Untimely reviews

Chris Rea’s “Fool (If You Think it’s Over)” is one of those songs that I can’t skip through. If it starts playing on the radio just as I’m parking, then I’m going to sit in the car until it’s over. 

This song was popular in 1978. I was 12, and I remember hearing it all the time and not particularly liking it. I liked up-tempo pop and disco at the time. “Fool” is not quite a ballad but it’s not really a pop song either. And something about it felt off. At 12, I was quite aware of creepy men, and I thought that the song’s voice was that of a creepy older man chasing after a young girl. But I was wrong. The lyrics that I thought were creepy turned out to be actually really sweet when you know the backstory. And thanks to the internet, I know the backstory. 

I hadn’t heard “Fool (If You Think it’s Over”) in literally decades, but it played on the radio one day, and I listened to it all the way through for the sake of nostalgia. And then something about the song grabbed me, so I listened to it again, and then again. Then I looked up Chris Rea, who was a pretty successful singer and musician in his native England. When he wrote “Fool (If You Think it’s Over),” he hoped to convince Al Green to record it, but the record company liked his demo recording and insisted that he record the song himself. It ended up being his only hit in the US.    

The real story, though, is the song’s inspiration. Chris Rea wrote “Fool” about his younger sister, Paula, who was heartbroken after her breakup with her first boyfriend. “The pains of 17/unreal they’re only dreams” is just the sort of infuriating thing a know-it-all big brother would say to a younger sister. But it’s clear somehow that he doesn’t mean “unreal” in the sense of imaginary or unimportant. The singer knows that the girl’s pain is real in the moment, but he also knows that it won’t last and that it won’t have any real impact on her life.  He wants her to know that she’ll move on and that things will get better. 

Context changes everything. “I’ll buy your first good wine..ooh we’ll have a real good time” was the line that made me think that the song was about a predator trying to groom a young girl. Instead, it’s a brother promising his younger sister that there’s so much more ahead of her - both good times and bad - than a teenage romance. And now, every time I hear that song, I imagine a brother consoling his younger sister over a bottle of wine. And I imagine the young girl cheering up and realizing that her brother is right and that the boy wasn’t worthy of her in the first place. And I imagine that the brother and sister actually do have a real good time. I hope that Chris and Paula Rea had a real good time. 

*****

During the early pandemic months in 2020, I started to watch “The Americans,” and I didn’t make it past episode 1. After a brutal rape 20 minutes in, I turned it off, absolutely furious. I’m tired of sexual violence as a plot point. Oddly enough, those of us who have actually endured it (and trust me that there are more of us than you think) don’t find brutal rape scenes very entertaining. 

Anyway, I started watching the show again recently. I skipped that scene, knowing that it was coming, but of course there was other sexual violence to come. And the almost lost me again, and not only for that reason. I just had a hard time believing in some of the period details and in the premise itself. But it started to grow on me. A few episodes in, I began to see how well it captures the period; not so much in visual details (but many of the visuals, especially the fashion, are spot-on)  but in the settled comfortable certainty of the upper middle class characters and their unshakeable belief in the mid-century idea of America. Then I watched three consecutive episodes when I was sick (again!) and the constant sex and violence and family drama felt repetitive. 

But the acting is absolutely brilliant. Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys and Noah Emmerich and the brilliant Alison Wright and Annet Mahendru. And while I still think that the sexual content is largely gratuitous and exploitative, the story and the pacing and the world that it creates are absorbing and compelling. Bottom line: This is a show best consumed a little at a time, with long breaks in between. 

Side note about Matthew Rhys - I’d heard somewhere that he was Welsh, but I’d never seen him play anything but Americans - mostly cold-blooded killers or dour misanthropes (I loved his performance as Lloyd in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood). I guessed that maybe he was born in Wales but raised in the US. Then I saw an interview with him, and that man is as Welsh as Dylan Thomas and also an absolute delight. I imagine a director saying something like “I need an actor to play a remorseless, pitiless murderer and/or an absolute miserable son of a bitch” and the casting director responding “I know! Let’s get that charming Welsh chap who sounds like he spends his days singing with his friends in a cozy seaside pub!” Uncanny. Matthew Rhys is really good at his job. 

*****

Our neighborhood civic association sponsors a summer movie series. “Song Sung Blue,” a movie that I assiduously avoided when it was first released, was the summer’s first selection, and I went for two reasons: My friends asked me to go, and no one else was home so what else did I have to do? 

Why did I try to avoid this movie, you might ask? Because I grew up hearing Neil Diamond all day every day and even though I still like him (how can you not), I didn’t need to see a movie about crazy Neil Diamond fans. I lived with one. That was my whole childhood. At one point in the movie, the Neil Diamond tribute singer portrayed by Hugh Jackman argues with his manager, trying to make a case for “Soolaimon” as the band’s opening number. “Nobody knows Soolaimon!” the man yells. “I fucking know ‘Soolaimon,’” I thought to myself.  I haven’t heard “Soolaimon” in decades but I bet I remember every note. 

The movie is based on a true story, and was different and much better than I expected. Kate Hudson deserved that Oscar nomination. I might even listen to some Neil Diamond today. 

*****

I just finished reading Leaving Aberdeen, a memoir by Estell Sims Halliburton. Mrs. Halliburton is a Black woman who was born on a sharecropping plantation in Mississippi in the 1940s. Her memoir tells the story of her early childhood picking cotton and living in a plantation shack through her family’s first real home in the town of Aberdeen to her first year in college at Tuskegee to her first summer in New York City as a 19-year-old on her own for the first time. That summer then turned into years, as the young Estell takes a break from school, works as a model and bookkeeper and store clerk, and marries a young soldier who ships out to Vietnam shortly after their wedding day. 

Halliburton’s writing style is uneven, but in a good way. She veers back and forth between formal and colloquial language, and the tone is inconsistent. Sometimes, she just recounts events as she recalls them. Sometimes, she places those events in the context of the Civil Rights Movement and other major historical events of the mid-20th century. The emotional tone varies, too - from her righteous anger as a Black woman who came of age in the Jim Crow South and learned that often, the North wasn’t any less racist; to love for her husband, children, parents, siblings, and friends. The book reads as if it was written in spurts, a few pages here and there as time permitted. The resulting variations in tone and voice make it very readable and human and moving. 

The young Halliburton family seemed to have had a rich and interesting life as working people and parents in 1970s New York, and I was surprised by their decision to return to the South. Mrs. Halliburton wrote a second memoir about the family’s life in Atlanta after the move, so I’ll read it and find out if it was the right decision. I do hope so. I’m invested now. 

*****

I started this as just a little journal of short reviews - a song, a movie, a TV show, a book - and then I realized that it reads like I spend all my time reminiscing about the 20th century. And I do. 

No, I really don’t. I don’t miss most things about the 20th century. But I do miss believing that I lived in the greatest and most benevolent country in the world. I miss the world in which everyone knew more Neil Diamond songs than “Sweet Caroline.” I miss pop music on AM radio. 

Three hours

 “Will he go for three hours, do you think?”

“Yeah, I wonder that too. I mean he’s almost 75. I’d be off that stage in 90 minutes but we’ll see.” 

That was my husband and me at dinner on September 7, just before our fourth Springsteen concert together. We saw him in 2009, 2012, and 2016; and he bought the tickets for this tour in mid-2023. Health issues forced Bruce Springsteen to reschedule his late 2023 shows, and we held on to the tickets. 

It was a perfect clear Saturday night at Nats Park, after a cloudy afternoon with little bursts of half-hearted rain. We took the Metro Red Line from Glenmont to Fort Totten and then switched to a Green LIne train to Navy Yard. 45 minutes from door to door, and that included driving to the Metro station, parking, buying a new fare card because I left my fare card in my wallet which I didn’t have with me because I was trying to carry as little as possible in my tiny tiny tiny Nats Park-compliant bag, waiting for the train, changing trains, and waiting for the second train. When Metro is good, it’s very very good. We strolled along First Street with all of the other happy concert-goers, feeling sorry for all the people in their cars, driving around the neighborhood looking for parking. 

