Midwest

We’re going to Cleveland this weekend, for a wedding. I’m hard-pressed to be excited about a trip anywhere right now. Nothing against Cleveland but we’re going to go there, stay overnight, go to the wedding, stay one more night, and get the hell out first thing on Sunday morning. I don’t need to Google anything about Cleveland other than the best land route out of town. No offense, Cleveland. It's not you. It's me. 

*****

It's Friday afternoon now and we're on our way. Our original plan was to fly, but I couldn't find reasonable nonstop fares and with two college tuitions, a new water heater, and a very expensive recent overseas trip, $1000 airfare to Cleveland and back was not in the budget. 

Yeah I know I sound like an old lady. That's because I am. I turned 58 last week and let me tell you that any 58 year olds out here identifying as "middle aged" are kidding themselves. The women in my family live a long time but not 116 years. 

And I feel like an old lady too. A few days ago, I slipped and fell down in the parking lot at work landing hard on my hands and knees. Thankfully I didn't break anything but I'm still sore. I expect to break a hip any day now. But not today. Today it's a beautiful sunny early fall Friday afternoon. We're just past the I270 northbound early rush hour traffic, with nothing but open road all the way to Ohio. You can't feel old when you're on a road trip

*****

Ohio is a five-hour drive from the DC suburbs of Maryland, give or take. It's not that far. But as soon as you cross the Pennsylvania - Ohio line, you see signs that say things like Great Lakes and Mississippi River Watershed, and you know that you're out of your zone. Ohio is definitely of the Midwest. It's flat and open, industrialized, gritty in some places and fancy in others. We attended a wedding in Berea, a charming town with a strong Polish flavor. I hadn't heard a polka played at a wedding in many years, but they played three. They all sounded the same. 

What I danced to:

• Miley Cyrus’s “Party in the USA”

• Usher's "Yeah"

• Nicki Minaj's "Starships"

• "Cupid Shuffle"

• Sister Sledge’s "We Are Family"

• Justin Timberlake’s “Can’t Stop the Feeling”

• All Pitbull because you can't sit down when Mr. Worldwide is singing

What I didn't dance to:

• Slow country

• The chicken dance

• Polkas 

*****

The drive to Cleveland was pleasant and easy, and it was lovely to fall into a comfortable hotel bed after a very long day. The hotel was fine - clean, simple, everything we needed and nothing we didn’t. It even had a pool, and we got to swim on Saturday morning, since the wedding was not until 1. The wedding was beautiful, and the reception was a blast. Even the clean-up was fun. Yes, we cleaned up afterward. The reception was held in a parish Knights of Columbus hall, like every wedding I ever attended in my working-class Catholic youth, and that’s how it works - you rent the hall for a very nominal fee, you hire your own DJ or band, you bring in your own food and liquor and decorations, and you clean it all up at the end. Technically, the guests can just walk out and leave the hosts to take care of the clean-up, but that is not how it’s done. That is not cricket. Everybody lends a hand with the clean-up. 

The dishes were rented and needed only to be collected and stacked for pick-up - we didn’t have to wash them. We gathered trash, stacked dishes, removed tablecloths and chair covers, and were out of there in 30 minutes. The young people then held an after party in the hotel. They kindly invited their elders, but it was after midnight, and I had already turned into a pumpkin. After party. These kids, I tell you. Crazy. 

*****

Have you ever had food poisoning? Well, I have, and it’s no way to end a weekend. No, it wasn’t the wedding food, thank goodness. That would have been bad. I ate one thing this weekend - a turkey sandwich - that my husband hadn’t eaten - and I paid for it dearly. I didn’t think it was possible to vomit that much. And vomiting wasn’t all I did. 

The illness ran its course very quickly. I woke up on Sunday morning feeling vaguely unwell. Within an hour, I had gone from vaguely unwell to very very sick. Within another hour, the sickness had passed, leaving me pale and weak and exhausted but otherwise OK. Barely OK, but OK. My husband drove us home while I alternated between waking and sleep, wrapped in a blanket in the shotgun seat. I felt vaguely guilty that he had to drive the entire way home in the rain, but I couldn’t have driven even if I wanted to. And he would have driven anyway. 

*****

And you know, that was still an 8/10 weekend. Food-borne pathogen encounters are an automatic two-point deduction, but 8/10 is solid. I’d do eighty percent of that weekend over again, no questions asked. 

Bag packing

If you’re old enough to remember grunge and if you watched “Friends” when it was still the most popular show on prime-time TV - in fact, if you even know what prime-time TV is - then you might remember the ‘zine. Short for magazines, ‘zines were underground, homemade publications, sometimes produced on the earliest desktop publishing software, and sometimes just typed on a typewriter, and then photocopied and sold or handed out to anyone who would take one. People made ‘zines for all kinds of reasons. Activists made ‘zines to share news or political content. Amateur writers self-published their work in the form of ‘zines. Humorists, artists, photographers, poets, weirdos - anyone could make a zine with pretty much no equipment. ‘Zine producers were bloggers for the Stone Age. 

Two friends of a friend of mine produced a ‘zine pretty regularly. I don’t remember what it was called, nor do I remember the two women’s names, but I do remember that they were both librarians, and that they were a bit older than me. They both had young children, and they sometimes wrote about their children and about their lives as the mothers of toddlers. Those children probably have children of their own now. 

I never actually met these women, and I never had my own copy of the ‘zine. My friend shared it with me when the two authors published it, which happened maybe three times over the course of two years. They were full-time working mothers of very young children and so they didn’t have much time to write, let alone type, photocopy, and distribute their small publication. But they did the best they could, because they had something to say. They had a distinctive voice - funny and sardonic but not mean. Silly but not precious. Passionate about the rights of women, especially working women, but not “strident” or “militant” or whatever adjective people like to use to ridicule anything even remotely feminist. My friend and I were big fans of their work. 

*****

Other than cat videos, handbag videos are my hands-down favorite thing on the whole internet. “Pack the cafe bag with us,” reads the caption for the Tom Bihn Instagram video, and they reeled me right in. I watched that video three times, rapt all the way through. I cannot get enough of handbag packing videos. 

And it’s not just social media ads - there is a whole YouTube subgenre in which people pack and unpack their handbags, tote bags, and backpacks. I love them all. The commercial videos tend to begin with a pristine brand-new empty bag, and you watch as a disembodied pair of well-manicured hands packs the bag with a wallet, phone, water bottle, book, notebook, pens and pencils, makeup, sunscreen, keys, and every other imaginable random accessory that a person might need or want to carry. These are fun to watch because everything is new and clean and pretty and elegant, and what’s better than a perfect bag with perfect accessories?

The homemade YouTube videos, though, are even better. In those videos, a woman unpacks a bag and shows us what she carries every day in her Longchamps Le Pliage or her Prada backpack.. Sometimes, the bag is new, and the person in the video is showing the audience how much it can hold, and how well - pockets and other organizational features, ergonomics, etc. These are usually sponsored videos in which a handbag company pays an influencer to share her impressions of their bags. But sometimes, people just record videos of themselves, taking everything out of their bag, whatever it looks like, and showing those things to us one at a time, without filters - a Fendi wallet and some balled-up used Kleenex; an elegant leather notebook and a Bic 4-color pen, a few hairpins and a few old receipts, a half-eaten granola bar, some gum - everything and anything that a person takes with them when they leave the house and all of the other things that they accumulate along the way. It’s not all stylish or beautiful but it’s all interesting and revealing. 

*****

It was that Tom Bihn video that made me remember my favorite ‘90s ‘zine; specifically, the “purse dump” issue in which the authors and a small group of their friends emptied their purses and wrote about the contents of each other’s bags. Each participant agreed to empty their purses exactly as they were, and to allow others to freely examine the contents and write about everything. As a reader, of course, I did not have any way to verify the claim that the purse dump descriptions were complete and accurate and unfiltered, but I also didn’t have any reason to believe otherwise. It didn’t matter, though, because it was excellent reading, far better than anything I’d encountered in Vogue or Allure or even my then-beloved Vanity Fair. What could be better than reading a detailed (and hilarious) commentary on the things that a person carries around with her, the things without which she doesn’t leave the house? 

I saw myself in some of the contents of these women’s handbags - lipstick, of course! I don’t carry other makeup but I always carry lipstick.  Two pens, because what if your first pen runs out of ink? Hmm? What then? Bandaids, because if you work in an office, you’re going to get paper cuts. A book - sometimes two books - because you can read on the subway. A snack - but not water. People didn’t carry water bottles around back then. 

