It's not ideal. And stuff falls out, too.
I guess I could carry less stuff.
Ridiculous. I'm not here to spout nonsense.
*****
One thing that I don't tend to carry around is books, because I read on a Kindle. I carry the Kindle just about everywhere, because you never know when you'll have a spare few minutes and it's always best to have something to read that has nothing to do with Donald Trump. But the Kindle doesn't take up very much space so it alone would not and could not justify purchase of a new bag of any sort.
*****
OK, so I just bought a tote bag. I can always return it. It might be the Holy Grail of tote bags and if I hadn't bought it, I'd never know, now would I? I'll report back later.
*****
Back to the books. Here are some short reviews of some recently read books:
Goodbye Mr. Chips, James Hilton. Did you read Lost Horizon when you were in high school? I did. I think I liked it, but my memory isn't what it was and I don't remember much about it other than Shangri-La. Attempts to create perfection on earth are always interesting fodder for literature, since they always end in disaster. Relentless tote bag hunt aside, however, this post isn't about perfection-seeking. It's about books. I loved Goodbye, Mr. Chips. I read it in the car on the way to the beach (it's very short, less than 100 pages), and the short break from work was the perfect time to think about how a person can accomplish the thing that they were put on Earth to accomplish, which is what this book is about more than anything else. A lovely book.
Frances and Bernard, Carlene Bauer. I liked this, though I was prepared and fully expecting to hate it. It's a true epistolary novel, 100 percent letters, mostly between the two title characters; and although I didn't accept the premise (the book was supposedly inspired by the friendship between Flannery O'Connor and Robert Lowell) for a hot second, I still liked the characters and the writing and the story very much. Bauer imagines Frances Reardon, the O'Connor character, as a working-class Philadelphian rather than a landowning southerner; but the Robert Lowell character is very much like I imagine the real Lowell probably was. The very idea that Flannery O'Connor would sleep with Robert Lowell or anyone else outside the confines of marriage is ridiculous (not offensive, just ridiculous). It's not clear why Bauer chose to relocate the Flannery character from Georgia to Philadelphia but not the Lowell character who was a Harvard-educated New Englander in the book as in real life. But the letters are beautiful and the story is compelling as long as you don't try to sustain any belief in the O'Connor-Lowell idea. I liked this well enough that I'm going to read Bauer's memoir, Not that Kind of Girl (a very popular memoir title, by the way).
*****
I had second thoughts about the first tote bag, so I bought a second tote bag. I'm not 100 percent sure about either of them, really. Print vs. solid, large vs. really large--so much to think about. At least one will go back, and possibly both of them.
*****
Back to the books.
Say Nothing, Patrick Radden Keefe. My number one book of 2019 so far, in a year that includes Graham Greene, Joan Didion, and C.S. Lewis. I wrote a whole separate post on this, which I'll publish soon. It's missing something (the post, not the book). I'll figure it out.
Thatcher, Jacob Bannister. Believe it or not, this showed up in my daily cheap books newsletter the very day that I finished Say Nothing, so I read a biography of Margaret Thatcher right after a book about the IRA. This was very short and superficial, running from the IRA hunger strikes to the Falklands war to the coal miners' strike to the fall of the Berlin Wall in just a few quick chapters. I didn't learn much about Margaret Thatcher that I didn't already know, except that she started her career as a chemist. That was something new.
*****
Tote bag #1 arrived today. It's lovely and well-designed, and appears to be very durable. It's also absurdly too large. I could carry a microwave oven in that bag, with room left over for the popcorn. Ridiculous. So now it's a decision between tote bag #2, or returning to the drawing board. I do earnestly hope that tote bag #2 will work. I don't think I have the mental capacity to start this whole process over again.
Maybe I should carry less stuff.
*****
I'll Tell You in Person, Chloe Caldwell. This reminded me a little bit of Domenica Ruta's With or Without You, though Caldwell is much more matter-of-fact and less dramatic about her drug use and other high-risk behavior. That's neither praise nor criticism. I liked this book better than I expected to. Caldwell seems to be writing to try to shock women her mother's age, but she comes across as droll and rather sweet, not bratty and self-important. I'll watch Ms. Caldwell's career with considerable interest. If I ever run into her, I'll tell her to be more careful. That way, she'll know that she rattled at least one middle-aged lady.
*****
Tote bag # 2 arrived today. I think it's the one. It has a zipper, and everything fits--computer, notebooks, lunch, pencil case, cosmetic case, water bottle, empty coffee cup, and even an umbrella if I need one. It's a nice shade of pink that might show dirt too easily, but I can wash it; and I work in a Federal government office, not a coal mine, so how dirty is it going to get?. Mission accomplished.
*****
South and West, Joan Didion. I read this a while ago, and I don't remember a darn thing about it, except a part where Didion eats a grilled cheese sandwich. I haven't had a grilled cheese sandwich in years.