When we arrived for the show, very early, an older (than us) couple were in the seats directly behind us. Very lovely people but extremely gregarious. Very talkative. Outgoing to a degree that I just cannot understand or cope with for extended periods of time. We chatted with them, meaning that we listened and nodded and threw in a few appropriate remarks at appropriate opportunities, for about an hour. And then just when I thought that I couldn’t handle any more interaction with these preternaturally friendly humans, the stadium lights went down and the stage lights went up, and the crowd began to roar. It was 7:40 PM, exactly 10 minutes past the scheduled 7:30 PM start. 

Our seats were on the club level. The section itself was a normal section, not a corporate box, but it felt fancy walking through the glass doors from the cement concourse to the carpeted club section. It was much more pleasant buying drinks in the indoor lounge area than from a concession stand. And the bathrooms in that section are SO MUCH NICER. 10/10 would recommend. 

*****

My first Bruce Springsteen concert was in 1984, during the Born in the USA tour. Even if you never attended a Born in the USA tour show, even if you weren’t alive in 1984, you probably know what Bruce wore on stage that night - faded blue jeans, a white t-shirt, a bandanna. People throw around the word “iconic” to describe all manner of garments and outfits, but this look was truly iconic according to the Oxford English Dictionary, which defines “icon” in several ways, including this: “a person or thing regarded as a representative symbol.” The blue jeans and t-shirt and bandanna were truly a representative symbol of American rock and roll. So was Bruce himself.  

He was in his 30s then, and incredibly energetic, constantly in motion, a live wire. I don’t remember very much about that show (except that my ticket cost $19 and my t-shirt cost $10) other than a story about Bruce’s father, an old-fashioned conservative who was relieved rather than disappointed when the Army rejected his son, keeping him out of Vietnam. I’m sure he told that story at every show. Stories are part of the performance. But it was still moving. 

*****

40 years later (almost 40 years to the day - I looked it up and the Philadelphia shows were in mid-September, just as I had remembered), Bruce is still very energetic, but more restrained, more dignified. He still wears jeans, now paired with a button-down shirt, a vest (also fully buttoned) and a tie. His hair is very short. His clothes are perfectly tailored. He looks very GQ now, very natty. He also still looks very rock and roll, but elder statesman rock and roll. There’s nothing edgy about his persona now; nothing rebellious or punk about his look or demeanor. His appearance and comportment on stage make clear that he knows exactly how important and legendary he is, and that he has neither the need nor the desire to come across as young or of the moment. He has nothing to prove. 

But even though he has nothing to prove, he was still on stage for three hours, playing mostly his own standards, everything from “Badlands” to “Tenth Avenue Freezeout” to “Promised Land.” The mostly but by no means exclusively older crowd sang along, roaring approval as each familiar intro played. I’d already planned to pretend that I couldn’t hear them if our very gregarious new friends in the row behind us insisted on chatting with us during the show, but thankfully they stopped talking and sang along with the music. 

When we arrived at 6:15 or so, the friendly couple were among the very few other people in our section. The field had already begun to fill up, though - there’s no assigned standing position and latecomers with field tickets end up way in the back, far from the stage. The man tapped me on the shoulder (this man touched me at least 5 times, and managed still not to creep me out). Pointing to the standing room area on the field, he asked “Do they stand the whole time?” 

“The whole time,” I said. “Better them than us, right?” Laughing, we all agreed that people our age (50s) and people their age (early 70s) have no business in a mosh pit. People in the stands didn’t really stand and dance, so they wouldn’t block the view of seated people behind them, and Nats Park security didn’t allow dancing in the aisles. The only place where you could dance all night was in the standing room area on the field. 

Until the encore, that is. At a Springsteen show, the encore is actually like a second show. When the stage lights went down, I expected a five-minute break, so I ran to go to the restroom, and ended up missing most of “Born to Run,” because the encore started almost immediately. I could still hear, though, and I’ve heard “Born to Run” probably 200 times at least, so it’s OK that I missed it. 

During that encore, which went about 30 minutes, all of Nats Park was a mosh pit. Everyone was on their feet, dancing and singing along to “Born to Run” and “Thunder Road” and “Rosalita.” Bruce sang “Well tell him this is his last chance…” and the crowd finished for him. It was Rosalita’s dad’s last chance to get his daughter in a fine romance, because the record company had just given her suitor a big advance. There are few songs more fun to sing along to in public than “Rosalita.” The famous band introductions happened in the lead-in to “Tenth Avenue,” which featured huge photo and video backdrops of the late Clarence Clemons and Danny Federici. The band left the stage a second time, and then Bruce returned on his own and performed “I’ll See You in My Dreams,” and then the show was over at just about 10:40 PM. 

Our friends had already gone home - they missed most of the encore because they drove to Nats Park from Springfield, VA and wanted to get ahead of the traffic. I’m sure they hated to miss the last few songs, but they probably did the right thing because by the time we got out of the stadium, the streets were already gridlocked with cars filled with people trying to get back to Maryland and Virginia. The Metro station was also very crowded, but the crowds were orderly and calm, and everyone got on their trains. 

Bruce Springsteen will be 75 very soon, so it’s not unreasonable to wonder how much longer he can do this. I mean, I’m not quite 60 and I’m wondering if I should be out here dancing at concerts and buying $50 t-shirts. Between Metro and t-shirts and drinks and dinner and the tickets, we probably spent $800 on this concert. Middle class people like us can spend $800 on a night out or we can put two kids through college. We probably can’t do both, at least not often. But a Bruce Springsteen concert is a special-enough occasion that it’s worth the money. If it does turn out to be his last tour, I’m glad we were there. 

Everybody agrees

I have so many drafts in various stages of completion or lack of, so what am I doing writing something new? Writing a new essay is like buying a new jacket. I have too many of both. I need to just wear what I have. 

But even though I have a ton of jackets (so many jackets), I can always find a hole in my jacket wardrobe, some jacket use case that I cannot address with existing resources. And because I tend to write about the same things over and over again (books, swimming, handbags; and of course, jackets) there are also lots of everyday life situations about which I have not ever written so much as a word. 

Like songs. I write about music a little bit here and there, but not very often. And one day last week as I listened to my new favorite song for the fourth consecutive time, I thought that I should write about falling in love with a song. 

Songs usually have to sneak up on me. I like to sing along with music, and so I tend to listen to songs that I already know and love. There are a lot of them, and it’s a pretty odd collection. Eclectic as it is, though, my favorite songs list is well established. It’s a comfortable little clique. It’s not easy for a new song to break in. 

But it happens. Sometimes, I fall in love with an old song that I’d never thought much about when it was a new song. A few years ago, for example, I happened upon the Richie Havens recording of “Here Comes the Sun,” and it became an instant top ten favorite song for me. I can listen to that song any time. Just a few days ago, I was driving home from work and heard the Temptations’ “Papa Was a Rolling Stone,” a song that was on the radio all the time when I was a little girl, and it threw me for a loop. That song is so great, and so radically different from the Temptations’ earlier work. That ominous bass line, the gradual build-up, the syncopated hand-clapping, the alternating solo vocals (especially the falsetto) - it’s all so brilliant. Seeing that my own papa was also a rolling stone, I didn’t like that song at all when I was young. Even at age 7 or so, I knew all about men who spent most of their time chasin’ women and drinkin’. I didn’t need to hear the Temptations sing about it. When I heard it last week, it didn’t seem like a throwback. It seemed brand-new

Other songs grow on me. When I was young, I worked for a self-important, pretentious little chain of stores. This little company was so full of itself that we, the ignorant and provincial staff, were not allowed to change the music selection dictated by the “creative director.” (But we did it anyway, all the time). I could tell you some stories about that place, but I won’t, because it still exists and it’s still full of itself. I have to admit, though, that if it weren’t for that stupid store and its stupid artsy pretension, I might never have heard Erasure and The Sundays. Erasure, in particular, drew me in slowly but surely. It’s been almost 30 years, but “Hallowed Ground” and “Heart of Stone” remain among my very favorite songs ever. 

*****

“At teatime, everybody agrees,” OR “at tee time, everybody agrees?”

It could be either, right? I drink a lot of tea and so in my life, any time could be teatime. And I wouldn’t set foot on a golf course unless you paid me, and you’d have to pay me a lot. So for my purposes, it would always be the former. But I looked it up, just to be sure.