But I also found inspiration. A pebble or shell from the beach - what a great thing to carry around! A good luck charm - of course! I should also have a good luck charm! Sugar packets and wet naps swiped from restaurants, and sealed in ziploc bags - I immediately resolved to swipe sugar packets and wet naps from every diner and restaurant in the greater Philadelphia area, so that I could also carry around ziploc bags of these very very useful things. 

Fast forwarding 30 or so years, I find the same I-feel-seen recognition and the same inspiration in purse contents videos, commercial or otherwise. I still carry lipstick and band-aids and a shell or two. I don’t really carry sugar packets or wet naps unless I’m traveling. I always have a pen and usually I have two pens. I carry several hair clips and hair ties, and an extra set of contact lenses. My purse always contains a little plastic tube that itself contains Tylenol, ibuprofen and a few Benadryl tablets. I have a tiny LeSportsac zipper case on a keyring, which contains my earbuds (always with me) and a quarter for the shopping carts at Aldi. I didn’t used to need sunglasses, but now I never leave the house without them. I carry my Kindle with me if there’s even the slightest chance that I’ll have five or more minutes of waiting time or downtime. The inspiration comes in not so much what to carry as in how to carry it, how to make ordinary utilitarian items look pretty so that rummaging through my purse is a joy. 

*****

And of course I bought the stupid Tom Bihn bag, too. This was not my fault. That bag chased me all over the internet for weeks until I finally caved. That is some effective advertising because I didn’t even like the bag when I first saw it. But it grew on me. I started imagining myself packing it just as the person in the video did, and after a few more viewings, I found that I couldn’t stop thinking about this bag and how it would fulfill a very specific need. I haven’t had a utilitarian nylon crossbody bag for a long time and it just felt like it was time to revisit that style and that aesthetic. I’m very happy with it so far, and it will be perfect for my upcoming road trip to Cleveland. That’s what a bag is for, of course - to make you feel prepared when you’re out in the world. Maybe I’ll write a whole post just about the contents of that bag. Videos are not my thing. 

Damn the torpedoes, bring on the (vile) PSL

My drafts folder is stuffed right now; stuffed, I tell you. I pulled out a draft and started to polish it a bit, thinking that I’d finish and publish it. But it’s missing something. So I’ll write instead about Labor Day weekend, which it is right now as of about 20 minutes ago (it’s 5:20 on Friday afternoon). Did I ever mention that I hate LDW? Well, I do. LDW is the end of summer and the beginning of pumpkin spice latte and stupid NFL football and the downward slide toward winter. LDW can go fuck itself. 

I wouldn’t normally be cooking on the Friday of LDW, but I am. I’m making a nice Nicoise salad, with salmon rather than tuna. I cooked the potatoes, and blanched the green beans, and broiled some salmon, and cut up some tomatoes. Now I just have to assemble the whole thing. I also cooked a take and bake pizza for any members of the household who don’t want salad. I even cut up some fruit. It should be a nice summer dinner, suitable for our people-coming-and-going summer routine. 

*****

It turned out to be a rather nice evening. I sat at the pool for a bit with some friends. Both the water and the air were early autumn cold. I wore a hoodie and draped a towel across my legs and we watched as a handful of kids inched their way into the icy water. When even kids aren’t jumping right in, you know that the water is cold. When even I am sitting in a deck chair rather than swimming laps, then you know that the water is cold. It was Baltic, I tell you. Baltic. 

And my son came home for the weekend, which was lovely. He arrived at 11 PM or so, and then I stayed up watching TV for a bit with my husband and both boys - only until midnight, but it was nice going to bed knowing that the rest of the family were just a few rooms away. It’s Saturday morning now, and I’ll make breakfast for anyone who’s awake in the next few minutes. You have to get up early in the morning if you want breakfast around here. It’s not a restaurant, know what I mean? 

*****

Saturday of LDW was kind of an ideal summer weekend day, making summer’s imminent end even sadder than it usually is. That is the most pitiful glass-half-empty-and-quickly-draining sentence, but that’s where my head is right now. All I do around here is keep it real. 

It took an act of will to immerse my entire body in the still-very-chilly water but with the temperature quite a bit warmer than it had been on Friday and the mid-afternoon sun sparkling on the water’s surface, the chill felt refreshing. I never really warmed up even after a solid lap swim at a pretty brisk (for me) pace, but I didn’t mind. The deck was warm and sunny and it was lovely to sit there after the cold swim, wrapped in a towel and watching as others approached the water, slowly and gingerly. Good luck with that, I thought, as the sun dried my hair and the feeling returned to my extremities. 

*****

Saturday of LDW feels like the first day of a little vacation. Sunday of LDW feels like the beginning of the end, and I’m very sad this morning. I should probably do something about the fact that I am crying every day, often more than once a day, but I probably won’t. I’ll probably just ignore this mental health crisis until it goes away, exactly as I do with every other thing that’s wrong with me, real or imagined. 

*****

It’s Monday now, Labor Day itself. I went to a party of sorts last night. A fellow Rockville swim mom, whose son was one of the four seniors on Rockville’s state championship squad, invited a bunch of women to her house for drinks and snacks. All of the guests had just recently sent a child off to college - some are younger mothers whose oldest children just graduated from high school, and some are older mothers sending their last children off. 

Going to a party, even a low-key, come-as-you-are party, was really the last thing I wanted to do, but I went because I like the hostess very much and because I should get out of the house more. And it was a lovely evening, and I’m glad I went. I had one drink that I didn’t finish, because my night driving is bad enough without adding alcohol to the mix, but the rest of the group, who all live within walking distance, were throwing back Moscow Mules and Dark and Stormys with abandon. I was one of the few completely sober people in that crowd, and it was OK. It was nice to be with people who understand. 

*****

The nice thing about having your kid home for the weekend is that he’s home for the weekend. But the bad thing of course is that he has to return to school and then you have to endure the separation again. It’s Tuesday now and LDW passed as quickly as it always does. It’s like a little mini summer in itself; long anticipated (by the people who actually like Labor Day weekend) and then over in a flash.

We spent most of the day at the pool. Labor Day is amateur night - everyone in the neighborhood shows up. Even if they haven’t made a single appearance at the pool all season long, people consider the summer wasted if they haven’t been to the pool at least once. It was the usual crazy Labor Day scene; pizza lunches and potluck dinners in the pavilion, frantic games of beaver and Marco Polo and knockout and sharks and minnows and water polo; balls flying through the air left and right. The lane ropes were gone by 6:30, and the pool was just a big open tub of splashing kids wringing out the last bit of summer fun. At 7:45 PM, there were at least 75 people in the water, and more people just kept jumping in ahead of the last whistle of the night and of the season. At 8 o’clock, seeing the head lifeguard about to blow the whistle, the children begged “Please? Just a few minutes?” And the head lifeguard, a grown-up pool kid himself, gave them 15 more minutes. Spontaneous applause - for a great summer and a kindhearted lifeguard - broke out when the whistle finally blew. It was dark at 8:15, and no matter what the meteorological calendar says, the summer was over. 

End of summer reading and writing

It occurred to me a little while ago that I hadn’t written anything about what I’ve been reading lately, and so maybe I’ll do that because I have to write something and because that’s a way to avoid thinking about the end of summer and the day that I have to send my son off to college and not have him around every day. I just can’t do it. 

So I’ve been reading. By my estimation, I’ll probably have finished 25 or 26 books by the end of this calendar year. It’s not very many. When I was young, I tore through a book or two every week. Those were the days, I tell you - my eyesight was excellent, and I had all the time in the world. Then I had babies and I didn’t have any time to read. Then the babies grew up a bit, and I had spare moments here and there. Then there were years of sports and school concerts and birthday parties and doctor visits and parent-teacher conferences, and I’d read in between innings at baseball games or in the waiting room at the dentist’s office or in the parking lot while waiting for a kid to finish practice or rehearsal. And then the kids just up and left and now I have all the time in the world again. It sucks, really. 

But back to the books. Books are good. Well, they’re not all good, but books in general are good, is what I meant. 

*****

Against Memoir, by Michelle Tea. I myself am going to come out very strongly against memoir pretty soon if I end up reading just one more shock-the-normies overly frank too-much-sexual-information memoir. I was really about to just give up on this one, and not because I was shocked or disgusted (well, I was a little disgusted but not even a tiny bit shocked because I've read all the same stuff in at least five other memoirs proving that I never learn) but because I was bored. Bored and skeptical. It's not that I didn't believe Tea's stories because why would she make these things up, but because I didn't believe her voice. She was trying so hard - SO HARD - to be daring and outrageous and shocking that I couldn’t really even hear what she was saying. But then she wrote this - or said it, because this is from a talk she gave to an lgbtq writers' group: "Give us your goofiness and your dark depths and your weird family and when you stay up eating cheese on the couch watching bad TV and crying, give us when you feel stupid and the big angry fight you had, give us everything…" in addition to all of the sex and drugs and outre transgressiveness and I thought "Yes, exactly, Michelle Tea, now why not follow your own brilliant advice?" Later, she does exactly that in an unflinching and rather lovely essay about her difficult relationship with her working class hard luck mother and stepfather. The essay is suffused with sadness and guilt but the guilt is unnecessary. Tea clearly loves her mother even though she finds her impossible. So the book wasn't a waste, but I probably won't read any more of Michelle Tea’s work. 

