Feel Free

Do you like Joni Mitchell? I like her, but I don’t love her. That puts me in a small and exclusive group of people. Among people who know Joni Mitchell and her music, there are two pretty large groups: People who really really love her and people who really really really can’t stand her. My group, which consists of people who can take her or leave her, is quite small.  

I’ve been reading a lot of Meghan Daum lately. Meghan Daum wrote an essay about how much she loves Joni Mitchell. Meghan Daum is what I think of as the typical lover of Joni Mitchell: a white, Generation X, East Coast-raised, Vassar-educated woman who discovered Joni when she was young, and then loved her for her entire adult life. 

*****

Anyway, I love Meghan Daum’s essays, and now I’ve finished reading all of her published essay collections, so I had to find another essayist to read, and that is how I stumbled across Zadie Smith’s essay collection Feel Free. Before I found this book, I didn’t know that Zadie Smith wrote essays but she certainly does and they are very very good. Smith writes about everything; about art and music and books and family life and race and politics and truth and lies. Like all great essayists, she makes me take notes and highlight passages and write down lists of things that I need to learn more about. She is very good company, funny and sharp and interesting, occasionally whiny but always truthful, much better read than I am or ever will be. 

Like Meghan Daum, Zadie Smith also loves Joni Mitchell. Unlike Meghan Daum, she started by hating Joni. She hated her so much that whenever a Joni Mitchell song played, she would fling herself at the radio to stop the sound of Joni’s voice. Zadie Smith hated Joni Mitchell's music until suddenly and inexplicably, she loved it. This is probably what I love best about reading Zadie Smith. She is capable of completely changing her mind and falling in love with a thing that she once found intolerable. 

She is also fearless. It takes courage to change your mind after taking a public stand about something, even if “public” just means among your friends and family; and even if the thing that you took a stand about is something relatively unimportant, like taste in music. (Note that I did not say that music is unimportant; only that an individual person’s taste in music is unimportant. Music is very important. A single person’s opinion about Joni Mitchell or Kanye West or Vampire Weekend is not.) 

I too have taken outspoken public stands about controversial issues. I’m on record as a right-thinking person who knows that pumpkin spice latte, though widely beloved, is vile, revolting swill. And I promise you that if I ever develop a taste for PSL, I’m not going to admit that to anyone. I’m not going to plaster my social media with reversals of my prior declarations that pumpkin spice is a hate crime against coffee (it is) and that people who take an objective good like coffee and add to it an unnecessary and disgusting element (pumpkin spice) that makes it unfit for humanity are under the devil’s influence (they are). I’m going to wear a disguise when I line up at Starbucks for my (ghastly) PSL. I’m never going to climb down. But Zadie Smith is not afraid to climb down. She’s not afraid to lose face before her friends, her family, and the reading public. She is fearless. 

Take Martin Buber and Justin Bieber, for example. You have to be utterly fearless to write a whole essay about Martin Buber’s idea of human relationships as either I-It relationships or I-Thou relationships, using Justin Bieber as an extended metaphor. 

A person who looks for a way to write about Martin Buber and Justin Bieber in the same essay just because “Buber and Bieber” sound funny together is a person after my own heart. But Smith also makes a brilliant connection between Buber's thought and the objectification of celebrities by those who “love” them, who turn the adored celebrity into an “It” rather than a “Thou.” She also does not fail to acknowledge the irony here, which is that she herself is also treating Bieber as an It rather than a Thou by virtue of his metaphorical role in this essay. The whole essay is like watching a high-wire act, and you read it with proverbial bated breath to see if she can pull this crazy stunt off and damn if she doesn’t. Fearless. And brilliant. 

*****

That’s not to say that she’s right about everything. Writing about her time living in Rome, she mentions “the Roman fetish for that British sartorial horror, the Barbour jacket…” 

Horror? HORROR? WHAAAAAT? I love Barbour jackets. I love Barbour jackets and Orvis jackets and Burberry jackets. They’re beautiful. 

OK, maybe they’re not beautiful in the strictly beautiful sense of beauty. But they’re practical and classic and they never go out of style and they look amazing with a Longchamp Le Pliage bag or a Coach crossbody, and OK, I guess I see her point. I mean, who am I, the Duchess of fucking Cambridge? Never mind. I’m going to keep wearing my Barbour jacket, with my Le Pliage slung over my shoulder; and if someone thinks that I’m a Kate Middleton fashion stan, then what about it? There are, I suppose, worse things to be. 

