This morning I awakened to news that much of Berkeley was without power. Why, you may ask? Well, it rained for about twenty minutes this morning -- a gentle, summer sprinkling that nonetheless freaked out the natives, since it apparently Does Not Rain here in the summer months. It was not enough rain to wash away the dust, mind you, but it was apparently enough to turn the dirt on the power lines into conductive mud (I know!) and short out all the power lines. I love California. Even its mundane problems are grandiose and goofy.
So, faced with the fact that many of the places I needed to go to run errands were out of commission, I decided instead to light out for the metaphorical territories and spend the day reminding myself why I love California and why I'm so happy to be here.
I drove north along I-80 and the Bay, coming over the crest of a hill just as the sun started to break through the early-morning mist and fog. With the fog hanging low around the base of San Francisco across the Bay, it looked like a fairy-tale palace, a city in the clouds.
I made my way over the old iron bridge and into the Napa Valley as the sun came out full force, warming up the tidal pools and highlighting the sugar cane factory and the rolling hills as I drove up into the wine country. My windows were down and my radio was up, and the air blowing through my hair smelled like baking bread -- a combination of the warming earth and the rosemary and lavender planted amongst the vines in the fields. I stopped at a local bakery/deli for coffee and a fresh-baked roll and then followed whatever back lanes appealed to me, until I found myself over in Marin County and following a path straight to the sea.
The air was crisp and cool, and I took a long, long walk on the beach with my shoes in my hand and my pants rolled up around my knees. The Pacific was beautiful and wild, and bitingly cold as I dipped my toes in. There were seals sunning themselves on distant rocks, and seagulls cawing, and a heron dipping out of the sky to skim the water. There were old women practicing Tai Chi at the flat entrance to the strand, and a group of elderly Asian tourists, all wearing hats made of newspaper, exactly like the little boys do in illustrations of Robert Louis Stevenson poems. It was hysterical.
I stopped to grab some lunch and had planned to drive right back to Berkeley, but was thwarted by a giant truck that cut me off at the exit for my bridge. Instead, I found myself shuttled onto the Golden Gate Bridge, which was wreath in fog so thick that all I could see was the very tops of its posts, but as I hit midspan, the fog thinned and lifted, presenting San Francisco spread out before me, sparkling in the distant sun. It was like being given an unexpected gift. I even managed to find my way across the city and back to the Bay Bridge without getting lost, getting a crash course in a few of the city's many, many Victorian neighborhoods in the meantime.
Even though it's taking longer than I'd like for me to settle in, I don't think I'll ever regret my decision to move. Every day I wake up and think how lucky I am to be here -- how much I love my adopted town, and my cozy little house. I feel like I've been given a chance to start fresh, and see the world through new eyes.
Who knows, I may end up tucking flowers into my hair and wishing you all "good vibrations" any day now.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Some Libraries Are Ditching Dewey
I am still in mourning over the loss of card catalogs in the local public library, don't tell me they're ditching the Dewey, too!
I love libraries of all kinds, and here in Berkeley we are blessed with some seriously old-school public space-as-public-art WPA-era beauties. I love the smell of them; the hush, the feeling that they are little temples to our love of books and learning.
I was raised Catholic, and learning the Dewey Decimal system as a kid felt a little like learning the Catechism -- the mysterious, slightly mystical entry price into a land of wonder. Once you learned the Dewey Decimal system, the world (or at least the printed page) was at your feet -- you could find a book on a shelf anywhere in the library by following the numbers -- it was a little miracle in its own right.
Much like the passing of the card catalog, the loss of the Dewey Decimal system means less of a chance for a little accidental magic -- that moment when, as a kid, you followed a trail for a paper or report and found yourself staring at the book next to it that was about something you never even knew you had an interest in until you saw it. In some ways, learning to use the library to do research was like learning to become a reporter; it taught me to be careful, methodical, dogged -- and sometimes, to follow an unexpected lead to a treasure trove of information.
Unlike losing the card catalog, which is, in the age of the Internet, a necessary evil, I don't think losing the Dewey will make using the library a better, faster or more efficient experience. It's a little like losing an old friend.
I love libraries of all kinds, and here in Berkeley we are blessed with some seriously old-school public space-as-public-art WPA-era beauties. I love the smell of them; the hush, the feeling that they are little temples to our love of books and learning.
I was raised Catholic, and learning the Dewey Decimal system as a kid felt a little like learning the Catechism -- the mysterious, slightly mystical entry price into a land of wonder. Once you learned the Dewey Decimal system, the world (or at least the printed page) was at your feet -- you could find a book on a shelf anywhere in the library by following the numbers -- it was a little miracle in its own right.
Much like the passing of the card catalog, the loss of the Dewey Decimal system means less of a chance for a little accidental magic -- that moment when, as a kid, you followed a trail for a paper or report and found yourself staring at the book next to it that was about something you never even knew you had an interest in until you saw it. In some ways, learning to use the library to do research was like learning to become a reporter; it taught me to be careful, methodical, dogged -- and sometimes, to follow an unexpected lead to a treasure trove of information.
Unlike losing the card catalog, which is, in the age of the Internet, a necessary evil, I don't think losing the Dewey will make using the library a better, faster or more efficient experience. It's a little like losing an old friend.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Jailhouse Rock
I'm going to share one of my deepest, darkest secrets with you guys -- I, like Ryan Atwood, am a victim of The Man. A veteran of the system. A girl on the edge of the law.
In other words, dear readers, I am a juvenile offender. Yes, it's sad but true. I once strayed from the path of righteousness.
The time? Long ago, when I was but a young girl of 14. I was spending the summer before I started Posh Girls' School (on a full scholarship) at my grandparents' house down the shore. I was, it goes without saying, sort of a weird kid. I had a job with friends of my parents, working at an ice-cream stand, and I was pretty much content to go from the house to the stand to the beach and back again. I spent most evenings by myself, reading on the porch, or biking around the town.
I was perfectly content, but my parents were concerned. My two female cousins nearest me in age, with whom I'd always been close, were about to be a sophomore and a senior in HS, respectively. By this time, their much-wealthier parents had bought their own summer house in the next town over, where a lot of the area's Main Line families (read: lots of Old Money) had their summer homes. Being both older and cooler than I, they were at the center of "summer local" society, and they were going out every night to illegal parties and all-ages dances and all of the thing that the cool kids did, and my Mom, especially, thought that I should make an effort to "be more social."
So one Saturday night, when my parents went to Atlantic City for the night, and my brother and I were staying over at the cousins', my mom and my aunt put their plan into action. It was not much of a plan, frankly. They basically bullied my cousins into agreeing to take me out with them that night.
We were supposed to go into the center of town, to the pizza parlor that served as the de facto hangout for the cool kids. On the way there, my cousins basically flipped for me, and my sophomore cousin got custody for the evening. It turned out that we were just going to the pizza place long enough to meet up with her friends and find out where the night's rager would be.
Under no circumstances did I want to go along. I was socially awkward -- physically overdeveloped for my age and sort of emotionally left behind; I had just attended my first school dances and had enough trouble dancing with boys, let alone contemplating doing anything else -- and I didn't drink. But I wasn't allowed to go home, and I didn't have anywhere else to go. So, under protest, I went along. We crammed into the back of her friend Drew's Jeep -- a classic beach vehicle plastered with surf stickers and painted a cherry red. I knew many of her friends at least slightly -- I wasn't a total social outcast, and we did do things like go to the beach together, but still, it was awkward, eight or so of us, boys and girls, crammed into a car designed for four or five at the max.
We ended up at the end of the island just after dark had fallen. The beaches in this town are known for their massive, environmentally-friendly dunes, and we had to wend our way along a sandy path, in the dark, with crickets and frogs chirping around us, with spider webs in our perfectly-coiffed hairdos (hey, it was the '80's. In New Jersey. Although, to our credit, we were sporting the bi-level surfer cuts and not the infamous mall hair) and sand in our penny loafers. And my cousin's friend Drew was carrying his skateboard, for no apparent reason, which bumped into my legs with every step, and copping a feel through my t-shirt "by accident" every time we stopped to figure out where we were supposed to be.
We came over the ridge of the dunes in the moonlight onto the Hobie Cat beach. Hobie Cats are catamarans -- the light, two-hulled sailboats that are much in favor down the shore because you can launch them from the beach without a dock, and park them there all summer, above the high-tide line.
There were probably two hundred kids at this party. It was New Jersey, not California, so no bonfires, but a couple kegs, lots of wine coolers, music coordinated from a multitude of boom boxes (I remember it being Simply Red and UB40, but fill in your own cheesy '80's soundtrack here). There were couples making out in the dunes, by the water, and all over the abandoned Hobie Cats. In short, a typical summer party.
Now, nearly 20 years later, my cousin and I remember some details in perfect sync; in others, our accounts vary widely.
We both remember that we hadn't even been there long enough to fight our way to the kegs and get a beer -- or even to acquire a girly wine cooler -- when the police arrived. We still aren't sure how they got there -- either they were right behind us on the path to the beach, being very, very quiet, or they had come over the dunes -- a strictly forbidden act.
Immediately, everyone scattered. My cousin, who is like a sister to me in many ways today, nonetheless left me standing there, paralyzed with fear, and took off like a stone-cold coward. A moment later, as people tore up and beach and over the dunes, I realized I was in trouble.
I kicked off my shoes and ran, with the other stragglers, towards the cover of the dunes. As I was running, legs churning up the hard-packed sand, kids diving off into the scrub to the left and right of me, a police officer in full uniform, with his billy club out, ran right alongside and then passed me.
Now, this is where our accounts differ. My cousin claims that I am the only person in the history of the the universe who halted when the police yelled "Halt!" I, on the other hand, remember thinking, distinctly, that I was going to outfox the cops and double back. I stopped where I was and turned around, running back down the beach in the other directions and almost directly into the arms of the middle-aged cop bringing up the rear.
This was not a rent-a-cop. This was one of the Main Line Beach Town's few full-time patrol officers, a local guy who was simmering with rage towards the spoiled-rotten rich kids who invaded his town for three months each summer, a heavyset guy with a salt-and-pepper mustache who was pissed that his polyester pants were soaked to the knees with sea water, his brogans were filled with salt and seaweed and he was on the edge of a heart-attack from the simultaneous fun of chasing kids through the sandy dunes and destroying the town's fragile eco-system at the same time.
He was, needlessly to say, less than pleased with me. He literally dragged me -- his hand attached to my arm so tightly that it left bruises the next day -- back across the sand and dropped me onto a Hobie Cat with a snarl. Next to me, soaking wet and more than a little drunk, was a tiny blonde girl I'd never seen before who had apparently figured that no one would see her if she dove into the water.
"Do you know how much trouble you two are in?" the cop roared at us, and proceeded to break down a list of the possible charges.
Underaged drinking. Destroying a protected wilderness. Trespassing. Destroying private property. Theft by misadventure (because we'd been using the Hobie Cats to sit on and, um, other stuff). The list went on and on as my stomach twisted, and the girl beside me shivered blankly.
As the other cops roamed the beach, searching for stragglers, this guy stayed beside us, whispering a litany of trouble and woe. We would be thrown in jail, never to see the light of day again. We'd never get into college. We'd end up, drug-addicted prostitutes, trolling the Atlantic City boardwalk for johns. He had some serious anger-management issues, and I, at that point in my life, had never even gotten a detention. I couldn't wait for the earth to swallow me whole.
As we sat there, miserable and shivering, waiting for the cops to take us back to the station, a clump of teen-agers came walking up the beach. At the head of the pack, carrying, for no good reason, a skateboard, and waving at me was my cousin's friend Drew, whistling cheerfully.
"Hey, you! Missy! Do you know who that is?" the cop demanded, and I was trapped.
Even a socially-retarded bookworm knows that the code of teenage life is Never Tell, but the cop was now grandly adding a couple charges of "accessory after the fact" to our still-growing laundry list of charges.
Finally the girl next to me piped up for the first time.
"They're just a couple of asshole surfers," she said, as if this were a conversation she had often, "They probably think we're hysterical."
Moments later, we were handcuffed and escorted, none too gently, over the beach, and back down the narrow, sandy path. Without the use of our hands, we were at the mercy of the cops, who I may have mentioned were none too happy. My shoes were somewhere abandoned on the beach, so I stumbled over rocks and burrs and Lord knows what else as I tried to duck and weave to avoid the low-hanging branches and spider webs.
Luckily, when we emerged from the beach, we were handed off to a different cop, a middle-aged woman with mom hair who took one look at us -- me on the verge of hysteria, feet torn and bleeding, and Blondie dripping wet and weaving slightly where she stood -- and snapped into mom mode. She placed us in the back of the cars with a hand on our heads (I remember thinking, distinctly -- "I can't believe they really do that!"), and even put our seatbelts on for us.
Unfortunately, we rode the whole way back down the island with lights on and sirens blaring. It was a Saturday night and the main street was thronged with people, each and everyone I was convinced could see us as we sped down the road at a law-abiding 25 miles an hour.
I didn't even know the town had a jail. Or a police station, for that matter. It turned out to be next to the strip that contained the town's only mini-golf course -- packed, of course -- and an Uncle Bill's Pancake House, housed in the same drab, brown Quonset hut where we bought beach tags.
We were, thankfully, driven around to the back of the police station, where no one could see us, and unloaded. There, on the side of the platform, was my cousin, waving discreetly. I found out late that she'd had no idea what happened to me, and had found out only after sending the skateboard-toting Drew and his minions to do a little reconnaissance on the beach. In the meantime, her older sister had returned home to find out -- all stealth-like -- if I'd wandered back to my aunt's house in the meantime.
We were taken through the tiny police station and back into what must have been the drunk tank -- happily, devoid of drunks at the time. We sat side by side, still handcuffed, still shivering. The air-conditioning was arctic-level, Blondie was still soaked through, and I was still barefoot on the floor that had, I was convinced, seen a thousand puke-outs before me.
I remember thinking that my parents were going to kill me for losing my penny loafers -- Weejuns without socks were the in things that summer, and mine were supposed to last long enough to wear as part of the PGS uniform in the fall -- and not, strangely, imagining their reaction to the whole minor arrest issue.
After what felt like hours, the mean cop came and unlocked our handcuffs, finally, and took us into a hallway that doubled as a photo backdrop. We had to hold little signs in front of our faces as they took our photographs, and then our profiles. I remember debating whether or not to smile, as Blondie mugged drunkenly for the camera.
Afterward, they took us each to a separate desk in the squad room and started the interview. The mean cop demanded my parents' names and phone numbers and -- in the land before cell phones -- I had to tell him that they were totally out of reach.
"Oh, well," he said with a smirk, "I guess you're spending the night with us, then."
It was, at this point, that I began to panic, slightly.
"Wait. I'm staying with my aunt! I'm staying with my aunt! Could you at least call her? Even if she can't come get me?" I begged.
After a few tense minutes the cop nodded, and then he asked me for my school.
"Oh, God, why do you need to know that? I'm just going to be a freshman! I have a scholarship!"
I could just picture the nuns at PGS getting a packet complete with my mug shot the week before school started and booting me to the curb faster than you can blink. That, finally, was enough to make me cry.
I wouldn't tell the mean cop where I went to school, sobbing hysterically for my aunt instead, while in the meantime, the mom cop had her hands full with Blondie, who couldn't, it seemed, remember her name. After ten minutes or so of cacophony, the mean cop had had enough, and dialed my aunt's house in defeat.
I could hear her through the phone on the other side of the desk.
"That's -- you've got to be kidding. You've obviously arrested the wrong kid. She's the good one! Where are my daughters?"
The cop's night was not getting any better. Before he could answer any of her questions, she'd hung up. At the time, I was convinced that she'd thought a) it was a joke or b) I deserved everything I was getting, so at this point I was convinced that I was spending the rest of the weekend in jail.
The cop didn't make me go back to the drunk tank, however. He let me sit there as they tried to coax some information out of the increasingly incoherent blonde girl beside me. Just as they were about to give it up for a bad game, an EMT who -- daylighted? I don't know -- as a lifeguard wandered into the room for something.
"Oh, hey, Chrissie," he said nonchalantly, "What're you doing here?"
"Hey!" she answered brightly, "We kind of got caught on the beach. You know, um, swimming."
The mom cop looked over at at the EMT like he was her salvation.
"You know who this is?" she asked quietly.
"Sure. That's Chrissie, the mayor's daughter. She just got back from camp."
You could have heard a pin drop in the squad room.
"Jesus Christ!" the mean cop growled at no one in particular, "That's why she looks so friggin' familiar. Goddamnit."
By a strange coincidence, my aunt and the Mayor arrived at the squad room nearly simultaneously. In the short time before they'd gotten there, they'd located a blanket, a sweatshirt and a lot of hot coffee for Chrissie.
The Mayor looked less like a politician and more like a the real-estate agent his was in civilian life -- in all his tanned-skin, bouffanted-hair, pink-polo-shirted glory.
"So, I hear my daughter took a little swim after the lifeguards went off duty," he said, and he may not have looked like a politician, but he had a politician's oily charm, and velvet over steel voice, "Right, guys?"
In the blink of an eye, gone were the laundry list of charges, the threats to call our schools, the drunk-tank sleepover, the fingerprinting still hanging over our heads.
My aunt, who was not born yesterday (and, God, do I love her for it!), chose that moment to step in.
"So, this was all a big misunderstanding, it sounds like, hunh? I mean, if no charges have been filed, who knows if you interrupted a party on the beach or a little illegal swimming? Right, guys?"
It was a perfect imitation of the Mayor. After an uneasy moment, even the mean cop agreed, and they tore up the reports they'd been writing, discreetly.
As we walked out of the police station, my aunt's arm was around my shoulder.
"What happened to your shoes? Did they take your shoes? Did they think you were going to kill yourself with your shoes?"
"No, I, um, kind of lost them," I whispered. In the midst of the shakedown I'd just witnessed, I'd managed to stop crying, but I was ready to crumble at any moment.
"Oh, well, you needed a new pair anyway. We'll go shopping for them tomorrow."
"Um, aren't I going to be grounded or whatever? Like, forever?"