*****

I started writing this on Monday. Five minutes later it’s Wednesday and my son leaves for school tomorrow, making tonight his last night at home. I swam last night and the water was still nice but the air was very cool, making getting out of the pool much harder than getting in. Today it’s warm, but not hot outside, and the breeze has an edge of Canadian coolness that suggests the imminent arrival of fall. Actually, at my house, the falling part of fall has been in full swing for a week. Our cherry trees are shedding their leaves and I’d crunch through them but I don’t want to crunch through leaves. It’s still August. So let’s talk about another book. 

*****

Two Souls Indivisible, by James Hirsch. Our medical students read this during orientation week and so I joined them. It’s an inspiring story about two POWs in Vietnam - Porter Halyburton, who is White and from the South; and Fred Cherry, who was Black (he died in 2016), formed a deep friendship during their shared captivity, which sustained them through terrible suffering and pain. Cherry would likely not have survived without Halyburton, who cared for him through illness and infections resulting from dreadful injuries. The book was originally published in 2005, and in some ways, it does not hold up particularly well. Fred Cherry was apparently rather conservative in his attitudes on race, at least according to Hirsch, and preferred to distinguish himself from Black people involved in the civil rights movement, whom he saw as agitators. This is not to criticize Mr. Cherry, who was clearly a product of his time; but the author’s tone in discussing Cherry’s beliefs is condescendingly approving. Without looking at the publication date, I’d have guessed 1981. It’s a very good story but not such a great book. 

*****

July seems like ages ago, doesn’t it? All-Star weekend (Prince Mont Swim League All Stars, that is) was the last Saturday in July. Our son won one of the League scholarships that day and we left the meet very proud and happy though a little sad, since it was our very last summer meet. It was very hot that weekend and after a swim, we went to the first half of Barbenheimer, a 7 PM showing of "Barbie," which was great but would have been worth the price of admission, even if it wasn't great, just for Ryan Gosling's performance of "Push." Hilarious. We saw "Oppenheimer," also great, the next day. Anyway, this is apropos of nothing, except that it was just a few weeks ago, the very heart of summer, but it seems like ages ago, and summer is all but over. I swam last night and the water was very cold. And we just moved our son into his dorm, and we're driving home without him, and I feel lost. Bereft. 

*****

OK so the Barbenheimer digression wasn't really apropos of nothing, because now I'm reading American Prometheus, the Robert Oppenheimer biography upon which the movie is based. 

*****

The drop off itself wasn't so bad really. I had been dreading it all summer and it hit me hardest when we finally made our way through security and pre-clearance at the Dublin airport last week. As much as I love Ireland, the best part of that vacation was being together, all four of us, every day. That was over. I knew that the boys would be right back at work and doing their own thing as soon as we returned home, and when planning the vacation, I had only left us a few short days between the end of the trip and college move-in day for our youngest. It was all so fast, so rushed. I’m sure that the flight crew and other passengers wondered about the lady who was sitting and crying quietly in her seat, but no one asked me any questions, and I was OK after a few minutes. I tried to watch a movie but the video screen quality on this rather old and beaten-up plane was very poor and so I just returned to my book. 

*****

American Prometheus, by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin, is what critics used to call a “sweeping biography,” the story of a larger-than-life figure with the events of the day as backdrop. Oppenheimer, one of the greatest scientific geniuses who ever lived, not only witnessed the cataclysmic history of the 20th century, he created it, at least in part. You can admire Oppenheimer or despise him. His life story is compelling either way. 

I mostly admire him. One of the most interesting things about Robert Oppenheimer was his self-transformation, from dreamy genius stereotypically absent-minded professor to brilliant administrator and leader. Authors Bird and Sherwin give almost as much attention to Oppenheimer’s remarkable personal gifts - frequent and unexpected kindness, charisma, social brilliance, communication skill - as to his unequaled intellectual gifts, and rightly so. And added to that is that he was just born at the right time and in the right place - the son of sophisticated, wealthy, indulgent Jewish parents, born at the turn of the 20th century, he had all the advantages of travel and education and culture that that background afforded him, combined with timing that placed him in the middle of the most important events of the century. His Jewish background made the race to beat the Nazis in the nuclear weapons race personal, a matter of life and death in the most personal sense. 

This is another book published in 2005, and once again, certain aspects do not hold up. 2005 was longer ago than I thought, I guess. For example, Oppenheimer had the brilliant idea to hire local indigenous women to help the Los Alamos wives with housework, thus freeing the white women to help as lab assistants and secretaries and technicians. The authors present this in the most uncritical and unquestioning terms possible, as just another ingenious solution to a practical problem, a win win. Everyone's working and everyone's happy.  Never mind that the local women might have preferred to have a chance at one of the lab or office jobs rather than the poorly paid domestic jobs (the book makes no mention of comparative pay rates but I think it's safe to assume that the domestic workers made much less money than the project employees). And there's also very little discussion of how few women (almost none) had real jobs at Los Alamos in the first place.  

The book is also almost completely preoccupied with the question of whether or not Oppenheimer was a Communist and although the authors return again and again to the conclusion that he probably was not, they also don't really consider the idea that it should have been OK for Robert Oppenheimer to be acquainted with Communists without having his loyalty to the US constantly questioned. 

Outmoded thinking aside, though, the book is very good. The was-he or wasn’t-he inquiries into Oppenheimer’s political background are balanced by long and thoughtful discussions of his accomplishments, his personality and his mind, and his relationships with friends and family and colleagues and enemies. He was interesting enough to merit this much thought and consideration. 

*****

It’s Monday now, and Labor Day is a week away and I really miss having my son in the house. It’s a little harder now that the reality has set in and I know that I won’t see and talk to him in person every day. We’re texting back and forth all the time, and he’ll probably come home this weekend, but this is just the beginning of the process of separation, as more and more of his life will be his life, opaque to us except for whatever details he chooses to share. It’s right and normal and natural that this should happen but it’s not easy and it’s not pleasant. 

The pool closes in a week. Right now it’s cloudy and dull and not particularly warm but I’m going to swim anyway. 

*****

And I did. That was Monday, and now it’s Tuesday, still cloudy and dull and not particularly warm, but I swam last night and I’m going to do it again tonight. Even when the water is cold and the sky is gray and I can feel the summer slipping away, a swim always helps. The pool is open for just six more days and even though I can swim indoors after next Monday, it’s not the same. Swimming indoors is an exercise; it’s a thing to cross off your list, just like any other task. Swimming indoors is lap swimming. It’s not going swimming. You have to be outside somewhere if you want to go swimming. Lap swimming is good for your body. Going swimming is good for your soul. After next Monday, I won’t be able to go swimming anymore. But at least I’ll still be able to read.  

Ireland 2023

We leave for Ireland on Friday. It's Tuesday now and I already started to pack some things. About half of these things are things that I will actually wear. The other half, I'm not so sure about. I'm going to have to think about these things. These things are going to have to earn their way into my suitcase. 

The smart thing to do would be to bring only the half that I'm certain I'll wear. But I don't always do the smart thing, especially when it comes to packing. I'm a terrible packer. I don't want to overpack but I really really don't want to get across the Atlantic Ocean only to find that I don't have anything to wear; or to discover that the one thing that I really really want to wear is among the things that I left at home in my zeal to avoid overpacking. What I want is to have everything that I truly need and want, and a few nice-to-haves. I'll check Joan Didion's packing list, that's what I'll do. 

*****

Well, I’m glad you asked. Joan Didion’s packing list was almost as famous as Joan Didion. She wrote a list of things to pack for when she had to travel on a moment’s notice (a frequent occurrence) and she taped it to the inside of her closet door. Her list was, of course, spare and elegant, much like herself. Of course she had to lug a typewriter everywhere she went, so she had to keep everything else light. But she probably would have anyway. She’d have always known exactly what to pack and what to leave behind, and she’d never get across an ocean or across town and find that she didn’t have the one thing she needed most. 