*****

Then there are those songs that take many years - decades, even - to worm their way into my affections. I am not an Eric Clapton fan, and will pretty much fling myself at the radio to turn off “Lay Down, Sally.” But “Promises,” which was on the radio all the time when I was a little girl, and which I ignored because it wasn’t the Carpenters or John Denver or Fleetwood Mac or Olivia Newton-John, is actually a great song. After forty or so years, I’m a “Promises” fan, and will always stop what I’m doing to sing along with that song. Same for Crosby, Stills, and Nash’s “Southern Cross,” and Chicago’s “Searching.” Actually, I’ve come to love almost all 1970s Chicago, almost as much as I hate 1980s Chicago. This is a point of contention between my husband and me. He likes the garbage Peter Cetera “Glory of Love” years. There is no accounting for taste. 

*****

And speaking of the 80s - throughout that whole decade, I avoided hair band metal. Everything from Van Halen to Def Leppard to Whitesnake - especially Whitesnake. What kind of name is that, anyway? I hated all of those bands and all of their music. Until suddenly, I didn’t. Sometime around 2007 or so, I was driving somewhere with my then-little children, who were strapped in their car seats in the back seat of my Honda, and Whitesnake’s “Here I Go Again” came on the radio. And instead of reflexively hitting a preset button to switch to something else - anything else - I turned it up a little and sang along. I still sing along with that song. That song is awesome. Van Halen, Guns n Roses, even Def Leppard - I love them all now. Not every song, and not all the time, but 80s hair metal has finally, after 40 years, earned a place in my stone cold heart. 

*****

But the best thing is when I fall in love with a brand-new song when it’s still actually brand-new and not just new to me. When you turn on a radio and hear a song that you’ve never heard before and it just speaks to you, it feels like the world is wide open. It feels like anything is possible. 

It begins with a catchy melody, the kind that gets into your head so quickly that you’re singing along the second time you hear the chorus. Then a lyric, a turn of phrase that speaks to you for whatever reason - it’s funny, it’s beautiful or relatable, or maybe a little of all of those things. There’s that moment when the right melody and the right lyrics hit me at just the right time, and I know that a never-before-heard song will instantly be my jam. This is what happened to me the first time I heard Taylor Swift’s “Anti-Hero.” The first time, I tell you!

“I have this thing where I grow older but just never wiser.” Yes, Taylor - I know exactly what you mean, because I have that very same thing! Witness - remember when I said that I have too many jackets? Well I do but I just bought another one. Older but never wiser. 

The house dance beat and that opening line drew me in, and then the hook: “It must be exhausting always rooting for the anti-hero.” Oh my gosh, it totally is - you have no idea. 

The lyrics so beautifully capture the rueful self-awareness (it takes real self-awareness to admit to your own “narcissism disguised as altruism”), the growing dismay as a still-young but maturing woman realizes that she is no longer the ingenue, no longer the “sexy baby.” She cleverly uses a young woman’s language (“It’s me, hi, I’m the problem”) even as she skips ahead 30 years to imagine herself as a rich old woman with a scheming, murderous daughter-in-law. It’s a brilliant song, and only Taylor Swift could have written it; not because there are no other brilliant songwriters but because it’s about her own particular peculiar preoccupations, which she’s unafraid to admit to and even sing about. It’s about her life, past, present, and future - the girl who was once the sexy baby pop star and who is now the “monster on the hill,” a star so big that she has distant admirers rather than friends; a woman so rich that someone is probably already scheming to separate her from her money - maybe a crooked agent or accountant or manager, or maybe a greedy future daughter-in-law. 

I liked Taylor Swift very much already, but this is the song that made me love her. Her earlier music, while often lyrically and musically brilliant, always seemed to belong exclusively to the young. I could hum along with “Blank Space” or “We Are Never Ever Ever Getting Back Together” but I couldn’t claim them as my own. I’m way past the break up with a bad boyfriend stage, and I was never the romantic drama girl, never a nightmare dressed like a daydream. But the woman who will stare directly at the sun but never in the mirror? The person whose depression works the graveyard shift? Yeah, that’s me. I’m the problem. It’s me. Taylor knows. 

On deck

What's better than a swim meet on a Saturday in December? How about two swim meets? It's Saturday morning and I am working at the check-in table at the Potomac Valley Swimming Turkey Claus, a four-day swimming extravaganza at the University of Maryland. Never mind the insanity of kids missing a day or more of school just to compete in a swim meet. My son missed school yesterday but he swam in the winning medley relay, so I guess it was worth it. 

I thought that the check-in table would be a more fun place to work than the pool deck but having now seen the grass on both sides of the fence, I have to say it's not any greener over here. My son’s club is hosting the meet, and the University of Maryland is charging a lot of money for the use of the aquatic center, and the money has to come from somewhere, and "somewhere" means an admission charge for parents who already hand over a lot of money to the swimming industrial complex. It's not an easy sell, but I have to say that most of the parents are pretty understanding. And I can talk the rest of them around. I'm pretty good at talking people around. It's one of my special skills. 

After prelims this morning, we will make our way to the Kennedy Shriver Aquatic Center (KSAC to the initiated) for Rockville vs. Richard Montgomery, the first meet of the high school season. My youngest is a senior, so it is his and our last season of high school swimming. 

*****

It's 7:30 on Sunday morning and I'm back at the Eppley Recreation Center pool for the fourth and final day of Turkey Claus. It's a clear and cold early December day and I'm looking out the floor to ceiling windows on the far side of the pool. It’s a lovely view. Early winter morning sunlight is streaming through bare trees in the little wooded area just outside the pool. My older son goes to school here but I don't think I have ever noticed that the main campus at UMD is really a very pretty place. Well, parts of it are. Yesterday, I lost my car in the Terrapin Trail parking garage, which is very much NOT a pretty place. That garage is dead to me now. 

My son made finals in breaststroke last night and he finished fifth. He wasn't happy about missing the medals but 5th place out of almost 130 is pretty good and we'll take it. This morning will be low key. I'm not volunteering, he's swimming one event in which he will not make finals, and we should be out of here by 11. 

*****

We were actually out of there just after 10. I brought a book with me so that I'd have something to do during the twenty-plus heats of the two events that preceded my son’s sole event but I didn't end up reading for two reasons. One is that they added another medley relay event that included my son, and the other is that I was engrossed in the other races. I'm usually so busy at a swim meet that I forget that I really love to watch swimming. My son's club swept the last minute relay, winning first, second, and third place. He finished somewhere in the middle of the 100 freestyle pack and then we went to the College Park Diner where the boy ate an astonishing amount of breakfast. Swimmers can eat, I tell you what. 

And that was Turkey Claus. There’s nothing but easy-peasy high school swimming until January. 

*****

It’s Wednesday night now, and I’m writing because I write every day, and because it’s just as good a way as any other to avoid cooking dinner. Dinner isn’t even hard. I know what I’m going to make and the ingredients are sitting right there. I’ll get right to it just as soon as I finish cleaning out my already pretty clean desk drawers. 

This is how I act when I’m out of sorts, and I’m out of sorts. Seasonal affective disorder is no joke, and the darkness and cold are combining with overwork and exhaustion and inability to see the light at the end of the busy-all-the-time tunnel. I wish I could sleep. Three months should do it. I’ll sleep until the middle of March and when I wake up there will be daylight until 7 or so. 

But of course, then I’ll miss Christmas, not to mention this last high school swim season. And the house will be a mess, too. They’re all pretty neat, my family, but they’re not compulsive. They’ll leave the folded laundry on top of the dryer for a week. They won’t vacuum unless there’s actual visible dirt. They won’t even think about the refrigerator shelves. And the bathroom? No, this won’t work. I’m going to have to wake up every day, at least for a few hours, or the whole operation will fall to pieces. Plus I have a job. There’s always a flaw in the plan. There’s always some damn detail. 

*****

It’s Thursday now, and I’m in a much better frame of mind. I was out of sorts yesterday, but I replenished my stock of sorts, and things are looking up. Yesterday wasn’t rock bottom, but it wasn’t far from rock bottom and the slope seemed slippery. I do hate those days. I hate feeling sad and I hate feeling sad about being sad because what on earth do I have to be sad about? I don’t lack for a single thing. How dare I? 

I’d never tell another depressed person to snap out of it. I’d never even think it. But that’s what I tell myself. And sometimes it actually works. It worked yesterday. A few hours sleep, a little pep talk (to myself), and “Here Comes the Sun” (the Richie Havens recording), and I’m right as rain, pretty much. 

“Here Comes the Sun” works every time. 

