The Weekly Meat

After 9/11

Less than an hour after the plane hit the south tower, it collapsed on live TV, as millions of us watched, helpless, and perhaps unbelieving. It seemed absurd to me, but Tom Brokaw (or was it Peter Jennings we were watching in the cafeteria at work?) was saying things along the lines of "We're not sure what we're seeing here. There's a lot of smoke, but something appears to have just happened."

 

A few mornings later, there were still no civilian flights in the entire US, and I just happened to be standing atop a monument on a hill overlooking Boston when I heard two F15s fly overhead, and looked up in time to catch the fly-by as they passed on patrol.

 

Three nights later, a group of friends got together to belatedly celebrate the birthday of the one of us who had actually been flying that morning. His birthday had been — and always will be — the 11th. Only now that fact suddenly seemed unfortunate and unlucky, and we were keen to show him the love. We had a pot luck dinner and lit candles and talked. The Gurgling Cod outdid himself with an au gratin potatoes baked in a skillet lined with bacon. It was the pinnacle of comfort food; a pound-for-pound champion of bad cholesterol and good healing.

 

And a night after that, AKL and I saw Sonny Rollins play one of the best live shows I have ever seen.

 

Ten days later, AKL and I flew from Boston to LA for a friend's wedding. BOS > LAX was the route of two planes used in the attacks that day. Security at Logan was extreme. Tons of police, national guard, Army. Guys in jackboots with grenade launchers. God bless them, but I have no idea what purpose they thought the grenade launchers might serve in an area of so many civilians.

But the world was a new and scary place then and no one knew quite how to deal with it.

On the plane, I had an aisle seat, and — aside from takeoff and landing — I left my seatbelt unbuckled. If, I supposed, I saw anyone moving toward the cockpit or acting strange, they were going to be checked hard into the next row of seats as they tried to walk past me.

At LAX, when we landed, things looked no different from what I imagine they did on September 10th. The difference between the two airports could not have been any more staggering.

When we went back to LAX that Sunday for our return flight to Logan, there was an orthodox Jew across from us in the gate area — the beard, the robe, the tefillin, the whole works — quietly saying prayers and davening. I too prayed — a less observant Jew, but observant nonetheless — that he would not be on our flight. My reasoning was simple: If I was an Arab terrorist, what disguise would be better than that of an orthodox Jew?

 

Three and a half weeks later, AKL and I got married. It was the happiest day of my life.

I had smiled so many fake smiles for pictures to that point that I literally never knew I had dimples. But this was a day of genuine and unadulterated joy and beauty, friendship and love and wonder. And the photographs bore it out.

When we took the microphone to say a few words and thank our guests for coming such a long way and under such circumstances, I said something to the effect that "We need to keep doing what we do; keep having fun. Because we are all the foot soldiers of this new war, and to not continue living our lives as we otherwise would is to allow the idiots the win."

 

A few months later, I painted for the first time since the attacks. It helped. It looked like this:

All those windows.

 

And now.

Ten years later, as most of us are, I am still so moved by the events of that single day and its aftermath. I am tired of the anniversary programs and editions and the "What did it all mean?" And yet I feel compelled to write about it. To scare it up again, explore my own feelings, and slowly piece together the memories.

I scored a C+ grade in the whole Kübler-Ross thing, skipping the first stage of grief entirely. I've tried denial for many things in my life, but in this instance, with the news anchors fumbling, as the first tower collapsed, the impact was immediate for me. I understood full well exactly what I was seeing.

And that I was watching thousands die. And that it was the single worst thing I have ever seen.

Thank god I have seen no worse since.

Random Sketchbook Pages

Back before everything went digital and we all got blogs, I used to be better about keeping a sketchbook. I have several from those days, and I page through them wistfully now and then, pining for the analog nature of it all.

Each is filled with sketches. Ideas too. For plays, stories, artwork. Doodles. Chords and lyrics. Words to live by. Lists of books and movies to read and see. Often, just random things I wanted to remember in that long-ago era before we all walked the earth with cameras in our pockets and knowledge lived in clouds.

Like a bar spotted in Ennis, Ireland called Tipsy McStaggers. Or a pawn shop in Sioux Falls called The Happy Hocker. Or how a friend used to refer to masturbation as "shaking hands with the unemployed."

Or a sign at a church in Gaylord, MI: GOT JESUS?

Or another church sign in Brighton, MA:

C H _ _ C H

What's missing?

