Simply 60

Hurry up and wait

I'm cheating a little here. The story of this day is not yet concluded but I am writing about it now, anyway. Why? Because we are stuck at Logan, delayed by weather; that furtive Nicole, beating up the coast and throwing her weight around in high winds and blinding rains, ergo — airport chaos. Of which, oh joy, we get to be a part. So far the flight out of Boston to Cleveland is delayed by three quarters of an hour; the flight from Cleveland to Louisville delayed even more. And these facts change every second, like a woman changing her mind at the dress shop.

The thing about traveling at this time of year is that weather concerns blindside you. In the winter, when you're desperate to get out of the northeast and into the warm of Florida or the Caribbean, you expect it. If you live on an island 30 miles out to sea, it doesn't take winter. You expect it because the Cosmic Thumb always grinds down island dwellers with surprises like fog, high seas, iced-in harbors. They — ice aside — can happen any time of the years.

I recall one summer on Nantucket when fog was the calling card of every August morning. I recall, too, tales of  Monday morning New York commuters heading for the 6 am plane to Boston being fogged out, then racing for the 6:30 boat and getting to the Cape two and a quarter hours later, taxi-ing to the airport and catching the plane to New York only to be diverted to Nantucket, where everything else was grounded.

So here we sit like birds in the wilderness. Pete vowing he will never fly again (a vow he has made innumerable times  before but not, thank heaven, kept— vital to the wanderlust in me) and me entertaining myself talking to you. He informs me that our plane has landed. So, with a little luck and fewer wind gusts, we should be winging our way to beautiful Cleveland before too much longer. Who knows what's in store for us there?

I could dissemble over this, to be sure. There is, after all, a wedding at the far end of our rainbow. And this one, like my own if I failed to show, would not go unremarked. But there's only so much a girl can worry about. A life lesson learned way late in the game. But better late than never.

Ain't life odd? 

Truffle: Having a water cooler moment, in which one of HILR classmates thanked me for a discussion contribution. Made my day.

Quote of the day: "Patience is the ability to idle your motor when you feel like stripping your gears." (Barbara Johnson)

Wardrobe anxiety

All is a-twitter (and it has absolutely nothing to do with social networking)! It's all systems go for a wedding in Kentucky. One in which the groom is yet to be heard from (no vows), the weather for travel out of Boston tomorrow afternoon is supposed to be stinking, and I am suffering from severe wardrobe anxiety.

There's a luncheon on Friday, followed by the rehearsal (out in a pasture), followed by the rehearsal dinner. That's three outfits, not counting the jammies I wake up in. On Saturday there will be 'free' time, followed by a communal hair appointment (Nancy swears I will emerge without helmet-head, but I am doubtful), where the bride, the M.O.B. (mother of the bride), her matron of honor and I all get our hair done. There's one small problem here — I have no hair. OK, well, I do have some hair, but it is close cropped. Hard to imagine, therefore what could be done to it besides maybe dying it blue. 

Then there's the wedding itself. At which I must be DRESSED but not so DRESSED as to eclipse the bride. So I will wear neutrals. Very becoming neutrals, I think. But fade into the landscape I definitely will. Then on Sunday, there is a brunch for wedding guests still lingering on, and that evening, Pete and I take the bride's parents out for dinner. 

In other words, a lot of clothes. And we are Yankee enough that the idea of paying to check a suitcase gets both our hackles up. Oh, nononono! So. The challenge is obvious: pack nearly a dozen outfits in a suitcase that fits in the overhead rack. Which begs the question: do I need such a challenge in the midst of learning my lines for the wedding? Shouldn't the airlines cut a first-time reverend some slack?

Plus ( though who cares?), I haven't done my homework.

Truffle: A gorgeous, long walk on the first dry day in three, with my new friend Dinny, and her dog George. George dances. Or more specifically, he twirls. And in that twirling enraptures Cajun. And except for the fear of being plowed down, all was well, all manner of things were well.

Quote of the day: "Was it love at first sight? It wasn't then — but it sure is now." (Ann Meara)

Night life

"Insomnia is my greatest inspiration," was going to be my quote of the day, thanks to Jon Stewart. Instead it has been elevated to Ultimate Truth.

Last night, somewhere between 1am and 4am, I solve the problem of Where To Put The Dog Food. This puzzle was put to me by our builder several days ago. It was in a lesson in never believe you've thought of everything. Obviously guilt gnawed at my conscience, and my conscience came back to bite me where it hurts — in my deep REM time. 

