Is Just One A Tortellino?
We have a wonderful young family member soon to complete Boot Camp.
He loves tortellini.
We worry about him.
I’m sure they have plenty of pasta in the Army, but is it the right kind of pasta? Even noodles are acceptable (he’s a tremendously adaptable guy), but what he loves are tortellini.
So far he seems to like the food okay; still we worry.
Here’s to hope; here’s to prayer; here’s to good fortune; here’s to tortellini.
Bernadette Peters With Egg Cream
I really like Bernadette Peters. She is all the things a musical performer should be–supremely professional and uniquely graceful with a vast range (not just of the vocal but of the dramatic). But I realized recently that my affection for her was based on more than all that. There is also a certain warmth by association, the kind of personal, Proustian aura that may incite much fandom.
It started with her wonderful performance in Annie Get Your Gun on Broadway years ago. My children and I went to the show because we had a friend in the cast. He very kindly arranged for us to meet Peters backstage. She seemed then (and now) just about the prettiest person I’d ever seen, like a creamy bouquet of purplish pink flowers. My younger daughter especially was entranced.
But my affection for Ms. Peters really sparked the second time we saw that show (my daughter was extremely entranced). We went with another set of friends, also with children. I was feeling a little guilty. Seeing the show twice was a huge extravagance–I had recently separated from my husband and had moved back from Brooklyn into Manhattan to be near my children’s private school–all factors which made money extremely short.
As a result, I was happy that we settled on HoJo’s, a place that seemed both affordable, but had real seats, for the post-Broadway snack.
Oh HoJo’s!–I hadn’t been there for years and had almost forgotten the HoJo mojo–that wonderful creamsicle orange, swimming pool turquoise, giddy scent of fried clams! (Oh childhood! Oh tartar sauce! Oh New Jersey turnpike!)
The father of the other family, Alan, was the only male in the group so he tended to fill a rather large spot in our table’s center stage. A friendly, wise-cracking and rather short guy (otherwise completely unlike Bernadette Peters), he ordered a chocolate egg cream, which, when it was brought to the table, had one small crisp french fry floating below the foam–at first a source of mystery (was it a bug?) then amusement, as was the egg cream itself. It all just seemed so New York.
Which brought me to the bemoaning of our new apartment. It had been the best I could afford, but had turned out to have several significant drawbacks–features which I felt I should have noticed before I signed the lease.
Ah, but there was a learning curve in assessing urban real estate, Alan said. On renting his first apartment, for example, he had not noticed that there was only one electrical outlet–in the whole apartment–which was located in the bathroom ceiling as part of the bulb light fixture.
He recounted the next several months, hooking up a full-size fridge to the light socket, unplugging it to shave (with electric razor), reaching in (once he squeezed into the bathtub) for the occasional cold beer.
Whenever he rented an apartment after that, he said, he was very careful to check for electrical outlets.
With a rueful grin, he ordered another egg cream, asking the waitress to hold the fries…errrr… fry.
We could not stop laughing. Alan had great delivery, but there was something more –the reflected brilliance of Times Square/Broadway/theater–whatever–that evening became imprinted as a silly, happy, children-in-New York memory, indelibly linked to Bernadette Peters.
Which is one reason that I recently went to see her in the revival of A Little Night Music. by Stephen Sondheim.
Frankly, there were several times in the production when I wished for a little less night music. The actors were good, and though I admire the type of mind that can coherently rhyme “raisins” and “liasons,” good actors and cleverness alone can’t quite carry me through three hours. There is just too much of everything in the play except for likeable, fleshed-out characters and/or an intriguing plot.
Except that there is also Ms. Peters. Send In The Clowns, her big number, is not a favorite song, with all its potential for the hackneyed. But her sensitivity, vulnerability, voice, timing, expressions, put one in touch with what is the best in performance–the sculpted but true moment–the poeticized real–something that is both wondrous and immediately recognizable; an empathy-inducing shimmer that, incredibly, is reproduced again and again, night after night.
I was so happy to see that my affection wasn’t all based on egg creams (with or without fries.)
Speaking of pens, I am writing with a new one. And it’s blue! (Cobalt!)
And I’m wearing a bright green sweater (chartreuse!) on a day in which I am to meet with a client.
And shortish pants–cropped!
(I actually put on a suit jacket before leaving home, and then a blouse, and then a different sweater, and then the jacket again, and different, longer, pants, and then the green sweater again–instead of the jacket and that blouse–and then an underblouse, and then back with the cropped pants, and then I was really getting kind of late so I had to just keep on what I had, although when I got to the office I did take off the underblouse once more, but kept on the sweater.)