Educated, Tara Westover. This is another one that I read a few months ago, and I remember almost everything about it. It's an extraordinary story. I heard about it from my son (well, I heard about it from the entire world, but my son urged me to read it), so I knew the basic outline going in: Young girl grows up off the grid in a fundamentalist quasi-Mormon family with no birth certificate, Social Security number, or papers of any kind, never enters a classroom until age 17, and ends up with a Ph.D. from Cambridge. There's so much more to the story than that, so much that's unexpected, and Tara Westover's writing is beautiful, very stark and spare but vivid. Very highly recommended.
*****
Day 1 carrying the new tote bag. The bag fell off my car seat, as they do, and nothing fell out because everything was securely zipped inside. The red and white striped lining is cheerful and pretty, a nice contrast with the pink. And it's comfortable to carry, even at full capacity. Altogether a good purchase.
*****
Right now, I'm reading a very long history of postwar Europe, aptly titled Postwar. It's very good and very readable but it'll take me a few weeks to finish. I'll probably alternate between a chapter or two of Postwar and another shorter book. I have about ten in my queue right now. An embarrassment of riches. If only I had an embarrassment of time. Does that even make sense? You know what I mean.
*****
It's not that I need a bag, it's just that the bags that I have don't exactly fulfill all of my bag requirements. Some are too big, and some are too small. My current favorite work bag is almost big enough, but not quite; and it's an open top bag, with no zipper or closure at all. So I can fit a lot in there but then everyone can see everything I'm carrying. It's not ideal. And stuff falls out, too.
I guess I could carry less stuff.
Ridiculous. I'm not here to spout nonsense.
*****
One thing that I don't tend to carry around is books, because I read on a Kindle. I carry the Kindle just about everywhere, because you never know when you'll have a spare few minutes and it's always best to have something to read that has nothing to do with Donald Trump. But the Kindle doesn't take up very much space so it alone would not and could not justify purchase of a new bag of any sort.
*****
OK, so I just bought a tote bag. I can always return it. It might be the Holy Grail of tote bags and if I hadn't bought it, I'd never know, now would I? I'll report back later.
*****
Back to the books. Here are some short reviews of some recently read books:
Goodbye Mr. Chips, James Hilton. Did you read Lost Horizon when you were in high school? I did. I think I liked it, but my memory isn't what it was and I don't remember much about it other than Shangri-La. Attempts to create perfection on earth are always interesting fodder for literature, since they always end in disaster. Relentless tote bag hunt aside, however, this post isn't about perfection-seeking. It's about books. I loved Goodbye, Mr. Chips. I read it in the car on the way to the beach (it's very short, less than 100 pages), and the short break from work was the perfect time to think about how a person can accomplish the thing that they were put on Earth to accomplish, which is what this book is about more than anything else. A lovely book.
Frances and Bernard, Carlene Bauer. I liked this, though I was prepared and fully expecting to hate it. It's a true epistolary novel, 100 percent letters, mostly between the two title characters; and although I didn't accept the premise (the book was supposedly inspired by the friendship between Flannery O'Connor and Robert Lowell) for a hot second, I still liked the characters and the writing and the story very much. Bauer imagines Frances Reardon, the O'Connor character, as a working-class Philadelphian rather than a landowning southerner; but the Robert Lowell character is very much like I imagine the real Lowell probably was. The very idea that Flannery O'Connor would sleep with Robert Lowell or anyone else outside the confines of marriage is ridiculous (not offensive, just ridiculous). It's not clear why Bauer chose to relocate the Flannery character from Georgia to Philadelphia but not the Lowell character who was a Harvard-educated New Englander in the book as in real life. But the letters are beautiful and the story is compelling as long as you don't try to sustain any belief in the O'Connor-Lowell idea. I liked this well enough that I'm going to read Bauer's memoir, Not that Kind of Girl (a very popular memoir title, by the way).
*****
I had second thoughts about the first tote bag, so I bought a second tote bag. I'm not 100 percent sure about either of them, really. Print vs. solid, large vs. really large--so much to think about. At least one will go back, and possibly both of them.
*****
Back to the books.
Say Nothing, Patrick Radden Keefe. My number one book of 2019 so far, in a year that includes Graham Greene, Joan Didion, and C.S. Lewis. I wrote a whole separate post on this, which I'll publish soon. It's missing something (the post, not the book). I'll figure it out.
Thatcher, Jacob Bannister. Believe it or not, this showed up in my daily cheap books newsletter the very day that I finished Say Nothing, so I read a biography of Margaret Thatcher right after a book about the IRA. This was very short and superficial, running from the IRA hunger strikes to the Falklands war to the coal miners' strike to the fall of the Berlin Wall in just a few quick chapters. I didn't learn much about Margaret Thatcher that I didn't already know, except that she started her career as a chemist. That was something new.
*****
Tote bag #1 arrived today. It's lovely and well-designed, and appears to be very durable. It's also absurdly too large. I could carry a microwave oven in that bag, with room left over for the popcorn. Ridiculous. So now it's a decision between tote bag #2, or returning to the drawing board. I do earnestly hope that tote bag #2 will work. I don't think I have the mental capacity to start this whole process over again.