"Oh, please. This has my daughters written all over it. You know, they came back to the house looking for a sweater. I didn't realize that was code for my-baby-cousin-who-I-abandoned-in-the-dunes. I'm going to have to kill them, of course."
"It wasn't their fault! I was lost, um, in the crowd. I got confused."
"Yeah, and here's another thing -- run. Seriously. That cop was old and fat, if you'd have made it to the dunes, you'd have been home free. You know, if you were ever to attend another party. Which you would never do. Because, of course, it's wrong. As is underaged drinking," she added with a wink as she pushed me into her car.
By the time we got back to the house, my cousins were waiting on the porch, and my aunt had worked up a righteous head of steam. The thing that she was mad about, however, was the fact that we'd all scattered at the first sign of trouble.
"That's why you're family. You don't leave each other. I should have been picking all of you up from that station! Or none of you! Do you understand me?"
We finally tracked my parents' down at their casino late that night, and after my father stopped laughing, my mother forced him to come back. Unlike the rest of the family, who were treating the whole incident as something of a joke, my mother had worked herself into a lather by the time they reached my aunt's house.
My mother -- who, until that point, had never cursed in front of us, walked into my aunt's kitchen at 4AM screaming, at the top of her lungs, "What the f--- is wrong with you?"
Before anyone could react, she slapped me across the face -- the first time since I'd been in diapers she'd ever hit me.
"You could have been arrested! You could have gone to jail! You could have been THROWN OUT OF SCHOOL!"
She kept coming at me, but my father at this point had entered the kitchen and was, literally, holding her back.
"Um, this might be the wrong time to mention it," my aunt piped up as my mother raged at me, "But it is sort of our fault."
"What? What the hell are you talking about?"
I was stunned. My mother was like a total stranger.
"Well, we did make her go out tonight. Remember -- you wanted her to act like a normal kid? Yes, well, welcome to normal."
For a moment, I thought that my mother was going to have a nervous breakdown. Her face turned purple and she nearly leaped out of my father's -- who is over a foot taller and probably two hundred pounds heavier than my tiny mom -- arms. Then, she just collapsed in hysterics -- first laughter, then tears, as the rest of us just stared at her. After about twenty minutes, she'd finally calmed down, and she turned to me, and said in her perfectly quiet, ordinary voice,
"That was not the smartest thing you've ever done."
We finally got to bed around 5AM. Several hours later, my dad woke me up and told me that I was not allowed to "call out arrested" and drove me back home to work the late-morning shift at the ice-cream stand.
On the way there, in his low-key way, he explained that there was basically nothing that he or my mother could do at this point except trust me -- they'd done all their parenting and I was going to be on my own for much of the time from now on.
"It would help," he added mildly, "If we thought we could trust your judgment. I realize that you were in a bad position last night, but there was an alternative. There almost always is. Just like there are always consequences, like having to spend the morning serving ice-cream to screaming kids on two hours of sleep. Good luck with that," he said, as he dropped me off.
When I returned to the house that afternoon, wanting nothing more than a nap, my bathing suit was sitting on the kitchen table under a note.
"Come to the beach. Don't make us come get you."
There was nothing I wanted to do less. I was tired, embarrassed and ashamed. I had a purple handprint on my cheek, my feet were torn and scratched and sore, and I had faint bruises on my arms where the cuffs had bit in, and where the mean cop had grabbed me. I hadn't slept more than two hours, I had a crying hangover, and I hadn't eaten all day. But more than anything, I was afraid of the return of my mother, the insane woman, from the night before.
I changed into my suit and trudged back down to the beach, over the dunes, following the same path in my sneakers that I'd followed, barefoot and in reverse, the night before. As I reached the top of the hill, at the edge of the protected beach, I saw my whole family spread out -- my parents, my brother, all my aunts and uncles and cousins -- in their sprawling mass of blankets and beach chair and umbrellas. They'd obviously been looking for me, because my brother started screaming as soon as I crested the hill, "There she is. She's coming!"
As one mass, they stood up, put on their striped hats and police caps and mirrored sunglasses, and started singing "Jailhouse Rock." Badly. Out of tune and at the top of their lungs. Everyone was staring. And I had about 100 yards of beach to cover on my own.
By the time I hit the edge of the family plot, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Then, my dad handed me a literal ball and chain. And a set of Chinese handcuffs. ("They didn't sell the real ones. Sorry.")
"So," I said finally, trying to be a god sport, "I guess someone hit the Five and Ten this morning."
My dad gave me a giant hug and whispered in my ear, "Remember those consequences we were talking about? Be a good sport and get it over with."
So I laughed, and wore my ball and chain, and fell asleep on the beach several minutes later.
Thanks to Chrissie, the Mayor's daughter, there's no record of my transgression -- although I guess my mug shot might be floating out there, somewhere. But thanks to my cousin's friend, who was several grades ahead of me at PGS and incapable of keeping her mouth shut -- every single girl I went to school with thought I was a felon by the end of the first day of my freshman year.
By last period that day, the scholarship girl from the ghetto had, depending on who you talked to, robbed a J.C. Penney, cut a girl in a gang fight or was a drug dealer on a massive scale. For weeks, girls sidled up to me in the locker room, whispering, "Can you hook me up?" and it took me forever to figure out they thought I was their drug connection.
On the plus side, not a single girl was brave enough to say anything -- at least to my face. And by the time they'd figured out that I was about as dangerous as a Disney cartoon animal, the damage had been done. For the rest of my high-school career, I skated by on my altogether-unearned reputation as a slightly-mysterious badass.
In other words, dear readers, I am a juvenile offender. Yes, it's sad but true. I once strayed from the path of righteousness.
The time? Long ago, when I was but a young girl of 14. I was spending the summer before I started Posh Girls' School (on a full scholarship) at my grandparents' house down the shore. I was, it goes without saying, sort of a weird kid. I had a job with friends of my parents, working at an ice-cream stand, and I was pretty much content to go from the house to the stand to the beach and back again. I spent most evenings by myself, reading on the porch, or biking around the town.
I was perfectly content, but my parents were concerned. My two female cousins nearest me in age, with whom I'd always been close, were about to be a sophomore and a senior in HS, respectively. By this time, their much-wealthier parents had bought their own summer house in the next town over, where a lot of the area's Main Line families (read: lots of Old Money) had their summer homes. Being both older and cooler than I, they were at the center of "summer local" society, and they were going out every night to illegal parties and all-ages dances and all of the thing that the cool kids did, and my Mom, especially, thought that I should make an effort to "be more social."
So one Saturday night, when my parents went to Atlantic City for the night, and my brother and I were staying over at the cousins', my mom and my aunt put their plan into action. It was not much of a plan, frankly. They basically bullied my cousins into agreeing to take me out with them that night.
We were supposed to go into the center of town, to the pizza parlor that served as the de facto hangout for the cool kids. On the way there, my cousins basically flipped for me, and my sophomore cousin got custody for the evening. It turned out that we were just going to the pizza place long enough to meet up with her friends and find out where the night's rager would be.
Under no circumstances did I want to go along. I was socially awkward -- physically overdeveloped for my age and sort of emotionally left behind; I had just attended my first school dances and had enough trouble dancing with boys, let alone contemplating doing anything else -- and I didn't drink. But I wasn't allowed to go home, and I didn't have anywhere else to go. So, under protest, I went along. We crammed into the back of her friend Drew's Jeep -- a classic beach vehicle plastered with surf stickers and painted a cherry red. I knew many of her friends at least slightly -- I wasn't a total social outcast, and we did do things like go to the beach together, but still, it was awkward, eight or so of us, boys and girls, crammed into a car designed for four or five at the max.
We ended up at the end of the island just after dark had fallen. The beaches in this town are known for their massive, environmentally-friendly dunes, and we had to wend our way along a sandy path, in the dark, with crickets and frogs chirping around us, with spider webs in our perfectly-coiffed hairdos (hey, it was the '80's. In New Jersey. Although, to our credit, we were sporting the bi-level surfer cuts and not the infamous mall hair) and sand in our penny loafers. And my cousin's friend Drew was carrying his skateboard, for no apparent reason, which bumped into my legs with every step, and copping a feel through my t-shirt "by accident" every time we stopped to figure out where we were supposed to be.
We came over the ridge of the dunes in the moonlight onto the Hobie Cat beach. Hobie Cats are catamarans -- the light, two-hulled sailboats that are much in favor down the shore because you can launch them from the beach without a dock, and park them there all summer, above the high-tide line.
There were probably two hundred kids at this party. It was New Jersey, not California, so no bonfires, but a couple kegs, lots of wine coolers, music coordinated from a multitude of boom boxes (I remember it being Simply Red and UB40, but fill in your own cheesy '80's soundtrack here). There were couples making out in the dunes, by the water, and all over the abandoned Hobie Cats. In short, a typical summer party.
Now, nearly 20 years later, my cousin and I remember some details in perfect sync; in others, our accounts vary widely.
We both remember that we hadn't even been there long enough to fight our way to the kegs and get a beer -- or even to acquire a girly wine cooler -- when the police arrived. We still aren't sure how they got there -- either they were right behind us on the path to the beach, being very, very quiet, or they had come over the dunes -- a strictly forbidden act.
Immediately, everyone scattered. My cousin, who is like a sister to me in many ways today, nonetheless left me standing there, paralyzed with fear, and took off like a stone-cold coward. A moment later, as people tore up and beach and over the dunes, I realized I was in trouble.
I kicked off my shoes and ran, with the other stragglers, towards the cover of the dunes. As I was running, legs churning up the hard-packed sand, kids diving off into the scrub to the left and right of me, a police officer in full uniform, with his billy club out, ran right alongside and then passed me.
Now, this is where our accounts differ. My cousin claims that I am the only person in the history of the the universe who halted when the police yelled "Halt!" I, on the other hand, remember thinking, distinctly, that I was going to outfox the cops and double back. I stopped where I was and turned around, running back down the beach in the other directions and almost directly into the arms of the middle-aged cop bringing up the rear.
This was not a rent-a-cop. This was one of the Main Line Beach Town's few full-time patrol officers, a local guy who was simmering with rage towards the spoiled-rotten rich kids who invaded his town for three months each summer, a heavyset guy with a salt-and-pepper mustache who was pissed that his polyester pants were soaked to the knees with sea water, his brogans were filled with salt and seaweed and he was on the edge of a heart-attack from the simultaneous fun of chasing kids through the sandy dunes and destroying the town's fragile eco-system at the same time.
He was, needlessly to say, less than pleased with me. He literally dragged me -- his hand attached to my arm so tightly that it left bruises the next day -- back across the sand and dropped me onto a Hobie Cat with a snarl. Next to me, soaking wet and more than a little drunk, was a tiny blonde girl I'd never seen before who had apparently figured that no one would see her if she dove into the water.
"Do you know how much trouble you two are in?" the cop roared at us, and proceeded to break down a list of the possible charges.
Underaged drinking. Destroying a protected wilderness. Trespassing. Destroying private property. Theft by misadventure (because we'd been using the Hobie Cats to sit on and, um, other stuff). The list went on and on as my stomach twisted, and the girl beside me shivered blankly.
As the other cops roamed the beach, searching for stragglers, this guy stayed beside us, whispering a litany of trouble and woe. We would be thrown in jail, never to see the light of day again. We'd never get into college. We'd end up, drug-addicted prostitutes, trolling the Atlantic City boardwalk for johns. He had some serious anger-management issues, and I, at that point in my life, had never even gotten a detention. I couldn't wait for the earth to swallow me whole.
As we sat there, miserable and shivering, waiting for the cops to take us back to the station, a clump of teen-agers came walking up the beach. At the head of the pack, carrying, for no good reason, a skateboard, and waving at me was my cousin's friend Drew, whistling cheerfully.
"Hey, you! Missy! Do you know who that is?" the cop demanded, and I was trapped.
Even a socially-retarded bookworm knows that the code of teenage life is Never Tell, but the cop was now grandly adding a couple charges of "accessory after the fact" to our still-growing laundry list of charges.
Finally the girl next to me piped up for the first time.
"They're just a couple of asshole surfers," she said, as if this were a conversation she had often, "They probably think we're hysterical."
Moments later, we were handcuffed and escorted, none too gently, over the beach, and back down the narrow, sandy path. Without the use of our hands, we were at the mercy of the cops, who I may have mentioned were none too happy. My shoes were somewhere abandoned on the beach, so I stumbled over rocks and burrs and Lord knows what else as I tried to duck and weave to avoid the low-hanging branches and spider webs.
Luckily, when we emerged from the beach, we were handed off to a different cop, a middle-aged woman with mom hair who took one look at us -- me on the verge of hysteria, feet torn and bleeding, and Blondie dripping wet and weaving slightly where she stood -- and snapped into mom mode. She placed us in the back of the cars with a hand on our heads (I remember thinking, distinctly -- "I can't believe they really do that!"), and even put our seatbelts on for us.
Unfortunately, we rode the whole way back down the island with lights on and sirens blaring. It was a Saturday night and the main street was thronged with people, each and everyone I was convinced could see us as we sped down the road at a law-abiding 25 miles an hour.
I didn't even know the town had a jail. Or a police station, for that matter. It turned out to be next to the strip that contained the town's only mini-golf course -- packed, of course -- and an Uncle Bill's Pancake House, housed in the same drab, brown Quonset hut where we bought beach tags.
We were, thankfully, driven around to the back of the police station, where no one could see us, and unloaded. There, on the side of the platform, was my cousin, waving discreetly. I found out late that she'd had no idea what happened to me, and had found out only after sending the skateboard-toting Drew and his minions to do a little reconnaissance on the beach. In the meantime, her older sister had returned home to find out -- all stealth-like -- if I'd wandered back to my aunt's house in the meantime.
We were taken through the tiny police station and back into what must have been the drunk tank -- happily, devoid of drunks at the time. We sat side by side, still handcuffed, still shivering. The air-conditioning was arctic-level, Blondie was still soaked through, and I was still barefoot on the floor that had, I was convinced, seen a thousand puke-outs before me.
I remember thinking that my parents were going to kill me for losing my penny loafers -- Weejuns without socks were the in things that summer, and mine were supposed to last long enough to wear as part of the PGS uniform in the fall -- and not, strangely, imagining their reaction to the whole minor arrest issue.
After what felt like hours, the mean cop came and unlocked our handcuffs, finally, and took us into a hallway that doubled as a photo backdrop. We had to hold little signs in front of our faces as they took our photographs, and then our profiles. I remember debating whether or not to smile, as Blondie mugged drunkenly for the camera.
Afterward, they took us each to a separate desk in the squad room and started the interview. The mean cop demanded my parents' names and phone numbers and -- in the land before cell phones -- I had to tell him that they were totally out of reach.
"Oh, well," he said with a smirk, "I guess you're spending the night with us, then."
It was, at this point, that I began to panic, slightly.
"Wait. I'm staying with my aunt! I'm staying with my aunt! Could you at least call her? Even if she can't come get me?" I begged.
After a few tense minutes the cop nodded, and then he asked me for my school.
"Oh, God, why do you need to know that? I'm just going to be a freshman! I have a scholarship!"
I could just picture the nuns at PGS getting a packet complete with my mug shot the week before school started and booting me to the curb faster than you can blink. That, finally, was enough to make me cry.
I wouldn't tell the mean cop where I went to school, sobbing hysterically for my aunt instead, while in the meantime, the mom cop had her hands full with Blondie, who couldn't, it seemed, remember her name. After ten minutes or so of cacophony, the mean cop had had enough, and dialed my aunt's house in defeat.
I could hear her through the phone on the other side of the desk.
"That's -- you've got to be kidding. You've obviously arrested the wrong kid. She's the good one! Where are my daughters?"
The cop's night was not getting any better. Before he could answer any of her questions, she'd hung up. At the time, I was convinced that she'd thought a) it was a joke or b) I deserved everything I was getting, so at this point I was convinced that I was spending the rest of the weekend in jail.
The cop didn't make me go back to the drunk tank, however. He let me sit there as they tried to coax some information out of the increasingly incoherent blonde girl beside me. Just as they were about to give it up for a bad game, an EMT who -- daylighted? I don't know -- as a lifeguard wandered into the room for something.
"Oh, hey, Chrissie," he said nonchalantly, "What're you doing here?"
"Hey!" she answered brightly, "We kind of got caught on the beach. You know, um, swimming."
The mom cop looked over at at the EMT like he was her salvation.
"You know who this is?" she asked quietly.
"Sure. That's Chrissie, the mayor's daughter. She just got back from camp."
You could have heard a pin drop in the squad room.
"Jesus Christ!" the mean cop growled at no one in particular, "That's why she looks so friggin' familiar. Goddamnit."
By a strange coincidence, my aunt and the Mayor arrived at the squad room nearly simultaneously. In the short time before they'd gotten there, they'd located a blanket, a sweatshirt and a lot of hot coffee for Chrissie.
The Mayor looked less like a politician and more like a the real-estate agent his was in civilian life -- in all his tanned-skin, bouffanted-hair, pink-polo-shirted glory.
"So, I hear my daughter took a little swim after the lifeguards went off duty," he said, and he may not have looked like a politician, but he had a politician's oily charm, and velvet over steel voice, "Right, guys?"
In the blink of an eye, gone were the laundry list of charges, the threats to call our schools, the drunk-tank sleepover, the fingerprinting still hanging over our heads.
My aunt, who was not born yesterday (and, God, do I love her for it!), chose that moment to step in.
"So, this was all a big misunderstanding, it sounds like, hunh? I mean, if no charges have been filed, who knows if you interrupted a party on the beach or a little illegal swimming? Right, guys?"
It was a perfect imitation of the Mayor. After an uneasy moment, even the mean cop agreed, and they tore up the reports they'd been writing, discreetly.
As we walked out of the police station, my aunt's arm was around my shoulder.
"What happened to your shoes? Did they take your shoes? Did they think you were going to kill yourself with your shoes?"
"No, I, um, kind of lost them," I whispered. In the midst of the shakedown I'd just witnessed, I'd managed to stop crying, but I was ready to crumble at any moment.
"Oh, well, you needed a new pair anyway. We'll go shopping for them tomorrow."
"Um, aren't I going to be grounded or whatever? Like, forever?"