I did make a list of all the essentials; and thanks to that list, I won’t leave home without a bathing suit or contact lens solution or sunglasses or a notebook or my Kindle. I’m trying to limit myself to two pairs of shoes. I’m only going to bring two jackets - one rain and one not. I’m going to put all of my lotions and creams and cosmetic items into the TSA-mandated quart-size ziploc bag, and anything that doesn’t fit in that little square of plastic is not getting on the plane with me. But the rest of the clothes? It’s going to take some doing to decide what to take and what to leave behind. 

*****

It’s Thursday night now. Today was my last day of work before the trip. We leave tomorrow. I stopped on my way home to buy some socks and some contact lens solution. The day before a trip is like the day before Christmas. Whatever you need, you’d better have - it’s too late to shop now. I think I have everything I need. Now I just have to work out my carry-on and checked bag strategy. I have a very nice check-in suitcase that is really more than large enough to carry everything I need. I could just hand everything over to the nice Aer Lingus people and breeze on to the plane carrying nothing but a handbag. But I won’t, for two reasons: One, I need to have at least a change of clothes and a jacket and some basic toiletries with me on the plane, in case they lose my suitcase. And two, I need to have a carry-on in case we accumulate stuff when we’re over there, which we’re certain to do. I think that I can pack one or even two very lightweight changes of clothes in my large Le Pliage, and carry that and my handbag onto the plane. My duffle bag can be folded up into my suitcase, and it can become my carry-on for the return trip. I’m sure that Joan Didion would have stuffed everything into a Pan Am shoulder bag and breezed past the baggage check. She’d have handed all of her wrinkled but elegant clothes over to a hotel housekeeper for ironing. She’d never have to figure out what silk blouses and cashmere sweaters and elegant knit jerseys went with which skirt or trousers (she’d have called them trousers) because everything she owned would have worked perfectly with everything else. Well good for you, Joan. It doesn’t work like that for me. 

*****

It’s Friday morning and I’m almost packed. I have room left in both my suitcase and my carry-on, a fact of which I am absurdly proud. Those bags aren’t closed yet, though, so I’ll have to temper my pride. Packing is like anything else - it’s not over until it’s over. 

Our boarding passes are printed and our passports are ready and we have a ride to the airport. My travel wallet is stocked with euros and pounds. We’ll be at the airport three hours early, as recommended for international flights, and then we’ll just hang around, I guess. I like hanging around in an airport. You can wander around the terminal, watch people come and go, listen to the boarding calls for flights all over the world. You can have a snack or a beer, maybe buy a book or some magazines for your flight, or maybe a silly neck pillow or an unnecessary tote bag. The sun (it’s sunny today) will be streaming through the giant windows, and we’ll watch planes take off and land. It’s a pretty good way to spend an afternoon. 

*****

Dublin, 5:30 AM. We had as smooth a flight as anyone could have wished, and now we're standing in the baggage claim at Dublin Airport, waiting for the carousel to start moving. Irish immigration let us breeze into the country with barely a second glance. The immigration officer asked my husband if it was our first visit to Ireland. "First visit for me and my sons," he said. "My wife has been here before." He took each of their passports in turn, saying "Welcome to Ireland" as he stamped the passports. When I handed him my passport, he nodded and smiled. "Ah, there's yourself," he said. I didn't need a "Welcome to Ireland." I had just been away for a bit and was now coming back. 

*****

We collected our bags and walked to the taxi rank, and a minute later we were speeding through early morning Dublin with a taxi driver eager to share stories and advice. "Hear that? Seagulls. That's Dublin."

We arrived at the hotel far too early to get into our rooms so we checked our bags and took a walk. Our hotel is on the canal so we walked the towpath and down Fitzwilliam Place. We returned to the hotel at 7. It was really just midnight DC time but we were all very very tired. It's disorienting to land in a foreign country at 5 AM. Hotel check in is not until 3, and you're still in your rumpled untidy travel clothes, burdened with bags and bundles. My husband is carrying a sweater and some books and a bottle of water in a plastic shopping bag. We have sturdy and presentable canvas and nylon tote bags, too many to count, and my husband is traipsing round Dublin carrying what amounts to a trash bag. That’s himself. 

*****

Last time I was in Ireland, we also landed in Dublin at 5 AM local time, which was midnight my time.  My travel companions spent the morning and early afternoon resting but I found that I couldn't stay still so I took my own private walking tour of Dublin and then returned to the hotel to collect my mother and drag her off to the St. Patrick's Day parade. Trust me, I was doing her a favor. For pretty much my whole life, she'd been talking about going to Ireland someday, and now here she was in Ireland, ON ST. PATRICK'S DAY, and she was reluctant to go to the parade because she didn't think she had the stamina to walk to the parade route and stand and watch. My mom loves St. Patrick's Day, and she loves Irish dancing and music and she loves parades and I knew that she'd regret it for the rest of her life if she missed her one chance to see the Dublin St Patrick's Day parade. So I dragged her out of the hotel and Bataan death marched her to the parade. I told her that she'd thank me later and she did. It was much later, though. 

Later that night I literally fell asleep at the table in a pub. I'd been awake at that point for at least 40 hours and something had to give. 

And I did the very same thing yesterday. We arrived at our hotel at 6 AM, far too early to check in. But kudos to the Dublin Hilton Charlemont Place staff because they took pity on us and got us into one of our two rooms at 8. Maybe they wanted us out of their very nice lobby. We didn't look our best, and we were not very decorative. 

My sons went to sleep immediately, and my husband also went to sleep when we got our second room an hour or so later. And I was profoundly tired but not sleepy at all, so I went out to explore on my own. Which was glorious but a little sad. I walked to MoLI, the Museum of Literature of Ireland, and took pictures of the garden where James Joyce probably wrote something or other. And then I walked through Stephen's Green, filled with picnicking families on a beautiful Saturday. And then I saw a wedding party leaving the Newman Center church, and I felt lonely, out-by-myself-in-a-foreign-country lonely. 

*****

Later that evening, reunited with my family and still wide awake, I suggested a little visit to Sandymount Beach, where we walked on the sea bed at low tide. We collected shells and took photos of the famous Poolbeg chimneys. We had a delicious dinner at a neighborhood pub, and although I managed to stay awake throughout the meal, I fell asleep in a taxi on the way back. When we arrived at the hotel, I got in bed fully clothed and slept the sleep of the dead. I woke up disoriented and confused, not knowing where I was or what time it was. It was 10 PM. I'd been asleep for a little more than two hours. 

*****

My sons and I differ on a crucial point. I believe that Kit Kats in Ireland are far superior to their American counterparts. They assert, wrongly, that the American version, the original, remains the best. My younger son also tried his first Guinness and hated it so much that he was hard pressed to even swallow the first sip. He does, however, acknowledge the superiority of the Irish breakfast, even though he considers grilled tomatoes an abomination. Both boys are enjoying pub dinners and packets of Tayto crisps and Yorkie chocolate bars. Yes we know that there's other food in Ireland. But we're on vacation. 

*****

"Thank you for traveling Iarnrod Eireann." I'm looking forward to hearing this very announcement on board the Irish Rail train to Belfast. Right now we're sitting in the waiting room at Connolly Station, waiting for our train to be called. We're laden with bags and baggage but so is everyone else. We're not the only people who overpacked this week, I tell you what. 

Our taxi driver from our hotel to Connolly gave us a brief overview of the stalemate at Stormont. He blames the DUP, and rightly so because it's their fault. He seemed to think that we, as Americans, couldn't possibly understand anti-democratic obstructionism and bad faith refusal to heed the will of the people. I didn't try to enlighten him. Let these sweet summer children maintain their innocence for as long as possible, that's what I say.  

*****

"What do you call a Northsider in a suit? The accused." A sample Dublin Northsider joke from our Liffey River tour guide, himself a proud Northsider. The boat cruise yesterday afternoon was our last tourist activity in Dublin. The tour guide and the pilot, both working class Dublin men of late middle age, regaled us with running commentary combining comedy, trenchant political observations (they're not fans of the greedy tech and real estate billionaires driving up rents in Dublin) and friendly insults toward each other. The cruise was nice, and those guys were hilarious. 

*****

I don't even know where I am right now. I'm on a tour bus, somewhere north of Belfast, driving on the left side of the road on a motorway with directional signs in blue. We're passing through a very cultivated area, prosperous looking farmland and houses surrounded by low brick walls or neat hedgerows. There are wind turbines at regular intervals. It's green and pretty, but tame. 