U R

 

At the very least, they are filled with the innocent, immature, and occasionally incoherent, notions we all have when unguarded. At their best, though, they illustrate the growth of both my creative and analytical thought processes. And contain an immediacy and truth that I rarely, if ever, reach on the pages of this blog.

For that, I treasure them. 

The Mid-Life Crisis

I'm 42, and though it has been slow in developing, I believe I am now fully involved in the proverbial Mid-Life Crisis. It's not manifesting itself in the traditional guy ways of thinking that a faster car or a younger wife, or copious amounts of cocaine or Rogaine, is going to greatly improve my life as I begin to rage against going gentle into that good night. Those, frankly, are dick things. And it's not a dick thing for me. Rather — as work seems my addiction of choice these days — my struggle seems to be all about work.

There has been some mid-life flirtation with running, but the true crisis is about work. It has always been about work. 

Between my day job, the blog, and my artwork, I am now consumed 24/7 with work. And even liking it (despite the occasional grousing). Similar to an epiphany about academia back in college, I've discovered more recently that though it has taken some time, I've finally become quite good at work — even doing the stuff that used to drive me crazy, like the business end of being a working artist (making art is the easy part; showing and selling it is far more difficult).

Still, as I hit the second half of life (and if I do indeed live to be 84, I expect I might be completely satisfied), I wrestle with the question of whether what I'm doing now is what I really want to be doing. The right step for me career-wise? What I could conceiveably do for another 25–30 years? And if not, shouldn't I shit or get off the pot?

There are occasions that try our souls, and the mid-life crisis is indeed one of them.

Sometimes I don't know exactly what I think until I write about it, and this is one of those times. Particularly, when one writes an essay, one needs to put forth a thesis, a sustainable argument. That is essentially, the mission of this blog, for good or ill and whether or not I succeed.

So here we are. And what, pray, is my thesis?

Can't say. But I can tell you that the mid-life crisis seems a hell of a lot easier proposition when one has real money behind them. Or no kids. Or no relationship. Kind of tough to chuck it all though when there is a mortgage to pay, mouths to feed, a future to make. Or maybe that's just me using my family as human shields to mask my fear of serious change (remember Inertia?).

So much to think on — while one sits, figuratively, on the pot.

House Rules

Girls are easier to parent than boys, right? Uh. Not so sure. (At right, RK does the Haka. And she's the quiet one.)

My two daughters are 19 months apart; the oldest, nearly five. And every single day, I find myself saying to them something I never thought I'd have to actually utter to anyone.

Yesterday morning, they were in their room chanting "poopie in the butt" and then screaming at the top of their lungs. After a minute or so, I trudged up the stairs to say something to them. Putting aside the fact that I was sorely tempted to join them in their chant, I, instead, said, "Go in the bathroom if you want to talk like that."

It is one of our two dozen or so house rules; things we say aloud, by rote, and alas, often. In some respects, the following rules and regs are really all you need to know about my life at home, and about parenting in general.

• No whipping
• No menacing
• No spitting
• No licking tongues
• No body parts at the table
• No eating upside down
• If you play with your food, you have to eat it
• No eating boogers
• If you're not hungry for dinner, you can't be hungry for dessert
• Bus your plate
• No drinking on the stairs
• No drinking bath water
• No running with a fork in your mouth
• No running with a toothbrush in your mouth
• Spit out your toothpaste
• No waking up before number six
• No sleeping on the stairs
• No wrestling on the stairs
• No shrieking
• No sitting on heads
• No pulling tails

and last, but certainly not least,

• Hug and release

 

Meet the Press

True story: 20 years ago, I ran out from my newspaper job one afternoon to pick up my brand new city-issued Press credentials. On the way back to the office, I passed by a building as several cop cars pulled up. I moved closer, as they formed a perimeter and put up yellow crime scene tape. The body was covered with a sheet and nearby was a completely trashed window-washing rig that had given way from 20-some stories up.

The Press pass burned a hole in my pocket. I had stumbled onto a homicide, and I was the first one there. A young writer's dream. A story to work as a stringer on. Break my cherry, get an all-city byline. And yet.

I turned and headed back to the office, back to my desk. Back to my work as the A & E writer/editor for a monthly business rag with a readership generously estimated at 25,000.

Let the dead window washer stay dead, let his family grieve. Let the cops do their grim job uninterrupted. There were things I was ready to do in my life, and things I was not. I knew that then, and — though those things have changed in the past 20 years — I know that now.