"Oh, please. This has my daughters written all over it. You know, they came back to the house looking for a sweater. I didn't realize that was code for my-baby-cousin-who-I-abandoned-in-the-dunes. I'm going to have to kill them, of course."
"It wasn't their fault! I was lost, um, in the crowd. I got confused."
"Yeah, and here's another thing -- run. Seriously. That cop was old and fat, if you'd have made it to the dunes, you'd have been home free. You know, if you were ever to attend another party. Which you would never do. Because, of course, it's wrong. As is underaged drinking," she added with a wink as she pushed me into her car.
By the time we got back to the house, my cousins were waiting on the porch, and my aunt had worked up a righteous head of steam. The thing that she was mad about, however, was the fact that we'd all scattered at the first sign of trouble.
"That's why you're family. You don't leave each other. I should have been picking all of you up from that station! Or none of you! Do you understand me?"
We finally tracked my parents' down at their casino late that night, and after my father stopped laughing, my mother forced him to come back. Unlike the rest of the family, who were treating the whole incident as something of a joke, my mother had worked herself into a lather by the time they reached my aunt's house.
My mother -- who, until that point, had never cursed in front of us, walked into my aunt's kitchen at 4AM screaming, at the top of her lungs, "What the f--- is wrong with you?"
Before anyone could react, she slapped me across the face -- the first time since I'd been in diapers she'd ever hit me.
"You could have been arrested! You could have gone to jail! You could have been THROWN OUT OF SCHOOL!"
She kept coming at me, but my father at this point had entered the kitchen and was, literally, holding her back.
"Um, this might be the wrong time to mention it," my aunt piped up as my mother raged at me, "But it is sort of our fault."
"What? What the hell are you talking about?"
I was stunned. My mother was like a total stranger.
"Well, we did make her go out tonight. Remember -- you wanted her to act like a normal kid? Yes, well, welcome to normal."
For a moment, I thought that my mother was going to have a nervous breakdown. Her face turned purple and she nearly leaped out of my father's -- who is over a foot taller and probably two hundred pounds heavier than my tiny mom -- arms. Then, she just collapsed in hysterics -- first laughter, then tears, as the rest of us just stared at her. After about twenty minutes, she'd finally calmed down, and she turned to me, and said in her perfectly quiet, ordinary voice,
"That was not the smartest thing you've ever done."
We finally got to bed around 5AM. Several hours later, my dad woke me up and told me that I was not allowed to "call out arrested" and drove me back home to work the late-morning shift at the ice-cream stand.
On the way there, in his low-key way, he explained that there was basically nothing that he or my mother could do at this point except trust me -- they'd done all their parenting and I was going to be on my own for much of the time from now on.
"It would help," he added mildly, "If we thought we could trust your judgment. I realize that you were in a bad position last night, but there was an alternative. There almost always is. Just like there are always consequences, like having to spend the morning serving ice-cream to screaming kids on two hours of sleep. Good luck with that," he said, as he dropped me off.
When I returned to the house that afternoon, wanting nothing more than a nap, my bathing suit was sitting on the kitchen table under a note.
"Come to the beach. Don't make us come get you."
There was nothing I wanted to do less. I was tired, embarrassed and ashamed. I had a purple handprint on my cheek, my feet were torn and scratched and sore, and I had faint bruises on my arms where the cuffs had bit in, and where the mean cop had grabbed me. I hadn't slept more than two hours, I had a crying hangover, and I hadn't eaten all day. But more than anything, I was afraid of the return of my mother, the insane woman, from the night before.
I changed into my suit and trudged back down to the beach, over the dunes, following the same path in my sneakers that I'd followed, barefoot and in reverse, the night before. As I reached the top of the hill, at the edge of the protected beach, I saw my whole family spread out -- my parents, my brother, all my aunts and uncles and cousins -- in their sprawling mass of blankets and beach chair and umbrellas. They'd obviously been looking for me, because my brother started screaming as soon as I crested the hill, "There she is. She's coming!"
As one mass, they stood up, put on their striped hats and police caps and mirrored sunglasses, and started singing "Jailhouse Rock." Badly. Out of tune and at the top of their lungs. Everyone was staring. And I had about 100 yards of beach to cover on my own.
By the time I hit the edge of the family plot, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Then, my dad handed me a literal ball and chain. And a set of Chinese handcuffs. ("They didn't sell the real ones. Sorry.")
"So," I said finally, trying to be a god sport, "I guess someone hit the Five and Ten this morning."
My dad gave me a giant hug and whispered in my ear, "Remember those consequences we were talking about? Be a good sport and get it over with."
So I laughed, and wore my ball and chain, and fell asleep on the beach several minutes later.
Thanks to Chrissie, the Mayor's daughter, there's no record of my transgression -- although I guess my mug shot might be floating out there, somewhere. But thanks to my cousin's friend, who was several grades ahead of me at PGS and incapable of keeping her mouth shut -- every single girl I went to school with thought I was a felon by the end of the first day of my freshman year.
By last period that day, the scholarship girl from the ghetto had, depending on who you talked to, robbed a J.C. Penney, cut a girl in a gang fight or was a drug dealer on a massive scale. For weeks, girls sidled up to me in the locker room, whispering, "Can you hook me up?" and it took me forever to figure out they thought I was their drug connection.
On the plus side, not a single girl was brave enough to say anything -- at least to my face. And by the time they'd figured out that I was about as dangerous as a Disney cartoon animal, the damage had been done. For the rest of my high-school career, I skated by on my altogether-unearned reputation as a slightly-mysterious badass.
Really Fresh Seafood
I am extraordinarily lucky to have a close and dear friend who also happens to be a nautical archaeologist. Think Indiana Jones in scuba gear. Not only is it kind of the coolest job description in the world, but his particular area of study (The Islamic Influence on Boatbuilding and Trade in the post-Crusades Economies of Europe) means that he gets to set up camp in some pretty nifty places. Exotic locale + friend who speaks language = the world's greatest vacations.
One of the few perks of working for a newspaper (or at least, of working for this newspaper) is that I get paid almost nothing, but that I get an outrageous amount of vacation. Between actual vacation, comp time and what the union calls "make-up time," I can, in a good year, end up with close to five weeks of time off. And I'm not even French! So the very first year that I found myself in that lucky situation, I made plans to visit my favorite exotic friend.
In the end, I spent nearly a month in Greece and Turkey, and there's not enough space in the world to chronicle how amazing it was. In part because of a scheduling snafu, I ended up spending four days alone in Athens at the start of the trip, and three days alone in Istanbul at the end.
It was the first time I'd ever traveled without a companion, and it was -- to my utter surprise -- extremely cool. I met a vast number of people, because I was forced to interact, and I did exactly what I wanted when I wanted to. No whining about the hours I spent in the Bazaar, no bored guy poking me because I'd been staring at that statue "forever." I felt all empowered and very Helen Reddy-like. I'm equally glad, though, that I got to spend the bulk of the time with my friend, because he -- and the rest of the trip -- were incredible.
One of my favorite stories from our time together (which -- hi! -- included iridescent butterflies, pirates, Europe's Largest Disco, shipwrecks, yachts owned by royalty, smuggling, weapons, haggling, road races, sheep, goats, camels, terrorists, temples, mosques, illicit bars, rugs, yogurt and lots and lots of apple tea) was the day we spent in a tiny little town called Gumusluk (there should be German-style umlauts over all those u's, btw).
We had been staying in a fairly large town called Bodrum, where the Museum of Nautical Archaeology lives. Bodrum caters to blue-collar holidaymakers from Germany and the U.K. who can't afford destinations like Ibiza, and reminded me, strangely, of Wildwood (or Brighton, or Santa Cruz -- fill in goofy, tacky, seaside town here) -- filled with chip shops that took pounds, breakfast joints that took euros, and lots of really awful discos.
Ten miles or so out of town, though, the neatly paved highway just ended, abruptly, as we started to climb the mountains, and we were launched onto dirt roads, and a world that had been essentially unchanged since the time of Christ. The transition was jarring.
We wound our way through the mountains and around to the other side of the peninsula -- a trip that, had there been any kind of, you know, roads probably would only have taken an hour or so -- and ended up in a small fishing village at, literally, the end of the country. Looking out across the Harbor, we could see the Turkish red flag and the sky-blue Greek flag planted on facing rocks in the middle of the Aegean, fiercely marking their territory.
We spent the day hiking around the town's one and only hill, which jutted out on a skinny spit of land between the flags. It was totally undeveloped -- the air rich with the scents of clover and thick with fat, drowsy bees -- and there were wild donkeys and goats and rabbits that would just sort of appear on the horizon and then dash away as we drew closer.
About three-quarters of the way around the peninsula, we stumbled -- again, literally -- on two older women sunbathing in front of the only cottage we'd seen for miles, face up on beach towels and totally nude. As we scrambled to apologize, one woman poked open an eye, and in the thickest Cockney accent I've ever heard, said "Oi! It's not like you're the first pair to see us in the altogether."
They actually sat up and threw on t-shirts and offered to picnic with us. They turned out to be old girlfriends -- one widowed, one divorced -- who'd tired of cold London winters and packed up stakes and rented this tiny little villa, site unseen, from a newspaper ad a few years before. I was fascinated: I wanted to learn their whole life stories, but at least according to some people, interrogation isn't polite.
By the time we returned to the harbor, it was twilight, and the sun was sinking as the tide was rising. There were about a dozen little seaside cafes, all cheek by jowl on the shoreline, and we picked a pavilion at random under an umbrella and sat, after taking off our shoes, with our tired feet ankle-deep in the warm, salty waters of high tide. We ordered illicit Turkish beer and mezes (little Turkish appetizers) and octopus.
Our waiter, who spoke no English, came out after a few moments and gestured us into the kitchen, where my friend and the cook had a very short, heated discussion in Turkish. After a few minutes, my friend turned to me and said, in English, "He wants us to know that their food is the freshest. We have to pick."
At that, he pointed to a shallow tub, filled with inky water, where a few fat octopi floated lazily. I pointed to one randomly (hey, do you know how to pick an octopus?), and the cook reached in briskly, wound up as if he were throwing the first pitch at Wrigley Field, and whacked the poor octopus's head against the corner of the prep table, killing it instantly. I didn't know whether to be horrified or impressed, but we managed to make it back to the table before we lost it completely.
Later, after a damn fine meal of the freshest octopus, the chef (owner?) came out to our table with a bottle of some licorice-y liqueur that I thought was ouzo, but apparently was not. He and my friend talked, and I contributed an occasional Turkish word I'd mastered (all four of them or so), and got steadily drunker as the night wore on. There were pockets of people laughing and dancing in each cafe, and we joined in an impromptu wedding celebration when the boats carrying the wedding party pulled up beside the harbor, where the bride's female relatives taught me to ulate, and taught the two of us to dance the intricate wedding dances.
By the time we left, night had fallen and we had to return, in the dark, over the mountains. We had only gotten about halfway up when we acknowledged the fact that neither of us should have been driving, period, let alone on dirt mountain roads in the dark. We pulled into a turn-off that overlooked the now far-off sea, and watched the full moon explode over the fields of pink and purple flowers below us. We talked for hours until we'd sobered up, and drove home listening to bad Turkish pop music spun by British DJ's "live" from the Bodrum discos we'd left behind that morning.
We returned to his villa by the light of the extraordinarily bright moon, and I thought for a moment that we had somehow left the world behind us in that little seaside town and were driving through an alien landscape by the light of a faraway sun.
One of the few perks of working for a newspaper (or at least, of working for this newspaper) is that I get paid almost nothing, but that I get an outrageous amount of vacation. Between actual vacation, comp time and what the union calls "make-up time," I can, in a good year, end up with close to five weeks of time off. And I'm not even French! So the very first year that I found myself in that lucky situation, I made plans to visit my favorite exotic friend.
In the end, I spent nearly a month in Greece and Turkey, and there's not enough space in the world to chronicle how amazing it was. In part because of a scheduling snafu, I ended up spending four days alone in Athens at the start of the trip, and three days alone in Istanbul at the end.
It was the first time I'd ever traveled without a companion, and it was -- to my utter surprise -- extremely cool. I met a vast number of people, because I was forced to interact, and I did exactly what I wanted when I wanted to. No whining about the hours I spent in the Bazaar, no bored guy poking me because I'd been staring at that statue "forever." I felt all empowered and very Helen Reddy-like. I'm equally glad, though, that I got to spend the bulk of the time with my friend, because he -- and the rest of the trip -- were incredible.
One of my favorite stories from our time together (which -- hi! -- included iridescent butterflies, pirates, Europe's Largest Disco, shipwrecks, yachts owned by royalty, smuggling, weapons, haggling, road races, sheep, goats, camels, terrorists, temples, mosques, illicit bars, rugs, yogurt and lots and lots of apple tea) was the day we spent in a tiny little town called Gumusluk (there should be German-style umlauts over all those u's, btw).
We had been staying in a fairly large town called Bodrum, where the Museum of Nautical Archaeology lives. Bodrum caters to blue-collar holidaymakers from Germany and the U.K. who can't afford destinations like Ibiza, and reminded me, strangely, of Wildwood (or Brighton, or Santa Cruz -- fill in goofy, tacky, seaside town here) -- filled with chip shops that took pounds, breakfast joints that took euros, and lots of really awful discos.
Ten miles or so out of town, though, the neatly paved highway just ended, abruptly, as we started to climb the mountains, and we were launched onto dirt roads, and a world that had been essentially unchanged since the time of Christ. The transition was jarring.
We wound our way through the mountains and around to the other side of the peninsula -- a trip that, had there been any kind of, you know, roads probably would only have taken an hour or so -- and ended up in a small fishing village at, literally, the end of the country. Looking out across the Harbor, we could see the Turkish red flag and the sky-blue Greek flag planted on facing rocks in the middle of the Aegean, fiercely marking their territory.
We spent the day hiking around the town's one and only hill, which jutted out on a skinny spit of land between the flags. It was totally undeveloped -- the air rich with the scents of clover and thick with fat, drowsy bees -- and there were wild donkeys and goats and rabbits that would just sort of appear on the horizon and then dash away as we drew closer.
About three-quarters of the way around the peninsula, we stumbled -- again, literally -- on two older women sunbathing in front of the only cottage we'd seen for miles, face up on beach towels and totally nude. As we scrambled to apologize, one woman poked open an eye, and in the thickest Cockney accent I've ever heard, said "Oi! It's not like you're the first pair to see us in the altogether."
They actually sat up and threw on t-shirts and offered to picnic with us. They turned out to be old girlfriends -- one widowed, one divorced -- who'd tired of cold London winters and packed up stakes and rented this tiny little villa, site unseen, from a newspaper ad a few years before. I was fascinated: I wanted to learn their whole life stories, but at least according to some people, interrogation isn't polite.
By the time we returned to the harbor, it was twilight, and the sun was sinking as the tide was rising. There were about a dozen little seaside cafes, all cheek by jowl on the shoreline, and we picked a pavilion at random under an umbrella and sat, after taking off our shoes, with our tired feet ankle-deep in the warm, salty waters of high tide. We ordered illicit Turkish beer and mezes (little Turkish appetizers) and octopus.
Our waiter, who spoke no English, came out after a few moments and gestured us into the kitchen, where my friend and the cook had a very short, heated discussion in Turkish. After a few minutes, my friend turned to me and said, in English, "He wants us to know that their food is the freshest. We have to pick."
At that, he pointed to a shallow tub, filled with inky water, where a few fat octopi floated lazily. I pointed to one randomly (hey, do you know how to pick an octopus?), and the cook reached in briskly, wound up as if he were throwing the first pitch at Wrigley Field, and whacked the poor octopus's head against the corner of the prep table, killing it instantly. I didn't know whether to be horrified or impressed, but we managed to make it back to the table before we lost it completely.
Later, after a damn fine meal of the freshest octopus, the chef (owner?) came out to our table with a bottle of some licorice-y liqueur that I thought was ouzo, but apparently was not. He and my friend talked, and I contributed an occasional Turkish word I'd mastered (all four of them or so), and got steadily drunker as the night wore on. There were pockets of people laughing and dancing in each cafe, and we joined in an impromptu wedding celebration when the boats carrying the wedding party pulled up beside the harbor, where the bride's female relatives taught me to ulate, and taught the two of us to dance the intricate wedding dances.
By the time we left, night had fallen and we had to return, in the dark, over the mountains. We had only gotten about halfway up when we acknowledged the fact that neither of us should have been driving, period, let alone on dirt mountain roads in the dark. We pulled into a turn-off that overlooked the now far-off sea, and watched the full moon explode over the fields of pink and purple flowers below us. We talked for hours until we'd sobered up, and drove home listening to bad Turkish pop music spun by British DJ's "live" from the Bodrum discos we'd left behind that morning.
We returned to his villa by the light of the extraordinarily bright moon, and I thought for a moment that we had somehow left the world behind us in that little seaside town and were driving through an alien landscape by the light of a faraway sun.
The Personal and The Political: September 11, 2006
I wasn't going to. There's been an endless parade of speeches, and documentaries, and clip reels. There have been speeches and memorials and finger pointing galore.
But the thing is, it happened to me, and it belongs to me, and it's been messing with my head in various ways over the last few weeks, so I'm going to talk about it.
If you can't handle another endless rumination on where we are, five years later, no harm, no foul. I'll still love you in the morning. Hopefully, you'll still love me.
It's hard even now to talk about what happened and not feel both self-absorbed and as those I'm treading on someone else's toes. In a way, I experienced it at a distance -- I was still working nights at the time, and I was asleep when it all began -- but it changed, fundamentally, every part of my life -- where I lived, where I worked, what I did, and everything in between. Even so, I feel as distant from it in some ways as someone in Alaska or Iowa.
I was one of the lucky ones -- I was in New Jersey, safe in my own bed, when the first plane hit. I was due in Manhattan -- a city to which I did not return for nearly a year after that day -- for a meeting at 2PM that afternoon; when my father called to wake me up, moments before my editor called to do the same thing. I thought he was joking. I was furious that he'd pull such a stupid prank so early in the day. It wasn't until I heard the commotion outside the apartment that I thought I'd better take his advice and turn on a television set.