We arrived in Belfast yesterday and after settling into our hotel (when we called to report that our rooms appeared to be without electricity, the front desk person said "Aye, do ye have your wee room key, then? Just pop it into the wee slot by the door, then. Did that work, aye? There ye go.") We then set out by taxi to meet James, our tour guide, for a walking tour of West Belfast. We met at the infamous Divis Tower, now just an ordinary residential tower, and spent the next two and a half hours walking the Falls Road and the Shankill Road, taking photos and listening to stories and trying to make some sense of the Troubles. If you have trouble understanding how the United States is so divided and how people in the same family or the same neighborhood can have such differing political views, just visit the Falls Road and read the murals and signs, and then walk through the peace gate to the Shankill Road just steps on the other side and read their murals and signs and you will see how 180 degree opposition can exist in very close quarters, and how two very similarly situated groups of people can see things completely differently from one another. The Troubles are still not really over in Ireland and I'm afraid they're just beginning in the United States.

*****

Yesterday's tour bus took us to the Giant's Causeway, an astonishingly beautiful natural landmark on the Northern Irish coast. It wasn't part of our original plan because we were only two days in Belfast but enough people told us that we should try to see it that we rearranged our plans, and I'm happy we did. 

I toured the Ring of Kerry in 2019, and it was also beautiful. But it can't touch the Giant's Causeway, so much wilder and more remote. The northern coast of Ireland feels like the end of the world. The light and the air are incomparable. The high green cliffs surround you at Giant's Causeway and the rock formations form little pools in the Irish Sea and you can step out onto the hexagonal basalt Causeway and feel surrounded by cliffs and sky and sea and nothing else. 

There are lots of good things about a bus tour. It's easy, especially in Ireland if you don't want to try to drive on the wrong side of the road, and we don't. It's fun to ride on a great big motor coach, and kudos to our driver, Anil, who maneuvered that giant bus up and down very narrow winding roads, especially in beautiful Ballintoy (the northernmost settlement in Northern Ireland, from where you can see Scotland on a clear day). If you have a good tour guide, the ride can be very entertaining (our guide, an American expat, was fine, but other than the legend of Finn McCool, she didn't tell me anything that I didn't already know).  

The bad thing about a bus tour, of course, is that you have to go where they go, and adhere to their timetable. This means that we wasted half an hour at Dark Hedges to indulge the weirdo Game of Thrones contingent, when we would all have to rather spent a little more time at the Causeway, or at the beautiful lookout point at Ballintoy, looking at Sheep Island and Carrick a Rede and Scotland in the distance, and breathing that perfect air. I'll plan better next time. 

*****

It could rain anytime in Ireland. I checked the weather forecast every day in the week leading up to our trip, and rain was forecast for almost every day. We had a few drops of rain on Tuesday afternoon doing our Belfast walking tour, and a few drops on Thursday afternoon but other than those brief light showers, we've had clear bright sunshine all week. But good luck runs out eventually, and it's wet and gloomy here on our very last day. 

We're on a DART train from Dun Laoghaire to Howth. My original plan had us on a Dublin Bay cruise to Howth with the return trip by train but the tour company cancelled the cruise because of the weather. It's really not bad out and I suspected that the cancellation decision was based on economics rather than safety but the route to Howth runs right along the bay shore and the water looks choppy and rough so maybe that was the right call. What do I know?

My older son, who is very politically aware and engaged, is passionate about public transportation. I share his belief in its importance but I grew up riding subways and trolleys and buses, so I don't romanticize it as he does. But I have definitely enjoyed the freedom of jumping on a DART train or the Dublin Luas or a Belfast city bus and going wherever we want to go, pretty quickly and cheaply. It reminds me of when I was young. 

Between public transportation, including train travel between Dublin and Belfast, and 7 to 12 miles of walking every day, we've seen quite a bit. It's been a good, full week, with no wasted time. Our hotel here in Dun Laoghaire has a very warm indoor heated pool and spa. My younger son and I went to swim last evening and were greeted by the young man who runs the hotel's fitness center, which also caters to local members. "Aye, staying in the hotel then?" I said yes and gave him our room numbers.

"Grand," he said, handing us our towels. "And do ye have your swimming hats?" I did not have a swimming hat, nor had I ever heard a swim cap referred to as a swimming hat. My son is a competitive swimmer who owns no fewer than 50 caps, but he didn't have one either. Six euros later, we were both outfitted with stretchy red nylon swimming hats, and we spent a lovely 45 minutes swimming. Six euros well spent. We'll swim again this evening and when they ask me if we have our swimming hats, I'll wave my little red nylon cap and say "indeed we do."

*****

In Ireland, a blustery day is a lovely day, and we had a great time in Howth, gray and windy and damp but not wet, the silvery gray sky blending with the lead gray water of the harbor and bay. The weather didn't scare us, and it didn't scare anyone else either - Howth was lively yesterday. We walked along the piers and waterfront, taking photos and watching boats and looking for seals. There were seals everywhere, popping up out of the water for air and then diving back down for fish. Very entertaining animals. We had a late lunch and a pint in a little harborside pub, and then rode the DART back through the center of Dublin to Dun Laoghaire. The real weather didn't start until we were walking back into our hotel. Storm Betty dumped a ton of rain on southeastern Ireland overnight, and the rain was accompanied by high winds. The hotel room windows are designed so that you can keep them open in the rain (like many hotels in Ireland, this one doesn't have air conditioned rooms) and we laid in bed listening to the rain and wind. I woke up at 2:30 and the wind and rain were still going full force. But this morning, the sun is shining and the pavement is almost dry, thanks to the wind. There's a rainbow over the Wicklow Mountains, a nice Saturday morning view from our hotel room. It's almost time for our last Irish breakfast and our last look around the hotel room. Aer Lingus to Dulles this afternoon. 

*****

It’s Sunday now. I felt a little blue yesterday as we waited for boarding. The trip that I planned so carefully and looked forward to for months was over in a heartbeat, and my son is leaving for college in just a few days. I’m trying not to think too much about that. But it’s a sunny Sunday morning now, and I’m almost finished with laundry and unpacking, though it’s only 10:15. After Mass, I’ll restock the refrigerator and the pantry, pay some bills, and go swimming. I have no idea what the weather was like in Maryland last week, so I have no idea what the pool water temperature will be like. I’m just glad I don’t have to wear my little red swimming hat. 

Our trip home was almost completely uneventful. When we boarded the plane, I noticed that almost none of the crew were wearing Aer Lingus uniforms and I worried for a moment that there’d been a mix-up that put us on the wrong plane. And then an Aer Lingus representative announced that the Aer Lingus crew were not available and that the flight would be run by another European airline, with herself on board to represent Aer Lingus, and I worried for a moment that “unavailable” was secret code for “bound and gagged and held hostage in an undisclosed location” and that we were about to be hijacked. The 30-minute delay on the tarmac was not reassuring on that count. But the plane took off smoothly in due course, and thanks to favorable wind conditions, we landed 30 minutes earlier than scheduled, despite the delay in departing. We exited the plane, proceeded to baggage claim, and waited, looking around to see if anyone else smelled the smoke. And they did, and people started to murmur, and then all of a sudden an airport representative was walking through the baggage claim area, yelling at everyone to exit the building, which was on fire. And we were a little concerned, but we also wanted our bags. And so did everyone else on Aer Lingus EI119 from Dublin. We chatted among ourselves. There was an exit door right next to the carousel. It couldn’t be more than five minutes or so before our bags would arrive, and we could get out quickly. We stood still and waited. 

The PA system began broadcasting the evacuation order, and the airport representative walked past us again, and ordered us out, but she didn’t do anything to force us to leave. So we kept waiting. We could definitely smell smoke now, and could see it too, and we decided that we’d wait no more than two additional minutes, and then we’d abandon our luggage and go. My suitcase dropped just at that moment, and a minute later our other suitcase appeared, and we got out, probably just in time. I don’t think the fire was bad - local news wasn’t even covering it - but emergency vehicles were arriving and we’d have had a hard time getting out of the airport even two minutes later. 

Yeah, we’re eejits, I know. But we’re eejits who don’t have to return to Dulles Airport today to retrieve our bags, so it’s all good. All’s well that ends well. Our trip was perfect, and it ended well. 

Stormy weather

I’m sitting on my couch right now. It’s 5:45 on Monday afternoon, and a storm is raging outside my window. Literally raging. It sounds angry. At 5:00 the sun was still out though the sky was beginning to look threatening and dark. Hot and intensely humid and oddly still, it just felt like the proverbial calm before the proverbial storm. And now at 5:45, all hell is breaking loose. The sky went from bright and sunny to gray to darkening to almost completely dark in a matter of minutes. A few drops of rain fell and then the sky just opened. The wind is gusting, as they say on the weather report. I haven’t seen any lightning but there’s been a steady rumble of thunder. This storm is no longer in the realm of the proverbial. It's as real as a heart attack. 