Maybe I should carry less stuff.
*****
I'll Tell You in Person, Chloe Caldwell. This reminded me a little bit of Domenica Ruta's With or Without You, though Caldwell is much more matter-of-fact and less dramatic about her drug use and other high-risk behavior. That's neither praise nor criticism. I liked this book better than I expected to. Caldwell seems to be writing to try to shock women her mother's age, but she comes across as droll and rather sweet, not bratty and self-important. I'll watch Ms. Caldwell's career with considerable interest. If I ever run into her, I'll tell her to be more careful. That way, she'll know that she rattled at least one middle-aged lady.
*****
Tote bag # 2 arrived today. I think it's the one. It has a zipper, and everything fits--computer, notebooks, lunch, pencil case, cosmetic case, water bottle, empty coffee cup, and even an umbrella if I need one. It's a nice shade of pink that might show dirt too easily, but I can wash it; and I work in a Federal government office, not a coal mine, so how dirty is it going to get?. Mission accomplished.
*****
South and West, Joan Didion. I read this a while ago, and I don't remember a darn thing about it, except a part where Didion eats a grilled cheese sandwich. I haven't had a grilled cheese sandwich in years.
Educated, Tara Westover. This is another one that I read a few months ago, and I remember almost everything about it. It's an extraordinary story. I heard about it from my son (well, I heard about it from the entire world, but my son urged me to read it), so I knew the basic outline going in: Young girl grows up off the grid in a fundamentalist quasi-Mormon family with no birth certificate, Social Security number, or papers of any kind, never enters a classroom until age 17, and ends up with a Ph.D. from Cambridge. There's so much more to the story than that, so much that's unexpected, and Tara Westover's writing is beautiful, very stark and spare but vivid. Very highly recommended.
*****
Day 1 carrying the new tote bag. The bag fell off my car seat, as they do, and nothing fell out because everything was securely zipped inside. The red and white striped lining is cheerful and pretty, a nice contrast with the pink. And it's comfortable to carry, even at full capacity. Altogether a good purchase.
 |
| There it is. It's bigger than it looks. |
*****
Right now, I'm reading a very long history of postwar Europe, aptly titled Postwar. It's very good and very readable but it'll take me a few weeks to finish. I'll probably alternate between a chapter or two of Postwar and another shorter book. I have about ten in my queue right now. An embarrassment of riches. If only I had an embarrassment of time. Does that even make sense? You know what I mean.
Saturday, August 10, 2019
20-20, more or less
I don't really mind returning to work from vacation, though I do hate getting up on the first morning. I'm an early riser, but "rising" and "leaving the house" are two different things. One of my favorite things about vacation is that no matter how early you rise, you can take as long as you like to actually leave the house. But with that part out of the way, the re-entry into daily working life isn't bad at all. I have to admit that a few times during the morning, I found myself thinking about what I would have been doing at the same time last week, but by 2:30 or so, I was caught up on emails and fully abreast of developments that occurred during my absence and ready to just get back to work.
Do bats really swirl? I don't know. Whatever they do, I'd prefer not to see it or hear it.
Normally, my vacation would just be getting started this week. Various family schedule conflicts made it necessary to go a week earlier than I normally do. This means that we have just about a month of summer remaining. It still feels like the back stretch, though. It's 7:40 PM as I write this and although it's still light out, it's not middle-of-the-day, sun-is-shining light out. It's get out while you can before twilight falls and the bats start swirling light out. Two entirely different things.
Do bats really swirl? I don't know. Whatever they do, I'd prefer not to see it or hear it.
My son just called to let me know that the pool just reopened after thunder had forced it to close for 30 minutes, so I'm going to take advantage of the waning daylight and the warm water and end my day with a swim. I should get home just as the bats begin to swirl, if that's the right word for what bats do.
*****
It's Tuesday now, 6:17 PM. My plan was to swim as soon as I got home from work, and then cook dinner. But thunder forced me to alter my plans once again. I did some housework and prepped some vegetables and then I'll cook the food and hope that the thunder will stop so I can swim at 7 or so.
I'm watching local news right now, hoping to see the weather forecast. I know that I can just look at the radar online, but I never know what I'm looking at. I can see the big green spots (why green?) but I can never tell where and how fast they're moving. I'm not a meteorologist.
The anchorwoman's hair is bothering me, because it's doing something that my hair does. It's lopsided. One side looks just fine and the other side is crazy. I don't think that this is intentional. The weather woman, on the other hand, has perfect hair, but it's so straight and shiny that she must have spent 45 minutes beating it down with a flatiron. Ain't nobody got that kind of time, least of all me. I need to cook some food. The thunderstorm warning ends in fifteen minutes.
*****
OK, so I'm not the only person who can't read radar because that thunderstorm went on for the whole evening and the pool remained closed. I found other things to do.