Our newspaper offices were in the World Financial Center, next door to the World Trade Center. In one of the most surreal conversations of my life, my managing editor called to 1) check my name on some giant company list as "accounted for" and 2) to inform me that I was to head to our offices in Central New Jersey where they were setting up an alternate newsroom. Ironically, we'd just had a whole year of planning for such a problem; our worries had been for Y2K, though, and we'd set up a complete back-up newsroom in North Jersey that turned out to be completely useless -- no one could get to it.
Everything about that day seems slightly unreal to me, in retrospect. I was still sleep-deprived and befuddled as I drove across New Jersey -- the only car on the road that wasn't an emergency vehicle or an Army convoy. It was a beautiful day -- cloudless, sunny, perfectly calm, and it was eerily silent. Central Jersey is in the flight path of at least three major and two regional airports; I'd never gone so long without seeing or hearing an airplane. Every station on the radio -- news, NPR, hip-hop, or classic rock -- was broadcasting wall-to-wall news: bulletins, updates, confusing rumors. My cell phone would ring and then fall silent, as friends and family tried frantically to get in touch, as I drove between overburdened cell towers. Every time, it startled me, and every time, the connection was broken long before I ever picked up a call. And all along the highway, electric signs blinked: New York City Closed. All Roads North Closed. Civil Emergency.. It seemed like a bad joke.
One of the strange things about being simultaneously in the midst of and removed from that day's events is that I have weird, fragmented memories of what happened -- and almost no visual images at all. We were trying frantically to put out a newspaper with no newsroom; hastily-set-up tvs blared wall-to-wall cable news, but no one looked up at them. We shared computers, even chairs, as exhausted IT guys struggled to set up desks on the fly. Our senior editors had hiked across the Brooklyn Bridge and set up a war room in someone's apartment kitchen; we farmed out copy editing and pre-press to newsrooms across the globe. For nearly forty-eight hours, no one left that room, except briefly -- we grabbed naps under desks and on ratty, discarded couches; we showered in the men's room, because the ladies' had no locker room; someone had a hundred pizzas delivered, and they disappeared in minutes. We were determined to put out a paper that almost no one in our main delivery area could or would receive. We were focused on that and nothing else.
We're generally a scattered and farflung organization -- many of the people I worked with every day I'd never met in person. My situation was further complicated by the fact that I'd started a new job only four months before, and had spent much of that time arguing with old-school editors and reporters to embrace the coming of the electronic age. Suddenly, we were all thrown together, cheek by jowl.
I remember one of our reporters, a guy who was best known for his impressive collection of filthy jokes, breaking down as he tried to turn his experiences into a coherent story. He'd been in the WFC when the planes hit, and had -- as reporters are trained to do -- raced across the street to the World Trade Center to get the story. He was stopped by a cop who told him, in cinematic NY cop fashion, that "Buddy, it just ain't worth it." He was convinced that cop had saved his life. He was convinced that cop had died moments later.
I remember one of our senior editors, a grumpy man wont to answering all internal phone calls by growling "what the f--- do you want now?" into his extension, coming by and patting me awkwardly on the head. "I just, you know, want to touch people. To make sure they're really there," he kept saying.
I remember reporters and editors -- a sarcastic group mostly known for their ability to find the black humor in every situation -- breaking down over and over again as they struggled to report the things they had just experienced -- waiting in vain for ambulances that never came at hospitals all over Manhattan; being swallowed alive by a blizzard of paper and office supplies; scrambling into pleasure boats pressed into evacuating the lower tip of the island. No one had a context for what was going on.
I remember flashes of the personal, too. There was never any doubt that I was fine; my father had spoken to me that morning. Nevertheless, when my mother finally got through on the phone at the office, she burst into tears and demanded I quit my job and come home.
After hours of uncertainty, I got an e-mail from a college friend's aunt in Alaska -- my friend's husband, a Marine stationed at the Pentagon, was alive; would we start an e-mail chain and pass the word? My best friend -- a high-school teacher at the time -- finally got through late in the day; one of her students had an older sister at a downtown investment bank, had we heard any news? It was moment after moment of fleeting connections with friends and strangers.
When I finally left that Friday, my whole world had changed. I couldn't get back to my house, not easily -- I ended up, at my mother's insistence, at my parents' for the weekend. My mother hadn't turned the tv off since it happened; I had hardly seen a single frame of video or film to back up the terrible things I'd read and heard. I sat on the couch in my parent's living room, drained and sleep-deprived, and hadn't even realized I'd started to shake until my father abruptly shut off the television and declared the house a news-free zone for the weekend. It was weeks before I really saw any footage at all.
In the aftermath of September 11, I had to give up my apartment and move in with my parents. For nearly two years, I commuted back and forth -- over 120 miles a day -- to our makeshift offices in New Jersey while I waited to see where I'd be working, and if my job was secure. My new job became a new job again, as we changed focus and attempted to rebuild our offices, our networks, our comfort levels.
Nearly eleven months later, I found myself in a conference room, picking through dusty boxes of personal belongings only to discover that the only thing that had been salvaged from my "new" space in our NY offices was a coffee cup that had to be thrown away because they couldn't guarantee that it hadn't been contaminated with human remains.
But it still feels like I escaped unscathed. I didn't have to live in the city for months as it struggled to rebuild. I didn't lose a loved one, or a even a job. But still, it affected -- it still affected -- so many parts of my life.
Around me, co-workers and friends struggled with far greater levels of upheaval -- people with homes and children waited in limbo for months, commuting from Connecticut and Staten Island and Brooklyn to New Jersey. Hardcore city dwellers learned to drive, and called, frantic and hysterical, at the first sign of snow. A good friend, who had shared the desk next to mine since I started at the paper, lost her baby brother -- an employee at Cantor Fitzgerald -- nine days before his wedding to her best friend's baby sister; a happy accident of fate turned unthinkable tragedy. In light of that, a little quarter-life upheaval seems like nothing.
Still, I feel like I an deeper connection to what is, admittedly, a national tragedy -- a blow against our country that every citizen felt. I've moved from angry to baffled to saddened to angry again as I've watched politicians and pundits use the effects of it to advance their own agendas. When they suggest that 9/11 widows are "lucky" in some way. When they insist that grain silos in North Dakota deserve more Homeland Security protection than the Statue of Liberty. Or the Liberty Bell. Or the Lincoln Memorial. I think that's why I nearly bit the head off someone last week who suggested that it was "unpatriotic" to disagree with President Bush -- about anything -- "in this time of war." I know it's why I'm offended every time someone suggests that we give up something -- free speech, open courts, checks and balances -- in order to keep us "safe." I've already given up quite enough, thank you.
As Somerset Maugham once wrote, If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too. In the past five years, the terrible blow against our country -- against my country -- against me -- has been used time and again to try to convince us to protect America by giving up the things that make us most American -- our Constitutional principles, our sense of fair play, our belief tomorrow holds promise -- not terror -- for all its citizens.
I hadn't meant to make the personal political; I'd only meant to talk about a sharp and visceral memory. But if George Bush can do it, so can I. Five years ago, we came together as a country, we learned or re-learned that patriotism has a place for everyone. Today, I can only hope that our long-lasting legacy, our final response to such heart-breaking events, will be to re-learn that patriotism has many faces, but that it always serves America, and Americans, not politicians and their parties.
But the thing is, it happened to me, and it belongs to me, and it's been messing with my head in various ways over the last few weeks, so I'm going to talk about it.
If you can't handle another endless rumination on where we are, five years later, no harm, no foul. I'll still love you in the morning. Hopefully, you'll still love me.
It's hard even now to talk about what happened and not feel both self-absorbed and as those I'm treading on someone else's toes. In a way, I experienced it at a distance -- I was still working nights at the time, and I was asleep when it all began -- but it changed, fundamentally, every part of my life -- where I lived, where I worked, what I did, and everything in between. Even so, I feel as distant from it in some ways as someone in Alaska or Iowa.
I was one of the lucky ones -- I was in New Jersey, safe in my own bed, when the first plane hit. I was due in Manhattan -- a city to which I did not return for nearly a year after that day -- for a meeting at 2PM that afternoon; when my father called to wake me up, moments before my editor called to do the same thing. I thought he was joking. I was furious that he'd pull such a stupid prank so early in the day. It wasn't until I heard the commotion outside the apartment that I thought I'd better take his advice and turn on a television set.
Our newspaper offices were in the World Financial Center, next door to the World Trade Center. In one of the most surreal conversations of my life, my managing editor called to 1) check my name on some giant company list as "accounted for" and 2) to inform me that I was to head to our offices in Central New Jersey where they were setting up an alternate newsroom. Ironically, we'd just had a whole year of planning for such a problem; our worries had been for Y2K, though, and we'd set up a complete back-up newsroom in North Jersey that turned out to be completely useless -- no one could get to it.
Everything about that day seems slightly unreal to me, in retrospect. I was still sleep-deprived and befuddled as I drove across New Jersey -- the only car on the road that wasn't an emergency vehicle or an Army convoy. It was a beautiful day -- cloudless, sunny, perfectly calm, and it was eerily silent. Central Jersey is in the flight path of at least three major and two regional airports; I'd never gone so long without seeing or hearing an airplane. Every station on the radio -- news, NPR, hip-hop, or classic rock -- was broadcasting wall-to-wall news: bulletins, updates, confusing rumors. My cell phone would ring and then fall silent, as friends and family tried frantically to get in touch, as I drove between overburdened cell towers. Every time, it startled me, and every time, the connection was broken long before I ever picked up a call. And all along the highway, electric signs blinked: New York City Closed. All Roads North Closed. Civil Emergency.. It seemed like a bad joke.
One of the strange things about being simultaneously in the midst of and removed from that day's events is that I have weird, fragmented memories of what happened -- and almost no visual images at all. We were trying frantically to put out a newspaper with no newsroom; hastily-set-up tvs blared wall-to-wall cable news, but no one looked up at them. We shared computers, even chairs, as exhausted IT guys struggled to set up desks on the fly. Our senior editors had hiked across the Brooklyn Bridge and set up a war room in someone's apartment kitchen; we farmed out copy editing and pre-press to newsrooms across the globe. For nearly forty-eight hours, no one left that room, except briefly -- we grabbed naps under desks and on ratty, discarded couches; we showered in the men's room, because the ladies' had no locker room; someone had a hundred pizzas delivered, and they disappeared in minutes. We were determined to put out a paper that almost no one in our main delivery area could or would receive. We were focused on that and nothing else.
We're generally a scattered and farflung organization -- many of the people I worked with every day I'd never met in person. My situation was further complicated by the fact that I'd started a new job only four months before, and had spent much of that time arguing with old-school editors and reporters to embrace the coming of the electronic age. Suddenly, we were all thrown together, cheek by jowl.
I remember one of our reporters, a guy who was best known for his impressive collection of filthy jokes, breaking down as he tried to turn his experiences into a coherent story. He'd been in the WFC when the planes hit, and had -- as reporters are trained to do -- raced across the street to the World Trade Center to get the story. He was stopped by a cop who told him, in cinematic NY cop fashion, that "Buddy, it just ain't worth it." He was convinced that cop had saved his life. He was convinced that cop had died moments later.
I remember one of our senior editors, a grumpy man wont to answering all internal phone calls by growling "what the f--- do you want now?" into his extension, coming by and patting me awkwardly on the head. "I just, you know, want to touch people. To make sure they're really there," he kept saying.
I remember reporters and editors -- a sarcastic group mostly known for their ability to find the black humor in every situation -- breaking down over and over again as they struggled to report the things they had just experienced -- waiting in vain for ambulances that never came at hospitals all over Manhattan; being swallowed alive by a blizzard of paper and office supplies; scrambling into pleasure boats pressed into evacuating the lower tip of the island. No one had a context for what was going on.
I remember flashes of the personal, too. There was never any doubt that I was fine; my father had spoken to me that morning. Nevertheless, when my mother finally got through on the phone at the office, she burst into tears and demanded I quit my job and come home.
After hours of uncertainty, I got an e-mail from a college friend's aunt in Alaska -- my friend's husband, a Marine stationed at the Pentagon, was alive; would we start an e-mail chain and pass the word? My best friend -- a high-school teacher at the time -- finally got through late in the day; one of her students had an older sister at a downtown investment bank, had we heard any news? It was moment after moment of fleeting connections with friends and strangers.
When I finally left that Friday, my whole world had changed. I couldn't get back to my house, not easily -- I ended up, at my mother's insistence, at my parents' for the weekend. My mother hadn't turned the tv off since it happened; I had hardly seen a single frame of video or film to back up the terrible things I'd read and heard. I sat on the couch in my parent's living room, drained and sleep-deprived, and hadn't even realized I'd started to shake until my father abruptly shut off the television and declared the house a news-free zone for the weekend. It was weeks before I really saw any footage at all.
In the aftermath of September 11, I had to give up my apartment and move in with my parents. For nearly two years, I commuted back and forth -- over 120 miles a day -- to our makeshift offices in New Jersey while I waited to see where I'd be working, and if my job was secure. My new job became a new job again, as we changed focus and attempted to rebuild our offices, our networks, our comfort levels.
Nearly eleven months later, I found myself in a conference room, picking through dusty boxes of personal belongings only to discover that the only thing that had been salvaged from my "new" space in our NY offices was a coffee cup that had to be thrown away because they couldn't guarantee that it hadn't been contaminated with human remains.
But it still feels like I escaped unscathed. I didn't have to live in the city for months as it struggled to rebuild. I didn't lose a loved one, or a even a job. But still, it affected -- it still affected -- so many parts of my life.
Around me, co-workers and friends struggled with far greater levels of upheaval -- people with homes and children waited in limbo for months, commuting from Connecticut and Staten Island and Brooklyn to New Jersey. Hardcore city dwellers learned to drive, and called, frantic and hysterical, at the first sign of snow. A good friend, who had shared the desk next to mine since I started at the paper, lost her baby brother -- an employee at Cantor Fitzgerald -- nine days before his wedding to her best friend's baby sister; a happy accident of fate turned unthinkable tragedy. In light of that, a little quarter-life upheaval seems like nothing.
Still, I feel like I an deeper connection to what is, admittedly, a national tragedy -- a blow against our country that every citizen felt. I've moved from angry to baffled to saddened to angry again as I've watched politicians and pundits use the effects of it to advance their own agendas. When they suggest that 9/11 widows are "lucky" in some way. When they insist that grain silos in North Dakota deserve more Homeland Security protection than the Statue of Liberty. Or the Liberty Bell. Or the Lincoln Memorial. I think that's why I nearly bit the head off someone last week who suggested that it was "unpatriotic" to disagree with President Bush -- about anything -- "in this time of war." I know it's why I'm offended every time someone suggests that we give up something -- free speech, open courts, checks and balances -- in order to keep us "safe." I've already given up quite enough, thank you.
As Somerset Maugham once wrote, If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too. In the past five years, the terrible blow against our country -- against my country -- against me -- has been used time and again to try to convince us to protect America by giving up the things that make us most American -- our Constitutional principles, our sense of fair play, our belief tomorrow holds promise -- not terror -- for all its citizens.
I hadn't meant to make the personal political; I'd only meant to talk about a sharp and visceral memory. But if George Bush can do it, so can I. Five years ago, we came together as a country, we learned or re-learned that patriotism has a place for everyone. Today, I can only hope that our long-lasting legacy, our final response to such heart-breaking events, will be to re-learn that patriotism has many faces, but that it always serves America, and Americans, not politicians and their parties.
Adventures in Babysitting
Okay, all you moms and mums out there, I salute you. Like, a lot. A lot, a lot. Good gravy! I can see now that there are many, many good reasons that I do not have small children. Among them that I might never shower again.
I'm fairly certain that you're not supposed to end a weekend of babysitting fun crippled like an old woman, right? That's what I get, I suppose, for agreeing that leaving me alone with an 3 1/2 year-old and and almost-one-year-old seemed like a reasonable thing to do. What were we all thinking?
I spent the weekend at my friend's house, while she and her husband attended a family wedding out of town sans the aforementioned small children. And it mostly went well -- they're still alive and kicking, so I figure I've done my job -- aside from the crippling, which happened when I went bent over to heft the world's biggest baby (seriously, 26 pounds, eleven months, slightly longer than two feet -- oy!) out of her pack-and-play, and at the exact moment I started to lift, her brother jumped on my back for a piggyback ride.
For a moment, I lost my balance and thought I was either going to fall forward and kill the baby, or fall back and crush her brother. Luckily, my back decided for me, and froze in a wicked spasm halfway, so I was sort of suspended there with a child hanging off each end like a fashion accessory.
Happily, it was just a spasm, and I managed not to squish either of them. And it happened at the end of the weekend, so while I'm sitting a little carefully today, all is otherwise well.
These are quite possibly my favorite kids in the whole world, so it was certainly not a hardship to spend a (mostly) hysterical weekend with them. I am amazed, seriously, that y'all get anything accomplished outside of keeping the little buggers alive. I was going breakfast dishes at nine o'clock at night, and trying to time my potty breaks to nap time. I didn't realize that otherwise, going to the bathroom is a group activity.
Some other things I discovered:
1) Everything you ever wanted to know -- or where afraid to ask -- about Pixar's Cars, a movie that no one has actually seen yet, I might add. It's frightening to realize just how much advertising kids soak up wholecloth. I was, however, briefly at the top of the heap for having brought a McDonald's Happy Meal toy -- aka Mater the Tow Truck -- with me as a gift.
2) Toddlers are eternal optimists. "Can we go see Cars?" "No." "Okay." Five minutes later. "Can we go to Chuck E. Cheese?" "It's eight o'clock at night. No." "Oh. Okay." And so on. It was so funny. It was like the embodiment of "nothing ventured, nothing gained." My guess is that your world is so filled with "No" when you're that age that it's not as surprising as it might otherwise be.
3) If you run out of lullabies that you know (it's not, in my case, an extensive list), a shrieking baby will respond to your desperation, if nothing else, as you sing Rizzo's song from Grease, the Cole Porter songbook, the theme from The Fact of Life and anything else your sleep-deprived little mind can drum up -- eventually. And the fact that when she finally does, she will burrow her little head under your chin, and make a soft little sigh that smells like baby food and nuzzle against your neck, pretty much makes you forget that she woke you up in the middle of the night in the first place.