*****

We have lots of old, tall trees in our neighborhood and storms like this are always a little bit scary. I’m writing this on a Chromebook. The lights are still on and the house is comfortable, and we’re all at home listening to the local news broadcast. Who knows how much longer we’ll have power, though; and even though the Chromebook is fully charged, it won't work when the power goes out. The nonstop weather updates are making me anxious but I can’t seem to look away. It’s just weather though. Whatever is going to happen is going to happen and I can’t change it by watching the weather report, or by turning it off. It’s out of my hands. Humbling, really, but kind of liberating too. 

*****

Intense but brief, the stoem was over almost as quickly as it started, with almost no major consequences. Our power stayed on, as it did for most people here. No major downed trees, no serious flooding, no big lightning strikes, no tornadoes. At 5:45, we were hunkering down, with candles and flashlights and battery operated radio close at hand. By 7:15, my husband and I were in the car, on our way to Costco, as we had previously planned to do. And now it's Tuesday, 5:15 PM. There's not a cloud in the sky. 

Handwritten

I learned, earlier this summer, that there is a national penmanship competition, something like the Scripps National Spelling Bee, but for handwriting. The young girl who won first place this year had a word of advice for potential future penmanship champions: Take your time. Don't rush. Slow and steady wins the penmanship trophies 

It's good advice. I know this, because my handwriting is dreadful, nothing more than scribble, and that is because I write fast, when I hand write anything at all, which I don't often do. But it wasn't always that way. When I was a young girl at a Philadelphia Catholic school in the 1970s, I wrote beautifully. I had to, of course - all the stories about nuns and handwriting are 100 percent true, and penmanship was a graded subject for us. I was a straight A student and I was determined to remain one, so I practiced my Palmer Method. 

But I didn't just practice to keep my place at the top of my class at St. John the Baptist. I practiced because I loved penmanship. I loved forming perfect, elegant looping letters, and I loved feeling my Bic pen scratching across the pale blue-lined pages of my marble composition books. Then as now I spent most of my time reading and writing. 

I competed in a city-wide Catholic school spelling bee when I was in 7th grade. The girl who was the unofficial boss of our school’s team didn’t invite me to join, and I didn’t stand up for myself, and I thought that was the end of it. Then on the day before the bee, the rest of the team heard that I’d been deliberately excluded, and they insisted on adding me to the team. This wasn’t because I was such a popular favorite. It was because I was a really good speller. As a last-minute entrant with one day to study, I got fourth place in that spelling bee, the only top ten finish in our school. I was happy to have done well but I didn’t care that much - spelling came so naturally to me that I wasn’t particularly proud of my skill, any more than I was proud of my blue eyes or brown hair. I was just born that way. But I worked really hard at my handwriting, and I was proud of it. If there had been a handwriting competition, I’d have been first in line to enter, and I would have practiced. I might not have won  - I wasn’t a natural - but I’d have been a contender. 

*****

Well of course there’s a point to all of this because when do I ever go off on ridiculous irrelevant tangents? I’m planning a trip right now and there’s a lot to keep track of - hotel reservations and plane tickets and ground transportation and passport numbers and daily itineraries - it’s a lot to keep straight in my mind. It’s a lot to remember. Of course, I set up a dedicated folder for all emails pertaining to the trip, but I like to know things right off the top of my head, and I don’t want to depend on my phone for everything. So I’m going to write it all down, in a brand-new notebook. Writing it down will serve two purposes; one being that everything will be written down somewhere in case my phone dies or gets stolen or is otherwise inaccessible to me, and the other being that the very act of writing things down helps me to remember them. And then there’s a third thing, an added bonus - I can work on my handwriting, which really needs work. 

*****

When I heard the story about the penmanship competition, I immediately got a pen and paper (ruled, of course) and started practicing the classic penmanship test sentence: The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. This sentence contains every letter of the alphabet, making it ideal for practicing your Palmer Method. I managed to scratch out a few neatly written lines - the page actually looked rather pretty - but there's no way that I'd get past the first round in any sanctioned competition. My handwriting, even when I make an effort to keep it neat and legible, is an unorthodox hybrid of printing and cursive that would not stand up to the most careless scrutiny, let alone the gimlet eye of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. I couldn't even remember how to write a Z in Palmer Method. I'm 40 years out of practice. 

But that’s OK. I’m not going to enter any penmanship contests, but that doesn’t mean I can’t work on my handwriting just to improve it for the sake of improvement. My notebook is slowly filling up with useful information, in non-standard but neat and clear (and large because my eyesight is not what it was) handwriting. I’m finding as I do this that there is another benefit to hand writing notes. That young penmanship champion was right - you really have to take your time. And when you do take your time and make the effort to write clearly and neatly, you are forced to slow your roll a bit. You have to be thoughtful and deliberate. You can’t multi-task your way through hand-writing a trip plan. You have to take a one thing at a time approach, which not only ensures that you’ll do a better job at whatever task you’re trying to accomplish, it also clears the clutter from your brain. And mine is considerably cluttered. 

*****

Today I attended a meeting of the university’s Journal Club. This sounds like something I would have wanted to do when I was 11 or so. I would have loved a journal club - a group of like minded girls sitting around with our journals, reading our best bits aloud, discussing books and movies, and maybe eating fancy snacks and sipping tea. But I didn't know any like minded girls. Not one of my friends would have been even slightly interested in sitting around, reading and writing, and talking about reading and writing. We played games and listened to records and stampeded around the neighborhood but we never once sat in a circle with journals on our laps. A pity.  

Journal Club was of course nothing like a childhood dream journal club but it was still pretty awesome. We listened to a speaker and watched a TED Talk and then we answered discussion questions in writing. Some of the other participants wrote their answers in the meeting chat but I got a pen, found a clean page in my notebook, and put it all on paper. Later on, I'll finish the final Journal Club requirement, a short reflection, which I'll write in Google Docs. That's the difference between paper and pen and a computer. The former is for writing things down. The latter is for writing, full stop. 

*****

My trip is almost planned. We decided to skip Galway this time - it’s pretty far from Dublin and Belfast - and just spend the last two days in Dun Laoghaire from where we can explore some Dublin Bay sights. I’m trying to get tickets for Kilmainham Gaol, which is much more popular than a jail (or gaol) should be. I’m looking for Belfast walking tour recommendations. I saw an advertisement for a murals tour that promised a “balanced view” of the Troubles, with due consideration given to both the Republican and Loyalist points of view. The Google Ads geniuses don’t know their audience, because I’m not at all interested in a neutral interpretation of the Troubles; at least not until the British get out of Ireland. But that’s not the point. The point is that all of the details on these various excursions are or soon will be neatly recorded in pen and ink in my notebook. If I lose my phone or my connection, I’ll have a notebook to refer to. And I’ll remember things better for having written them down. And you never know when I might want to try for that penmanship trophy. 

Fleeting

It's late July, crape myrtle time, summer-winding-down-already time. We have the whole month of August of course but once the crape myrtle appears, we're on the slippery downward slope to fall. Pumpkin spice is about to rear its ugly head if it hasn't already. Bleak. 

The thing is that it's blazing hot, brilliantly sunny, intensely humid - central casting summer conditions, almost impossible to think about chill and sweaters and school and pumpkin bleeding spice. But the summer swim season is just about over now, our last one ever. Everyone is leaving town. Graduation seems years in the past. Even 4th of July seems like a distant memory. 

It's 5:30 PM on Friday, and I'm waiting for my hairdresser to finish with another customer. There is a stack of People magazines in the waiting area, including the July 10 issue with the OceanGate tragedy on the cover. Was it just weeks ago that the entire country was gripped by this story? And now it's also in the past, all but forgotten by everyone except the families and friends of the victims.

*****

It's Saturday morning now and we are sitting in our team area at the West Arundel Swim Club in Laurel, Maryland. It's the Prince Mont Swim League All Stars meet, our really really really last and final summer swim meet ever. 

It's tropical here, very warm and very humid at 8:50 in the morning. It rained last night and this place is like a swamp. We're all crowded together in our folding chairs under our team canopy, surrounded by the crowded team canopies of the 35 other teams in the league. Swampy, I tell you, and densely populated; a summer swimming tent city. IYKYK. 

We can't even see the pool from our spot. We secured a tiny standing spot on the pool deck, and watched our boys take 2nd place in the medley relay, way outperforming their sixth seed. We gave up our spot after that race so that other parents could watch their daughters in the girls medley relay, and we'll have to work our way back in there when it's time for butterfly and breaststroke and IM. Everyone gets a turn at the good viewing spots. That's just good manners. All Stars etiquette. We're all in this swamp together. 