While I was at it (and awake if not actually up), I had an inspiration about how to use the back of the fireplace (solid brick) that forms one of the pantry walls. The pantry, such as it is, will be is tiny. Would that simply have to remain a blank wall? Then, long about pre-dawn I had a eureka moment: put up several rows of narrow shelves each with plate grooves and use the wall as a display 'case' for platters of various sizes, shapes and antiquities. Practical and attractive (with luck).

For as long as I have been an adult the best thinking I do has been in the middle of the night. The best lines of plays and books and god-knows-what pop into my head. Problems, vast and minute, are worked out. Plot lines are developed, in life as in fiction. All is possible, the night rich with visions, the world has perfect meter. These are the sweet fruits of my insomnia. 

The bitter take the form of inflated worry, overblown anxiety, insurmountable obstacles to happiness. And dodging them any way possible — looking at the clock; turning on the TV to watch the snow; turning pages and calling it reading; surfing the net; getting up and prowling around; sipping the last of the cooking sherry.

At some point I turned a corner with all that thrashing about. I couldn't say when. No lightbulb went on. On the contrary, one is more likely to have gone out. Whereas I once fought sleeplessness, I now embrace it as the one time in my day when I actually have time to think. If sleep eludes me, then I say to myself, 'Okay then, use the time wisely. Where is it you want your novel to go tomorrow.' Or, 'where the hell does the dog food go?'

What lingers, unavoidably, is the exhaustion. An abundance of recent scientific evidence shows that a good night's sleep is crucial for health and longevity. Hmm. Too bad I can't seem to shake off the short term need-to-know for the long term get-up-and-keep-going. Equally too bad that if I insist on burning something out, it isn't the midnight oil. 

In the meantime, my nights are full of definitions and doors opening where once they were stuck: how to define the tower walls without closing myself in or Pete out; what to do with the bronze lions and the giant bronze cranes that are part of this home and must be part of the next; how to have a garage and not, both at once. And that's just about the new house. In these dark reckonings I stir the stew of my simple little life (Harvard, tenants in Nantucket and, for years now, Bedlam, etc.) and arise sated. Like all things slow cooked — the issues I confront may start out tough as goat guts but eventually they tender out.

And now to bed. To get some work done.

Truffle: Night noises — the bell at Concord Academy, the mournful baying of coyotes, a screech owl across the river, an outrage of Canada geese (could it be those coyote at work?), the last summer hum of cicadas in the trees, rain in the birch tree outside my window.

Quote of the day: "The first thing I do in the morning is brush my teeth and sharpen my tongue." (Dorothy Parker)

Saltcoats north

My great grandfather was a Scottish sea captain. He went down with his ship. Oddly, his sea chest survived and is still in the family. So perhaps the less than charitable rumor that he was a scoundrel and a drunk — hence why his chest survived and he did not — has basis in fact. We will never know. But this romantic family tale informed my desire to name the first salty thing I owned, be it boat or house, after the town from which he sailed: Saltcoats. Which, indeed, is the name of our teacup 1746 cottage in Nantucket.

Now we embark on building here in Concord. Well, not 'embark' literally, as we still have a couple of permitting hoops to jump through. But it is at least imminent, if one allows a broad definition of 'imminent'. Maybe November, maybe next spring. So I've begun to think of this project as Saltcoats North.

We met with the architect today and in one of those jam sessions that leaves your heart rate in overdrive and your head thumping with ricocheting ideas, we began ironing out details that speak to the reality of it all: how to design a laundry room, where to put beds, what to do with too much (I know, you don't believe it, but it can happen) master bedroom closet space, how to define the tower, where to zone for heat, should this and perhaps that window be moved?, how do we accommodate too little wall space? etc. etc.

That got me thinking again about the approaching end of this blog (43 days left) after an entire year's due diligence. And my subsequent postpartum blues. So, I'm considering embarking on another, more incidental one, to keep my oar in the water so to speak. My subject this time would be a blend of building a house and transitions in life. The former practical, the latter philosophical. With entries maybe a couple of times a week. Or as the backhoe moves me.

But what to call it? 'House' is not only mundane but taken. So, what then? Home Fires? Front Door? Brick by Brick (only it'll be clapboard)? Chez Funk? Stout Hearthed? Or cryptic Saltcoats North? 

Or is this all one big Who Cares? What's in a name, after all? Except everything. Ask anyone who's name is constantly misspelled or mispronounced. Nothing, absolutely nothing is more important than getting the name right. I know. I'm a Katharine with an A.

Truffle: On this rainy day coming around a bend in the forest and walking into a sea of sunshine. Turned out to be a grove of small sarsaparilla trees, each one festooned with bright yellow leaves. A shock of color, a taste of autumn. 