There are stories we want in our lives, stories we think we want to tell forever, others we have only passing interest in, some stories we know about but don't want to hear, and still others we don't even want to know about. The key is in the knowing, and the knowing changes as we grow — assuming we indeed do grow.

Sometimes we're so interested in telling past stories, or creating future stories that we neglect the present. Occasionally, we're laser-focused on the present and certain it will bear fruit in the form of stories we'll tell again and again. And sometimes we can't see the stories for the trees.

I think what I'm trying to say is that I need a vacation badly and I'm about to get one — out in the wind-blown jack pines and sage, butted up against buttes. I can't wait.

The Toddlershank Redemption

We have plastic child safety "locks" on several of the doorknobs in our house. They keep the kids, two and a half and four, from getting into the various bits of mayhem in our basement, keeps them off the insanely shallow yet steep and irregular "stairs of death" to our attic, and — this may strike you as odd only if you've never had children — keeps the kids in their room after "lights out" (we then remove the doorknob cover once they're actually down for the night and before we go to sleep ourselves.

Four-year-old RK knows how to work around the lock to get out of the room if need be, and she generally has little energy left for bedtime fussing. Young E-O is a different story. She needs (not "wants," mind you) a diaper change, another hug, a kiss, water, a tissue, her "blankie," etcetera, ad nauseum. Allowed to freely roam the halls, she might never fall asleep on her own. She can eschew sleep like Delta Force, and is as stubborn as a fiberglass splinter.

So, the door lock in their bedroom has long been an effective deterrent.

During the 20 hours a day when the plastic cover is not on their doorknob, it rests on the place closest to the door — the changing table. Yes, sadly, as mentioned earlier, we are still changing E-O's diapers.

For the past six months or so, E-O has been asking to hold the two piece of the doorknob cover while being changed. I should not need to elaborate on the obvious benefits of keeping even a two-and-a-half-year-old's hands occupied while dirty diapers are in play. And so, the door lock; the perfect toy.

Can you see where this is headed? I couldn't.

Two weeks ago, I'm doing some work on the computer while E-O is meant to be taking a blessed post-lunch nap. The doorknob cover is on, and all signs point to her being asleep — when she strolls out of her room and comes smiling into the office, where I'm working.

Me: "E-O, honey, why aren't you taking a nap?"

E-O: "I didn't go to sleep."

Me: "How did you get out of your room?"

E-O: "I takeded a lock off."

And there it was. The sudden overwhelming realization that she had been playing possum for a full six months, stringing me along on the long con, practicing each day, studying, there on the changing table, putting the two pieces of the lock together. And taking them apart. I had been punked by a two-and-a-half-year-old. My own flesh and blood.

I could not have been more proud of her.

In the Closet

By guest author Monica Gebell of Writing the Open Road

Every six months or so, on the verge of a school vacation, I'm standing in my 5' x 5' closet at a loss for what to wear. It's the kind of stupor that makes me late for homeroom and makes me determined that I will clean the closet and get organized.

Teachers, by nature, are usually organized people. We know exactly where to locate a well-maintained lesson planner we used three years ago, we keep files like "Mockingbird: handouts" and "World Myth." We're supposed to know where our damn pants are.

My closet is especially tricky. It was a selling point when we were looking at the house as a potential home: I saw it as a small refuge with a beautiful, small, leaded-glass window reminiscent of the era of the house's construction (1902), a hovel where I might store or sport some things that make a little room a place of expression, decompression even. But since it houses everything I can put on my prenatal, postnatal, and non-natal body and feet throughout four seasons, there's little room for the few trinkets and whatnots that make it a room of my own.

So into the closet I'll go, boxes ready and labeled for thrift stores and bags for stuff that ought to have been tossed months ago: a shirt that hasn't fit since college but I keep because it was once hip; a knit scarf that's unraveled itself into threads; a pair of broken, worn-out sandals that helped me trek through parts of India and South America.

There's a basket of scarves that lives on top of the high shelf above the clothing rack I rarely touch. I purchased the thin blue one when I was 15, next to a night club in Tel Aviv where I had my first drink; another from a flea market in Tuscany where a bunch of friends decided we'd laze for ten days one summer (silk, apparently, can molt). A long, white kerchief with coin tassels purchased for me by friends as we embarked upon a belly dancing lesson prior to my bachelorette party. One, a remnant of my mother's flirtation with psychedelic fashion in the '60s; another, a thank-you gift for directing a play. I don't wear any of these.