Fashion disagreements aside (really, that is a big one), when Smith is right, she’s really right, and she’s right most of the time. Writing about the then-current (2016) state of politics in the UK and US, she quotes Tony Judt (hey! An author I’ve actually read!) 

We have freed ourselves of the mid-20th-century assumption--never universal but certainly widespread--that the state is likely to be the best solution to any given problem. We now need to liberate ourselves from the opposite notion: that the state is -- by definition and always -- the worst available option. 

Tony Judt is right, of course, but Zadie Smith knows exactly why he’s right. The tension between private interests and the public good has been the central debate of politics for my entire life. Foreign policy and education and health policy and even to a certain extent racial justice are just window dressing for the never-ending human struggle between the rich and powerful and the rest of us. Every political position answers the question: Do we want a world in which the strong consistently and relentlessly crush the weak? More and more it seems that people in power are prepared to answer: “Yes, and fuck all of you.” 

According to Zadie Smith, the politicians are also just window dressing, and if you want to know who really runs the world, it's not Biden or Trump or Boris Johnson or even Vladimir Putin. “My life and the lives of my fellow Britons are at all times at least partially governed by a permanent, unelected billionaire class, who own the newspapers and much of the TV, and through which absurd figures like (Nigel) Farage are easily puffed up, thus swinging elections and shaping policy.” Oh yes. Substitute Trump or any of his Trumpity Trumpster wannabes like DeSantis or Abbott or Noem or Marjorie Taylor Greene for Nigel Farage, and we’re in the same boat in the United States. 

*****

Zadie Smith grew up in what she describes as the British lower middle class, which was once a good place to be. Sometime before Thatcherism really took hold, a middle class Briton (lower middle or middle middle or upper middle) could count on a reasonably secure life and future for herself and her family. That’s not to say that it was easy to become middle class if you weren’t born into that status. Smith’s parents, a white English father and a black Jamaican mother, grew up poor enough that their entry into the middle class with its attendant privileges (a modest home in the suburbs, annual holidays, a good education for their children) was a real achievement. But it was a possible achievement. It was an achievement that put you on pretty solid ground from the standpoint of long-term economic and social stability and security. Now it’s even harder to move up from poverty into the working or middle class. And it’s much much easier to fall from the working class or even the middle class into poverty. 

Writing about a fire that destroyed her apartment in Rome, Smith marvels at her own position of privilege. For her grandparents and even her parents, a fire that destroyed all of their worldly possessions would have been a disaster beyond recovery. Poor people don’t have savings or insurance or the promise of future earnings or any of the economic security mechanisms that make it possible to replace your home and its contents if they’re destroyed in a fire. Smith and her family (including her dog, whom she’d taken with her before leaving the apartment, thus saving his life), although traumatized and heartbroken at the loss of their home and possessions, had access to all of the necessary means of recovery. They could stay in a hotel for a few days, maybe wait for an insurance company to assess the damage and offer compensation, and then rebuild their material lives with relatively little struggle. 

It’s sad and infuriating that this capacity to recover from disaster is a privilege reserved to an ever-smaller group of people; and that more and more working people can be pushed right over the financial brink by just one big unexpected bill, let alone a fire. 

*****

The best thing about reading a great essayist is learning about new ideas, new authors, new artists; that is to say, new to me. Reading Zadie Smith is like reading a young British Nora Ephron/Joan Didion hybrid. She starts with a high-level bird’s eye view of pretty much everything in the social and political and artistic and cultural landscape, and then she zooms in and picks and chooses where to really dig in and get to the root of something. She gets to the root of Joni Mitchell in a way that even Meghan Daum didn’t manage to do. Thanks to Zadie Smith, I’m going to see some movies that I haven’t seen before and look at some paintings that I’ve never looked at before. I’m going to listen to some new music and I’m going to read some new and old books. 

I started, predictably, with the books. Having never read Philip Roth (having in fact assiduously avoided him), I am now reading Goodbye, Columbus, and it’s pretty good in a mid-century NY/NJ time capsule kind of way. The title story encapsulates the entire history of the sexual revolution and its connection to World War II, all in about 100 very sad pages. After shaking my head at Neil Klugman for 100 pages, I don’t think I have the patience for Mr. Portnoy and his Complaint, but who knows? Maybe I’ll read Portnoy, too. Zadie Smith is a Joni Mitchell fan now. Maybe I’ll come to love Philip Roth. Anything is possible. Anything can happen. That’s the takeaway, really. A few hours with Zadie Smith, and you feel that anything can happen. 