No swimming today, either. I had some errands to run after work. For some reason, the normal after-work errand-running traffic was far worse than it usually is. I'm lucky that I have a very easy commute to work. I'd be a hideous, quaking mass of road rage if I had to spend more than 20 minutes each way on the road.
I usually write in Google Docs, but I just started using Writer, the Internet Typewriter, just to see what it's like. It's fun but I don't think I'll use it regularly. It's a little too bare bones. I'm not a Luddite. But I do like the typewriter sounds and the custom pink background. Maybe I'll use both. Google probably owns too much of my life anyway.
Sorry Google! Forget I said that! I didn't mean it! Don't erase me!
*****
Me after five minutes in the car: GOOOOO! Oh my GOD! GO! AAAAAUGH!
Yeah, I know. It's bad.
*****
It's Thursday now, and a work meeting that I had particularly dreaded went very well, and I accomplished a lot today, and I also got to go swimming after work. The water sparkled, clear and softly cool without even a slight edge of too-coldness.
Later, I vacuumed, because it was vacuuming day; and around here, we vacuum on vacuuming day, no matter what. By "we," I of course mean "I." About midway through the house, I heard a sound that could only mean that something was stuck in the intake, but I kept vacuuming, because maybe if I ignore that noise, it'll go away. That approach always works, right?
After a few more seconds, I couldn't ignore the noise anymore, so I pulled the plug and pulled a piece of string out of the vacuum cleaner and then finished up. And everything was fine. The End.
*****
No, not really the end, because now my eyesight is getting a tiny bit blurrier every day and I'm pretty sure that I have cataracts. And I'm thinking that if I just keep doing what I'm doing and ignore the cataracts, they'll probably go away.
I dread medical appointments. I marvel at people who just go to the doctor every time something is wrong, just like filling up the gas tank or picking up a gallon of milk. My mother-in-law, who is quite healthy, is like that. If she's even a little bit sick, she calls the doctor. My mother, on the other hand, won't go to a doctor unless she's bleeding from her eye sockets. That used to be my joke, anyway, until I just now pointed out to myself that I am walking around with what are very likely cataracts, and I'm doing absolutely zero about it. I hope I don't start bleeding from my eyes sockets. Then I'll probably have to go to the doctor.
*****
It's Tuesday now, 6:17 PM. My plan was to swim as soon as I got home from work, and then cook dinner. But thunder forced me to alter my plans once again. I did some housework and prepped some vegetables and then I'll cook the food and hope that the thunder will stop so I can swim at 7 or so.
I'm watching local news right now, hoping to see the weather forecast. I know that I can just look at the radar online, but I never know what I'm looking at. I can see the big green spots (why green?) but I can never tell where and how fast they're moving. I'm not a meteorologist.
The anchorwoman's hair is bothering me, because it's doing something that my hair does. It's lopsided. One side looks just fine and the other side is crazy. I don't think that this is intentional. The weather woman, on the other hand, has perfect hair, but it's so straight and shiny that she must have spent 45 minutes beating it down with a flatiron. Ain't nobody got that kind of time, least of all me. I need to cook some food. The thunderstorm warning ends in fifteen minutes.
*****
OK, so I'm not the only person who can't read radar because that thunderstorm went on for the whole evening and the pool remained closed. I found other things to do.
No swimming today, either. I had some errands to run after work. For some reason, the normal after-work errand-running traffic was far worse than it usually is. I'm lucky that I have a very easy commute to work. I'd be a hideous, quaking mass of road rage if I had to spend more than 20 minutes each way on the road.
I usually write in Google Docs, but I just started using Writer, the Internet Typewriter, just to see what it's like. It's fun but I don't think I'll use it regularly. It's a little too bare bones. I'm not a Luddite. But I do like the typewriter sounds and the custom pink background. Maybe I'll use both. Google probably owns too much of my life anyway.
Sorry Google! Forget I said that! I didn't mean it! Don't erase me!
Me after five minutes in the car: GOOOOO! Oh my GOD! GO! AAAAAUGH!
Yeah, I know. It's bad.
*****
It's Thursday now, and a work meeting that I had particularly dreaded went very well, and I accomplished a lot today, and I also got to go swimming after work. The water sparkled, clear and softly cool without even a slight edge of too-coldness.
Later, I vacuumed, because it was vacuuming day; and around here, we vacuum on vacuuming day, no matter what. By "we," I of course mean "I." About midway through the house, I heard a sound that could only mean that something was stuck in the intake, but I kept vacuuming, because maybe if I ignore that noise, it'll go away. That approach always works, right?
After a few more seconds, I couldn't ignore the noise anymore, so I pulled the plug and pulled a piece of string out of the vacuum cleaner and then finished up. And everything was fine. The End.
*****
No, not really the end, because now my eyesight is getting a tiny bit blurrier every day and I'm pretty sure that I have cataracts. And I'm thinking that if I just keep doing what I'm doing and ignore the cataracts, they'll probably go away.