Tomorrow is Friday and I’ll work from home, and then we’ll go watch the Capitals play the Seattle Kraken. On Saturday, I’ll be on the deck with my clipboard for Rockville vs. Einstein. And really, what’s better than a swim meet on a Saturday in December? 

Fruits and vegetables

I started writing something a few days ago. It's coming together I guess. Today I had an idea for a conclusion and I wrote it down so I wouldn't forget. What was the idea, you ask? Well, I know that it must have had something to do with the words "inverse proportion." I’m sure this made perfect sense to me at the time, but now I really don't know what I was getting at. I don't know what I was thinking. 

That last sentence? An answer to the question: Can you write your autobiography in 7 or fewer words?

I'm only about halfway sure that I will eventually remember what "inverse proportion" was supposed to mean. It's OK, though. I'll think of some way to finish the silly thing. It does bother me that I forget things. A lot. 

Both, really. I forget things a lot and it bothers me a lot. 

*****

The next day, I wrote down the word “banana,” certain that I wouldn’t forget what it meant, and I didn’t. A banana is a concrete thing, after all, not an abstract idea like inverse proportions. A few minutes earlier, I had walked through the lobby of my building today, past the glass case with the scale model of all of the buildings on campus. I really love architectural models, and sometimes I stop to look at this one. Today, as I walked past, I saw that someone had left a banana on top of the glass case. I’m easily amused, and that banana made me laugh right out loud. I mean, a banana, right? Even the word is funny. I don’t think that it was intended to serve as a comedy prop, but I’m telling you, a banana just left where it obviously doesn’t belong is hilarious. I imagine that someone stopped there to dig through their bag, placed the banana on top of the glass case to free up their hands, and then forgot about it. It sat there pretty much all day. It was a perfectly good banana, and no one wanted to throw it away, I guess. 

Later, I had to sit through a required active shooter training video. I’d rather actually face the active shooter than watch that training again. I'm never more restless, more tear-out-my-hair desperate to escape than when I am watching a mandatory training video. Mandatory training videos serve to remind us that Annie Lennox was right: Every single one of us is made to suffer. 

Well of COURSE I don’t want to face a REAL active shooter. Just a little bit of hyperbole, for effect. I really needed to convey just how much I hate mandatory training videos. I hate them a lot. 

*****

It’s Friday now, late afternoon. I’m finished work for the day, though I haven’t logged off yet. I stay connected for a bit at the end of the workday, just in case someone needs me. I’m very dedicated. 

But there’s such a thing as being too dedicated. For example, we’re going to the Nats game today. Not only are we going to the Nats game, but we’re leaving insanely early so that we can arrive insanely early so that we can be among the first 10,000 fans, who receive a bobblehead, which my husband is so insistent that we must obtain at all costs that you would think it was the gosh-darn tesseract. So we’ll arrive about 90 minutes early for a late-season game between the third-worst (Cincinnati Reds) and worst (Washington Nationals) teams in all of Major League Baseball. I mean, I love the Nats, but this is a game that I’d be happy to half-watch and half-ignore in the comfort of my air-conditioned house. Instead, I’ll be hustling through the Glenmont and Fort Totten and Navy Yard Metro stations, trying to catch up with my husband who will break into a full run rather than miss a train and possibly lose his bobblehead to another, more fleet-of-foot fan. It should be fun, really.  He’s buying the drinks. 

*****

It actually was fun. Gollum secured his Precious, which made him very happy and if he’s happy, I’m happy. There was a pre-game concert and as it turned out, we know the band, so that was really fun. Trust me, we are not cool people, but we do have some musician friends, which allows us to occasionally bask in reflected “we’re with the band” coolness. 

We had seats in two separate sections of the stadium, because another bobblehead fanatic friend was unable to attend and asked me to go in her place and get her bobblehead. These people are crazy, I tell you. But the stadium was half-empty and it’s late in a now-meaningless season, so we found seats together in the much better of the two sections, sat down with our drinks, and watched the game. Stadium personnel (who are lovely, by the way) were not checking tickets last night, so people could sit wherever they wanted. Our team has the worst record in the entire league, but there’s an upside to everything, right? 

*****

This wasn’t supposed to be a “that was the week that was” kind of a post, but here we are. It’s Sunday morning now, and I’m probably going to go to Mass, but right now I’m sitting in my backyard listening to cicadas and pondering a tomato. Our tomato plants have underperformed this summer. They’re not achieving their targets. They’re not meeting their metrics. And they don’t give a shit, because they are tomatoes. 

The tomato that I am pondering is ripe enough to pick, I think, but perhaps it would be better to wait a bit. Perhaps it needs just a little bit more time. And it’s not the only one. Today is the last day of summer (yes, I know it’s still August but school starts tomorrow and although it’s maybe not the complete end of summer, it’s the beginning of the end), and I think I would benefit from another day or so. I think I need a little bit more time. I’m going to let that tomato sit for a day or so. The rest of us have to keep to a schedule, but tomatoes are free. I never did remember what “inverse proportion” was supposed to mean, but this thing is over 1,000 words of absolute drivel, and so there’s an inverse proportion for you. The less I have to say, the longer it takes me to say it. 

The dogs on Main Street

When people show up at your house in the middle of the workday to try to talk you off the proverbial ledge, it might be time to get a fucking grip.

Sometimes, though, those people come bearing chocolate. Always a silver lining, amirite?

Yeah, that’s my day today. It’s 5 o’clock and I’m so much calmer than I was 9 or 10 hours ago. I thought I might actually be losing my mind, like I was watching this odd little person have a breakdown in front of her three computer screens, and wondering “What’s wrong, little person? What could possibly have happened to upset you so?” And the problem is that the answer is nothing, really; nothing more than the usual workday routine of due dates and deadlines and milestones to achieve or not.

Anyway, when it’s too much, when you have to eat an elephant, the thing to do is to eat him one bite at a time. And that’s what I did. And I listened to music as I worked. You can’t cry and sing along to a block party playlist at the same time. You can do one or the other, but not both. It’s just electric, just electric, just electric.

Yes, I like Justin Timberlake. Fight me. Some JT, some Aretha, some Queen, some Machine Gun Kelly, some Dua Lipa, some Beyonce, some Brandi Carlile, some White Stripes, some Eva Cassidy, some Elton John singing about Philadelphia Freedom, and I was right as rain.

And then some Bruce Springsteen. The dogs on Main Street howl 'cause they understand, and so does Bruce Springsteen. There was a dark cloud rising from the desert floor this morning. But everything is OK now, and I still believe in a Promised Land.

I'll wear your Granddad's clothes

Here’s a thing that I do. I buy a top or a dress or a sweater and I decide that that particular top or dress or sweater is the perfect one for me and that I need to have duplicates. I need to have back-ups. So I buy an extra, in another color if it’s available; or maybe an exact duplicate in the same color, just so that I will always have that perfect dress or top or sweater when I need it. 

On the one hand, this is a perfectly sensible thing to do. Women learn something as we grow older, and that is that we can no longer walk into a store and just buy any garment that looks cute on the hanger. You find that there are a few styles that work on your particular weird body, and you stick with them. Maybe you vary the colors or the patterns. Or maybe you stick with solids. I still like prints, but that’s me. Anyway, knowing as you do that fashion trends change and that certain shapes and silhouettes go in and out of style, you try to stock up on the ones that work when they’re available. As an example, LuLaRoe makes a shirt in a style called Randy (after a person, presumably, like all of their other styles). The Randy top is one of the items that I buy on repeat. 

Side note #1: I make fun of LuLaRoe just like every other right-thinking person. Why would a grown woman wear leggings printed with donuts or cupcakes or kittens? Why would you wear Disney apparel unless you happen to work at Disneyland? These are among the many questions that I have about LuLaRoe clothing. But the Randy is the exception. It's a simple baseball-style t-shirt that comes with solid sleeves and a patterned torso or the reverse, and while some of the patterns are truly hideous (Disney or donuts or the like), some are very nice. And the Randy goes well with pants and skirts and shorts, and it fits me well, and I like it. 

Side note #2: I know all about how problematic LuLaRoe is, even aside from the horrendous pre-K-appropriate prints and sack dresses. In fact, I knew about all of that even before the Amazon documentary. A friend of a friend sold LuLaRoe, and she lost a lot of money on her huge investment. And so I don't buy LuLaRoe products new anymore. I buy my beloved Randy tops secondhand on Thredup or in thrift stores or on Poshmark. 