There has been a revolution in women’s workplace clothing over the past twenty years.
When I started as a young (I’ll admit it) lawyer, it was all blue (as in midnight) or possibly black, and cut into cookie-cutter suits. I am talking jacket and skirt suits. A woman partner (woman partner!)– there were a few of those back then but they were mainly wealthy women who practiced trusts and estates on their wealthy friends–could get by without lapels and possibly even red , but the lowly first year associates had to stick to the basics. (As in blue, black/blue-black.)
I bought my first suit at a small dark shop on Orchard Street. Harvey Bernard, midnight blue, pinstriped—the narrow skirt was a real b—- to try on behind some bolts of fabric and dust. (For that price, I expected a changing room?!)
I wore the suit nearly every day for several months. It was a curiously hermaphroditic ensemble with padded square shoulders, mannish lapels on top, below, a narrow slightly slit skirt. The inside held a curly-q bow and some kind of silky blouse (no cotton).
I remember getting an extremely short hair cut a couple of years later and a senior partner pulling me into his office to berate me on its boyishnesst: (i) “how could you do this without consulting me?” and (ii) “you might as well wear trousers.”
Trousers were introduced at the firm by a visiting Japanese attorney who would not have comprehended any complaints about her attire. We all quickly followed…. suit.
The good part was that it was kind of uniform—you couldn’t really worry about whether the clothing was an expression of your inner self . (What you worried about was whether the job was an expression of your inner self.) This made for a relatively easy morning—stockings, skirt, jacket, bow, worrying about the job.
This was a stupid incident, but it’s stuck with me. It happened when I went to the office of an accountant on a recent trip to Florida to visit to my elderly parents.
A part of me really does believe that you shouldn’t just a book by its cover. But there’s another part of me that makes judgments based on “covers” all the time, that makes judgments before I even see covers.
Here the judgment started with a phone conversation with the accountant’s receptionist/secretary. The timbre of her phone voice was crisp, nice enough but edged–the kind of “niceness” that said I darn well better be nice back. I hate to politicize everything, but I sometimes associate this kind of crisp, slightly demanding, nice voice with a certain worldview–one that favors Nixonian law and order, the Rockefeller drug sentencing mandates, three strikes you’re out, black and white (no grey), and multiple tours of duty for reservists (‘they signed up,after all’). In my mind, the voice goes with very neat, slightly curly hair and a certain kind of Republicanism. (Yes, I know this is unfair.)
I should confess that I was also being nice but edged back (though my hair is stick straight.)
I had initiated the call to check on a missing tax return that I found out (from the receptionist) was being done on extension. I quickly explained that if the return could be completed while I was in the area, I could save the accountant a lot of trouble by picking it up (it is usually delivered by the accountant personally), filing it, and making arrangements for the payment of the accountant’s fee.
The receptionist mumbled something grumpy about the accountant just finishing corporate returns, the due date not being until October, and the end of the week coming fast. I asked her to please relay my message.
The next day, sure enough, I got a call that the return would be finished that afternoon and that I could pick it up the following day.
And here’s where the interesting part began. (Sorry for all the prologue.)
I got to the accountant’s office mid-afternoon. It was empty, but I was also tousled, and the receptionist had me wait while she licked some envelopes, finished some notes.
I gave her the check for the accountant’s fee. She reviewed it, then asked me to sign a receipt for the return, handing me a pen.
The pen didn’t work; I apologetically (but probably slightly triumphantly) handed it back.
“That’s funny. It worked this morning,” she said with some irritation.
I apologized that it might be me, something about the way I held it. But she, with a quick flick of her wrist, and not a single experimental scribble, tossed the pen into the garbage.
Maybe it’s the writer in me, but I never throw away a pen lightly. Not even after multiple tries. And shaking. And very vigorous scratching about.
“It really might be me,” I repeated.
But she nodded dismissively–”better safe than sorry.”
(There would be no more trouble from that pen.)
I have thought about her words for some time. What could be unsafe about a possibly malfunctioning pen? What, the source of sorrow? That someone in the accountant’s office (chockfull of other pens) might have to retrace their signature?
I wanted to actually slither through her receptionist’s window and retrieve the poor pen, but she was so definite; her lips pressed together, her hair immoveable, her safety protected, that I did not dare make an appeal. Thankful that she worked for an accountant, and not the IRS, I grabbed the return and ran.