I dread medical appointments. I marvel at people who just go to the doctor every time something is wrong, just like filling up the gas tank or picking up a gallon of milk. My mother-in-law, who is quite healthy, is like that. If she's even a little bit sick, she calls the doctor. My mother, on the other hand, won't go to a doctor unless she's bleeding from her eye sockets. That used to be my joke, anyway, until I just now pointed out to myself that I am walking around with what are very likely cataracts, and I'm doing absolutely zero about it. I hope I don't start bleeding from my eyes sockets. Then I'll probably have to go to the doctor.
*****
It's Friday night. I still haven't called the doctor, but I also didn't start bleeding from my eye sockets. I can see well enough to write, so as far as I'm concerned, it's not broke, and I ain't gonna fix it.
I worked in the office today rather than from home as I normally do on Friday. Our team spent the day gathered around a single conference table, working and talking but mostly talking. After work, I went to my three-year-old niece's birthday party; and from there, to a going-away party for a neighborhood kid who is leaving for his LDS mission. I had just enough time to drop off my work bag at home and see that the house was not in order, but I had to leave it that way.
So maybe it was the whole day surrounded by people, or maybe it was the stress of leaving the house in disarray, but by 9:30, I was 100 percent done and I had to leave the party that minute and not one minute later. And so I did.
*****
It's Saturday and I just read over what I read last night and if spelling and punctuation are any indication (they are the only indication), then my claim that I could see well enough to write was quite false. In my defense, I was writing late at night, in the dark, on my phone, and with my contact lenses out. But still.
My eyes are just fine today, and I don't have a thing to do other than read and write and swim and clean my house. No parties, no errands, no road rage, and absolutely no doctor's appointments. It's almost like another vacation.
*****
It's Saturday and I just read over what I read last night and if spelling and punctuation are any indication (they are the only indication), then my claim that I could see well enough to write was quite false. In my defense, I was writing late at night, in the dark, on my phone, and with my contact lenses out. But still.
My eyes are just fine today, and I don't have a thing to do other than read and write and swim and clean my house. No parties, no errands, no road rage, and absolutely no doctor's appointments. It's almost like another vacation.
Sunday, August 4, 2019
All I ever wanted
It's Saturday, the first day of our biennial beach trip, and I'm in my car, heading north on I-95, about an hour north of Baltimore. Traffic is quite heavy, as it always is on Saturdays in July and August. We're not the only people trying to get the heck out of town.
A beach trip is different from a city vacation. We don't have any exploring to do this week because we know Avalon, NJ inside and out. We won't really see anything new. We'll swim in the Atlantic Ocean and ride our bikes and eat at our usual restaurants. I'll read a lot.
*****
An hour and a half later and we're finally on the right side of the Delaware Memorial Bridge. Now we're really on vacation. Another hour or so and we’ll finally cross my favorite little bridge onto Seven Mile Island.
*****
Sunday of beach week is like a holiday. Everyone is happy, except maybe a handful of island residents who are sick of tourists. Too bad for them. I'm smelling saltwater and Coppertone right now, and I'm brushing a fine coating of sand off my skin. It's blazing hot in the sun but it's cool and shady under the umbrella.
I was just in the middle of a conversation with my 18-year-old son, when he suddenly yelled "ice cream man!" and then took off running. We're close to the water and the tide might force us to shift the whole operation a few feet back.
And it did, very abruptly. We were all under our respective umbrellas, chatting with our assorted children, when a rush of saltwater soaked our towels and bags, with another wave hitting just as we pulled up stakes to move. We'll plan better tomorrow. For today, we cut the beach day short and split up, some of us to swim at the pool, some to ride bikes, and a few more who decided to take naps.
*****
So that’s a lot of people, you might be thinking, and you would not be wrong. When we take city vacations, it’s just my immediate family--husband and two sons, now teenagers. But beach week is come one, come all. Right now, in three separate locations within a five-block radius, we are on vacation with two sisters (one mine and one his), two brothers-in-law, three nephews, and one niece. My mother will arrive later today and will split up her time between my house and my sister’s.
It’s exhausting being the one person who has a connection with every single other person here. My phone, as they say on the Internet, blows up every morning and every evening as both sides of the family check to see what time we’re planning to make camp on the beach, and what time we’re going to have dinner and what that dinner will consist of. I’m popular.
*****
Avalon and Stone Harbor are two of the blondest and whitest places in the United States. There are maybe some sororities at universities in the southern states that contain more tan, beautiful blond girls than Avalon and Stone Harbor in July, but you would have a hard time finding any other place in the U.S. with a higher ratio of blond girls to members of every other demographic. And there are maybe some lacrosse teams or some country clubs where blond-haired, Sperry-wearing college-age boys represent a greater percentage of those present on any given day than 96th Street in Stone Harbor on a Saturday night in August, but if those country clubs and lacrosse teams are not in Connecticut or the Main Line suburbs of Philadelphia, then they’re in Stone Harbor or Avalon.