Side note #3: Anyone else lol-ing at the unmitigated gall of AMAZON airing a documentary exposing corporate greed, shady business practices, and worker exploitation? 

*****

Anyway, if you don’t know about Poshmark and Thredup, they are both online resale stores. Thredup is like a consignment shop. People send in their stuff, and Thredup takes pictures and writes descriptions and sets prices and posts listings. When the items sell, the original owner receives a portion of the proceeds. Poshmark is more like a fashion-focused eBay without the auction-style bidding (although you can bargain over prices). You open a Poshmark account, set up your shop (they call it a closet), write your own descriptions and post your own pictures and set your own prices. Poshmark then keeps a commission on your sales. I’ve purchased items on Thredup but I have never consigned to them, but I do have a Poshmark closet, and I sell stuff every so often. It’s not very much money, but there’s something satisfying about allowing someone else to benefit from a bargain and recouping a little of your investment on an item that you no longer use. 

Both of these sites are very popular. Both of them promote the reduce-reuse-recycle sustainability ethic. Of course, it’s also just cheaper to buy used clothes. But it’s not just thrift and it’s not just environmental consciousness that makes these sites so popular. It’s desperation to get rid of stuff. We all have too much stuff. 

*****

Maybe it’s too broad to say that “we all” have too much stuff. But I certainly have too much stuff and even as I recognize this, I still continue to stockpile Randy tops and shift dresses and pants that fit. And I’ve been thinking about why I do that. I criticized the early pandemic hoarders just like everyone else, and what is stockpiling your favorite clothing types if it’s not hoarding against future shortages and in the process, possibly depriving others of access to the thing that I am hoarding? But the “thing” that I am hoarding is not actually a thing. It’s the feeling of security and ease and lack of self-regard that I feel when I am wearing certain clothing. I like that feeling of freedom. I want to feel that way every day. 

*****

We had a neighborhood garage sale last week. People could set up tables in the pool parking lot, display their items, and sell them to any and all comers. I didn’t go this time, but I’ve been to this annual event many times. We have lots of older people in this neighborhood, so in addition to the usual clothes and toys and household goods, you can often buy vinyl records, Sony Trinitron TV sets, typewriters, or old Trimline or Princess phones. My younger son, now 17, then 11, once bought a huge Clinton-era camcorder. He and his best friend, who had his own giant camcorder, spent the rest of the summer making nuisances of themselves by videotaping everything and everyone that they could point their lenses at. It was like Snapchat for the Stone Age. I have no idea if any of the footage is extant. Maybe they’re saving it for posterity. 

*****

It was a good weekend for garage sales. Everyone and their mom had a table or two set up in their driveway, with little piles of books or collectibles or toys, available for pennies on the original dollar. That made me see the upside to all of this overbuying and over accumulation. Amid the nearly annual political media frenzy over the disastrous impact that a default on the national debt would have on the economy and daily life (Stock market crash! Currency devaluation! Bank failures! Bread lines!) it's reassuring to think that at least we can't run out of stuff. Having more clothes than you need means that if we run out of fuel, we can always wear multiple layers for warmth. Or we can barter for whatever we need. I can trade a Randy or a Le Pliage for some bread and milk or some firewood. I picture a weekly market where people set up tables in their driveways and display everything they have to offer, and we all walk around carrying canvas totes full of sweaters and socks and light bulbs and books and canned food, offering a can of peaches for a pair of double A batteries or a bunch of extra Scrabble tiles for an unopened toothbrush. I figure that we can sustain a cashless neighborhood micro-economy for months--maybe years. 

That solves the problem of what to do with all of our excess stuff. It does not solve the problem of needing stuff in the first place, needing it for reasons other than physical survival. That's a different problem altogether. Maybe it’s a mental health problem. I tell myself that I buy too many similar clothing items because then I’ll always be able to enjoy the freedom that comes with not having to think about what you’re going to wear every day. It’s not really freedom, though, is it, if it depends on a shirt or a dress or a jacket? It’s not really freedom if it requires a thing. That is the thing that I wrestle with. 

Maybe I can find a therapist who accepts payment in books or postcards or Randy tops. Or maybe I should pray for detachment. Freedom demands detachment, and I am far from detached. 

20/20

I'm in the pickup line at Rockville High School on this cold and sparkling January afternoon; so sunny that the glare makes it hard to see. I'm listening to the impeachment trial on the radio. I know that a Democrat is speaking but I don't know which one. In the absence of any witnesses I guess they're all going to just make speeches. I can’t see so good but I can hear this scalding hot mess just fine.

*****
While we're on the subject of scalding hot messes, it's cluster concert time. I'm in the Rockville High School parking lot again, because it's too early to go in there.

It's my fifth cluster concert and my younger son's first. I dropped him off at 5:30 and ran errands before returning to attend the concert. We were almost late. We had to hunt for a black bow tie. And we were literally out the door when my son dropped something and bent over to pick it up, displaying a quarter inch of gleaming white tube sock between the sharply pressed black tuxedo pants and the mirror shine of his black dress shoes. "Auuugghh," he groaned when I ordered him to change his socks. "Who cares about my socks?" I'm not the most fashion-conscious person, but you better believe that I care about black socks with black pants. Someone has to stand up for civilization around here.

*****
It’s Friday now. The concert was quite lovely, after a slightly rough start from the elementary school string ensemble. In a reasonable world, there probably shouldn’t be such a thing as a string ensemble made up of elementary school children but we’re long past the hope for a reasonable world. They started with “Simple Gifts,” but they were at least 16 bars in before I recognized it. Their second selection, however, was noticeably better, so I guess “Simple Gifts” was a warm-up. The high school students played last, and they sounded like the New York Philharmonic by comparison. So there’s a performing arts tip for you: Always book an elementary school string ensemble as your opening act. The show can only go up from there.

*****
It’s Saturday today. Not such a good day. I don’t know why. Maybe because January started six months ago and seems to be just getting started. And yes, Netflix, I AM still watching “Schitt’s Creek.” Don’t judge me.

I went shopping today, and I forced myself to try on some clothes. I even bought a few things. I looked longingly at the handbags, but I didn’t buy one. I bought blouses. And a sweater. I needed pants but I couldn’t find any that didn’t have super high waists. I can’t get behind that look. I’ll probably learn to embrace it six months after it’s out of style; but for now, I’m going to stick with what I know, if I can find it. Or I’ll just keep wearing my old pants. I wore very old pants today, and a very old sweater, and raggedy sneakers, and then I wondered why I felt so sad and dumpy. I hate January.

Netflix aside, it’s been a busy day and it’s not over. It’s 6 PM and I could easily go to bed now but my son has a nighttime swim meet, so I’ll be standing on a pool deck in an hour. I need to do something. I'm not so good at picking out Saturday morning outfits, but I'm very good at timing swim meets. I might as well do that.

*****

Did you ever cut your own hair? I used to cut my own hair all the time, but that’s when I was young. We all used to cut our own hair. But middle-aged ladies don’t generally cut their own hair.

I had a bad day yesterday. My hair had nothing to do with that, but it didn’t help, either. So I got through the day, because I always do, and things just seemed better today. I went grocery shopping after Mass, and sang along with a song that was playing on the store’s sound system.

My hair, sadly, was still a mess. So I came home, found the sharpest scissors in the house, spread some paper towels over the bathroom sink, and got to work.

I bet you thought that this wasn’t going to end well, but it turns out that I can cut my own hair. Use lots of clips, twist sections and trim the ends, cutting tiny points; and stop every few minutes to make sure the whole thing isn’t getting away from you, and you’ll end up with a pretty reasonable facsimile of a haircut. It turned out fine.  That’s probably a one-time thing, of course. A person can get away with one DIY haircut every so often but even I know that I can’t make a habit of taking scissors to my head every time I have a bad hair day. Beginner’s luck runs out eventually.

Is there a more beautiful song lyric than “Here is that rainbow I’ve been praying for?” Not today there isn’t. The sun is out again today, and I can see clearly this time. I got the hair out of my eyes, you know?

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 è 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.

Ruby Tuesday

I'm happy to be back in America and especially happy to be in Section 416, Row L, Seat 10 at Capital One Center. It's game time minus 14 minutes and I'm waiting for the puck to drop at one of the last regular season games of the year. Capitals vs. Hurricanes. Don't get me started on the ridiculousness of a hockey team from North Carolina.