Isn't life grand!?
I am flying back from Florida to New York and the flight attendant has just announced that we are over 10,000 feet and that permitted electronic devices can now be turned on and also (omg!) that this airplane is equipped with WiFi service – ‘just check your sky magazine for details.’
I am not the kind of person who checks sky magazines for details any more than I am the kind of person who reads instructions before assembling a baby carriage. There are screws and bolts and bits and pieces and somehow you’ve got to jam them all together so that you only have one or two of the silly things left over.
You call my kind of people the bargers-ahead; the damners of the torpedoes.
But I digress.
Wifi on the airplane!
Yes, I was almost asleep. Yes, I’d been actually reading print media. Yes, I’d even been looking out the window.
But hey, yippee!
I don’t write this as a complete troglodyte. Wifi on the airplane gives me a whole new reason to look out the window. Now I’ll be able to write about what I see. More importantly, I’ll be able to think about what I see. (Looking silently is maybe just doable, but thinking silently? Without pen or pad or laptop!? No way, for a manic barger torpedo-damner.)
I compose my excited first line as I drag out my laptop: I’m flying. I’m posting. I’ve got the Atlantic Ocean to my right, and two empty seats to my left!
(Hey, I can even post a photograph. I drag out my camera and take a shot of this herd of beautiful little puffs of clouds and ocean and shoreline as my computer boots up. Then try to log on.)
Yes, there is Wifi on the airplane. But it costs $10 per flight.
Do I really need to post right here, right now?
Wasn’t I about to go to sleep?
It’s not the money; it’s the principle of the thing.
I know the airlines will not give you a free lunch any more, but can’t they spare a little bandwidth???
The clouds are petering out. The shore is no longer visible. Enjoy the sky. Still blue, still free, for now.
Better Make The Most of It (while still free).
A New Yorker's Concern About Bare Feet
I have been in Florida these last couple of weeks and am returning home tomorrow.
I have to confess to being very happy to return home. Not to leave my parents who have transplanted themselves here, but to get back to New York City.
Weirdly enough, what I will enjoy the most is a return to nature.
There is certainly nature down here–nature with a capital N as in the end of Ocean, the middle of Hurricane–Nature that is beautiful but so forceful people seem to need to insulate themselves from it.
I’m looking forward to the kind of nature that I can walk around in even at noon and open my windows to. (This assumes no more NYC tornadoes.)
Actually, the main thing I’m looking forward to is simply walking. People walk in Florida, but either (i) on the beach or (ii) early in the AM with big sneakers and determined elbows.
I try to do errands on foot. These are not comfortable walks–aside from the heat, it feels a bit odd to schlep plastic shopping bags on the beach. (BTW, butter melts if left on hot sand even in a bag covered by clothing.)
I’ve learned not to wear black. But even in muted colors, I don’t really fit in. I’ve started one fire and one explosion in the last two weeks. When I drive, which I hate, I roll all the windows down. (Yes, it’s very hot without A/C.)
Maybe what I’m anxious to return to is my personal nature.
I think it’s Billy Collins who says something about poetry coming from a place where you start out with nothing to say. (Something like that.)
I should probably not confess that I really have little that can be said (at least in a public forum) this evening. So let’s try for a poem, a sonnet.
The Inconvenient Body
The body is not of the modern world.
Babies do not nurse only before nine
or after five. ( I remember how mine twirled
a finger against hair, cheek, breast, in a kind
of slow-mo dance even when demons
screamed to hurry up this time, nod off.)
They don’t grow out of it–older humans
too refuse to fall in space allotted,
to manifest symptoms in an orderly
fashion, to fit recovery into
a three-day weekend, but sordidly
succumb to ills that don’t begin to
improve till mid-week (if then), their tick-tock
measurable enough but off the clock.
(I know the last couplet doesn’t quite work but it’s late and last couplets are always the problem with sonnets. I welcome suggestions.)
Words Outside the Bottle
This morning brought one further occasion (aside from the state of my own writing) to bemoan the demise of the English language.
Two people were sitting on the boardwalk steps as I walked up from the beach at about 9. I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop, but every day that I spend in Florida helping my folks seems to make me older and more decrepit (sorry, Folks!) and I was having a hard time getting my sandals which were lodged just below the boardwalk. This meant that I spent a fair amount of time in the vicinity of these two individuals. One was a going-to-seed, slightly greasy, youngish man with a large half-empty bottle of beer by his hand; the other an already-at-seed, slightly pudgy, youngish woman with a half-knowing (I will not say “empty”) grin.