We were working class, so Avalon was not my beach town when I was growing up. We went to Wildwood. From 2009 to 2012, I worked for a small government contractor that eventually shut down (and that sentence sums up my entire working life from 2001 to 2015, by the way). One day in the lunchroom, I overheard a group of young interns discussing the then-new phenomenon that was MTV’s “Jersey Shore.” Shaking his head, one of the interns said “That show has to be scripted, because those people can’t possibly be real.” I laughed at his naivete. I knew that those people were real, and Wildwood, New Jersey is the reason why I knew that. So the contrast between my childhood beach experience of beaches crowded and noisy with competing transistor radios, and Greek luncheonettes and Italian-run pizzerias, and Morey’s Pier, and sleazy t-shirt and souvenir shops; and the preppy, moneyed gentility of Avalon and Stone Harbor is pretty stark.
Wealth and social status aside, though, it’s still New Jersey. People still listen to the radio on the beach; and just like in Philadelphia, if the radio isn’t tuned to a Phillies game, then it’s on a station that plays no music recorded after 1985 or so. There are at least 25 places where you can
get pizza that is actually worthy of the name. People who summer in $7 million beachfront estates in Avalon call soft ice cream “custard,” just like the people who save up all year to rent a third-floor apartment in Wildwood for a week. And there are t-shirt stores everywhere, even though they’re the kind of t-shirt stores that sell $95 hoodies and softly washed blue and gray t-shirts screen-printed with crossed paddles. The beach is the beach.
*****
Vacation privileges:
I just finished reading something that I liked so I have to find something new to read. It's only Tuesday and I would like to find a novel that with last through the rest of the week.
*****
It's Wednesday and I'm reading The End of the Affair. It's only my second Graham Greene, after Our Man in Havana, which I loved. I'm not sure why I didn't start reading him a long time ago but I will make up for lost time now. This book won't last me through the rest of the week. I'll probably finish it tomorrow.
I always get tired midway through our beach vacation. I love the beach, but it’s a lot of work. There’s a lot of carrying back and forth. A lot of schlepping, because that’s a good onomatopoeic word. After a day on the beach and a sweaty trek home under the merciless sun, burdened by bags and towels and chairs and umbrellas, I’m as tired as a coal miner. By Wednesday, I feel like a camel, midway through a long and thirsty journey across a burning desert.
Then Thursday comes, and I realize that I’ll only wake up to the sound of seagulls three more times this year. Only two more full days at the beach; only two more days of bicycle runs to the corner grocery store to buy Jersey peaches and Jersey tomatoes and wine and ice cream and nothing else. Maybe a bagel.
*****
We spent today with friends from home who are staying in Wildwood, a few miles and a world away from Avalon. My friend told me that she feels conspicuous for her lack of tattoos and body piercings. They are new to the Jersey shore and chose Wildwood because of its proximity to Cape May. They’re having a good time, though, with three children who love the wide beach and the crazy colorful noisy boardwalk that smells like french fries and pizza and funnel cake.
Our friends arrived on our doorstep at 7:30 this morning. The male 60 percent of the family joined my brother-in-law’s annual crabbing trip, while the ladies stayed behind with me. We walked to the shops in Stone Harbor and had a smoothie and shopped at Hoy’s, and then we packed a picnic and headed to the beach. Despite cold water, we all enjoyed a swim, and then my friend’s delightful 10-year-old daughter entertained my six-year-old nephew and three-year-old niece, while their mother read her book, amazed at the normally shy three-year-old’s willingness to make a new friend. After an afternoon on the beach, the men rejoined us for a quick swim in the pool, and then we took turns taking five-minute showers before walking to my sister’s house (carrying the aforementioned wine and ice cream) for the annual crab feast that follows the annual crabbing trip. My friends returned to Wildwood at 9 PM or so, as the week’s first thunder began to rumble. It was a perfect day.
*****
It's Thursday now, and I woke this morning to cloudy gray skies. It wasn’t gloomy; it was actually rather nice. The ocean and the bay and the sky were all the same pearly color; perfect for seagull camouflage. Everything was quiet. A handful of other people were out on their bikes. We nodded to one another as we passed.
It’s a little past 10 now and the sun is out, so we’ll head to the beach soon. We’re hoping for warmer water. The water has gotten a little colder each day this week. Apparently, a rip current is to blame. That’s what the surfers say, anyway, and who am I to argue with them?
*****
And now it's Friday. This morning dawned just like yesterday, with pearl gray skies and slightly lighter pearl gray clouds and a pale yellow sun trying to break through but not quite succeeding.
I hadn't been shopping this week so my son and I rode our bikes to the shops. He and I have a long tradition of early morning excursions during vacation, while the rest of the family sleeps in. We didn't do this every day that time. He's almost 15 now and he likes to sleep. It was nice to have him back again. We found a little used book and print store where we bought a framed vintage postcard and beach tag. It sounds silly but it spoke to us. Then I bought a sweatshirt blanket and St. Christopher medals, and a fancy donut for my son.