I like getting here early, seeing the stands fill up, watching the zambonis, listening to pre-game commentary from John Walton and Mike Vogel. We have different seats this time. My son, who is much more observant than I, noticed that the Capitals logo is right side up from this side of the ice. It's a hopeful sign.

First intermission : Capitals 1, Hurricanes 0.  I usually walk the concourse during the intermission but I don't feel like it right now.

The seats filled up very quickly tonight. The 400 level at Capital One Center makes coach class on any airline seem wide open and downright roomy, but 400 level fans are a hardy lot. We look askance at the one percenters in the suites and the 100 level. But if we're being honest (and we're always being honest because we're the gosh darn salt of the fucking earth) then we have to admit that we'd ditch the 400 level in a New York minute, if we only had a chance.

Tonight's Twitter song poll choices:

“LA Woman,” The Doors. Why? What do The Doors or LA women have to do with the price of tea in China at a hockey game between Washington and North Carolina?

“Cool Jerk,” The Capitols. This makes much more sense. It's the Capitols, and tonight is bobblehead night for Evgeny Kuznetsov, famously labeled a “jerk” by noted hockey curmudgeon Don Cherry. Whatever, Don. Kuzy is the coolest of the cool jerks. He is, in fact, the king of the cool jerks. 

“Ruby Tuesday,” The Rolling Stones. So it's Tuesday, obvs, and ruby=red, so this is a clearly relevant selection, and the best song of the three. I'm an Instagram girl, so I won't actually cast a Twitter vote, but l’d vote for “Ruby Tuesday.” “Cool Jerk” will win, though.

For some odd reason, Coldplay’s “Sky Full of Stars” was playing during the song campaign, adding to the confusion. I'm going to go full suburban white lady and declare my love for Coldplay, especially “Sky Full of Stars.” I like Coldplay and I cannot lie. As Kuzy would say, “Let's fuck this shit.”

“Cool Jerk” was the winning song and the Washington Capitals were the winning team, with a 4-1 final score that clinched a playoff spot. With three assists, our second favorite Russian was the player of the game. I'm in the car (not driving) and it's much more fun to listen to the post-game radio show after a win than after a loss. We're in first place now. Let's go Caps.

American Tune

I was born in Connecticut, in a small town near New Haven, and I lived there until I was six. We lived in an apartment; in the converted second floor of an old house, not in an apartment building. My parents didn't like the landlord. In fact, it wasn't until I was a bit older that I realized that "landlord" wasn't an insult.

*****
My memories of that place are of course very vague, but I do remember a few things. The house had a big yard, with trees and a stone wall that was covered with ivy and moss or something. We played out there every day. My sister and I liked the fuzzy caterpillars that hung out on the stone wall.

I got pneumonia the winter that I was in kindergarten, and I remember spending all day, for several days, in my mother's bed. Like most parents at that time, my parents didn't allow the children to play in their bedroom, so I remember feeling very privileged to be allowed in there, especially in the giant bed.

My mom had a radio in the bedroom, and I remember hearing "Sounds of Silence" over and over again as I slept and woke. "Sounds of Silence" was released in 1965, so I don't know why the radio station was playing it so frequently in 1970. Maybe it was about Vietnam. I don't remember that I understood anything about Vietnam when I was five; I just remember that I knew that Vietnam was something that grownups talked about. Or maybe I only heard the song once and remember hearing it over and over. I was five.

My parents' marriage was troubled, and they divorced. I barely remember my father. He left and I never saw or heard from him again. We moved to Philadelphia, my mother's hometown, when I was six. My mother used to take us there to visit her family; we took the train from New Haven, because my parents had only one car. On one of these trips, my mother had the three of us children and herself in two seats. My brother, a baby at the time, was on her lap; and my sister and I, who were probably five and four, shared a seat. The train was full of mostly young people. I remember the train ride.

Apparently (this part I don't really remember), I asked my mother if the young people across the aisle from us were hippies. And apparently, the hippies heard me, and thought I was hilarious, and they entertained my sister and me for the rest of the trip. One of the boys had a guitar--that part, I do remember. I don't remember what songs he played, but I think of the train ride every time I hear "Scarborough Fair (Canticle)," so maybe he played that. Or maybe that song is just another hard-wired memory of my early childhood during the Vietnam War, riding trains to the city that would become my home.

Our first few months in Philadelphia were confusing. We lived with my grandparents, whose tiny three-bedroom rowhouse barely accommodated them, my youngest aunt (who was 8 at the time), and their German schnauzer, Toby. I slept on a cot in my aunt's bedroom. My mother, sister, and brother slept in the spare bedroom, which had a trundle bed. My mother worked during the day and was unhappy when she was home, and my grandmother was overwhelmed, having quadrupled the number of young children in her house.

*****
I'm watching old episodes of "The Office" as I'm writing this. Two separate Chewy.com commercials feature two different white women of about my age. Both women have shoulder-length wavy blondish hair and they both wear stretch jeans and long open cardigans. It's like they screen-tested two different actresses and then just decided, "what the hell, we like both of them."

*****
Soon enough, my mother found us a place to live--another rowhouse less than a mile from my grandparents' house. She got a car, and I started school at St. John the Baptist, where she had also gone to school, and we settled in to life in Philadelphia, and I grew up there.

Before the days of Apple Music and Pandora, kids listened to the radio. Kids still listen to the radio, because there's nothing like the random serendipity of just hearing your favorite song while you're driving along. It's even better when you're in a car full of people who love the same song, and you can all sing along together. In 1973, "Kodachrome" was one of those songs, and not just because we got a bad word pass on the word "crap" when we sang along with Paul Simon. I loved "Loves Me Like a Rock" even more than "Kodachrome," but "Kodachrome" is the song that recalls my childhood, like a photograph, like my mother's Instamatic, like the Fotomats that occupied every other street corner in Philadelphia.

I didn't think much about Paul Simon after 1973 or so, until 1979, when we sang "Sounds of Silence" at my first high school choir concert. I remembered it, and I dug out my mother's old Paul Simon and Simon and Garfunkel records, and then I was a fan all over again.

A few years later, I was out of college (not finished, but out) and working as a proofreader for an old-fashioned offset printing company. I was 21, with the wrong job and the wrong man and the wrong apartment in a very wrong neighborhood. Not gonna lie, as they say on the Internet: My life was a bit of a mess.

I was at a party one night, and the TV was on, tuned to "Saturday Night Live." Paul Simon was the musical guest (and maybe he was the host, too).  I went out and bought "Graceland" the next day, just so I could listen to "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes" a  hundred more times. There are lots of albums that I really love, but "Graceland" is the one that I know best. I could sing every single word of that album. That's not a threat, just a statement of fact.

*****
In another of my favorite songs, "The Cool Cool River," from the 1991 "Rhythm of the Saints," Paul Simon sings "Sometimes, even music cannot substitute for tears."

But sometimes, it can. Music has substituted for tears for me more times than I can count, and no one's music more than Paul Simon's, which I have listened to for literally as long as I can remember and even longer. I probably heard it "Wednesday Morning 3 AM" in the womb.

Tonight is the last date on the "Homeward Bound" farewell tour. Who knows what "farewell" really means--lots of artists and athletes "retire" only to return a month or a year later. And last Friday night, when I finally got to see him live for the very first time, he sounded great. So maybe he'll perform live again--maybe he'll even tour again. But I'm glad I was there, last tour or not. I'm glad I got to share over 50 years of music with 40,000 or so of my closest friends, many of whom weren't even alive when even "Graceland" or "The Rhythm of the Saints" were first released, let alone "The Sounds of Silence" or "There Goes Rhymin' Simon." I bought a t-shirt, and then I bought another one. I can still hear the music, a week later. I've been hearing it for my entire life.

Something strange in the neighborhood

It's Saturday night, and I'm the only person home. My husband and younger son are at a baseball game, and my older son is at work. I'm unusually tired, so I'm in for the night at 8 PM. I'm going to watch the "Ghostbusters" remake with Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Leslie Jones, and Kate McKinnon. I'm sitting on my couch with my computer on my lap, and without a thought in my head.