I keep another basket atop the dresser in my closet for things like birthday cards I can't throw away, necklaces that need repair. Scissors and sewing stuffs. A glass jar of buttons that never managed to make it back onto the sweaters from which they've fallen (or were plucked by my button-happy daughter). There are small, beaded purses and floppy hats for whimsical evenings, belts, a ball cap. Assorted perfumes I don't often wear. Everything in here has a story. Everything in here, collectively, tells where I've been and who and what I've loved. All in a 5 x 5 closet.

A friend of mine has made a living of organizing people's homes (and lives). Part of her philosophy of organization involves tossing out what you don't need. Superfluous items are simply space-wasters. But for some reason, I cannot part with the (now too-tight) sweater I wore on a first date with my husband. I can't toss the beaded hemp necklace a stranger gave me in Paris, even though I never wear it. And though they're woolen, scratchy, and too big in all the wrong places, the jackets my grandmother's uncle had made for her in Argentina will have to find their way back up on the clothes rack.

Right after I find my pants.

Blog Swap v1.0

This week's Meat about Our Missing Neighbor, Wilson, posted on Writing the Open Road. Check it out over theres. And check back heres soon for guest blogging from Monica of said Open Road blog jaun.

East Coast

I. Here's the difference between the east coast mentality and that of our country's western interior:

Fifteen years ago, my brother and I were visiting our sister and her husband at their then-digs in semi-rural Wyoming. At the time, they were living in the Moose-Wilson area outside of Jackson.

It was Christmas Eve day, and my brother and I were soothing our newly-vacationing selves with a luxurious afternoon of nothing but football watching, while our hosts were working or doing errands or whatever.

In any case, we each had a couch to ourselves, and from mine, I could see both the TV, and the accumulating snow outside the window. I was watching both, when a car — with a Domino's pizza sign on top, mind you — came around the bend by the house and promptly slid across the road into a ditch.

This was before the advent and proliferation of cellphones, and we were the only house within shouting distance.

We had arrived in Jackson a day or two earlier, in minus-ten-degree temperatures. And we'd each been there before, as well as having spent a good deal of our youth camping, hiking, canoeing, etc. This to say that I well understand the code of conduct that exists outside of east coast city life. As well, of course, as the code that exists within those cities.

One of these codes told me that we clearly had to be the ones to help this guy out of the ditch. The other one told me there was something savory to be had for our efforts.

I looked at my brother and asked, "You want a free pizza?"

He looked at me, confused, and I pointed outside; he too, quickly sized up the situation.

With some effort, we were able to help the very grateful delivery man get back on solid ground and underway. And sure enough, he offered to repay us in pizza, once he was able to return to town and back out to us again. An offer, needless to say, that we took him up on.

II. East coasters are pushy, self-centered, and cocky.

Or is it assertive, self-sufficient, and confident?

III. Friends Ted and Kristi recently had a baby. At the hospital, the nurses and midwife were of the opinion that things were moving a bit more slowly than Ted and Kristi thought. (This was their third, so they're not rookies.)

As they thought they were nearing go-time, the midwife again checked things out and assured them they had plenty of time and she and the nurse were going to mosey down the hall to check on another patient, maybe grab a coffee, blah blah blah. Kristi explained that she sure felt ready to go ahead and push the baby out.

Approximately one minute later, the baby was crowning, and Ted was the only person in the room not giving birth or being born.

Ted and Kristi are from Ohio — excellent, salt-of-the-earth folks — but thankfully, have been living here in Boston plenty long enough to have absorbed the attitude. Ted shouted down the hall: "Here comes the head! Get in here right now!!" He then coolly delivered the head, and the midwife ran back in time to deliver the more-tricky shoulders and the body.

IV. There is a midwestern tendency to begin answering a negative with a positive. I know they mean well, and like to smile politely and break news gently, but at times it's just plain confusing to us east coasters.

East coast question: Do you have change for a dollar?

Midwestern answer: I sure don't.

V. What I'm trying to say is this:

A good friend of ours, K, discovered this week that she has what doctors like to euphemistically call a "mass" on her brain stem.

K is from the upper midwest. She is of hard-working farm stock, strong-willed but in a way that few — especially strangers — would ever witness. When she phones, she almost always begins with the questioning apology "Is this a bad time?"