*****

Our air conditioning chose yesterday,  one of the hottest days of the year so far, to take what I suppose it considers a well-earned break. And it wasn't so bad. Things cooled down considerably last night and I slept with the windows open and a ceiling fan on high and a crisp cotton sheet over my body, and it was fine. The guy is coming to fix the system today; or rather, he is coming today and we hope that he can fix it. If he can’t, then our very spoiled family will live with a few more days of discomfort. It’ll probably do us good, really. 

We saw “Barbie” last night, and we’re seeing “Oppenheimer” today. The line for popcorn was long and every seat in the place was filled, almost, and people even applauded. After the movie, my husband watched women’s World Cup highlights, our family room dark and quiet with the fan on high. We sat still to stay cool. This, too, is the most summery thing, a shared excitement over a movie or a sporting event or a news story; and then an abrupt shift in mood as the zeitgeist moves on to other things. July gives way to August and the mood transitions from peak summer to impending autumn. There will be a cool morning at some point; not just cool but close to chilly. There will be an evening sometime early in August when someone will lament that it’s only 8 PM and it’s almost dark. There will be a week in late August when every child in the neighborhood will show up at the pool right as it opens, and they’ll stay all day, squeezing every last drop out of the waning summer. By then, the place will be a riot of pink of all shades. The crape myrtle will be in full bloom. 

\

Five years, give or take

I went to an Orioles game once, in 1998. It was just a random, late-season game. I’m not a particular Orioles fan but my then-boyfriend, now-husband was a huge fan, and he got tickets, and we went. It was fun in the way that all low-stakes baseball games are fun. The Orioles were not in contention for anything that year, so no one other than the most die-hard fans cared if they won or lost that game, but it was a nice night to sit outside and drink beer and eat popcorn and watch baseball with middling levels of attention. 

The game was not exciting but around the sixth inning, a buzz began to grow throughout the stadium. Cal Ripken Jr., who had the longest consecutive games played record in baseball history (a record that will likely stand forever) had not yet entered the game. Cal was nearing the end of his career and he was no longer starting every game as he did in his superstar early and mid career years. It wasn’t uncommon for him to sit out a few innings. But it was the bottom of the sixth inning, and Cal was nowhere to be seen. Was he just not going to play? Was he injured? Was he going to suddenly announce his retirement? The stadium grew more restless and the buzz grew louder, until Cal finally came out of the dugout at the end of the game, to formally announce what everyone had by then already figured out - he had decided that the streak had gone on long enough, and had chosen to sit out the game to end it that night. 

*****

We had a busy weekend. The very last summer swim meet at our home pool - the B Division championship - followed by a quick road trip to Avalon NJ to watch my son compete in the Murray Mile Ocean Classic. He did very well in both things, and it was a lot of fun. But it was hectic. The meet didn’t end until 11:30. We got on the road by 12:30 but the already-horrendous summer Saturday traffic on I-95 was made much worse by two accidents, probably about 40 miles apart from one another. By the time we checked into our fleabag (oh my gosh so terrible more detail later) hotel and dropped our stuff off, we just barely had time to get to the beach to watch the race, which started at 6:30. My son finished the mile in very good time, beating all of his friends who had also caravaned to NJ following the meet, and scored age group honors among the men. My sister and her husband had come to the beach, and so we went out with them and had a very good time. We collapsed on our (terrible terrible terrible) hotel room beds at about 11 pm, and left at 8 the next morning, while all the young people (who stayed at the beach for the day) were still asleep. It wasn’t until we were about 20 miles inland that I realized that I hadn’t written a single word the previous day. It wasn’t intentional; I just forgot. 

*****

I don’t know exactly how long my daily writing streak lasted. Looking at my blog entries, I see references to it going back as far as five years. So it was at least a five-year streak of daily writing. And when I say "daily," I MEAN daily. Seven days a week, 365 days a year, weekends and holidays included. I never missed a day until Saturday. 

*****

Are you thinking that it's stupid and shallow and clueless and solipsistic to compare my small-time daily writing streak for which no records exist and which I can’t even prove really happened to one of the greatest baseball achievements of the 20th century? Of COURSE it is. If I wasn’t clueless and (sometimes) shallow and (occasionally) stupid and (a little bit) solipsistic, then what would I have had to write about for five years? How would I have sustained that streak for as long as I did? 

*****

Well one way was to write everywhere and anywhere. Any time I had five or ten free minutes, I'd open Google Docs and just start writing. Now, for example - it’s 9:18 AM and I'm at work but our whole network is down and the IT people are trying to figure out what's wrong, and the rest of us are just sitting around waiting. Well, the rest of them are sitting around waiting. I'm using these spare ten minutes that might turn into hours to write about writing (or about failing to write). Saturday was just the last day of the old streak. It's Tuesday now and day 3 of a brand new streak. You can miss a day and still be a person who writes every day. See you in five years, give or take. 

Perfect

Swimming and books - that’s all I’ve been writing about this summer, with a few forays into overplanning for travel and irrational fears about encounters with wild animals. Well, maybe not entirely irrational, since we do have coyotes swanning about the place like they own it, and every suburban neighborhood in the United States now seems to have its own black bear. 

Other than the books and the swimming, I couldn’t think of a single thing to write about today, and I thought about skipping it, just breaking my years-long daily writing streak because once the streak is broken then I don’t have to think about it anymore. Plus, I wrote a ton for work today. PLUS, I have to take the minutes at the neighborhood association meeting tonight. That’s writing, I tell you. That should count. 

But it doesn’t count. According to my own self-imposed and pretty much meaningless rules, I have to write something non-work-related every single day. There’s nothing in the world forcing me to do this except my own knowledge that I’ll feel bad if I don’t. The streak is the one ball that I have managed not to drop for the last five or more years, and I’m going to keep it in the air just a bit longer. 

*****

This summer is passing with ridiculous speed. Summer swimming will be over - not just for the summer, but forever - in two weeks. Meanwhile, we have trips to Avalon, NJ and Buffalo, NY (quick overnight trips, swimming-related), Ireland, and Ohio (not until September, so maybe it doesn’t count as a summer trip). I’m still recovering from graduation. I have to plan an end-of-year banquet and make a program for the Divisionals meet. I have to polish and finalize the meeting minutes that I took last night. And I have a job. It all seems overwhelming, and just five days after we return from Ireland, we’ll need to take our son and all his stuff to college. 

I don’t want to do any of this, except for the Ireland trip. I want languid summer days of reading and swimming and losing track of time and eating tomato sandwiches for lunch and dinner. That is the big upside of this summer - our backyard tomatoes are plentiful and delicious. I can just step outside and pull a tomato off the vine, wash it, slice it, sprinkle salt on it, and then arrange the slices between two slices of toasted white bread spread with mayonnaise. Why would you ever want to eat anything else? 

*****

Have you ever participated in a cornhole tournament? That is some fun, I tell you what. Just after I finished complaining in writing yesterday, I changed and went to the neighborhood pool, where our first-ever annual cornhole tournament was about to kick off. 32 teams, 16 cornhole sets of varying quality, a picnic table where the tournament commissioner registered teams and assigned brackets, and then the bean bags started flying, just barely keeping pace with the trash talk. 

I did not enter the tournament, but I did play an exhibition round; my husband and me against our friends and neighbors. We wiped the floor with those suckers, and then I swam laps to cool off. At that point, the tournament had heated up considerably. The final four teams were tossing bags, and the buzz centered on three teams - our friends’ son and his girlfriend, my son and one of his best friends, and a pair of ringers who called their team “The Brothers,” though they did not appear to be related. They wore “Toss Like a Boss” t-shirts, and they were there to win. They even brought a cheering section. 

The Brothers eliminated their semi-final opponent, and entered the final against my son’s team, the Renegade Rogues, or something like that. Our boys got off to a rough start. Down 7 to 1, they appeared destined for a second-place finish. But the Renegades prefer to be on the right side of destiny, and they finished strong to win the match, the tournament, and the custom WWE-style championship belt. They posed for a phalanx of cell phone-wielding kids snapping photos, and walked out in triumph, the belt of victory held high above their heads. No one knows what happened to The Brothers, who made a quick escape. No one had ever seen those two guys before, and I suspect we won’t see much of them again until the next cornhole tournament. 

*****

Silly. Just so silly. But I had begun that day feeling sad enough that keeping my head up was a challenge, and I ended the day happy, knowing that I’d just been part of a perfect summer night. Like everyone else, I guess, I’d been hoping for a whole summer of perfect summer nights following perfect summer days, and it hasn’t quite shaken out that way, what with the annual spring mental health crisis hanging on until well into July. But a perfect night is a perfect night, and I’ll take it. I’m not greedy. Some people never get a perfect summer night. 