As we browsed at Hoy's, my son's favorite childhood shopping destination, I noticed a lady in her 70s carrying a basket of toys and gifts. She perused a rack of beaded bracelets, pursing her lips and tilting her head to the side, trying to choose the best bracelets for her granddaughters or nieces. She finally made her selections and headed to the register to pay. I guessed that it was her last day, too.
*****
Saturday again, and we're on Route 47 North along with all of the other slightly sad people who are returning home from the shore.
I woke up early this morning, as I always do. After one last bike ride and one last walk on the beach, I came back to wake up the rest of the family to pack up our house. And now here we are, winding our way through the Pine Barrens to the Delaware Memorial Bridge.
The End of the Affair actually did hold out until Friday. It's even better than Our Man in Havana. I'll write about it later. I just started the next book in my queue, a history of postwar Europe that will probably take weeks to read. No more novels for now.
I almost wish that I hadn't put my feet in the water this morning. But I can still go swimming later today. Beach week is over but summer is not.
A beach trip is different from a city vacation. We don't have any exploring to do this week because we know Avalon, NJ inside and out. We won't really see anything new. We'll swim in the Atlantic Ocean and ride our bikes and eat at our usual restaurants. I'll read a lot.
*****
An hour and a half later and we're finally on the right side of the Delaware Memorial Bridge. Now we're really on vacation. Another hour or so and we’ll finally cross my favorite little bridge onto Seven Mile Island.
*****
 |
| Stone Harbor beach at 81st Street, 6:30 AM, Sunday July 28 |
Sunday of beach week is like a holiday. Everyone is happy, except maybe a handful of island residents who are sick of tourists. Too bad for them. I'm smelling saltwater and Coppertone right now, and I'm brushing a fine coating of sand off my skin. It's blazing hot in the sun but it's cool and shady under the umbrella.
I was just in the middle of a conversation with my 18-year-old son, when he suddenly yelled "ice cream man!" and then took off running. We're close to the water and the tide might force us to shift the whole operation a few feet back.
And it did, very abruptly. We were all under our respective umbrellas, chatting with our assorted children, when a rush of saltwater soaked our towels and bags, with another wave hitting just as we pulled up stakes to move. We'll plan better tomorrow. For today, we cut the beach day short and split up, some of us to swim at the pool, some to ride bikes, and a few more who decided to take naps.
*****
So that’s a lot of people, you might be thinking, and you would not be wrong. When we take city vacations, it’s just my immediate family--husband and two sons, now teenagers. But beach week is come one, come all. Right now, in three separate locations within a five-block radius, we are on vacation with two sisters (one mine and one his), two brothers-in-law, three nephews, and one niece. My mother will arrive later today and will split up her time between my house and my sister’s.
It’s exhausting being the one person who has a connection with every single other person here. My phone, as they say on the Internet, blows up every morning and every evening as both sides of the family check to see what time we’re planning to make camp on the beach, and what time we’re going to have dinner and what that dinner will consist of. I’m popular.
*****
Avalon and Stone Harbor are two of the blondest and whitest places in the United States. There are maybe some sororities at universities in the southern states that contain more tan, beautiful blond girls than Avalon and Stone Harbor in July, but you would have a hard time finding any other place in the U.S. with a higher ratio of blond girls to members of every other demographic. And there are maybe some lacrosse teams or some country clubs where blond-haired, Sperry-wearing college-age boys represent a greater percentage of those present on any given day than 96th Street in Stone Harbor on a Saturday night in August, but if those country clubs and lacrosse teams are not in Connecticut or the Main Line suburbs of Philadelphia, then they’re in Stone Harbor or Avalon.
We were working class, so Avalon was not my beach town when I was growing up. We went to Wildwood. From 2009 to 2012, I worked for a small government contractor that eventually shut down (and that sentence sums up my entire working life from 2001 to 2015, by the way). One day in the lunchroom, I overheard a group of young interns discussing the then-new phenomenon that was MTV’s “Jersey Shore.” Shaking his head, one of the interns said “That show has to be scripted, because those people can’t possibly be real.” I laughed at his naivete. I knew that those people were real, and Wildwood, New Jersey is the reason why I knew that. So the contrast between my childhood beach experience of beaches crowded and noisy with competing transistor radios, and Greek luncheonettes and Italian-run pizzerias, and Morey’s Pier, and sleazy t-shirt and souvenir shops; and the preppy, moneyed gentility of Avalon and Stone Harbor is pretty stark.
Wealth and social status aside, though, it’s still New Jersey. People still listen to the radio on the beach; and just like in Philadelphia, if the radio isn’t tuned to a Phillies game, then it’s on a station that plays no music recorded after 1985 or so. There are at least 25 places where you can
get pizza that is actually worthy of the name. People who summer in $7 million beachfront estates in Avalon call soft ice cream “custard,” just like the people who save up all year to rent a third-floor apartment in Wildwood for a week. And there are t-shirt stores everywhere, even though they’re the kind of t-shirt stores that sell $95 hoodies and softly washed blue and gray t-shirts screen-printed with crossed paddles. The beach is the beach.
*****
Vacation privileges:
- Two showers a day. More if I feel like it.