Quote of the day: "Badger hates Society, and invitations, and dinner,and all that sort of thing." (Kenneth Grahame)

Two good pegs

My sister asked me to make a birthday wish list since, astonishingly, this blog tells me it's only 44 days away. I know what I want. It's not something hers or anybody's money can buy. As I once wished for my two front teeth, now I wish only for two good pegs. 

I rolled to my knees once today — skating on acorns. A second time Pete caught me before I slid into a heap. I seem to drop all the time these days. Knocked on my bean, knocked on my butt, knocked this way and that. I trip, I stumble, I fall. Fortunately, I'm really really good at falling, don't fear it at all (landing on my head aside) and so bounce back up — well, crawl actually — and carry on.

But I fear the handwriting on the wall. 

Since July 1993 I have known I was in a fight to the finish for my mobility. That might seem like overstatement since 17 years have passed in the interim. But it's not. Not a day has passed since that freak injury that I have not been aware of every step I take. Every last one of them. Hardly a day has passed since then that I don't think about five days paralyzed and the unending aftermath. About being discounted by the doctor in charge and so denied a chance for intensive rehab. And any day in which someone asks me why I'm limping makes me cringe. 

It is vanity partly. An athlete never wants to be less than fully physical in the world. But it's something else too. On the days when no one asks, I delude myself that all is well. That both legs work equally well even though I absolutely know this is not the truth. That delusion is central to carrying on. And recently my carefully crafted self-delusion has failed me. Evidence has been too strong, too visible to the contrary.

I'm coming to the terrifying realization that every time I walk on an unpaved surface — we could call this 'walking the dog'; every time I go down stairs; every time I venture anywhere barefoot; I am cruising for trouble. Risk now comes in the most ordinary of packages. Balance, flexibility, agility have all been compromised well before their time, and there seems to be little I can do to stem the tide.

I will, however, continue with the exercises my Nantucket physical therapist outlined. And I will enlist the services of a personal trainer, in the hope that an overseer is what I need. I will also continue to play chicken with destiny, walking the dog off road, cross-country skiing, taking the stairs two at a time. 

Two good pegs. That's what I'd like for my birthday. Or for Veterans Day. Or Secretary's Day. Or Patriot's Day or any old day. And a walk in the wood with my head up and my feet on auto pilot.

Truffle: Cajun had her first sleepover with a friend last night. Sally's parents reported that the girls had a fine time; that Cajun is 'a very active dog.' But the truffle in this tale came this morning when we drove to Hutchins Farm to walk and retrieve her. She and Sally were way down in the fields, a couple of hundred yards away. I whistled once. Her head snapped around. I whistled a second time and she ran to us at full tilt.

Quote of the day: "I've never had a dream in which I'm disabled." (Christopher Reeve)

Physician, shut thyself up

Now I know why I did not go to medical school. It's not that I'm too dumb (though that was the party line all us girls were spoon fed like ipecac back when I was in high school). Or that it was a 'man's world.' It's because I was not destined to become a boor. My guardian angel knew that much, even if I didn't. And so my G.A. made me gag on math and blow up beakers in chemistry.

Indeed I had a taste of medical school this afternoon. We could begin with the setting: the Ether Room, as it is known, at Mass. General Hospital. They claim it was the scene of the first successful administration of an anesthetic to a surgical patient, but they also admit the actual event went undocumented. According to MGH, the photographer fainted. All that blood dontcha know. Well! Really? Or were they all just tripping on fumes?

After the setting, we could go right on to the modus: a quote-unquote mini-reunion of Pete's Princeton class of '63, built around a symposium on medicine in the 21st century.

[Never mind the irony of having a Princeton gathering in a Harvard stronghold — from MGH to the Harvard Club of Boston where cocktails and dinner were held. Don't these tigers have any pride?]

After the setting and the modus, let's move right on to the program. Four — that would be four — plus hours of lectures by classmates and assorted other Princetonians on topics ranging from the humane genome to no-scar surgery, from the future of cancer to PTSD (post-traumatic stress) ; and from oral hygiene in Zambia and  to cholera in Bangladesh. Fascinating, a lot of it, but butt-numbing. Ultimately, the affair could have redefined anesthesia were the seats not so rigidly uncomfortable. 

I probably would have come away impressed but slightly zombified if it had just stopped there. But at dinner we had the considerable lack of luck to be seated with eight physicians. Ever had this experience? If you have you know they can only talk about themselves and the wonders of their god-like work. We were as marooned as castaways on the Dead Sea.

Another reason I did not go into medicine. Had I had the choice. Which I did not. And so I did not know until tonight just what I was missing.