After I finished Lynn Freed's Leaving Home, I returned very briefly to Alison Lurie's Imaginary Friends. I'd intended to finish it, in fits and starts, in between reading other books, but I find that I can't make myself care about what happens to the Seekers. Right now, I'm reading Entering Ephesus, by Daphne Athas, an author I'd never heard of before I found this book. Entering Ephesus is a novel about three sisters whose family loses its fortune during the Great Depression and is forced to move from an unnamed New England beach town to Ephesus, a fictional southern college town. Apparently, the novel is somewhat autobiographical, and Ephesus is loosely based on Chapel Hill.

I'm almost finished with Entering Ephesus, and I don't know what to make of it. The racist language on almost every page is shocking, even considering the context of 1971, when it was published; and 1939, when the story begins. And the characters are mostly unsympathetic and unlikable; even borderline evil. On the other hand, it's hard to completely hate a book that includes passages like this:

"The linoleum rugs could not be taken up because the house was riddled with termites. In the middle of the night they could hear tiny, intermittent chain-saw noises as the termites worked, laborious as Communists digging the Moscow subway." This is part of a description of the broken-down house that the family rents when they arrive in Ephesus, having finally lost their beautiful 15-room mansion overlooking the sea.

In a later scene, the girls have entered the local school, where the youngest is instantly the most popular child in her class. Asked by the teacher to comment on an oral report presented by the  poorest, least fortunate child in the class, she praises the boy sincerely and winningly, causing his classmates to see him with new respect: "Even Miss Bogue felt a lump in her throat. There was a victorious feeling in the depths of her being, that feeling that arises when it is manifest that the underdog has won."

So I don't completely hate it. But I don't love it either, and I won't be sorry to finish it. I can overlook the racism, given the historical context. And unsympathetic or evil characters can make great novels, even if they win in the end. But I have an old-fashioned need for redeeming value in a novel; evil characters must be evil for a reason and must more importantly be opposed by good characters. And that's the deepest textual analysis and most insightful literary criticism you'll get around here. On a scale of 1 to 10, it's a 5, and three of those five points are conferred on the linoleum passage.


*****
Now it's 8:10 PM on Monday night, and I'm taking a break from work to write about work. I work too much. And that's all I have to say about that. 

*****
Tuesday. Once again, it's 8 PM; and once again, I still have work to do. And once again, I'm writing about it rather than doing it. It's a pattern.

I took a break for 30 minutes, to swim in a pool that was a tropical haven of rest yesterday and an icy Norwegian fjord today. OK, so I'm exaggerating. But it was cold. And it occurred to me, as I swam one chilly lap after another, with the sky gray and lowering, that yesterday might have been the turning point. It might have been the last day of warm-water swimming for 2018. Two weeks from today, the pool will be closed. I kept swimming as a few raindrops fell.

If you have ever worked on a huge proposal, then you know that some proposal tasks are worse than others. If a proposal is an aircraft carrier, then resumes and letters of commitment are KP. Do they have that in the Navy? Whatever the kitchen duty is called. I guess on a ship, it's a galley.  But it could be worse. I could be writing a compliance matrix. That's latrine duty.

I turned on some music a little while ago, because I needed an energy boost.

• "Mr. Blue Sky," Electric Light Orchestra. It's not possible to sustain a bad mood through this song.
• "Cheap Thrills," Sia. This song appeared on at least five "Worst Songs of 2016 According to Snotty Hipster Critics" lists. Morons. This is one of the greatest songs ever.
• "Forever," Chris Brown. Yeah, I know. Me too. But no one can be all bad who can make people so happy with just one song. 
• "Party in the USA," Miley Cyrus. Shut up. 
• "(Lay Down) Candles in the Wind," Melanie. My mom had the album, and we played it all the time. I could listen to this song a hundred times and never tire of it. I sing along like a six-year-old holding her mother's hairbrush like a microphone. 

*****

It's Wednesday now, and I have work to do, so of course I need to write about having work to do before I can actually do the work. The whole house of cards might be about to come down now, but I can't worry about history in the making. I have a proposal to write. 

Let's go back

It's Sunday morning. Normally, I write for a little while on Sunday morning, but I haven't left myself much time. When we return from a trip, the unpacking and laundry will often provoke a too-much-stuff-driven anxiety attack, and last night was no exception. Because we really do have too much stuff. So this morning, I cleaned rather than wrote.

I clean all the time, but routine everyday cleaning is different from turn-this-mother-out CLEANING. I'm organizing closets. I'm cleaning under things, and behind things, and on top of things. I'm purging.

But that's enough of that. What is this, HGTV?

*****
Memory is tricky, isn't it? You can be quite sure that something happened in a certain way, at a certain time. You might even be sure that you remember exactly what you were wearing, or what song was playing on the radio. And you can be wrong, even in your certainty that you remember every detail.

We went to Canada in 2010. We got passports for our children, who were 9 and 5 at the time, and renewed our own passports. I remember sitting at the Aspen Hill Post Office, waiting for our names to be called; and I remember completing the paperwork, and receiving all of our passports a few weeks later. My husband remembers the same appointment. And we did all go together, and we did sit and wait to hear our name called, and we did get our children's first passports.

Last Saturday night, we returned to the U.S. from Canada, via the same border crossing at Champlain--St. Bernard de Lacolle from which we'd entered Canada the previous Saturday. The very friendly U.S. Border Patrol agent chatted with us for a few minutes, asked us a few pro forma questions about why we'd been in Canada, and what we had purchased, and where else in the country we'd traveled. We answered, and then handed over our passports.

The border guard looked at our passports, and then looked closely at my husband. "Did you know that your passport is expired?" he asked.

"What?" we both exclaimed in unison. "No, that can't be," my husband said. "I renewed it in 2010, so it expires in 2020."

"No," said the border guard, "your wife's expires in 2020, but yours expired in June of this year. Didn't the Canadian border guards check it when you came into Canada?"

We looked at the passport, and realized that the man was 100% right. In 2008, my husband made his first return trip to Korea, the land of his birth (any excuse to write "the land of his birth"). He had renewed his passport earlier that year, and was only along for the ride when the boys and I got our passports in 2010. We had completely forgotten that small, but critical detail. Je ne me souviens pas. 

And the Canadian border guard? He had one job, as the hashtag goes. #RocketScience.

*****

Let's go back let's go back 
Let's go way on way back when
I didn't even know you, you couldn't have been too much more than ten
I ain't no psychiatrist, ain't no doctor with degrees
But it don't take too much high IQs to see what you're doing to me

I never used to cry at celebrity deaths, but as I've gotten older, I've come to understand the relationship between ordinary people and their favorite celebrities. They speak for us, or express something for us that we can't. And we don't have to know them personally, or to even meet them for a moment, to feel love and kinship with them, and gratitude for the gifts that they share. That's how I felt about Mary Tyler Moore, and Carrie Fisher, and Kate Spade. And Aretha Franklin. "Think," one of Aretha's own songs, was the one that I couldn't get out of my head today. You have to watch her perform that song, not just listen to it, because she used her whole body when she sang, with a combination of freedom and abandon, but total control, that was unique to her. I kept singing "Think" to myself, but I didn't cry until I saw a later performance of "(You Make Me Feel Like a) Natural Woman," a song written by Carole King but owned by Aretha.

We can listen to Aretha forever; but it won't be the same, knowing that she's gone and that there won't be any new Aretha performances.

People walking around everyday
Playing games, taking score
Trying to make other people lose their minds
Ah, be careful you don't lose yours

I'll be careful I don't lose mine. Aretha Franklin, rest in peace. 

Burn baby burn

Monday: It's a beautiful day. And almost 20 years to the day after this happened, I was walking across Twinbrook Parkway in Rockville, returning from the badging office in one Federal government building to the Federal government building where I work, when a man drove past me and shouted something too obscene for me to repeat here. Three construction workers, walking away from a food truck where they'd just picked up their lunch, all turned their heads, as shocked as I was.

There was nothing I could do, of course. It was 11:45 on a Monday morning, and he was driving, fast. Later, when I told my husband about it, I couldn't even remember what the car looked like.

One of my government bosses has nicknamed me "Liam Neeson." He says that I'm like Neeson's character in "Taken," because I have a special set of skills, honed over a lifetime. Unfortunately, they're not the kind of skills that make me immune to public harassment and humiliation. But that's fine. I'll just use this little episode to fuel my rage. I'll need it someday.

*****
Speaking of bosses, can we talk about how many I have now? Four. I have four bosses. Fortunately, I like all of them.