I don't have the cholesterol

You know what? Climbing the proverbial corporate ladder is not all it’s cracked up to be, and that’s from someone who didn’t have much ambition in that direction to begin with. I mean it’s nice to be promoted but I’m working all the time now. All. The. Time. I work like a dog. 

And you know what else? Forget that, because I know a bunch of dogs, and they’re all lazy and shiftless. They sleep 18 hours a day and spend the rest of their time sniffing things and trying to score free food. A day of my life would kill your average dog. No work ethic at all. 

*****

Earlier today, I asked my 16-year-old son if he’d seen any of the milk crate challenge videos, and he replied in the affirmative. “You’re not going to try that, are you?” I asked. 

He scoffed. “No. Where am I going to get 20 milk crates?”

*****

It’s the next day now. I stopped work a few minutes earlier, only to notice that I have ten million household chores yet to do. That’s another problem. I need to get everyone else in the house to do more of this stuff, but I don’t. I do it all myself, and then I wonder why I’m exhausted. 

*****

I mean, I was glad to hear the “no,” but I do wish it was prompted by concerns more practical and urgent than milk crate supply chain issues, know what I mean? 

*****

I have been writing several different things all at once, but my real job has been sucking up most of my mental energy, so this has to suffice as my writing for today. Milk crates and vacuuming. Maybe I should just write Twitter threads. A Twitter thread is its own literary form, and I read one today that includes a line that I will be repeating for years to come: “You don’t have the cholesterol to be out here.” 

Analyzing why a thing is funny generally makes it no longer funny, so I won’t ruin this line by overthinking it. 

OK, it’s the word “cholesterol.” It’s a fatty acid, right? Or at least it’s close enough to a fatty acid. And fatty acids do more than clog arteries; they also yield ATP through metabolic processes. So that’s a shorthand but obscure but also hilarious way of saying that someone doesn’t have the necessary energy. I won't get into an exegesis of "out here," which is a thing all to itself. Brilliant writing. I can only hope to be so creative. Not today, though. Fatty acids are in short supply. 

Silly

I just finished a long workday and was about to walk out the door to swim, and then I remembered that I need to write something. I’m taking my chances with the weather, which is wildly erratic today, and the early evening sunshine that is still shining through the window behind me could give way to the threatened thunderstorms any minute, which would completely scuttle my swimming plans. Life is risky. 

Of all of the terrible things going on in the world today, from Haiti to Afghanistan to the parts of the United States that are falling victim to the latest Greek letter COVID variant, I’m worried about my weight. I know, it’s so petty and suburban white lady-ish to worry about how fat I am when others are hungry or sick or homeless or in imminent danger. But there it is. I’m a petty suburban white lady who’s carrying a few extra pounds. The extra weight doesn’t bother me as much as the state of the world bothers me. But I’d be lying if I said that it didn’t bother me at all. 

*****

It’s the next day now, and the sun continued to shine and the threatened thunderstorm did not materialize and the National Weather Service cancelled the tornado watch that had been in effect for much of the day. All of the weather hoopla turned out to be much ado about nothing. The water was lovely, and I swam my 800 meters, and I went on my way rejoicing.  

I’m technically working now. I’m listening in on a corporate call, but I’m also thinking through a project problem, and I’m making to-do lists, for the long and short term. I can multi-task like nobody’s business. 

Tomorrow is payday. I got promoted so I got a raise. It’s kind of a big promotion and kind of a small raise, but more money is more money and I’ll take it. I donate money every time I get paid, and so tomorrow, I’ll donate to the International Refugee Assistance Project (for Afghanistan) and Catholic Relief Services (for Haiti). Can I do more than that? I don’t know. I guess I can pray. I guess I can keep donating as much as I can and a little more because they need the money more than I do. I guess I can keep living my own little life and spend as much time being grateful and as little time complaining as possible. I can just swim without worrying about being too fat or looking silly in my bathing suit. Frog and the turtle and the mice and the dragonflies and the snakes can laugh their fool heads off.  

So what if I look funny in my bathing suit? SO WHAT? 