Truffle:  My husband the businessman

Quote of the day: "Doctors are men who prescribe medicines of which they know little, to cure diseases of which they know less, in human being of whom they know nothing." (Voltaire)

Interventions

One of the things my moral dilemmas class hasn't addressed yet is when to intervene and when to take the purely libertarian position that every person has a right to make his/her own decisions. Libertarians, though, do have a kind of checks and balances system in their belief in self-determination: do whatever you want so long as it does not harm anyone else.

And then there's the question of when just to punt.

There have been a rash of incidents in my recent experience where men (as it turns out, most all are male) have taken their families to the brink of despair by self-determining themselves out of jobs and nearly out of this world. In some cases the evil twin is alcohol; in others it's fecklessness assisted by indecision on what course loved ones dare take to effect positive change. There is, alas, always the fear that to act will push the ill away or will further jeopardize the teetering peace on which these families have effected a delicate balance.

So when does one intervene? Oh, we hear a lot about interventions, in self-help books, on Oprah and Dr. Phil, on TV health segments, at Al-Anon meetings, over countless kitchen tables. It sounds good — like heading for California when gold hit the headlines, but just as hard to make pan out in real terms. Besides, the common wisdom is, interventions don't work unless the person upon whom it has been taken sees, or can be made to see, the error of his ways, the hope of salvation.

How often is that realistic? Does anyone know the statistics on intervention success rates? Intervention recidivism? I'd like to know.

What I do know is that I am pained to see people I love burdened by the terrible weight and affliction of another's self-destruction. And I'd like to take these idiots by the shoulders and shake them till their marbles rattle. Which is worse, after all? Scrambled brains or pickled ones?

Truffle: Chocolate mousse. Preceded by chocolate volcano cake with vanilla ice cream. The latter was ordered; the former observed at lunch today. We were told the latter was for a private group, hence the cake order (not all bad). But then when one person in that group failed to show the waitress delivered the extra mousse to us at no charge. Nice, huh? And tasty. And decadent. And, why not?

Quote of the day: "If you are going through hell, keep going." (Winston Churchill)

Musings on fine lines

There must be a hatch mark on the cultural timeline between 'dated' and 'period'. But where? Or perhaps more appropriately, when?

Tonight we saw William Inge's play Bus Stop at the Huntington. It is definitely dated. But at some mysterious point will it cross over that line and fall into that category known as period piece? The former is like trying to stuff a grown foot into a baby shoe; the latter like that selfsame shoe bronzed and enshrined on the mantel.

Think of Happy Days, a sitcom that began its 10-year run in 1974, just 20 years after the period it perfectly captured. Watching it, you didn't look at the Fonz and cringe at his ducktail; you didn't look at the jukebox and think, 'Wow, this show is so dated. They haven't had those gizmos in restaurants for donkey's years.' So why is it that Bus Stop, set in the 50's too, buries us in half a century of accumulated dust instead of exposing a bygone time to new insight? 

Was there ever a time when somebody watched Hamlet and whispered to the chap next to him, "Those ramparts! You'd never seen a castle like that today!" Or said of Juliet (though 'she' was most certainly a 'he'), the corsets those girls were made to wear! They're so old-fashioned." There must have been a point when even Shakespeare's plays seemed outdated. Or was there?

Maybe it was just badly directed — mixing two-dimensional characterizations with bad wigs and mis-castings. Or perhaps Bus Stop is just a C+ play. Either way you look at it, you want to look away. I was glad when the curtain came down, though I felt for the actors. But then I always feel for the actors. All that work! All those lines! All for what?

So how do you ever know: a) if what you create will be enduring? b) what the secret to 'enduring' really is. Inge wrote about things in Bus Stop as universal as first love, infidelity, predation, latent homosexuality. Why then is there only tarnish where patina should be? 

Truffle: Picking up my Harvard College library card

Quote of the day: "Intellectual property has the shelf life of a banana." (Bill Gates)

Ouevre

My life's work does not amount to what I thought it would. At least not when I was 20 and a dreamer. Or even 40 and a cockeyed optimist. 

I thought (innocent that I was) that if I wanted it badly enough, worked hard and had a modicum of talent having a string of well received novels under my belt by the time I croaked was altogether realistic. That's not going to happen, though there will be a string of unpublished novels to take up room in some landfill or choke the nearest shredder.

Over the last week or two I've been writing the wedding ceremony for my godchild Lauren, whom I will marry in ten days' time. Both strike me as uncommonly odd things for me to be doing, however flattered and honored I am to have been asked to do them. It never occurred to me that of all the things I might write one might be a wedding. But I'd have said the same thing about writing a eulogy for my mother (by the time I wrote my father's, writing them was, alas, old hat) when I was 30.