But still. Four bosses is a lot.

*****

I didn't think about what happened for the rest of the afternoon. Then I went for a walk after work, with the iPod cranked up to 11. I skipped around, looking for a song that was angry enough to sing along to, and settled on Erasure's "Hallowed Ground," which doesn't really sound like an angry song, at least in terms of melody and instrumentation. But what's angrier than "Who will be the next victim of the criminal dawn?" I sang along, like I do. I can be loud on the street, too. I also sang along to the Pretenders "Talk of the Town:" "Maybe tomorrow, maybe someday. Maybe tomorrow, maybe someday. You'll change..." And maybe I will. Maybe someday, I'll change into a person who can have an upsetting experience, and then just let it go, like it was nothing; like the proverbial water off the back of the proverbial duck. Maybe.

*****
Saturday: It was a bad week, and not just because of the stupid man and his stupid verbal assault. But it got better.  My son had a baseball game today, during which my husband was nearly chucked by the umpire. He never argues with sports officials or coaches. But he did today. Too long a story to make short, but five years from now, we'll refer to the whole episode as the infield fly rule incident, a day that will live in infamy. But that's another story, for another day.

After the game, I was running errands and listening to the radio. It's almost never so bad that singing along with "Disco Inferno" can't make it better. The Capitals just won Game 5 against Pittsburgh, and April is over, finally. Burn that mother down.

Ghosts appear and fade away

Sunday:  This morning was a legitimately cold December morning; cold by anyone's standards, which means bloody well freezing for me. But I couldn't sleep past 6:30, so I went for a walk anyway.

With enough clothing, the temperature was just bearable, and even I had to admit that it was a really beautiful, sparkling morning. There was still a coating of snow on the grass, leftover from the tiny bit of snow that fell on Friday, and it was sunny and clear, but just a tiny bit misty. Beautiful.

I walked past the pool, which was frozen over, with a dusting of snow on the deck. Later, I heard that one of the neighborhood boys had posted Instagram video of himself and his dog, walking on the frozen water. Teenage boys are idiots; this is something that I have personal experience with. No more so than the rest of us, of course, but idiots in their own particular way. I myself did more stupid things this week alone than I'm prepared to write about on this blog, but you can trust me that walking out onto the surface of a frozen swimming pool was not among them. Idiots.

*****

Sometimes I like to listen to NPR when I walk, but I usually like to listen to music. My husband and I share an iTunes library, and I usually just put the whole thing on shuffle and listen to whatever shows up (within reason), but this morning, I felt like selecting songs. I found a playlist with my name on it (literally; it was named "Claire") so I started the first song and was on my way.

It was a good playlist, beginning with my beloved Erasure's "Heart of Stone." Sometimes, I get tired of even my favorite songs, and I skip past them, but I can't remember ever skipping over "Heart of Stone."

It got even better, with Gladys Knight and the Pips "Midnight Train to Georgia." I'm always all aboard for "Midnight Train."

Three excellent songs in a row! The third was Men at Work's "Overkill" (the acoustic version). I've always liked the original recording of this song, but I really love the acoustic version, and the lyrics are my life on the radio:

Especially at night
I worry over situations
I know will be all right
Perhaps it's just imagination

But day after day, it reappears
Night after night, my heartbeat shows the fear
Ghosts appear and fade away. 

Anyway, these songs were among my favorites when I made the playlist, probably sometime around 2012 or so. They held up. 

*****

One reason why I like to go out walking early on Sunday morning is that I like to sing, and there are only a handful of people out at 7:30 on Sunday morning. Running Lady, The World's Happiest Dog and his person, Bike Helmet Guy, and maybe a few others here or there, but mostly, I have the streets to myself. And I need the streets to myself. Alone on the streets, I'm free to really cry for your heart of stone. And when L.A. proves too much for the man, I can sing, loudly, about his decision to leave the life that he'd come to know. In fact, I usually sing "Midnight Train" twice: Once as Gladys, and once as a Pip. 

I know both parts equally well, and I slay them both. 

The low battery warning came just as I was turning back on to my street, about halfway through a performance of David Bowie's "Modern Love" that would have blown the roof off the joint, had I not been outside. It was a good walk, and a good morning.

KP

Last Saturday, I went to a family party in Philadelphia. It was the kind of party where you see people whom you haven't seen in many years, and everyone brings something, and there's far more food (both homemade and catered) and drink than anyone could ever consume.

The party was at the Philadelphia Canoe Club, a really lovely spot for a party. The building is over 100 years old, and the property, which includes an old stone building with porches and huge windows with deep windowsills, and grounds that slope gently down to the water, sits at the confluence of the Wissahickon Creek and the Schuylkill River.

I like deep windowsills. 

When your cousin is the president of the club, then you can borrow a canoe or kayak. On a cold day, you can stay inside, where there's a huge fireplace, and walls decorated with antique paddles and photos of old club members, and high-water mark plaques commemorating the many times that the building has flooded during the last century or so.

Is this a kayak or a canoe? I have no idea. My 16-year-old son got the hang
of it pretty quickly, and enjoyed a solo paddle around the confluence. 

So it was a nice party, but with a big mess to clean up at the end. The handful of us who remained got to work. It's kind of fun to clean up a big party mess. You start with the easy jobs; the low-hanging fruit--throw away half-eaten plates of food, collect empty cups and bottles, gather all of the decorations and centerpieces on to one table, so that you can clear the tablecloths and trash from the rest of the tables. You fold and stack the folding chairs. Then the real clean-up begins.

There were tons of dishes to wash and tons and tons of food to wrap and distribute. I really hate to wash dishes at home, but I don't mind it at someone else's house, or boathouse, as the case might be. And I really hate packing up leftover food. So I volunteered to wash the dishes.

The best thing about being the dishwasher in a large dinner cleanup operation is that the rest of the cleanup proceeds behind your back, and you have no idea what's going on. You stay focused on the dishes (and no one bothers you; if they do, you justly claim that your hands are full) and then when you turn around after 15 minutes or so, it's like the kitchen fairy has paid a visit. Platters full of half-eaten food have turned into tidy parcels of leftovers for people to take home; the dirty floor is neatly swept, and the counters are clean.

The party was a 30th birthday party, and the playlist was early 21st century nostalgia, chosen by people who have begun to realize that they are now old enough to reminisce about their youth. In between Gavin DeGraw's "I Don't Wanna Be," and Beyonce and Jay-Z's "Crazy in Love," and Natasha Bedingfield's "Pocket Full of Sunshine," I washed and rinsed and piled dishes on the huge drainboard.

A friend once commented that plastic wineglasses depressed her. I'm not sure why. We could have recycled the wineglasses, but whoever cleared the table piled them into the sink, so we were clearly meant to wash them, and so I did. They were molded to look like lead crystal, and that made me happy for some odd reason. Someone tried to make something plain and ordinary a little bit nicer. The 500 or so plastic glasses (oxymoronic, no?) that I washed and rinsed probably ended up in the trash, but the boxed wine tasted just fine, and the party was fun, and we left the Canoe Club just as we found it. 

Illuminate the main streets and the cinema aisles

Isn't it so much easier and more pleasant to clean your kitchen when you have music to listen to?  I forget this sometimes, but I remembered it tonight, and the nightly dishes and counters routine was much more pleasant as a result.

I skipped around a bit on my husband's old iPod, landing first on The Brothers Johnson's "Strawberry Letter 23", followed by Al Stewart's "Time Passages". Then I found Cornershop's "Brimful of Asha", and listened to it three times.

So many reasons to love "Brimful of Asha". I'm an Indio-Anglophile, if such a thing exists.  Years of working with Indian scientists and software engineers left me with great affection for Indians, who seem to combine razor-sharp wit with kindness like few other cultures can.  Even better than Indian Americans are Indian Brits (or British Indians?)  Because they're BRITISH AND INDIAN.

I like to think that "Brimful of Asha" probably gave at least one record company executive heartburn when he first heard it.  It's a longer-than-five-minutes song about a Bollywood star, and Indian sociopolitics, and life in late-20th-century England, with vaguely Indian melody and instrumentation.  Who would have expected it to be a huge hit? I fell in love with this song the first time I heard it in 1996, and it's held up beautifully.

I'm listening now to Toad the Wet Sprocket's "Nanci".  If only I could bend my words like Uri Geller's spoons.