4) My girlfriend's husband is a bad, bad influence. "Can we watch James Bond, Aunt Shannon?" (This, from a kid who's not allowed to watch The Chronicles of Narnia, because it might be too violent) "No, we cannot watch James Bond. Does your mommy know you're watching James Bond?" "No, it's our little secret." "Oh. Your little secret with who?" "Daddy. We watch good stuff. Buck Rodgers, too! And cartoons. Do you like The Simpsons?" Ack.
5) You can stop a tantrum in its tracks by confusing the hell of 'em. We were deep into the "I don't wanna go to bed" meltdown when I said, "Well, into each life, a little rain must fall."
Instantly, the tears stopped. "What does that mean?" It took fifteen minutes to get through all the questions, at which point we'd managed to get upstairs, brush teeth, wash face and hands, use the potty and hop into bed. Not bad for an accidental trick.
6) "Heck" is a bad word. I got sent to time out for saying it. (And don't think I'm kidding. This is a child with a finely-honed sense of moral outrage.)
6) The Boy Child might just be a mad toddler genius. My original, confident "no tv" policy lasted oh, about a minute and a half. While flipping madly through the channels trying to find more NASCAR racing (The Boy Child is a nut about cars, trucks, anything with an engine), we stumbled across a program on pyramids and mummies.
At first, I wigged out about whether or not it was going to cause nightmares, and then realized that it was way too educational for that. It was a PBS-style documentary, and I figured he'd be bored out of his skull, but he wouldn't let me change it, and several hours later, when we were playing with the blocks on the floor, he was building himself a pyramid, complete with using the little round columns as impromptu skids to move his blocks from one side of the pyramid to another. It was sort of eerily impressive.
So I salute you, hot mamas, you are far, far better women than I.
I'm fairly certain that you're not supposed to end a weekend of babysitting fun crippled like an old woman, right? That's what I get, I suppose, for agreeing that leaving me alone with an 3 1/2 year-old and and almost-one-year-old seemed like a reasonable thing to do. What were we all thinking?
I spent the weekend at my friend's house, while she and her husband attended a family wedding out of town sans the aforementioned small children. And it mostly went well -- they're still alive and kicking, so I figure I've done my job -- aside from the crippling, which happened when I went bent over to heft the world's biggest baby (seriously, 26 pounds, eleven months, slightly longer than two feet -- oy!) out of her pack-and-play, and at the exact moment I started to lift, her brother jumped on my back for a piggyback ride.
For a moment, I lost my balance and thought I was either going to fall forward and kill the baby, or fall back and crush her brother. Luckily, my back decided for me, and froze in a wicked spasm halfway, so I was sort of suspended there with a child hanging off each end like a fashion accessory.
Happily, it was just a spasm, and I managed not to squish either of them. And it happened at the end of the weekend, so while I'm sitting a little carefully today, all is otherwise well.
These are quite possibly my favorite kids in the whole world, so it was certainly not a hardship to spend a (mostly) hysterical weekend with them. I am amazed, seriously, that y'all get anything accomplished outside of keeping the little buggers alive. I was going breakfast dishes at nine o'clock at night, and trying to time my potty breaks to nap time. I didn't realize that otherwise, going to the bathroom is a group activity.
Some other things I discovered:
1) Everything you ever wanted to know -- or where afraid to ask -- about Pixar's Cars, a movie that no one has actually seen yet, I might add. It's frightening to realize just how much advertising kids soak up wholecloth. I was, however, briefly at the top of the heap for having brought a McDonald's Happy Meal toy -- aka Mater the Tow Truck -- with me as a gift.
2) Toddlers are eternal optimists. "Can we go see Cars?" "No." "Okay." Five minutes later. "Can we go to Chuck E. Cheese?" "It's eight o'clock at night. No." "Oh. Okay." And so on. It was so funny. It was like the embodiment of "nothing ventured, nothing gained." My guess is that your world is so filled with "No" when you're that age that it's not as surprising as it might otherwise be.
3) If you run out of lullabies that you know (it's not, in my case, an extensive list), a shrieking baby will respond to your desperation, if nothing else, as you sing Rizzo's song from Grease, the Cole Porter songbook, the theme from The Fact of Life and anything else your sleep-deprived little mind can drum up -- eventually. And the fact that when she finally does, she will burrow her little head under your chin, and make a soft little sigh that smells like baby food and nuzzle against your neck, pretty much makes you forget that she woke you up in the middle of the night in the first place.
4) My girlfriend's husband is a bad, bad influence. "Can we watch James Bond, Aunt Shannon?" (This, from a kid who's not allowed to watch The Chronicles of Narnia, because it might be too violent) "No, we cannot watch James Bond. Does your mommy know you're watching James Bond?" "No, it's our little secret." "Oh. Your little secret with who?" "Daddy. We watch good stuff. Buck Rodgers, too! And cartoons. Do you like The Simpsons?" Ack.
5) You can stop a tantrum in its tracks by confusing the hell of 'em. We were deep into the "I don't wanna go to bed" meltdown when I said, "Well, into each life, a little rain must fall."
Instantly, the tears stopped. "What does that mean?" It took fifteen minutes to get through all the questions, at which point we'd managed to get upstairs, brush teeth, wash face and hands, use the potty and hop into bed. Not bad for an accidental trick.
6) "Heck" is a bad word. I got sent to time out for saying it. (And don't think I'm kidding. This is a child with a finely-honed sense of moral outrage.)
6) The Boy Child might just be a mad toddler genius. My original, confident "no tv" policy lasted oh, about a minute and a half. While flipping madly through the channels trying to find more NASCAR racing (The Boy Child is a nut about cars, trucks, anything with an engine), we stumbled across a program on pyramids and mummies.
At first, I wigged out about whether or not it was going to cause nightmares, and then realized that it was way too educational for that. It was a PBS-style documentary, and I figured he'd be bored out of his skull, but he wouldn't let me change it, and several hours later, when we were playing with the blocks on the floor, he was building himself a pyramid, complete with using the little round columns as impromptu skids to move his blocks from one side of the pyramid to another. It was sort of eerily impressive.
So I salute you, hot mamas, you are far, far better women than I.
Death in the Almost-Family
My mother has had the same two best friends since grade school -- my Aunt Lou, who lived down the block from her growing up, and my Aunt Pat, who came along at the advanced age of 8. They may not be family, but they're as close as.
While I was at my parents over the weekend, my Aunt Lou's mother passed away, something I thought would never happen. Up until about six months ago she was a spry and as hale and hearty as a woman half her age, despite the fact that she's been battling lymphoma on and off for the best ten years. She and her husband of 63 years danced the Continental at the wedding of my Aunt Pat's son just this past summer, but over the past month or so she's been slowly fading.
She couldn't have had a better death, though. She got out of bed Friday night -- an increasing rarity -- since all her grandchildren were home for a visit, had an enormous family dinner and then went to bed next to her husband. She just never woke up Saturday morning.
In a way, it was a relief, but I'm surprised at how sad I really was to hear the news. My mom's mother died when I was in middle school, and my Aunt Lou's family sort of adopted us. They're a huge, boisterous Italian family, and they just sort of fit us in. When my mom was a kid, she and my aunt used to trade houses so that she could eat pasta and my Aunt Lou could have potatoes -- so we claim that we're honorary Italians.
She was an amazing woman -- not sweet, not in the slightest, but kind and funny and compassionate. She was the life of the party into her questionable age (we still don't know how old she really was -- her obituary omitted the information and she lied to everyone about it -- but a good guess was 90 or so (her husband is 94), and from all anecdotes was hell on wheels as a young woman. She always told me that she would dance at my wedding, and when I last saw her -- at yet another wedding a few months ago -- she patted my hand and told me, in the distinctive croak of a 60-year pack-a-day smoker, that it took the men "a little longer to come around on the smart ones."
We may be honorary Italians, but I have to say that the ways of Italian mourning are new to me. In an Irish family, the grief is tempered by a lot of whiskey and a lot of laughter. In an Italian family, there's still booze -- in this case brandy and red wine -- but no laughing, and serious amounts of food.
I spent much of the rest of the weekend ferrying around to various and sundry teeny, tiny Italian delis, groceries and bakeries in "the old neighborhood" with my brother, tracking down all kinds of exotic foods and smelly cheeses. In a way, it was strangely reassuring to have something concrete to do, to contribute, and it's funny how the ins and outs of grief have been codified over the years.
At one point, I'm standing in the best bakery in the city for homemade cannolis, on a Sunday morning after the last Mass, in a neighborhood where Sunday dinner still starts at two o'clock in the afternoon, trying to explain why I didn't call ahead for the massive amounts of pastry I've been sent to acquire.
The old women behind the counter who, in their pastel smocks and dyed-black bouffant "sets" look amazingly, heartbreakingly, like my Aunt Chick, are fixing me -- whom they're obviously pegged as one of the hated yuppie outsiders currently gentrifying their longtime neighborhood -- with steely brown eyes. "Honey," the oldest one says, not unkindly, "It's after 11 o'clock Mass. There's nothing left but some ladyfingers."
But, I'm trying to explain, I was sent for cannolis. The grieving, apparently, require cannolis. I pronounce them the way I've been taught by my Aunt Lou's family -- as canools -- and something in her face softens.
"Aw, hon, did someone pass?" she asked, and suddenly, there are pastries appearing from everywhere -- things I can't identify, things whose names I can't spell and can barely pronounce.
"We always keep a few in the back," she tells me, patting my hand as it rests on the counter, "Just in case."
Twenty minutes later -- "Was it a good death? Old woman? Old man? They'll eat more -- with the young people, it's too sad" -- I leave laden with boxes tied tightly with twine as the old women press their floured hands to my cheeks, touched and faintly baffled by what just transpired.
I meet my equally-puzzled brother back at the car, juggling his own packages filled with meats and cheeses, to hit the bread bakery before we return to my Aunt Lou's house and her million and one hungry relatives.
"Did they ask you how old she was?" he asks me, and apparently, that's a universal measure for the amount of funeral baked-meats any household needs.
On the way home we do our mourning Irish-style, telling funny stories about Aunt Chick and her husband, Uncle Moon, in which the food currently perfuming the air-conditioned car features prominently. We both realize that we've learned all Italian food terms orally -- it took me years to realize that ham cappacola and gabbagool where the same thing -- and I think it's particularly appropriate that we only found out that Aunt Chick's real name was Michaelina, and her husband's Dominic, when we had to fill out the Mass card for the wake.
And I'd like to think that someday, though, if I ever do get married, Aunt Chick will be dancing the Continental in heaven in celebration.
While I was at my parents over the weekend, my Aunt Lou's mother passed away, something I thought would never happen. Up until about six months ago she was a spry and as hale and hearty as a woman half her age, despite the fact that she's been battling lymphoma on and off for the best ten years. She and her husband of 63 years danced the Continental at the wedding of my Aunt Pat's son just this past summer, but over the past month or so she's been slowly fading.
She couldn't have had a better death, though. She got out of bed Friday night -- an increasing rarity -- since all her grandchildren were home for a visit, had an enormous family dinner and then went to bed next to her husband. She just never woke up Saturday morning.
In a way, it was a relief, but I'm surprised at how sad I really was to hear the news. My mom's mother died when I was in middle school, and my Aunt Lou's family sort of adopted us. They're a huge, boisterous Italian family, and they just sort of fit us in. When my mom was a kid, she and my aunt used to trade houses so that she could eat pasta and my Aunt Lou could have potatoes -- so we claim that we're honorary Italians.
She was an amazing woman -- not sweet, not in the slightest, but kind and funny and compassionate. She was the life of the party into her questionable age (we still don't know how old she really was -- her obituary omitted the information and she lied to everyone about it -- but a good guess was 90 or so (her husband is 94), and from all anecdotes was hell on wheels as a young woman. She always told me that she would dance at my wedding, and when I last saw her -- at yet another wedding a few months ago -- she patted my hand and told me, in the distinctive croak of a 60-year pack-a-day smoker, that it took the men "a little longer to come around on the smart ones."
We may be honorary Italians, but I have to say that the ways of Italian mourning are new to me. In an Irish family, the grief is tempered by a lot of whiskey and a lot of laughter. In an Italian family, there's still booze -- in this case brandy and red wine -- but no laughing, and serious amounts of food.
I spent much of the rest of the weekend ferrying around to various and sundry teeny, tiny Italian delis, groceries and bakeries in "the old neighborhood" with my brother, tracking down all kinds of exotic foods and smelly cheeses. In a way, it was strangely reassuring to have something concrete to do, to contribute, and it's funny how the ins and outs of grief have been codified over the years.
At one point, I'm standing in the best bakery in the city for homemade cannolis, on a Sunday morning after the last Mass, in a neighborhood where Sunday dinner still starts at two o'clock in the afternoon, trying to explain why I didn't call ahead for the massive amounts of pastry I've been sent to acquire.
The old women behind the counter who, in their pastel smocks and dyed-black bouffant "sets" look amazingly, heartbreakingly, like my Aunt Chick, are fixing me -- whom they're obviously pegged as one of the hated yuppie outsiders currently gentrifying their longtime neighborhood -- with steely brown eyes. "Honey," the oldest one says, not unkindly, "It's after 11 o'clock Mass. There's nothing left but some ladyfingers."
But, I'm trying to explain, I was sent for cannolis. The grieving, apparently, require cannolis. I pronounce them the way I've been taught by my Aunt Lou's family -- as canools -- and something in her face softens.
"Aw, hon, did someone pass?" she asked, and suddenly, there are pastries appearing from everywhere -- things I can't identify, things whose names I can't spell and can barely pronounce.
"We always keep a few in the back," she tells me, patting my hand as it rests on the counter, "Just in case."
Twenty minutes later -- "Was it a good death? Old woman? Old man? They'll eat more -- with the young people, it's too sad" -- I leave laden with boxes tied tightly with twine as the old women press their floured hands to my cheeks, touched and faintly baffled by what just transpired.
I meet my equally-puzzled brother back at the car, juggling his own packages filled with meats and cheeses, to hit the bread bakery before we return to my Aunt Lou's house and her million and one hungry relatives.
"Did they ask you how old she was?" he asks me, and apparently, that's a universal measure for the amount of funeral baked-meats any household needs.
On the way home we do our mourning Irish-style, telling funny stories about Aunt Chick and her husband, Uncle Moon, in which the food currently perfuming the air-conditioned car features prominently. We both realize that we've learned all Italian food terms orally -- it took me years to realize that ham cappacola and gabbagool where the same thing -- and I think it's particularly appropriate that we only found out that Aunt Chick's real name was Michaelina, and her husband's Dominic, when we had to fill out the Mass card for the wake.
And I'd like to think that someday, though, if I ever do get married, Aunt Chick will be dancing the Continental in heaven in celebration.
Friday Night Lights: State
Last night was the (hopefully) season finale of one of the best shows that I've ever seen on broadcast -- no, actually, on t.v. -- in general. I can't imagine that, despite the flimsy ratings, they won't find a way to renew this vibrant, vital, life-affirming show. Seriously, could anyone who watched the pitch-perfect season finale last night imagine a world where we don't get to visit the denizens of Dillon, Texas for at least an hour each week? I know without them, my world will be a little bit smaller.
When I watched last week's episode, Best-Laid Plans, I had assumed that they were wrapping up the non-football storylines to leave this week's finale open for the big showdown at the State finals between Dillon and Voodoo and his new team. I should have known that this show doesn't ever take the easy road out.
I loved that while State was the centerpiece of the story -- as well it should have been (and if you'd told me six months ago that I'd be jumping up and down like a lunatic on my couch as fake tv people ran plays that I could actually identify on my screen, I would have directed you to the pharmaceutical of your choice) -- I also loved that the life of the people and the town outside of football went on.
What Friday Night Lights has done exceptionally well from the beginning is not be a show about football. It's a show about life, that uses football as its focal point, sort of like a wizard uses a wand to focus his energy. It could have been quilting-bees or rodeo or chili cookoffs -- the point was, it had to be something that brought a whole small town together with passion and pride, which imparted life lessons in ways that sometimes weren't obvious for years. And in small-town Texas, there is no greater love than high-school football.
The Dillon Panthers climactic trip to Dallas, and the State Championships, was certainly about football, and the coach and his team. They sacrificed themselves -- literally, in Jason Street's case -- at its altar. They had a season that started in tragedy and ended in triumph. But the real, true accomplishment for every boy on that field was his year-long journey closer to manhood.
I loved and adored that silent moment of awe, as the boys walked into the Cowboy's stadium for the first time, and saw their names on the lockers, as official as an NFL game. It captured so much -- the idea that, for many, this was the pinnacle of achievement -- a dream they'd never touch again. For a few, it was just the beginning of something new, of a place they'd return to again and again. But for each boy there, it was a moment of recognition, a startling realization that someday, his name would be official -- it would be his passport and his calling card and his reputation. It deserved a moment of silent awe.
I loved, too, watching Jason Street, whose crippled body betrayed him even as his football-genius mind continued to whir and turn, wheeling himself out onto the Dallas Cowboys' field. It was heartbreaking -- a look at what might have been -- but also heartening. Jason found a place with his beloved team in the end, and doing that restored his inner light. He won't be a professional football player, but finding a way to reignite his passion means that whatever he does, his life will be filled with meaning, if he wants it to be.
But for all the hype around the game, I loved that the story began and ended with family. While the coach dealt with the hoopla and the tumult, Tami found herself, a little desperate and a lot alone, at the counter of a Planned Parenthood, contemplating her future.
The idea that she was, in fact, pregnant, delivered with such awesome compassion and tact by Mama Smash, who continues to be one of my favorite character, was so terribly complicated. They didn't, of course, pull any punches. Who hasn't had a friend or family member in that situation -- having wanted, perhaps even tried desperately for years, to have another baby, finally laying aside that dream and picking up another -- making a difference, having a career -- only to be blindsided when it does happen. You could see it in her eyes -- two years from when her daughter leaves the house, she and her husband poised on the brink of enormous change, trying to learn each other anew, contemplating new roles, only to be tossed back into a situation they thought they'd long left behind -- it wasn't that she wasn't happy, it was that she was in shock.