Hints and allegations

Do you know how sometimes, you flame out in a blaze of righteous anger, fighting an injustice for your own sake and for the sake of those who might come after you, and then you find that maybe you overreacted a bit or maybe you even misunderstood the situation altogether so that the perceived injustice was really just a failure to communicate and then you feel that embarrassing mix of deflation and remorse? 

No? 

Neither do I. That has never happened to me, either. There’s nothing to see here other than a colorful description of an emotional state that other people might have experienced, people less temperate and reasonable than I.  

*****

Anyway, a person in such an emotional state could well say some things that he or she could well regret later. Or maybe it’s not so much what that person might have said but the way in which the person said it that could be the cause for later sorrow, or at least regret, or at the very least a slight feeling of foolishness. Thank goodness that this is all speculative, all rhetorical.

*****

You’re smart, so I know that you figured out that this was neither rhetorical nor speculative, but an actual dear-diary entry about a thing that happened and the way that I reacted to it. And although I did overreact, the overreaction was only slight. My response to the situation was only slightly out of proportion to the situation’s severity and its relative importance in my life. And not only that, but the people who were the targets of my overly righteous and overly indignant indignation actually backed down and agreed that I have a legitimate grievance, and they promised to promptly address my very valid concerns. All’s well that ends well. 

That might be a premature statement, because a promise to address a person’s concerns is not the same thing as concrete action, but it’s a start. Validation is a start. Let’s just say that all is  likely to be well. Things are looking up. 

And I regret nothing.

Beach Week 2021

It's beach week! Or maybe I should capitalize that: It's Beach Week. It's Saturday, August 7 and we are in the car, heading north on I-95. We're about 15 minutes south of Baltimore and God willing and the creek don't rise, we will be crossing the Delaware Memorial Bridge into New Jersey in about two hours. From there it's another two hours of driving along meandering secondary roads through the tomato fields and pine barrens of South Jersey. 

As always, I packed too much stuff immediately after.as always, resolving not to pack too much stuff. I'm nothing if not consistent in my lack of consistency. Next time though. Next time for sure I'm bringing one handbag, one jacket, two swimsuits,two pairs of shorts, some t-shirts, a dress, and some sandals. That's it. Maybe a sweater. Underwear and pajamas of course. Notebook, obviously, and my laptop. Books. Sneakers and socks. Some pants and a long-sleeved shirt because it gets chilly in the evening sometimes.

Well fine. Traveling light is obviously bullshit. Whatever. 

*****

It’s Sunday morning now, cool and pearly gray. The sky has a light blue tinge on the horizon and there’s a little bit of glow, a little hint of possible later sunshine; and the water of one of Stone Harbor’s many little back bays is greenish gray, no sparkle of sunlight, just a chilly dank channel that could be as shallow as a swimming pool or as deep as the Marianas Trench. A sea bird just skidded into a flapping water landing. I think it was some kind of heron. A neighbor across the channel is skimming by in a little outboard motorboat. I know even less about boats than I do about birds, so I won’t attempt to describe the boat any further except to say that it contains four people and probably could not accommodate any more. 

All of that is to say that it’s lovely outside, which is a nice contrast with inside. We’ve been lucky in the past to rent beach condos and townhouses sight unseen that turn out to be pretty nice when we show up with our suitcases and our linens. This one is a rare exception. There’s not really anything terribly wrong with it. It’s smaller and more cramped than I expected but we don’t need much room. And it hasn’t been updated in many years, a fact that also does not bother me. What does bother me is the hideousness of the Miami 1987 decor, shades of pink and peach and beige and pale gray on just about every surface. I’ll tell you about the “artwork” at another time, but suffice to say that almost every picture on every wall has a narrow chrome frame; and all of the pictures, without exception, adhere to the pink/peach/beige/gray palette. There’s a picture of two pale beige horses fading into a creamy pink haze. There’s a print of a beautiful woman dressed in peach and pink flowing robes, her beige-y blond hair cascading in waves down her back. If the “Miami Vice” detectives had been girls, this would have been their apartment. 

There’s also a “Relax” sign. There’s always a “Relax” sign at a Jersey Shore beach rental, but this one is the first pink one I’ve ever seen. Maybe the owner commissioned it. 