That got me to thinking: what haven't I written? After which it dawned on me that my claim to fame as a writer will never be renown, but it could be, as my tombstone might reflect — she wrote (at least) one of everything.

Which begs (a nod here to Melville and his catalog of whales) an inventory of what I've penned by way of coming to what I have not. So —

2.75 literary novels (all unpublished)

1 romance novel (60,000 words written in 13 days as a personal challenge; unpublished)

1 musical play (commissioned and produced in NYC)

1 full-length play (produced in Nantucket & staged-reading in Chicago); plus several others (unproduced)

1 one-act (produced in Nantucket)

1 ten-minute comedy (unproduced)

1 radio play (1 of 13 international finalists for a BBC radio play contest)

1 screenplay for a TV pilot (unproduced)

1 children's book

numerous short stories

All categories journalistic (published)

1 collection of essays (published)

1 non-fiction book (published)

1 wedding

Numerous eulogies

Several grants

Several newsletters

Poetry (juvenilia; a few published)

2 graduate theses

[what have I omitted???]

...

So what's left?

A doctoral dissertation (not likely)

A mystery (I suppose I could...)

A teen/youth novel (maybe)

A graphic novel (not unless stick figures would work)

???

So my life as a writer didn't work out as dreamed. But looking at this list, I can't help but think I've at least been busy. I may pin it up on my bulletin board for those sinking spells one has at any age when, disheartened, all seems to amount to nothing. As I commented once before, there's just nothing like a list to shore up one's sense of accomplishment, however small.

Truffle: Paper Clips, a 2004 documentary about a Holocaust project in a middle school in Tennessee, in which a bunch of 8th graders endeavor to collect 6,000,000 paper clips, one for every Jew murdered; and end up with 27,000,000 and a German cattle car used to transport people to the camps to house them all. Important. Moving. And a testament on tolerance, something this country could use a good deal more of.

Quote of the day: "Out beyond the ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there." (Jalal ad-Din Rumi)

All that appetizes is not edible

Brainstorming. It is my all-time favorite sport.

Growing up, my sister was nicknamed the Idea Queen. So it must be a DNA thing. This business of having a mind that is constantly ticking over with...well, what?...well, with possibility. One woman's problem is another woman's solution. One man's dark corner is another's lightbulb. Wattage, that's me.

I had a courtesy lunch today with a woman who is E.D. of a local non-profit, one of those non-profits so lost in the shrubbery of the community as to be hidden in plain sight. Lots of people benefit from it, few have ever heard of it. And, to date, it cannot find a clear path to general recognition.

I'm not sure why we had lunch. Oh, I know well enough the impetus: a woman we both admire knows us both and wanted us to get together. Perhaps to work together. And there were other associations that required an obligatory nod: my sister-in-law, the poet, was her teacher; a Social Science Club friend of mine, was an old acquaintance of hers. But in her busy life and my distracted one, having lunch with a stranger to satisfy an elder, or anybody else remotely connected to one or both of us, is either a testament to our individual regard for those imperatives or a product of pure duty. Either way, our meeting could easily have been: have lunch, report we met, be done with it — and each other.

Though only time will tell, I don't think it actually went that way in the end. First, she did not press me, or even ask me, to be on her board. A mighty relief. Second, the conversation somehow turned toward ways to get her organization known in Concord. Concord is not an easy door to open, socially or politically, something we'd both experienced in our separate ways — me with numerous attempts to get involved here only to be rebuffed; she with twice as many thwarted attempts to connect with the town to grow her group to the next level.

Our luncheon ended in an impromptu ideas jam session. Dreaming up ways to get her word out, on a budget. Nearly two hours' worth. We started as strangers and morphed miraculously and almost instantly into comrades in arms. When we parted I had agreed to mentor her on all things journalistic and she to share with me the date of arrival and name of her son-in-utero, due in December.

But it was the ideas that stoked my fire. Ones inspired by the AFLAC duck and gps-driven treasure hunts around the world and restaurants-as-art-gallery. Ideas for her, a woman I don't know, and her organization, one I can't get excited about. There just isn't anything more contagious than a person in need of a good idea. That doesn't mean I can guarantee delivery. But it does mean I have a blast trying.

Truffle: A hemlock-shaded ridge overlooking the Assabet River. Perched on a fallen-down tree trunk, listening to the peace.

Quote of the day: "Small cheer and great welcome makes a merry feast." (William Shakespeare)