Of course, Coach Taylor's response to the news was spot-on, too. Seriously, I waver between wanting him as my daddy and as my husband, but his reaction to the news was so sweet and sexy that I think I've pretty much been swayed to the husband side.
I loved, too, that his reaction to it -- but not only because of it -- was to decide to give up his own dreams and make it all about the family. But even better was Tammi's fierce refusal to let him. She knew, as soon as she heard the news, that her life was going to change forever, and not all of it in ways she may have wanted, but she wasn't willing to give up her dreams, or her husband's, without a fight. She has faith such as moves mountains, and I have no doubt that should there be a second season, she will have found a way to make it all work somehow.
And Coach Taylor? What a man. Seriously. He is a man's man -- and a woman's man, too. I adore that they've found a way to let him be a strong, even a stereotypical, man in some ways, but have gone to such lengths to show the nuances of what that means. This is a man who knows right from wrong, and struggles mightily not only to do right, but to show right to others. From the moment the news was out that he had accepted the TMU job, he was honest and straightforward with his boys, talking to them in language they could understand, and honoring them by asking them to see the world through his eyes, trusting that they could do so. No boy on the Panthers will grow to be a man untouched by the Coach's example.
His speech at half-time, too, was note-perfect. Look inside yourself. Recognize that the fight, not the outcome, is what molds you. See, in the small stillness of your center, the people that really matter to you. And God bless the editors, who took the time to show who it was that really mattered to these boys -- their mothers and sisters and grandmothers and fathers. Their wastrel older brothers, and the nerdy kids who worship them. Their Amazon ex-girlfriends, with stripper sisters and messy mothers in tow, and their gangly best friend with the best intentions. The whole town of Dillon was there to support them, and it was a lovely way to showcase some of the actors who have done such outstanding work with their small, background parts all year.
And what of the boys that the Coach led to that field, that moment?
Matt Saracen became a man, and a leader, by allowing himself to be angry, and then finding a way to channel it. He knew when to ask for help -- embracing Jason's tutelage -- and when to ask for space -- rejecting the Coach's attempt to talk to him about the future. But in the end, in a wonderful echo of his first game of the season, his eyes were wide open, and the play he called, he called on his own.
Smash Williams became a true team player, and in doing so, became a better player than ever. He learned to care about one girl, and to deal with her problems. He learned to see himself as a leader, but also as part of a larger whole -- not only as part of a team, but as part of a legacy. He backed up his arrogance with determination and grit, his fast words with hard work and a full heart.
Tim Riggins took a step away from being a Lost Boy and towards being a man. He may have lost the MILF, but he kept his sweet, intense relationship with Bo, her son, and in doing so learned how easy it is to hurt those we love, even when we don't mean to. He made steps towards mending fences with Tyra, but still doesn't seem to understand her true worth. But he found a spark in himself -- as protector and teacher and even leader -- that may save him from himself someday.
And Jason Street -- who perhaps had the longest, hardest journey of all -- found himself again on the football field. The look of joy and relief on his father's face as he realized his son hadn't been defeated after all was perhaps even sweeter than the actual football victory. It was like watching a phoenix rise from the flames. I like that this seems to mark the beginning of his journey, not his end, and that he still has a long, long way to go. But as we saw at the end, as he gently and naturally stepped into Coach Taylor's formidable shoes, he may actually have the beginning of what it takes to stay there.
The other characters, too, had their moments. Landry, who's been moving from comic relief to star player in his own life, got to shine, showing that he really is a good boy, trying hard to be a good man. The poor kid, trapped in estrogen hell, did the best he could -- cheering on his best friend, taking care of his grandma, putting up with strippers and cheerleaders and all sorts of hangers-on, but never making it less than clear to Tyra that he was a man worth having.
In contrast, Buddy Garrity had it all and let it slip away. Not only did he lose his marriage, he lost his relationship with his daughter, and at what should have been his moment of triumph, he was truly alone.
But really, at the end of the night, the women of Dillon kicked a little ass and took some names. This season has been -- as much as it was about the boys of the Panthers becoming men -- about the ways that women and girls are defined and confined by small towns, and how they go about breaking free.
I love the newly feisty Lyla and the newly vulnerable Tyra, and can't wait to see them as a collective force to be reckoned with. Even Julie, who spent the year learning to be her own person not apart from her boyfriend but from her parents, found a way to stand on her own two feet last night, to find love and still love her family. To dare to believe that she could find a way to keep what she loved about Dillon. These are not the girls -- the women -- they were at the beginning of the season, and their whole life stories remain to be written.
Finally, could there have been a better, more perfect way to sum up the season than with the homemade victory parade down Dillon's main street. There they were, those princes of the gridiron, those kings of West Texas, shining in the sun like the gods they will never be again. But even in that, what came through was not the arrogance of the winning athlete, but the sheer, innocent joy of the boys they still were, and the pride of the community they represent.
The whole town -- the whole cast -- was there at the parade. Tyra and Lyla, smirking and angry, then grinning despite themselves. Landry, the good friend, the good man, standing next to Tyra, waiting for her next move. Tim's ersatz family -- his big brother who loves him and the little boy who's teaching him to love; Smash's family -- Mama and sisters and his whole church community; Grandma Saracen, beaming with pride, and the Lady Mayor, swelled with joy. And Buddy Garrity, all alone while his family looks on, pitying. It was a perfect microcosm.
But of course, life, like football, goes on and on. The last tracking shot of Coach T, driving through town, pulling into his space for perhaps the last time, listening as Jason stepped up into a new kind of leadership position, left nothing resolved, and yet everything said. In the end, no matter what happens, we know that Coach will make the right choice, do the right thing. At the end of the day, Tami and Julie and the little Taylor to be will always center his universe, their orbit strong enough to spin out and teach everyone around them to fly.
Here's to a second season. And more poetry in the mundane of all of our lives.
Remember, Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose!
When I watched last week's episode, Best-Laid Plans, I had assumed that they were wrapping up the non-football storylines to leave this week's finale open for the big showdown at the State finals between Dillon and Voodoo and his new team. I should have known that this show doesn't ever take the easy road out.
I loved that while State was the centerpiece of the story -- as well it should have been (and if you'd told me six months ago that I'd be jumping up and down like a lunatic on my couch as fake tv people ran plays that I could actually identify on my screen, I would have directed you to the pharmaceutical of your choice) -- I also loved that the life of the people and the town outside of football went on.
What Friday Night Lights has done exceptionally well from the beginning is not be a show about football. It's a show about life, that uses football as its focal point, sort of like a wizard uses a wand to focus his energy. It could have been quilting-bees or rodeo or chili cookoffs -- the point was, it had to be something that brought a whole small town together with passion and pride, which imparted life lessons in ways that sometimes weren't obvious for years. And in small-town Texas, there is no greater love than high-school football.
The Dillon Panthers climactic trip to Dallas, and the State Championships, was certainly about football, and the coach and his team. They sacrificed themselves -- literally, in Jason Street's case -- at its altar. They had a season that started in tragedy and ended in triumph. But the real, true accomplishment for every boy on that field was his year-long journey closer to manhood.
I loved and adored that silent moment of awe, as the boys walked into the Cowboy's stadium for the first time, and saw their names on the lockers, as official as an NFL game. It captured so much -- the idea that, for many, this was the pinnacle of achievement -- a dream they'd never touch again. For a few, it was just the beginning of something new, of a place they'd return to again and again. But for each boy there, it was a moment of recognition, a startling realization that someday, his name would be official -- it would be his passport and his calling card and his reputation. It deserved a moment of silent awe.
I loved, too, watching Jason Street, whose crippled body betrayed him even as his football-genius mind continued to whir and turn, wheeling himself out onto the Dallas Cowboys' field. It was heartbreaking -- a look at what might have been -- but also heartening. Jason found a place with his beloved team in the end, and doing that restored his inner light. He won't be a professional football player, but finding a way to reignite his passion means that whatever he does, his life will be filled with meaning, if he wants it to be.
But for all the hype around the game, I loved that the story began and ended with family. While the coach dealt with the hoopla and the tumult, Tami found herself, a little desperate and a lot alone, at the counter of a Planned Parenthood, contemplating her future.
The idea that she was, in fact, pregnant, delivered with such awesome compassion and tact by Mama Smash, who continues to be one of my favorite character, was so terribly complicated. They didn't, of course, pull any punches. Who hasn't had a friend or family member in that situation -- having wanted, perhaps even tried desperately for years, to have another baby, finally laying aside that dream and picking up another -- making a difference, having a career -- only to be blindsided when it does happen. You could see it in her eyes -- two years from when her daughter leaves the house, she and her husband poised on the brink of enormous change, trying to learn each other anew, contemplating new roles, only to be tossed back into a situation they thought they'd long left behind -- it wasn't that she wasn't happy, it was that she was in shock.
Of course, Coach Taylor's response to the news was spot-on, too. Seriously, I waver between wanting him as my daddy and as my husband, but his reaction to the news was so sweet and sexy that I think I've pretty much been swayed to the husband side.
I loved, too, that his reaction to it -- but not only because of it -- was to decide to give up his own dreams and make it all about the family. But even better was Tammi's fierce refusal to let him. She knew, as soon as she heard the news, that her life was going to change forever, and not all of it in ways she may have wanted, but she wasn't willing to give up her dreams, or her husband's, without a fight. She has faith such as moves mountains, and I have no doubt that should there be a second season, she will have found a way to make it all work somehow.
And Coach Taylor? What a man. Seriously. He is a man's man -- and a woman's man, too. I adore that they've found a way to let him be a strong, even a stereotypical, man in some ways, but have gone to such lengths to show the nuances of what that means. This is a man who knows right from wrong, and struggles mightily not only to do right, but to show right to others. From the moment the news was out that he had accepted the TMU job, he was honest and straightforward with his boys, talking to them in language they could understand, and honoring them by asking them to see the world through his eyes, trusting that they could do so. No boy on the Panthers will grow to be a man untouched by the Coach's example.
His speech at half-time, too, was note-perfect. Look inside yourself. Recognize that the fight, not the outcome, is what molds you. See, in the small stillness of your center, the people that really matter to you. And God bless the editors, who took the time to show who it was that really mattered to these boys -- their mothers and sisters and grandmothers and fathers. Their wastrel older brothers, and the nerdy kids who worship them. Their Amazon ex-girlfriends, with stripper sisters and messy mothers in tow, and their gangly best friend with the best intentions. The whole town of Dillon was there to support them, and it was a lovely way to showcase some of the actors who have done such outstanding work with their small, background parts all year.
And what of the boys that the Coach led to that field, that moment?
Matt Saracen became a man, and a leader, by allowing himself to be angry, and then finding a way to channel it. He knew when to ask for help -- embracing Jason's tutelage -- and when to ask for space -- rejecting the Coach's attempt to talk to him about the future. But in the end, in a wonderful echo of his first game of the season, his eyes were wide open, and the play he called, he called on his own.
Smash Williams became a true team player, and in doing so, became a better player than ever. He learned to care about one girl, and to deal with her problems. He learned to see himself as a leader, but also as part of a larger whole -- not only as part of a team, but as part of a legacy. He backed up his arrogance with determination and grit, his fast words with hard work and a full heart.
Tim Riggins took a step away from being a Lost Boy and towards being a man. He may have lost the MILF, but he kept his sweet, intense relationship with Bo, her son, and in doing so learned how easy it is to hurt those we love, even when we don't mean to. He made steps towards mending fences with Tyra, but still doesn't seem to understand her true worth. But he found a spark in himself -- as protector and teacher and even leader -- that may save him from himself someday.
And Jason Street -- who perhaps had the longest, hardest journey of all -- found himself again on the football field. The look of joy and relief on his father's face as he realized his son hadn't been defeated after all was perhaps even sweeter than the actual football victory. It was like watching a phoenix rise from the flames. I like that this seems to mark the beginning of his journey, not his end, and that he still has a long, long way to go. But as we saw at the end, as he gently and naturally stepped into Coach Taylor's formidable shoes, he may actually have the beginning of what it takes to stay there.
The other characters, too, had their moments. Landry, who's been moving from comic relief to star player in his own life, got to shine, showing that he really is a good boy, trying hard to be a good man. The poor kid, trapped in estrogen hell, did the best he could -- cheering on his best friend, taking care of his grandma, putting up with strippers and cheerleaders and all sorts of hangers-on, but never making it less than clear to Tyra that he was a man worth having.
In contrast, Buddy Garrity had it all and let it slip away. Not only did he lose his marriage, he lost his relationship with his daughter, and at what should have been his moment of triumph, he was truly alone.
But really, at the end of the night, the women of Dillon kicked a little ass and took some names. This season has been -- as much as it was about the boys of the Panthers becoming men -- about the ways that women and girls are defined and confined by small towns, and how they go about breaking free.
I love the newly feisty Lyla and the newly vulnerable Tyra, and can't wait to see them as a collective force to be reckoned with. Even Julie, who spent the year learning to be her own person not apart from her boyfriend but from her parents, found a way to stand on her own two feet last night, to find love and still love her family. To dare to believe that she could find a way to keep what she loved about Dillon. These are not the girls -- the women -- they were at the beginning of the season, and their whole life stories remain to be written.
Finally, could there have been a better, more perfect way to sum up the season than with the homemade victory parade down Dillon's main street. There they were, those princes of the gridiron, those kings of West Texas, shining in the sun like the gods they will never be again. But even in that, what came through was not the arrogance of the winning athlete, but the sheer, innocent joy of the boys they still were, and the pride of the community they represent.
The whole town -- the whole cast -- was there at the parade. Tyra and Lyla, smirking and angry, then grinning despite themselves. Landry, the good friend, the good man, standing next to Tyra, waiting for her next move. Tim's ersatz family -- his big brother who loves him and the little boy who's teaching him to love; Smash's family -- Mama and sisters and his whole church community; Grandma Saracen, beaming with pride, and the Lady Mayor, swelled with joy. And Buddy Garrity, all alone while his family looks on, pitying. It was a perfect microcosm.
But of course, life, like football, goes on and on. The last tracking shot of Coach T, driving through town, pulling into his space for perhaps the last time, listening as Jason stepped up into a new kind of leadership position, left nothing resolved, and yet everything said. In the end, no matter what happens, we know that Coach will make the right choice, do the right thing. At the end of the day, Tami and Julie and the little Taylor to be will always center his universe, their orbit strong enough to spin out and teach everyone around them to fly.
Here's to a second season. And more poetry in the mundane of all of our lives.
Remember, Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose!
The 20th Anniversary of MOVE
Friday, May 13th marked the 20th anniversary of the burning of the MOVE crisis. For those of you who are not from the Philadelphia area, this is liable to mean nothing at all. For those of you from Philadelphia, this is probably a half-remembered incident from your childhood. I grew up across the park from the West Philadelphia neighborhood where Osage Ave. stands, however, and so it remains one of the searing images of my past.
MOVE was a radical, African-American "back-to-nature" group whose members were known mostly for their long, matted dreadlocks and their insistence on eating all foods "raw," that is, without cooking.
If they'd just stuck to the wacky, granola-crunchy side of things, we might not ever have heard of them. Instead, they advocated violent revolution, and a society without technology, police or government. They also hoarded piles and piles of weapons and ammunition.
In the '70's, a confrontation with the original group, in a neighborhood called Powellton Village by the University of Pennsylvania, ended with a police officer shot and killed, but by 1985 the group had moved to the edge of West Philadelphia, to a block of working-class rowhomes.
The neighbors on the mixed-race block complained repeatedly about the MOVE compound -- the members built a bunker on the roof of their house to store weaponry; their house was filled with trash; their children ran wild; they screamed obscenities at their neighbors, often through bullhorns, night and day -- for over two years, but on May 13, then-mayor W. Wilson Goode ordered the city's police and fire commissioners to evict the group from their fortress-like home.
What happened next haunts the city to this day. The MOVE members refused to emerge from their boarded-up house. The police claimed to have heard gunshots. They opened fire on the house, and an hours-long gun battle erupted. The entire block was evacuated, and the mayor decided, as twilight descended, that the best way to end the confrontation was to drop a bomb on the bunker on top of house, which was filled with ammunition and explosives.
The resultant fire was allowed to burn for over an hour before the fire department was permitted to fight it, and the results were devastating. Eleven MOVE members were killed, including five children under the age of 13. Sixty-one homes were burned to the ground -- an entire city block leveled. And the recriminations started to fly.
In a city sharply divided by race and class, this was more than a tragedy, it was a fiasco. The black mayor of a majority-black city ordered a bomb dropped on a radical back group by the white police and fire commissioners. Fingers were pointed. The police and fire commissioners claimed they had been ordered not to fight the fire. The mayor claimed there was "snow" on his t.v. at City Hall, and he had mistaken that for water from firefighters' hoses. The one surviving adult MOVE member -- Ramona Africa --claimed that they had tried to evacuate the children out of the house by a back door, but were pinned in by police gunfire. And the city wept.
Fast-forward twenty years. In the ensuing free-for-all, the Mayor promised to rebuild the block of Osage Ave. And he did, using rigged bids and a corrupt contractor who built homes that were, in many cases, declared unfit for habitation only a year or two after they were completed. Again, allegations of bribery and corruption flew, and the race card was played again, as residents and politicians divided themselves along party and race lines and the city fell into notorious disrepair.
When Ed Rendell was elected Mayor, one of the many problems that he tackled as he revived the city was the aftermath of MOVE. He tried to fix or repair the shoddy houses, but his administration passed the buck into the lap of our current mayor, John Street.
The Street administration decided that the homes were too expensive to repair, and offered residents a one-time buyout of $150,000 per home. The majority of the Osage Ave. residents took the buyout and left, heartsick, the neighborhood where they had raised families and built a community.
At least twenty families, though -- the majority over sixty years of age and unwilling to leave their lifelong homes -- sued the city and won much-larger payouts. Which the city is now appealing, on the grounds that it shouldn't have to pay for the mistakes of past administrations. You know, like killing babies and destroying a neighborhood.