::::::::::::::::::::

K, your medical situation must revolve around you. There is a pecking order to attention given at a hospital, where triage is the way. And a mass on one's otherwise-healthy 30-something brain stem moves one toward the top of the class.

From there, the squeaky wheel gets better care, and if nothing else, you need to let your doctors and nurses know that you're important enough to deserve the best care possible, you want your good health, and you're not going to just roll over for a mass on your brain stem, god-dammit. You want a second opinion? Get one. You want the best doctors available? Get them. Assertive is the new polite. So be strong, raise your voice, and let all within shouting distance know what's up, and what you need to beat this thing down.

Where Babies Come From

When I was in third grade, with two younger siblings, I finally asked my parents where babies came from. They smiled uncomfortably and looked at each other in a way that said, "The day has come."

"Where do babies come from?" I repeated.

"Well," my father volunteered — the one syllable hanging on his tongue like good wine — "two people have to love each other very much."

"Oh." Good enough. "Well how long does it take?"

"Nine months," my mother volunteered.

"Oh."

I was satisfied with the answer. What did I know? I had never heard any different — as opposed to the four-year-old daughters of two separate friends, who each volunteered recently that babies come from "my mommy's vagina." Needless to say, my parents must have been ecstatic that I was satisfied with their non-answer.

It seemed very simple to me. Too simple maybe. But then again, I had never tried it.

I figured I'd give it a shot. I tried to think of which girl in the third grade I loved enough to make her have a baby. I wondered if I'd even have to tell her, or just love her and wait nine months. Kelly? She kissed me once. Maybe she was already pregnant. I didn't think I loved her when she kissed me, but who knew?

It was then that the full impact of this love thing hit me. Forget the girls in class. What about my girlfriends on TV? Leather Tuscadero, Daisy Duke, two out of three Charlie's Angels (sorry Kate). I couldn't say exactly whether I was more in love with Suzy Quatro, Barbara Bach, Jaqueline Smith, or Farrah Fawcett, but clearly — as the Notorious B.I.G. once sung — "I see some ladies tonight that should be havin' my baby."

In any case, I waited, and waited, and waited. Nothing. I started to think maybe there was more to it than my folks had told me. I thought back on it. "Two people have to love each other very much." Ah. Okay, so maybe that was the catch. "Girlfriends" needed to reciprocate your love. Now we're getting somewhere.

But who knew how women felt and what they thought. (I still don't know.) But for argument's sake, say one loved me back. Then she'd get pregnant? Again, I'd have to wait nine months to find out. And there was the nagging Charlie's Angels question. I wondered: if Jaqueline or Farrah were pregnant, would they still be on the show? You can imagine my concern.

At school, it didn't strike me that anyone in my class was pregnant. But I was getting a little scared. Whom had I been in love with — and when? I wasn't ready to be a father. I was hardly even ready to be an older brother. It all seemed like a heavy responsibility, and one that had little to do with the other things I loved — namely hockey, and pasta, and TV.

A few short years later, my friends and I knew all the titillating facts about where babies came from, and had seen all the requisite diagrams and such — which we augmented with full-color glossy photos of airbrushed nakedness from the drawers and bookshelves of our 1970s suburban fathers, all of whom seemed to have countless samples of "gentlemen's magazines."

But still, we had no real concept of what sex was all about.

Around these Playboy (or as one younger neighbor mistakenly called them, Pep Boys) years, one friend described walking in on his parents several years earlier while they were "making Shelley," as he called it (he had a younger sister, Michelle). At the time, it didn't occur to either of us to question his logic: his parents were having sex, he had a younger sister, therefore, he must have seen them in the process of creating his younger sister.

It would be yet another year or so before we finally understood — despite our preoccupation with the feathered-hair girls of prime-time TV and our familiarity with the soft bits of the female anatomy — that sex was not just for procreation, but for recreation.

:::::::::::::::::

My older daughter is three-and-a-half. It is only a matter of time before she is no longer satisfied with knowing that from time to time, our friends and acquaintances have a "baby belly." She'll be looking for answers, and we'll be expected to supply them. Still, AKL and I have not discussed what our story is, let alone gotten it straight.

I don't imagine it will start and end with the conceptually obtuse "two people have to love each other very much." Then again, I don't see it containing only the clinical facts either. (Though, clearly, I might be forced to say the word vagina.) For me, and for my kids, the story lies somewhere in between, I imagine, in that gray area that, admittedly, I sometimes still don't quite understand myself.