*****

I didn’t go in the ocean yesterday. This is rare for me, but it was cold on the beach, cold enough that I wore a hoodie over my suit and cover up, and I sat with a towel over my knees like a blanket. Getting into the water, I thought, wouldn’t be too bad. It was the getting out that I dreaded. So I sat on the sand on my tiny lightweight low-to-the-ground aluminum folding chair, and I read and chatted with my sister and ate a frozen lemonade and looked out at the ocean. My son and I gathered the first shells of the week. 

We’re particular about our shells. We favor small ones, but we won’t pass up a big one as long as it’s perfect. They all have to be perfect or nearly so. A tiny chip on an edge that does not affect the shell’s shape, we are prepared to overlook, especially if it’s a very nice shell otherwise. But as a rule, we’re looking for the best of the best. During the course of the week, only about 30 shells will make our cut. The rest of them will remain on the sand at the 82nd Street beach. 

Today, it’s sunny and clear at 8:30. The sky is pale blue and the only clouds are wispy, slightly pink cotton candy-looking things. The sun will be relentless at noon when it’s right overhead. I’ll swim in the ocean today, and then I’ll come back and swim in the tiny pool at our beach rental. 

*****

Later that morning, I rode my bike to the 111th Street beach in Stone Harbor, also known as Nuns’ Beach because 111th Street is also home to the retreat and retirement home of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. IHM sisters taught me when I was a student at St. John the Baptist parish school, now closed, in Philadelphia. 

The nuns’ home is scheduled for demolition, and a new one is to be built on the site, a bit farther back from the road. The sisters run a tiny makeshift shop selling Nuns’ Beach merchandise, and so I bought a hoodie. I asked the three dour old women sitting behind the card table on which the merchandise was displayed if they were retired sisters, as none of them wore a habit. The lady who took my money and handed me my Nuns’ Beach hoodie, who looked like every mean judgy church lady I’d ever avoided as a child, pointed to the other two, seated on folding chairs. “That’s Sister Andrew and Sister Michael,” she said. “I’m not a sister.” 

I said thank you, and told the ladies that the Sisters had taught me. Sister Andrew and Church Lady looked at me with uninterest bordering on disdain. Sister Michael said “OK, then, have a good one,” and returned to her conversation with Sister Andrew. 

I have a lot of distant and impersonal affection for the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Some of them were very good teachers, who taught me a lot. But the stone cold rudeness of the Stone Harbor nuns was also the authenticity test that proved the truth of their claim of IHM sisterhood. I didn’t ask, but I’d bet the house that they taught in Archdiocesan schools in Philadelphia. I was happy to buy a hoodie because I don’t want the old bats to go homeless, But I’m also very sure that I’d never hand a child of mine over to any of them. Fuck off, Sisters. You’re in my prayers, but only from a distance. 

*****

Stone Harbor and its sister town Avalon are among the whitest places in the United States. I’m talking about upper middle class preppy white, blond hair and blue eyes and deep tans and lacrosse and golf and sailing and flags and bumper stickers that proclaim homeowners’ and drivers’ connections with prestigious universities and private schools. It’s so white that my Korean husband and mixed sons nod in recognition to any non-white person they encounter. A few Black and Asian families venture here to vacation, but not many. Most of the people of races other than Main Line white people are here to work. People don’t notice them unless they look for them. I see sanitation workers in the morning, clearing the streets of last night’s pizza boxes and wine bottles before the morning dog walking and biking and golf-carting begins. I saw a group of Hispanic maids chatting together outside the Icona hotel and resort, animatedly waving their hands and shaking their heads and laughing and nodding in agreement with one another. They were fed up with something, probably their manager or possibly spoiled and unreasonable hotel guests. Maybe both. 

Early yesterday morning, I walked past a man who was hosing down the sidewalk outside a restaurant. He seemed surprised when I said good morning, but he returned the greeting. Maybe I shouldn’t have spoken. Maybe by greeting him I wasn’t recognizing his humanity, but intruding on his privacy, on the one moment of the working day when he was away from affluent white beachgoers and free to think his own thoughts as he worked. I hope he had a good day at work. I hope the maids have an easier day today, and that departing guests will tip generously. I hope the sanitation guys won’t have to deal with anything too disgusting. 