Here's what I remember about the MOVE confrontation: I remember that we were kept inside school for the day, as our teachers feared we would caught by a stray bullet, and we weren't allowed to leave until someone collected us in a car, so we wouldn't walk home in the midst of the confrontation. Our baseball and softball games were canceled for weeks, until the Athletic Association could sweep the fields for spent rounds and unspent ordinance. We sat on my front steps as the night fell, watching the rolling, black clouds of smoke punctuated by columns of flame from over the trees, hearing the distant sound of explosions. We thought someone was setting off firecrackers, and couldn't understand why my mother and our neighbors were all crying. We were hearing gunfire, and watching a neighborhood burn to the ground.
The sun never rose the next day, and we were ferried back to school in a dim, hazy, twilight, coughing and gasping at the smoky aftermath. We might as well have spent the day at home, however, as all we did that day was watch the unrelenting local tv coverage, and pray, over and over, for "the souls of the faithful departed."
Later, there were sick jokes and we learned the words to "The Roof is on Fire" as "The MOVE is on fire" ("We don't need no water let the M----F--- burn!"), but we continued to be oddly subdued about it. Or maybe not so odd. It's hard not to take it seriously when your classmates lost houses, or their grandparents did. When your best friend's father, a cop, gets spit on and called a "baby killer" at the mall. When your teachers, priests and nuns, spend a week explaining why limbo doesn't exist anymore, and why the "pagan babies" that were killed in the fire will still go to heaven.
Twenty years later, the city has still never dealt with, or answered for, its part in this larger tragedy. The 6100 block of Osage Ave. is an eyesore -- filled with boarded-up and decaying homes. The larger neighborhood has never fully recovered -- the commercial strip is filled with "out-of-business" signs, even as the rest of West Philadelphia revives, the Catholic Church and its school are closed, the Baptist church imports its members from the surrounding suburbs. The families of Osage Avenue are scattered, and in many cases have never bounced back, emotionally or financially, from the devastation of that day.
And the surviving members of MOVE? Using the settlement from their wrongful-death suits against the city in the deaths of the five children, MOVE purchased a beautiful Victorian home on the outskirts of the University of Pennsylvania, where they are said to be ideal neighbors.
MOVE was a radical, African-American "back-to-nature" group whose members were known mostly for their long, matted dreadlocks and their insistence on eating all foods "raw," that is, without cooking.
If they'd just stuck to the wacky, granola-crunchy side of things, we might not ever have heard of them. Instead, they advocated violent revolution, and a society without technology, police or government. They also hoarded piles and piles of weapons and ammunition.
In the '70's, a confrontation with the original group, in a neighborhood called Powellton Village by the University of Pennsylvania, ended with a police officer shot and killed, but by 1985 the group had moved to the edge of West Philadelphia, to a block of working-class rowhomes.
The neighbors on the mixed-race block complained repeatedly about the MOVE compound -- the members built a bunker on the roof of their house to store weaponry; their house was filled with trash; their children ran wild; they screamed obscenities at their neighbors, often through bullhorns, night and day -- for over two years, but on May 13, then-mayor W. Wilson Goode ordered the city's police and fire commissioners to evict the group from their fortress-like home.
What happened next haunts the city to this day. The MOVE members refused to emerge from their boarded-up house. The police claimed to have heard gunshots. They opened fire on the house, and an hours-long gun battle erupted. The entire block was evacuated, and the mayor decided, as twilight descended, that the best way to end the confrontation was to drop a bomb on the bunker on top of house, which was filled with ammunition and explosives.
The resultant fire was allowed to burn for over an hour before the fire department was permitted to fight it, and the results were devastating. Eleven MOVE members were killed, including five children under the age of 13. Sixty-one homes were burned to the ground -- an entire city block leveled. And the recriminations started to fly.
In a city sharply divided by race and class, this was more than a tragedy, it was a fiasco. The black mayor of a majority-black city ordered a bomb dropped on a radical back group by the white police and fire commissioners. Fingers were pointed. The police and fire commissioners claimed they had been ordered not to fight the fire. The mayor claimed there was "snow" on his t.v. at City Hall, and he had mistaken that for water from firefighters' hoses. The one surviving adult MOVE member -- Ramona Africa --claimed that they had tried to evacuate the children out of the house by a back door, but were pinned in by police gunfire. And the city wept.
Fast-forward twenty years. In the ensuing free-for-all, the Mayor promised to rebuild the block of Osage Ave. And he did, using rigged bids and a corrupt contractor who built homes that were, in many cases, declared unfit for habitation only a year or two after they were completed. Again, allegations of bribery and corruption flew, and the race card was played again, as residents and politicians divided themselves along party and race lines and the city fell into notorious disrepair.
When Ed Rendell was elected Mayor, one of the many problems that he tackled as he revived the city was the aftermath of MOVE. He tried to fix or repair the shoddy houses, but his administration passed the buck into the lap of our current mayor, John Street.
The Street administration decided that the homes were too expensive to repair, and offered residents a one-time buyout of $150,000 per home. The majority of the Osage Ave. residents took the buyout and left, heartsick, the neighborhood where they had raised families and built a community.
At least twenty families, though -- the majority over sixty years of age and unwilling to leave their lifelong homes -- sued the city and won much-larger payouts. Which the city is now appealing, on the grounds that it shouldn't have to pay for the mistakes of past administrations. You know, like killing babies and destroying a neighborhood.
Here's what I remember about the MOVE confrontation: I remember that we were kept inside school for the day, as our teachers feared we would caught by a stray bullet, and we weren't allowed to leave until someone collected us in a car, so we wouldn't walk home in the midst of the confrontation. Our baseball and softball games were canceled for weeks, until the Athletic Association could sweep the fields for spent rounds and unspent ordinance. We sat on my front steps as the night fell, watching the rolling, black clouds of smoke punctuated by columns of flame from over the trees, hearing the distant sound of explosions. We thought someone was setting off firecrackers, and couldn't understand why my mother and our neighbors were all crying. We were hearing gunfire, and watching a neighborhood burn to the ground.
The sun never rose the next day, and we were ferried back to school in a dim, hazy, twilight, coughing and gasping at the smoky aftermath. We might as well have spent the day at home, however, as all we did that day was watch the unrelenting local tv coverage, and pray, over and over, for "the souls of the faithful departed."
Later, there were sick jokes and we learned the words to "The Roof is on Fire" as "The MOVE is on fire" ("We don't need no water let the M----F--- burn!"), but we continued to be oddly subdued about it. Or maybe not so odd. It's hard not to take it seriously when your classmates lost houses, or their grandparents did. When your best friend's father, a cop, gets spit on and called a "baby killer" at the mall. When your teachers, priests and nuns, spend a week explaining why limbo doesn't exist anymore, and why the "pagan babies" that were killed in the fire will still go to heaven.
Twenty years later, the city has still never dealt with, or answered for, its part in this larger tragedy. The 6100 block of Osage Ave. is an eyesore -- filled with boarded-up and decaying homes. The larger neighborhood has never fully recovered -- the commercial strip is filled with "out-of-business" signs, even as the rest of West Philadelphia revives, the Catholic Church and its school are closed, the Baptist church imports its members from the surrounding suburbs. The families of Osage Avenue are scattered, and in many cases have never bounced back, emotionally or financially, from the devastation of that day.
And the surviving members of MOVE? Using the settlement from their wrongful-death suits against the city in the deaths of the five children, MOVE purchased a beautiful Victorian home on the outskirts of the University of Pennsylvania, where they are said to be ideal neighbors.
How I Learned To Stop Hating and Love Small-Town Football
Okay, I realize that no one needs another t.v. show to obsess about, but I can't help myself. I have to pimp the awesomeness that is Friday Night Lights again. And again, and again, and again. It's getting its sweet, sincere ass kicked by Dancing With the Stars, NCIS, even Gilmore Girls, so it could use all the help it can get.
But don't take my word for it. I come bearing persuasive arguments.
1) The Boys.
Jailbait? Check. Wounded, sensitive, inarticulate, teens? Check. Complicated home lives? Check. It's only the second episode, and already, we've discovered the following things:
-- All-star QB Jason Street -- horribly injured in the Pilot -- is not only a polite automaton, groomed his whole life for stardom and success. He's also a clear-eyed, smart kid on his way to becoming a helluva strong man.
-- Back-up QB Matt Saracen is living with his (adorable), if failing, grandma. His dad's in Iraq, his mom is (so far) MIA, and he's barely holding it together -- taking care of his grandma, working to support them both, and trying to figure out what to do know that he's in the spotlight.
-- Tim Riggins, who's a defensive guy of some sort. (Yeah, did I mention that you really don't have to know anything about football to enjoy this show? Case in point.) He's a hothead, a drunk, and is -- at least as far as we've seen -- being raised by his wastrel older brother, himself a formidable former football player. He's a wreck, in every sense of the word. Also, extremely hot. I mean, like, dirty hot.
-- Brian "Smash" Williams, the African-American running back (see! I know some stuff) with a silver tongue and a devotion to God. He also has a single mom who -- in less than three minutes on screen -- instantly became my favorite person ever in last night's episode. He and Rig are mortal enemies, at least off the field.
-- Landry Clarke, is, ironically, despite his name, the only main boy not on the team. He's Matt's odd, motormouth best friend, who may or may not be starting a Christian speed-metal band.
2) The women.
Because, really, even the girls in this one are women. I know that one of the points the original movie Friday Night Lights was how this football obsession marginalizes the girls in the small town, these characters have already come out blazing.
-- Tami Taylor, the Coach's wife, played by the amazing Connie Britton, who just inhabits this role. She's smart and practical, and amazing to watch as she goes from "Hey y'all" lady who boosters to steel-eyed heart of her family in seconds flat.
-- Julie Taylor, the Coach's daughter, who won't eat with football players, who seems to tolerate the football nonsense mostly out of love for her daddy, and who won my heart forever by effortlessly comparing a high-school football season to Moby Dick.
-- Lyla Garrity, who looks like a Stepford Wife, is the head freaking cheerleader, and is in a serious state of denial over her boyfriend Jason Street's long-term prognosis. This actress's accent is wacky, but watching her -- all brittle steel under doe-eyed, Southern sweetness, it's easy to see why they went with her.
-- Tyra Collette, or, as Supernatural fans may know her, Sam's dead girlfriend, the toasted Jess. She's Tim Riggins erstwhile girlfriend, and sort of the town slut. She's smarter than she looks, at least so far, and she's the only character so far that seems equally at home with the white or the black players.
3) The Coach.
He's so awesome, he gets his own number. He's the fantabulous Kyle Chandler, now with bonus hardscrabble Texas accent. I love that he's been -- so far -- equal parts family man, hard nose and father figure. He actually seems sincerely interested in guiding these boys not only to football glory but to manhood.
There's a scene in the pilot, where troubled -- and trouble with a capital T -- Tim Riggins comes to practice hungover and still half-drunk, and he has the entire team practice tackling him, over and over, saying "Get up, son" in this quiet voice after every hit -- well, not only to you get a sense of the dangerous man who'd been thus far hidden under wraps, but you see that he might, in some cases, be the first man who ever took these boys seriously, took them to task, and demanded the best from them, all in a calm, quiet voice. It's amazing.
And then last night? When he took the scared sophomore QB and lit a fire in his soul in the middle of the night on a lonely football field? I didn't honestly think I could love Kyle Chandler more until just then.
4) The Town.
Because, really, it's a character all its own. In only two episodes, we've already gotten a feel for the town and the stakes it has in football. It's honest about small-town -- hell, about suburban -- life without ever being condescending, which is a rare feat. The place for adults to see and be seen is the local Applebee's, just as the place for the kids to go is the local drive-through. In some ways, it's like the town that time forgot, and then you see the pressure on the Coach for a win, on the kids -- who are like rock stars -- the way that hardly any family is intact, and hardly anyone -- except maybe Jason and Lyla -- has big dreams, and it grounds you right back in today.
5) The Issues.
Not in a preachy, after-school special way. It's tackling the rarely-talked-about issues of race, politics, religion and class with subtlety and surety so far. Case in point, as the members of the team and their families gather to pray for the injured Matt on Sunday, all the black players are in one church, all the white in another. And I love that it portrays the everyday way that religion permeates everything -- not in a crazy way, as it's often portrayed, but as just another part of small-town life.
6) The Soundtrack.
So far, it's kicking all kinds of ass. Over the aforementioned "Get up, son" scene, Ram Jam's pulsing Black Betty. In a scene at the local car dealership, the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs suddenly break in. And in the lead-up to last night's suspenseful ending, Bright Eyes' Devil Town was the perfect backdrop.
7) The Humor.
For a grim show about a violent sport in a dying town, there's a lot of humor to break it up. The Ann Richards-esque mayor, telling squeaky-clean Jason Street to listen to "early Black Sabbath" to get meaner. Tim Riggins, getting hit on by an older woman who thinks a blitz just sounds "so sexual." And just about every scene Landry's in.
8) The Art.
There is nothing that looks remotely like it on t.v. right now. It's all overexposed bright sunlight and shaky, handheld cameras that increase the feeling that you're watching a fly-on-the-wall documentary. And it makes the inevitable Friday night games look simultaneously artful -- like some choreographed dance -- from above, and chaotic from the field-eye view. So far, it's been using these neat tricks to serve the story, and not to show off, but I suppose that time will tell.
9) The Smarts.
I love that it assumes we're all smart enough to figure out what's happening -- which is probably why it's tanking in the ratings. The book-club ladies come across as sharks, not airheads. Lyla's about ten seconds from cracking wide-open this whole episode, and only her increasingly plastered-on smile gives her away. Not even a week into the season, the air-conditioning's on the fritz in the Taylor household, and the Coach is on verge of losing his job, and the Coach is on the verge of losing his job. Without one word of discussion, Tammie's decided to get a job. Matt doesn't want the coach to see the tiny house he shares with his grandmother; the Coach knows that before he even opens the front door.
It's a toss-up for me as to what, exactly, was the best scene of the last episode:
-- The Coach goes to visit Jason Street, who's just learned the devastating outcome of his spinal surgery. As the two talk, and Jason pushes him to give Matt some breathing room, saying that Matt's creative because "he listens to Bob Dylan, and draws pictures, and stuff" -- we see not only the relationship that's built between the Coach and his star player (since Pee-Wee league), and a glimmer of the strength in this young man has inside, but also a sense of what a brilliantly intuitive sense he has of how to play the game -- he just gets football -- and how truly devastating this loss is.
-- Tim Riggins sits alone in the locker room, watching film of the hit that ended Street's career over and over and over again, until his face finally crumples and he starts, not even to sob, but to hyperventilate. It's absolutely heartbreaking.
-- The amazing, extended sequence where the Coach comes to visit Matt at his grandmother's house. In which he figures out who Matt is -- a hard worker, a workhorse, but also a bit of a dreamer -- and then finds the exact right way to get Matt to commit to his new role, to step up and embrace his destiny. And again, you get the sense that he's going to push this kid not just to be a better player, but a better man.
I love a show that gives me layers.
10) The heart.
See above, re: the best three scenes of the episode, then add in the ease amongst the Taylors, the hero-worshipping Pee Wee leaguers, the conflicted kids, the big stakes, the way that religion just sort of weaves itself in and out of everything. Lyla bringing rally cookies to Jason in the hospital. And that scene in the end, when Matt tells the Coach his eyes were open "the whole time."
Shut up! You'd cry, too.
And just in case, check out some of the smart writing:
In the bookclub scene, as Tammie finally gloms onto what's really happening:
I loved the book. Y'all didn't read the book? Y'all don't -- read -- the books?
... Let's talk about what's important. (Said in the sweetest Southern accent) Smashmouth football. Smash. Mouth. Football.
Says Tyra, to a typically emo, hysterical freshman girl at the diner, crying over the injured Jason:
Hey, hey -- yeah, you! You don't even know Jason Street, so stop crying. No, seriously. Stop. Followed by her turning to her boyfriend, and asking, as if inquiring about the weather, So, how exactly drunk are you right now?
At the diner, a perky "rally girl" -- think Veronica Mars baking Wallace all those snickerdoodles -- which nearly causes poor Landry to choke on his Coca-Cola:
Hey, Matt. I'm all yours. Now that you're first-string, you get a first-string rally girl. So the way this usually works is, you tell me what you like, and I provide it. So, what do you like, Matt? And yes, it's exactly as dirty as it sounds.
And says Landry, when Matt confesses to being uncomfortable with all the attention:
Well, maybe it's not right, but it's what we got.
Says Smash to the already-angry Tim, provoking the fight that he was just able to walk away from:
Hey, smile, Rig! God don't like ugly.
Says Smash's awesome momma, ten seconds after finding Tyra and Smash in an, er, compromising position on her couch at what appears to be the Dillon, Texas projects, to Tyra:
You! Come with me. They march out of the house and back towards the parking lot. Is this to get back at Tim Riggins?
Says Tyra: What are you, a shrink?
Oh, that'd be nice. I work at Planned Parenthood. You probably haven't seen the last of me.
I know how to use protection! I'm not some piece of trash!
Aw, no. You're a class act, all the way.
What does that mean?
It means you're safe to walk from here.
That two-minute exchange just killed on about three different levels.
Says Landry, driving Matt, the new "QB One" to practice:
The point is, you gotta learn to work the media . . . right now, the bitches can't even get your name right.
Says velvet-over-steel Lyla, to the reluctant Tim Riggins:
I know you're not a chatterbox about your feelings, but if you want to talk, I'm here for you . . . Visiting hours are over at six, but I kind of have the place wired. You know, you wait too long, he's gonna start taking it personal.
Says poor delusional Lyla, to Jason in the hospital:
I don't think Dr. Crow realizes who you are. We are going to go out and find the best doctors out there, that's what we're gonna do. You are Jason Street and I am Lyla Garrity, and everything's going to work out just the way we planned it.
Says Tami, to her increasingly panicked husband, the Coach:
I know what you're going to do. You're going to mold that boy, just like you did Jason Street. . . . You know what, there is not a person in the world that could do this except for you. This is what you do . . . I believe in you. I believe in you with every cell in my being.