“It’s cause you said that, you know, what you said.” (from the woman.)
Man: “Nah, I never said that s—. I told him, you know that other s—.”
Woman: “No you said, you know, what you said.”
Man: “I didn’t, I said, whatever, you know–I said, uh-huh all that. I wasn’t going to play that game of his.”
Woman: “Oh yeah.”
Man: “S—, no. I said, whatever.”
At this point, my sandal strap almost on, I couldn’t help but get quite close. I thought they’d stop talking with me at their feet, but things actually picked up.
Man: “I was just telling him what kind of ho’s are ho’s. That’s all I said.”
Woman: “That it?”
Man: “Not you….”
Woman: “Whatever.”
Man: “Good morning.” (This addressed to me.)
Woman: “Have a good one.” (Also to yours truly.)
A part of me really did want to intervene at this point. I don’t want to sound patronizing, but I was just aching for more, you know, words, and also, uh, directness.
Look, I wanted to tell the guy, just tell her that you want to get into her pants, and think that she’ll probably agree in the end because she’s sitting out here arguing with you.
To her: so, he really is kind of sleazy and opportunistic. The question is how lonely are you?
Needless to say, I shuffled on in my silent, decrepit way, sandals (sort of) affixed.
I recently rushed down to Florida to help take care of, and maybe say goodbye to, a father who might be dying. On one level, of course, we all of us are dying and might be doing it soon. But the possibility of his end seemed to be not so philosophical, more, possibly, immediate.
My mother who is both staunchly independent and optimistic (especially when it comes to belief in her ability to get my dad through any setback) was anguished. (Me too.) Getting here sooner rather than later seemed imperative.
But the body is a funny organism. Thankfully, my dad’s seems better right now; and the possibility of what might be, or not be, is again a little more remote.
Some family members, religious, attribute the improvement to prayer. I’m glad enough of prayer, but also think some stern, but cheerful, cajoling (of my father, not the Almighty) may have had something to do with it. Whatever – something has triggered a re-pivot of mind which allows the body to hang on again.
Typically, what complicates everything, aside from the worry and sadness, is practicality. Helping aging parents feels, at times, like the reporting of a news story–full of who, what, where, when, how. Who can/will help? What can they do? Where can I find them? When will they come? And then, most importantly, how will we get the sick person, and especially his wife, i.e. my mother, to accept such help? (Why is it so difficult?)
The very qualities that may help long-term survivors survive make them nearly impossible to assist. You find yourself arguing endlessly with that stubborn making-the-best-of-it-on-your-own endurance – a characteristic that you value in yourself and almost anyone else. (And, truly, secretly, in them too.) (Ssshhh…..)
Enjoying What's There
The other day I wrote about not waiting for “unalloyed” enjoyment. The idea, more or less, was not to be distracted by the proverbial “fly in the ointment” but to try to conjure up your own “fly-free ointment” – something that would allow you to whoosh above all the pettiness that blocks appreciation.
I am frankly not terribly good at this. My eye (and heart too, I suppose) hook onto almost any deficiency. Contentment is not just marred by a fly in the ointment, but by the idea of flies, even, perhaps, by the need for ointments.
But right now I’m sitting on a flight to Florida–actually I’m sitting on a plane that is, in turn, sitting on a runway, hopefully, aimed for Florida. Something that seems like an emergency is going on in my family. Weakness happens.
It’s an amazingly sunny day outside the lozenge window. What’s even more amazing is that, in the midst of my worry, I am actually noticing it: the clouds are elongated for Constable, but might just qualify for Tiepolo; the blue certainly would.
I was given an aisle seat even though I bought this ticket an extremely short time ago. and lo and behold, the window seat (it’s a two seater) is empty, and now I’ve moved just into the shaft of light there, with plenty of room to sit cross-legged.
I find myself able too to enjoy a certain bizarre satisfaction at the success of ManicD quickness–bag packed, difficult arrangements made, JFK navigated, all with unimagined speed – it turns out that the words “my father’s sick” coupled with boarding pass can get you immediately to the front of the security line.
These are not exactly pleasurable moments; they are, however, the ones that currently encapsulate my experience of time. And here are these wonders– a plane made, no baby crying, a book in hand, blue sky outside, clouds.
ManicDDaily 
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