*****

Our condo is on the bay, and when I say “the bay,” I want to be sure to first disabuse you of any notion of a large coastal mini-ocean like the Delaware Bay or even the inland Chesapeake Bay. “Bay” at the Jersey Shore is a catchall term for a salt marsh, a boat harbor, or a back canal where people dock their boats and their jet skis and go paddle boarding and crabbing. The one we are staying on is bordered on three sides by houses and buildings on 96th and 98th Streets and Third Avenue. The fourth side opens up into a larger channel that feeds into a salt marsh that connects to another channel and bay that will eventually connect with the ocean at an inlet. 

Anyway, it’s a lively scene out there. Several restaurants and bars have decks on the bay, and the houses and condo buildings almost all have boat docks and walkways down to the water. Our building has a little pool with a big deck on the bay. The deck has a gate that leads to a gangplank that leads to a ladder that leads right into the dank chilly bay water. 

On Tuesday, my son was sitting on our tiny balcony, and he called out to me. “Mom! There’s an old lady swimming in the bay.” I came to look, and after explaining to him that what he was seeing was just a “lady” and not an “old lady,” I started thinking about how I needed to swim in the bay, too. Later on Tuesday, after the beach, we saw several other people swimming in the bay, and I resolved to jump in myself. After I swam in the very warm pool, I dipped a toe in the bay, which was very cold, and I lost my nerve. Tomorrow, I thought. Tomorrow, I will swim in the bay FIRST, and THEN get in the pool. 

And that is exactly what I did. And it was glorious. I felt as free as a fish, swimming around in a still body of water surrounded by boat docks, facing a channel that led to even more wide-open water. I thought for just a moment about how I could keep swimming, right past the jet skiers and then past the crabbing boats heading toward the salt marsh. But then I began to panic a bit. Perhaps it was the opacity of the water--I couldn’t see my own body underneath the surface, so I certainly couldn’t see the bodies of any underwater creatures that might be swimming around me. A piece of seaweed brushed past me, and I shuddered. It was like an open water swimmer’s version of the “twisties.” I’m a good swimmer but all of a sudden I felt that I just couldn’t swim anymore, and so I got myself back to the barnacle-encrusted ladder and I pulled myself out. After a quick rinse in the shower, I jumped into the pool, which felt like a hot tub after the cold of the bay. My vacation goal, to swim in every available body of water, is accomplished. Check. 

It’s Friday now, the last day of beach week (sorry: Beach Week). It always goes by extremely fast, but especially when you’re working every day, which I did. Between several hours of work every day and entertaining my mom, who joined us mid-week, and keeping up with the daily minimum housekeeping necessary to make a small beach rental liveable for five people, it was really more work than vacation. I am trying not to feel bad about that. We had lovely weather, and I rode my bike every day, and I went to the beach every day, and I visited a bird sanctuary and a soon-to-be-demolished convent, and I shopped with my sons and bought them some nice things that they were going to buy for themselves, but sometimes you just feel like buying your kid a present, and that’s what I did. I swam in two different pools, the ocean, and the bay. So it’s been a fun week. 

If I had to pinpoint the thing that was missing from this vacation, and the thing that I crave more than anything else, it’s freedom. I am near desperate for a week or even a day when I’m not on the clock. I want to come and go as I please, with no need to account to anyone for my whereabouts, and no requirement to return by any set time. Maybe that is too much to ask. Most people don’t have that kind of freedom and I don’t expect it 365 days a year. But a day or two here or there would be nice. It’s been so long since I had an unscheduled day that I don’t even remember really when that long-ago day might have been. I suppose I’d have to check my calendar. 

*****

Quickly as ever, Beach Week is over and we're in the car winding along through the South Jersey farmland and pine barrens on one of several two lane highways that will take us back to the Delaware Memorial Bridge and back onto I-95. 

The last morning at the beach is a busy morning. I woke up at 7 and started to clean up and pack, stopping for a few minutes to have coffee on the deck. The bay was quiet. It was too early for boaters and jet skiers and paddle boarders and swimming ladies. The seagulls and herons and egrets had the place to themselves. 

My last day of Beach Week goal is always to go home with only one load of dirty laundry, to get in one last bike ride, and to make sure we don't leave anything behind. All of this, as well as packing the car and securing the bikes on the bike rack, takes three hours, and checkout time is 10 o'clock. My son dropped the keys off at 9:55, and there's one small bag of dirty laundry in the trunk. My last bike ride was a short trip to the 101st Street beach, and I gave the whole place a thorough once-over, and then did it again, just to be sure. A twice-over, if you will. Mission accomplished. 