Wednesday

"Swimmers, take your marks." The "swimmers" is unnecessary, really. Who else would be taking their marks? A simple "Take your marks" is all that you need. It's probably a newly trained starter. She'll learn. Officiating a swim meet is like any other endeavor. Practice makes perfect. 

We're at a Wednesday night swim meet, at an old time DMV swim club, steaming hot on a July evening, the humidity so thick that it's palpable; the grass and trees and shrubs all just slightly overgrown and the whole place veering toward tropical wildness. IYKYK. 

Wednesday night "B" meets are a DMV swimming tradition. They are unofficial meets, an opportunity for swimmers to practice their weaker events. Loud, crazy, and loose, B meets are silly cheers and "swimming up" and little swimmers running around between events with dripping popsicles and giant slices of pizza. For the last 17 years, Wednesday nights in July were reserved for B meets. This is our last B meet ever. 

*****

I went home after work, just to change my clothes, because I didn't want to stand on the deck of a pool in which I'm not allowed to swim on a hot July evening in my skirt and silk blouse. And comfort aside, there is also the question of appropriateness for the occasion. A B meet is not a dressy affair. Even business casual is overkill at a B meet. But of course, once I'm home I'm going to try to get some things done. I am me, after all, and this house isn't going to compulsively clean itself. And I’m quick - I can vacuum, wash the kitchen countertops, and fold a load of laundry in 30 minutes. 

As I stood in the laundry room speed-folding, a moth fluttered by, and I panicked for a moment, wondering if he was a lone wolf moth or one of many. I really hate moths. Visually, they are relatively less disgusting than other insects (RELATIVELY), but I can't bear their frantic swirling and flapping. If they'd just stay still for a hot second, I'd have no beef with them but they can't stay still and so I can't stop swatting at them until they're out of my sight or dead. 

I swatted like a person possessed and the thing had brains enough to understand that I was seriously opposed to its existence in close proximity to me. It wisely removed itself from the immediate area and I went about my business. I finished the laundry, changed into B meet appropriate attire and was on my way. But I was also considerably creeped out and hyper aware of my surroundings, especially where bugs were concerned. And let me tell you that a swimming pool in a close-in DC suburb in July is no place for a person who is bothered by flying insects. The atmospheric conditions at that pool on Wednesday night can best be described by the word “swampy,” and it was a whirlwind of gnats, not to mention home to a mosquito population of malarial proportions. I spent the long evening swatting and ducking. And I didn’t even think about ticks until later - 3 in the morning, to be exact. 3 in the morning is when I always enter worst-case-scenario mode. I checked myself and my husband for ticks, and was this close to waking my son up and making him check himself, too, but my husband managed to assure me that this could wait until morning. 

*****

But back to the meet. I arrived about 20 minutes late, pulled into one of the last available parking spots and crunched across the gravel to the sound of between-heat music (Taylor Swift). I found my friends in our team area, an encampment of folding camp chairs and collapsible tents and eight million wet towels draped over every available surface. People remembered that it was our family’s last B meet. They congratulated us, and asked us what we’re going to do with our Wednesday nights in future summers. And I really have no idea. It felt a little sad. 

*****

Some people take some things far too seriously, including kids’ sports. Well, really, ESPECIALLY kids’ sports. Again - IYKYK.  The referee for this particular B meet seemed determined to run his meet in accordance with USA Swimming standards, and he dragged out every single call into a minutes-long discussion, causing repeated between-heat delays. For context, a normal B meet that starts at 6 PM should end by 8:30. Maybe 8:45. I finally had to leave this meet at 9 PM after my son’s next-to-last event, and it was nowhere near finished. I’m told that it ran until almost 10. And so between the gnats and the heat and the stupid unnecessary delays, our last B meet was kind of a drag. But that wasn’t such a bad thing, really. If the last B meet had been perfect, I’d have probably gone home crying. Instead, I just went home. One more Saturday dual meet, one last Divisional championship, and one last All-Star meet, and our careers as summer swim team parents will come to an end. 

The Years of Lyndon Johnson

I read Robert Caro’s The Path to Power, the first volume in the now four-volume Years of Lyndon Johnson series, in 1990. The second volume, Means of Ascent, had just been published to great acclaim, and so I read the first volume (which had been published a decade before, when I was still in high school and completely uninterested in Lyndon Johnson) and then immediately ran out and bought Means of Ascent in hardcover because I couldn’t wait - literally couldn’t wait - for the paperback edition to come out. 

When I first learned about this series, I think I recall reading that Caro, already famous for The Power Broker, his huge biography of Robert Moses, had intended to write a two-volume biography of LBJ. The first volume was supposed to cover his early life and his political career through his time in the Senate. Then the second volume was to cover his time as Vice President, President, and his last few years at the LBJ Ranch. But after writing about half of the first volume and finding himself nowhere near Johnson’s first term in the House, he realized that he might - just might - need a third volume. He published that third volume, Master of the Senate, in 2002 and as you might guess from the title, it covers Johnson’s Senate years but not his years as JFK’s Vice President nor his own presidency. 

Passage of Power, volume 4, was published in 2012. It covers the years 1958 to 1964, so it doesn’t even touch Johnson’s real presidency, only his interregnum year as JFK’s successor. A fifth volume is expected to cover Johnson’s one-term elected presidency and his few years in retirement until his death in 1973. On the one hand, the hugely eventful and consequential Johnson presidency from 1965 to 1969, not to mention Caro’s track record, would suggest that it might not be unlikely that Caro would break those last few years into two more books, bringing the series up to six. And I would be all in for this. On the other hand, he is already in his 80s and probably needs to wrap this up before he literally runs out of time. According to Caro’s Wikipedia page, he has about 600 pages of volume five in the can. Not sure if that’s enough to cover the 1965 civil rights legislation, the Tonkin Gulf incident, the assassinations, and the protests. Pretty sure it’s not. It’s been well over 40 years, about half of Robert Caro’s life, and it seems that he’s nowhere near finished with Lyndon Johnson. And so neither am I. 

*****

Back in the 90s, I tore through Means of Ascent and Path to Power. Means of Ascent, especially, just took over my life for days. I remember reading the pages and pages of exposition on the misery and poverty of the Texas Hill Country before electrification made life bearable for the Hill Country’s poor farmers and workers and housewives. As a young Congressman, Lyndon Johnson fought to bring New Deal rural electrification programs to the Hill Country, and was a hero to the Texas poor and working class for the rest of his life. Path to Power opens with the lead up to Johnson’s famous 1965 Voting Rights Act speech, two minutes that ended with the former Southern segregationist looking straight into the TV camera and echoing the words of the civil rights movement : “We Shall Overcome.” There is just no way for readers to understand the full significance of these moments in Lyndon Johnson’s political career and his place in the middle of the American century without knowing the full back story, and Caro doesn’t take shortcuts. He doesn’t spare a detail no matter how many pages - or how many volumes - it takes. 

I have no idea why, but I never got around to reading Master of the Senate, though I do have a hardcover copy that I bought at a library book sale. And until last week, I didn’t even know that volume four had been published, though that happened over a decade ago. 

That's the difference between my life when I first read Robert Caro and my life during the last 20 years. Not only did I have lots of time to read but I also had lots of time to read about books and think about what to read next. Understand, of course, that hindsight is 20/20. At the time, I didn't feel like I had lots of extra time. I was a young person with a job and friends, and I thought I was busy busy busy, from morning to night. But now I know that I had all the time in the world. 

Reading Robert Caro again now feels like a long summer day of reading when I was young, when I looked up from a page after an hour or three, a little disoriented, lost to the world in the middle of the 20th century in Washington DC and the Texas Hill Country. Lyndon Johnson was the American century itself, huge and consequential and so complicated that it literally takes volumes to describe. 

*****

Yesterday, I heard an NPR story about Robert Gottlieb, Robert Caro’s longtime editor, who died this year. Caro apparently continues to work on volume 5 of the series. I wish him good health and long life for his own sake of course, but like many other Robert Caro fans, I also want to see him finish this project, or at least to finish and publish one last volume. I’m going to go back and read Master of the Senate, even though I’ll be reading it out of sequence; and I might go back and re-read Means of Ascent and Path to Power again, too. I can’t imagine that anyone could understand Lyndon Johnson, and his place in 20th century American history in less than hundreds of thousands of words. I can’t imagine that it’s possible to make sense of him in anything less than four or five or six enormous volumes. And I can’t imagine that anyone else will ever write a biography even remotely like the Years of Lyndon Johnson series.