- Never wiping down the shower walls.
- Doing only the minimum housework necessary to avoid squalor.
- Not keeping up with the news. Trump probably tweeted something today but if he did, I don't know about it.
- Answering all questions with the words "I don't know."
- Answering all followup questions, which are almost always slight paraphrases of the original question, with the words "I really don't know."
- Reading as much as I want to.
I just finished reading something that I liked so I have to find something new to read. It's only Tuesday and I would like to find a novel that with last through the rest of the week.
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| The view from our deck, where I wrote most of this. |
*****
It's Wednesday and I'm reading The End of the Affair. It's only my second Graham Greene, after Our Man in Havana, which I loved. I'm not sure why I didn't start reading him a long time ago but I will make up for lost time now. This book won't last me through the rest of the week. I'll probably finish it tomorrow.
I always get tired midway through our beach vacation. I love the beach, but it’s a lot of work. There’s a lot of carrying back and forth. A lot of schlepping, because that’s a good onomatopoeic word. After a day on the beach and a sweaty trek home under the merciless sun, burdened by bags and towels and chairs and umbrellas, I’m as tired as a coal miner. By Wednesday, I feel like a camel, midway through a long and thirsty journey across a burning desert.
Then Thursday comes, and I realize that I’ll only wake up to the sound of seagulls three more times this year. Only two more full days at the beach; only two more days of bicycle runs to the corner grocery store to buy Jersey peaches and Jersey tomatoes and wine and ice cream and nothing else. Maybe a bagel.
*****
We spent today with friends from home who are staying in Wildwood, a few miles and a world away from Avalon. My friend told me that she feels conspicuous for her lack of tattoos and body piercings. They are new to the Jersey shore and chose Wildwood because of its proximity to Cape May. They’re having a good time, though, with three children who love the wide beach and the crazy colorful noisy boardwalk that smells like french fries and pizza and funnel cake.
Our friends arrived on our doorstep at 7:30 this morning. The male 60 percent of the family joined my brother-in-law’s annual crabbing trip, while the ladies stayed behind with me. We walked to the shops in Stone Harbor and had a smoothie and shopped at Hoy’s, and then we packed a picnic and headed to the beach. Despite cold water, we all enjoyed a swim, and then my friend’s delightful 10-year-old daughter entertained my six-year-old nephew and three-year-old niece, while their mother read her book, amazed at the normally shy three-year-old’s willingness to make a new friend. After an afternoon on the beach, the men rejoined us for a quick swim in the pool, and then we took turns taking five-minute showers before walking to my sister’s house (carrying the aforementioned wine and ice cream) for the annual crab feast that follows the annual crabbing trip. My friends returned to Wildwood at 9 PM or so, as the week’s first thunder began to rumble. It was a perfect day.
*****
It's Thursday now, and I woke this morning to cloudy gray skies. It wasn’t gloomy; it was actually rather nice. The ocean and the bay and the sky were all the same pearly color; perfect for seagull camouflage. Everything was quiet. A handful of other people were out on their bikes. We nodded to one another as we passed.
It’s a little past 10 now and the sun is out, so we’ll head to the beach soon. We’re hoping for warmer water. The water has gotten a little colder each day this week. Apparently, a rip current is to blame. That’s what the surfers say, anyway, and who am I to argue with them?
*****
And now it's Friday. This morning dawned just like yesterday, with pearl gray skies and slightly lighter pearl gray clouds and a pale yellow sun trying to break through but not quite succeeding.
I hadn't been shopping this week so my son and I rode our bikes to the shops. He and I have a long tradition of early morning excursions during vacation, while the rest of the family sleeps in. We didn't do this every day that time. He's almost 15 now and he likes to sleep. It was nice to have him back again. We found a little used book and print store where we bought a framed vintage postcard and beach tag. It sounds silly but it spoke to us. Then I bought a sweatshirt blanket and St. Christopher medals, and a fancy donut for my son.
As we browsed at Hoy's, my son's favorite childhood shopping destination, I noticed a lady in her 70s carrying a basket of toys and gifts. She perused a rack of beaded bracelets, pursing her lips and tilting her head to the side, trying to choose the best bracelets for her granddaughters or nieces. She finally made her selections and headed to the register to pay. I guessed that it was her last day, too.
*****
Saturday again, and we're on Route 47 North along with all of the other slightly sad people who are returning home from the shore.
I woke up early this morning, as I always do. After one last bike ride and one last walk on the beach, I came back to wake up the rest of the family to pack up our house. And now here we are, winding our way through the Pine Barrens to the Delaware Memorial Bridge.
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| It was a good shell-collecting week. This was the very last one. It had to end sometime. |
The End of the Affair actually did hold out until Friday. It's even better than Our Man in Havana. I'll write about it later. I just started the next book in my queue, a history of postwar Europe that will probably take weeks to read. No more novels for now.
I almost wish that I hadn't put my feet in the water this morning. But I can still go swimming later today. Beach week is over but summer is not.
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