101st Street, Stone Harbor, NJ.
August 14, 2021, 9:30 AM

*****

It’s Sunday morning now. I like the post-vacation weekend hours, even the unpacking and organizing and laundry and grocery list-making. Especially that part, if we’re being honest and I'm always being honest. I miss the beach but I don’t miss the tiny beach condo with its musty curtains and its dodgy carpets and mattresses. It’s roomy at home, and it’s clean. The couch in the family room has saggy cushions but I know where that sagginess originated from. I know exactly who slept on these mattresses and exactly whose feet have been propped up on this coffee table, the one where my feet are propped right now. 

We unpacked and organized as soon as we came home because some of us can’t breathe until everything is in order. And then I swam in the pool that had warmed back up to my preferred temperature during our absence. Today, it’s time to restock this place. I will shop for my family and for my old lady, who went a whole week without her chocolate milk and her whole wheat matzo, and then I will cook dinner for the first time in ten days. It’s Sunday, August 15. Back to work tomorrow. 

 

Disasters, natural and otherwise

I’m waiting for a meeting to start. It should have started some time ago, but here we wait, as the fire rages right outside my window. 

That is not a metaphor. A house up the street from me is literally on fire; there are actual flames burning from the rooftop and the neighborhood is filled with smoke. “Right outside my window” is a slight exaggeration, as I have to actually walk out into my driveway to see the fire. But the fire is real and not symbolic in any way. 

And so there’s a real firehose, and also a metaphorical firehose. The meeting, which just began, is a training meeting. My job is changing once again, and I’m collapsing under the weight of the new information and new directives that have been piled on my proverbial desk in the last few days. In business jargon, which is stupid but also sometimes very expressive, I am drinking from the firehose. So to keep everything in order, we have a real, literal fire; but a metaphorical firehose. And a real firehose, too, which the firemen used to put out the fire, which is, again, real. The house is very badly damaged, but no one was home, thank God. 

*****

Do I do anything except wait for meetings to start? Apparently I don’t because here it is at 7:30 PM the next day, and I am once again waiting for a meeting to start. This one is a meeting of a board on which I serve as a volunteer. We meet monthly, and it occurs to me that August should be a month off. Two board members are on vacation and they are attending from their beach rentals. They are more dedicated than I am. 

It’s 7:52 now, and the meeting is moving right along. An issue that I feared would be contentious was surprisingly completely non-controversial, and we’re ahead of schedule. That was risky, putting that in black and white. You don’t talk about a perfect game in progress, and you definitely don’t swan around the place celebrating a meeting ending on time until the meeting in fact ends on time and is actually over. 

*****

See, I knew I shouldn’t have indulged in premature celebration, because it wouldn’t be a meeting if certain people (meaning a certain person) didn’t derail the conversation and drag out the proceedings with bad faith passive-aggressive victim performance. 

Anyway. 

Did I mention that my neighborhood was literally on fire two days ago? But big deal, because last night, we awakened at 2:30 AM to what felt very much like an earthquake. Twitter also thought it was an earthquake. That’s the thing about Twitter. It’s not the place to go for thoughtful contemplation of ideas and issues, but it’s usually pretty reliable when you need a real-time update on an immediate local situation. If 100-plus people on Maryland Twitter all say that they felt an earthquake near Columbia or Silver Spring or Rockville, then you can probably be pretty sure that it was in fact an earthquake that just woke you up. 

*****

Let’s recap, shall we? A fire on Monday and an earthquake on Wednesday. It's Thursday now and so far, the day is disaster-free, unless you count my job. It’s really quite overwhelming, and I hit a wall today. Earlier this week, I thought I could handle it all.  I started to regain my confidence. For a few hours there, I was downright cocky. “I’m going to shake things up,” I thought. “I am going to light this place up.” 

OMG, I KILL myself. 

Seriously, dying here. 

Hilarious jokes notwithstanding, I’m not so cocky anymore. I bit off more than I can chew; although really, that is not quite accurate because I did not ask for this job. It would be accurate to say that I was force-fed more than I can chew, but they’re making me chew it anyway. 

It’s 10:10 PM, and I’m all out of energy. I just found myself thinking about rabbits and Boston accents and the American worker and I think I might be sleeping with my eyes wide open. It’s time to stop thinking and definitely it’s time to stop typing. I’m going to go to bed soon, because the meetings start early tomorrow morning. That part, at least, is a constant. That part doesn’t change.