Says the Coach, to the fearful and shamed Matt Saracen:
I don't know how you do it. You got your studies, you're working for a living -- all that, and you're man of the house, too. And I'll tell you something, I know you didn't want me to step foot in your house tonight, but I'll tell you something -- you should feel proud. You should feel real proud. See all this -- it's yours for the taking.
And if I still haven't managed to convince you, you can go download an entire ep at NBC.com.
Yes, it's a little earnest, and yes, it's a little cliched, but it's got its heart in the right place, and its eyes on the stars.
Remember, Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose!
Help out the underdog! Give yourself a treat! Check out my new obsession. You'll be glad you did.
But don't take my word for it. I come bearing persuasive arguments.
1) The Boys.
Jailbait? Check. Wounded, sensitive, inarticulate, teens? Check. Complicated home lives? Check. It's only the second episode, and already, we've discovered the following things:
-- All-star QB Jason Street -- horribly injured in the Pilot -- is not only a polite automaton, groomed his whole life for stardom and success. He's also a clear-eyed, smart kid on his way to becoming a helluva strong man.
-- Back-up QB Matt Saracen is living with his (adorable), if failing, grandma. His dad's in Iraq, his mom is (so far) MIA, and he's barely holding it together -- taking care of his grandma, working to support them both, and trying to figure out what to do know that he's in the spotlight.
-- Tim Riggins, who's a defensive guy of some sort. (Yeah, did I mention that you really don't have to know anything about football to enjoy this show? Case in point.) He's a hothead, a drunk, and is -- at least as far as we've seen -- being raised by his wastrel older brother, himself a formidable former football player. He's a wreck, in every sense of the word. Also, extremely hot. I mean, like, dirty hot.
-- Brian "Smash" Williams, the African-American running back (see! I know some stuff) with a silver tongue and a devotion to God. He also has a single mom who -- in less than three minutes on screen -- instantly became my favorite person ever in last night's episode. He and Rig are mortal enemies, at least off the field.
-- Landry Clarke, is, ironically, despite his name, the only main boy not on the team. He's Matt's odd, motormouth best friend, who may or may not be starting a Christian speed-metal band.
2) The women.
Because, really, even the girls in this one are women. I know that one of the points the original movie Friday Night Lights was how this football obsession marginalizes the girls in the small town, these characters have already come out blazing.
-- Tami Taylor, the Coach's wife, played by the amazing Connie Britton, who just inhabits this role. She's smart and practical, and amazing to watch as she goes from "Hey y'all" lady who boosters to steel-eyed heart of her family in seconds flat.
-- Julie Taylor, the Coach's daughter, who won't eat with football players, who seems to tolerate the football nonsense mostly out of love for her daddy, and who won my heart forever by effortlessly comparing a high-school football season to Moby Dick.
-- Lyla Garrity, who looks like a Stepford Wife, is the head freaking cheerleader, and is in a serious state of denial over her boyfriend Jason Street's long-term prognosis. This actress's accent is wacky, but watching her -- all brittle steel under doe-eyed, Southern sweetness, it's easy to see why they went with her.
-- Tyra Collette, or, as Supernatural fans may know her, Sam's dead girlfriend, the toasted Jess. She's Tim Riggins erstwhile girlfriend, and sort of the town slut. She's smarter than she looks, at least so far, and she's the only character so far that seems equally at home with the white or the black players.
3) The Coach.
He's so awesome, he gets his own number. He's the fantabulous Kyle Chandler, now with bonus hardscrabble Texas accent. I love that he's been -- so far -- equal parts family man, hard nose and father figure. He actually seems sincerely interested in guiding these boys not only to football glory but to manhood.
There's a scene in the pilot, where troubled -- and trouble with a capital T -- Tim Riggins comes to practice hungover and still half-drunk, and he has the entire team practice tackling him, over and over, saying "Get up, son" in this quiet voice after every hit -- well, not only to you get a sense of the dangerous man who'd been thus far hidden under wraps, but you see that he might, in some cases, be the first man who ever took these boys seriously, took them to task, and demanded the best from them, all in a calm, quiet voice. It's amazing.
And then last night? When he took the scared sophomore QB and lit a fire in his soul in the middle of the night on a lonely football field? I didn't honestly think I could love Kyle Chandler more until just then.
4) The Town.
Because, really, it's a character all its own. In only two episodes, we've already gotten a feel for the town and the stakes it has in football. It's honest about small-town -- hell, about suburban -- life without ever being condescending, which is a rare feat. The place for adults to see and be seen is the local Applebee's, just as the place for the kids to go is the local drive-through. In some ways, it's like the town that time forgot, and then you see the pressure on the Coach for a win, on the kids -- who are like rock stars -- the way that hardly any family is intact, and hardly anyone -- except maybe Jason and Lyla -- has big dreams, and it grounds you right back in today.
5) The Issues.
Not in a preachy, after-school special way. It's tackling the rarely-talked-about issues of race, politics, religion and class with subtlety and surety so far. Case in point, as the members of the team and their families gather to pray for the injured Matt on Sunday, all the black players are in one church, all the white in another. And I love that it portrays the everyday way that religion permeates everything -- not in a crazy way, as it's often portrayed, but as just another part of small-town life.
6) The Soundtrack.
So far, it's kicking all kinds of ass. Over the aforementioned "Get up, son" scene, Ram Jam's pulsing Black Betty. In a scene at the local car dealership, the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs suddenly break in. And in the lead-up to last night's suspenseful ending, Bright Eyes' Devil Town was the perfect backdrop.
7) The Humor.
For a grim show about a violent sport in a dying town, there's a lot of humor to break it up. The Ann Richards-esque mayor, telling squeaky-clean Jason Street to listen to "early Black Sabbath" to get meaner. Tim Riggins, getting hit on by an older woman who thinks a blitz just sounds "so sexual." And just about every scene Landry's in.
8) The Art.
There is nothing that looks remotely like it on t.v. right now. It's all overexposed bright sunlight and shaky, handheld cameras that increase the feeling that you're watching a fly-on-the-wall documentary. And it makes the inevitable Friday night games look simultaneously artful -- like some choreographed dance -- from above, and chaotic from the field-eye view. So far, it's been using these neat tricks to serve the story, and not to show off, but I suppose that time will tell.
9) The Smarts.
I love that it assumes we're all smart enough to figure out what's happening -- which is probably why it's tanking in the ratings. The book-club ladies come across as sharks, not airheads. Lyla's about ten seconds from cracking wide-open this whole episode, and only her increasingly plastered-on smile gives her away. Not even a week into the season, the air-conditioning's on the fritz in the Taylor household, and the Coach is on verge of losing his job, and the Coach is on the verge of losing his job. Without one word of discussion, Tammie's decided to get a job. Matt doesn't want the coach to see the tiny house he shares with his grandmother; the Coach knows that before he even opens the front door.
It's a toss-up for me as to what, exactly, was the best scene of the last episode:
-- The Coach goes to visit Jason Street, who's just learned the devastating outcome of his spinal surgery. As the two talk, and Jason pushes him to give Matt some breathing room, saying that Matt's creative because "he listens to Bob Dylan, and draws pictures, and stuff" -- we see not only the relationship that's built between the Coach and his star player (since Pee-Wee league), and a glimmer of the strength in this young man has inside, but also a sense of what a brilliantly intuitive sense he has of how to play the game -- he just gets football -- and how truly devastating this loss is.
-- Tim Riggins sits alone in the locker room, watching film of the hit that ended Street's career over and over and over again, until his face finally crumples and he starts, not even to sob, but to hyperventilate. It's absolutely heartbreaking.
-- The amazing, extended sequence where the Coach comes to visit Matt at his grandmother's house. In which he figures out who Matt is -- a hard worker, a workhorse, but also a bit of a dreamer -- and then finds the exact right way to get Matt to commit to his new role, to step up and embrace his destiny. And again, you get the sense that he's going to push this kid not just to be a better player, but a better man.
I love a show that gives me layers.
10) The heart.
See above, re: the best three scenes of the episode, then add in the ease amongst the Taylors, the hero-worshipping Pee Wee leaguers, the conflicted kids, the big stakes, the way that religion just sort of weaves itself in and out of everything. Lyla bringing rally cookies to Jason in the hospital. And that scene in the end, when Matt tells the Coach his eyes were open "the whole time."
Shut up! You'd cry, too.
And just in case, check out some of the smart writing:
In the bookclub scene, as Tammie finally gloms onto what's really happening:
I loved the book. Y'all didn't read the book? Y'all don't -- read -- the books?
... Let's talk about what's important. (Said in the sweetest Southern accent) Smashmouth football. Smash. Mouth. Football.
Says Tyra, to a typically emo, hysterical freshman girl at the diner, crying over the injured Jason:
Hey, hey -- yeah, you! You don't even know Jason Street, so stop crying. No, seriously. Stop. Followed by her turning to her boyfriend, and asking, as if inquiring about the weather, So, how exactly drunk are you right now?
At the diner, a perky "rally girl" -- think Veronica Mars baking Wallace all those snickerdoodles -- which nearly causes poor Landry to choke on his Coca-Cola:
Hey, Matt. I'm all yours. Now that you're first-string, you get a first-string rally girl. So the way this usually works is, you tell me what you like, and I provide it. So, what do you like, Matt? And yes, it's exactly as dirty as it sounds.
And says Landry, when Matt confesses to being uncomfortable with all the attention:
Well, maybe it's not right, but it's what we got.
Says Smash to the already-angry Tim, provoking the fight that he was just able to walk away from:
Hey, smile, Rig! God don't like ugly.
Says Smash's awesome momma, ten seconds after finding Tyra and Smash in an, er, compromising position on her couch at what appears to be the Dillon, Texas projects, to Tyra:
You! Come with me. They march out of the house and back towards the parking lot. Is this to get back at Tim Riggins?
Says Tyra: What are you, a shrink?
Oh, that'd be nice. I work at Planned Parenthood. You probably haven't seen the last of me.
I know how to use protection! I'm not some piece of trash!
Aw, no. You're a class act, all the way.
What does that mean?
It means you're safe to walk from here.
That two-minute exchange just killed on about three different levels.
Says Landry, driving Matt, the new "QB One" to practice:
The point is, you gotta learn to work the media . . . right now, the bitches can't even get your name right.
Says velvet-over-steel Lyla, to the reluctant Tim Riggins:
I know you're not a chatterbox about your feelings, but if you want to talk, I'm here for you . . . Visiting hours are over at six, but I kind of have the place wired. You know, you wait too long, he's gonna start taking it personal.
Says poor delusional Lyla, to Jason in the hospital:
I don't think Dr. Crow realizes who you are. We are going to go out and find the best doctors out there, that's what we're gonna do. You are Jason Street and I am Lyla Garrity, and everything's going to work out just the way we planned it.
Says Tami, to her increasingly panicked husband, the Coach:
I know what you're going to do. You're going to mold that boy, just like you did Jason Street. . . . You know what, there is not a person in the world that could do this except for you. This is what you do . . . I believe in you. I believe in you with every cell in my being.
Says the Coach, to the fearful and shamed Matt Saracen:
I don't know how you do it. You got your studies, you're working for a living -- all that, and you're man of the house, too. And I'll tell you something, I know you didn't want me to step foot in your house tonight, but I'll tell you something -- you should feel proud. You should feel real proud. See all this -- it's yours for the taking.
And if I still haven't managed to convince you, you can go download an entire ep at NBC.com.
Yes, it's a little earnest, and yes, it's a little cliched, but it's got its heart in the right place, and its eyes on the stars.
Remember, Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose!
Help out the underdog! Give yourself a treat! Check out my new obsession. You'll be glad you did.
Stadium Couch Seating
My brother, whom I love and adore, is definitely an odd duck.
During college, however, he had a rather serious substance-abuse problem. As in, if there was a substance, he abused it. Even at his frustrating worst, though, he mostly maintained a kind of laid-back stoner vibe, rather than any "Requiem for a Dream"-like horror show.
During this time, I was home visiting my parents for the weekend, and my mother asked me to go pick him up for a family dinner at the rather dubious squat in which he was living with a group of fellow stoners.
I arrived at the prearranged time and knocked on the door. As the minutes stretched out, I eventually heard some fumbling at the latch, and my brother opened the peeling wooden door, blinking sleepily and clad only in reindeer boxer shorts I had given him, as a joke, the Christmas before, and eating an industrial-size jar of peanut butter with a spoon. Apropos of nothing, he said to me, "Come in. I accidentally bought gay porn."
I walked into the narrow entryway of the row house, and stepped into the living room. Like most Philadelphia row homes, his house was constructed railroad-style, the living room, dining room and kitchen all flowing into each other in a row. However, unlike in most conventionally decorated homes, he and his roommates decided to keep the clutter to a minimum.
Instead, they turned the living room and dining room into one giant paean to mass media. They cleared the rooms of all traditional furniture, and constructed, instead, stadium couch seating. Where ordinary families might have a suite of furniture, they had constructed plywood risers in their tiny living room, and placed a sofa on each one, so that each roommate might have a place to stretch out and watch their massive big-screen television in comfort.
The massive, big-screen television was, of course, the only other piece of furniture they owned, and occupied the room that would, in any conventional home, have been the dining room. A series of Maxim centerfolds and discarded bongs were the only decor. It was, in short, a frat boy's dream house.
I followed my brother back into the living room, half-convinced that he'd finally lost his mind, and half-convinced I would leave the house with either a contact high or a social disease. Paying me little attention, Andrew flopped back down on "his" couch, putting down the peanut butter only long enough to pick up a giant remote control.
Without a glance to see if I was watching, he hit the "pause" bottom, and the room was filled with the familiar, cliched "bow-chick-a-bow-wow" music. My eyes were dragged to the enormous screen, almost against my will, and I started to protest the fact that my baby brother was showing me dirty movies, but instead of the standard-issue, bleached-blonde pseudo-lesbian tripe, there on the screen were two buffed, vacuous male actors are going at it with vim and vigor.
"Wait. You bought gay male porn. By accident?"
"Yeah," said my straight brother, fumbling in the cushions of his couch for a discarded bong, "I was kind of stoned."
He lit the bong expertly, grinning at me around the glass bowl, and patted the seat next to him invitingly.
"Come watch."
"I can see from here. Your neighbors can see from across the street on that tv. So let me get this right. You accidentally bought gay porn, and now you're sitting here, alone, watching it?"
He nodded, and offered me a spoonful of his peanut butter after I waved away a bong hit.
"Yeah. Actually, it's clearing up some technical questions for me."
Then, as though he were watching the last minutes of a nail-biter NBA game, he turned back towards the screen and said, "Oh, this is the really good part now. Watch this! Did you even know your ass could do that?"
I looked again from my brother, eyes wide and wholly absorbed, to the screen, where the buff actors had turned to a position that I had not, in fact, known was possible, and gave up the ghost. I sat gingerly on the couch and allowed him to narrate the action for the next hour.
Never let it be said that he's not an open-minded fellow. And I have never, before or since, had a better excuse for being late for a family dinner.
During college, however, he had a rather serious substance-abuse problem. As in, if there was a substance, he abused it. Even at his frustrating worst, though, he mostly maintained a kind of laid-back stoner vibe, rather than any "Requiem for a Dream"-like horror show.
During this time, I was home visiting my parents for the weekend, and my mother asked me to go pick him up for a family dinner at the rather dubious squat in which he was living with a group of fellow stoners.
I arrived at the prearranged time and knocked on the door. As the minutes stretched out, I eventually heard some fumbling at the latch, and my brother opened the peeling wooden door, blinking sleepily and clad only in reindeer boxer shorts I had given him, as a joke, the Christmas before, and eating an industrial-size jar of peanut butter with a spoon. Apropos of nothing, he said to me, "Come in. I accidentally bought gay porn."
I walked into the narrow entryway of the row house, and stepped into the living room. Like most Philadelphia row homes, his house was constructed railroad-style, the living room, dining room and kitchen all flowing into each other in a row. However, unlike in most conventionally decorated homes, he and his roommates decided to keep the clutter to a minimum.
Instead, they turned the living room and dining room into one giant paean to mass media. They cleared the rooms of all traditional furniture, and constructed, instead, stadium couch seating. Where ordinary families might have a suite of furniture, they had constructed plywood risers in their tiny living room, and placed a sofa on each one, so that each roommate might have a place to stretch out and watch their massive big-screen television in comfort.
The massive, big-screen television was, of course, the only other piece of furniture they owned, and occupied the room that would, in any conventional home, have been the dining room. A series of Maxim centerfolds and discarded bongs were the only decor. It was, in short, a frat boy's dream house.
I followed my brother back into the living room, half-convinced that he'd finally lost his mind, and half-convinced I would leave the house with either a contact high or a social disease. Paying me little attention, Andrew flopped back down on "his" couch, putting down the peanut butter only long enough to pick up a giant remote control.
Without a glance to see if I was watching, he hit the "pause" bottom, and the room was filled with the familiar, cliched "bow-chick-a-bow-wow" music. My eyes were dragged to the enormous screen, almost against my will, and I started to protest the fact that my baby brother was showing me dirty movies, but instead of the standard-issue, bleached-blonde pseudo-lesbian tripe, there on the screen were two buffed, vacuous male actors are going at it with vim and vigor.
"Wait. You bought gay male porn. By accident?"
"Yeah," said my straight brother, fumbling in the cushions of his couch for a discarded bong, "I was kind of stoned."
He lit the bong expertly, grinning at me around the glass bowl, and patted the seat next to him invitingly.
"Come watch."
"I can see from here. Your neighbors can see from across the street on that tv. So let me get this right. You accidentally bought gay porn, and now you're sitting here, alone, watching it?"
He nodded, and offered me a spoonful of his peanut butter after I waved away a bong hit.
"Yeah. Actually, it's clearing up some technical questions for me."
Then, as though he were watching the last minutes of a nail-biter NBA game, he turned back towards the screen and said, "Oh, this is the really good part now. Watch this! Did you even know your ass could do that?"
I looked again from my brother, eyes wide and wholly absorbed, to the screen, where the buff actors had turned to a position that I had not, in fact, known was possible, and gave up the ghost. I sat gingerly on the couch and allowed him to narrate the action for the next hour.
Never let it be said that he's not an open-minded fellow. And I have never, before or since, had a better excuse for being late for a family dinner.
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