Family

Scavenged

We set off on foot, the six of us, under an azure sky as big as the ocean. The breeze off the water smelled of salt and September, and the dune grasses bent toward each other, whispering the news that fall was coming. It was a picture-perfect, precious August day, the kind of day that a talented someone with a camera might photograph and print onto a postcard, which someone else might then buy to send to a friend, to show how big the Maine sky can look over an endless sea; and how the line from the midday crowd snakes lazily out of the soda fountain, through a squeaky screen door propped open all day, in turn, by the backside of whoever happens to be waiting for service next; and the way the wild beach roses that grow straight out of sand (impossibly) cascade over a split-rail fence, tumbling […]

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At a Loss for Words

On Thursday, my son finished up his junior year of high school, and today his dad, little sister and I drove him 75 miles to the Rhode Island School of Design, where he’ll spend the next 6 weeks immersed in Art. He’ll spend much of that time muddying his clothes in the ceramics studio, with his hands elbow-deep in clay that turns magical in his two hands — hands that have turned sinewy and strong from all his time at the potter’s wheel. He hugged me and patted my back with those hands when we left to drive back home. He’s gone to summer camps before. But this was the first time that he didn’t push me toward the exit with impatience, counting the seconds before I would stop embarrassing him, or smothering him, or fretting too much, or whatever it is that I do that usually drives him absolutely

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Awkward Family Photos

As I sometimes reveal here, there is something universal about the awkwardness of family. About a week ago, two childhood friends launched a site to document as much. The results — in the vein of LOLCats and Stuff White People Like — are hilarious: The Choker: “This is what happens when your male role model is both a priest and a gym teacher.” ———————————————————————————————- My Two Dads: “You may use your calculator for this equation.” (Favorite comment: “I am very confused by this. Is the guy in the front right like a neighborhood computer guy who helps them out sometimes?”) ———————————————————————————————–

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‘What Happened to Your Nose?’

It’s usually children and foreigners who ask: those who have no sense of propriety or privacy, or those who consider Westerners too uptight about all the wrong things, and, paradoxically, not uptight enough about others. The waiter at the Indian restaurant sympathetically gestures toward his own, toast-colored nose and inquires in heavily accented English, “Oooh… what happened?” The Palestinian gas station attendant, his hands wrapped in heavy woolen mittens, points vaguely and asks, “That hurt?” Today, I smiled broadly at a pint-sized preschooler watching me from his mother’s grocery cart, but my friendliness wasn’t reciprocated. The child was perhaps three or four, dressed in a miniature plaid hunting jacket, and dark, tightly curled hair crowned his head like a button mushroom cap. He was swinging his winter boots dangerously close to the shelved bottled ketchup. But as his wide eyes fully took me in, his dangling legs quit their motion

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Wii Are Family

In college, I had a friend named Jane. She was the oldest daughter in a family of tennis players, and they all looked like her: tall and willowy, but strong as thoroughbreds, with defined muscles in their long arms and legs; permanently sunburned noses; and an effortless way of moving that was almost heartbreaking to watch. Even when Jane was just swinging her backpack over her shoulder as she sauntered out of class, she had a way of making it look like art. At her Long Island home, her family walked around in track suits and tennis shoes, without the irony that, for example, a track suit would have conveyed on my plump mother. Someone was always going out to play on the courts or coming in from just having played, toting bags and several racquets and fresh cans of balls that smelled excitingly of gassy rubber. They had kitchen

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Evergreen Christmas

1970 It’s four days before Christmas, and my father finally retrieves from beneath the cellar stairs the huge Sears box that houses our Christmas tree. The tree is heavy, its metal trunk solid and plumed with thick branches trimmed with rough-cut green cellophane that simulates pine needles. It’s the only Christmas tree I’ve ever known, and when my father wrestles it upright and folds its heavy wire branches down, one by one, it’s as magical to me as a butterfly unfurling new wings. He gets pinched once or twice by the boughs as he tugs them into place. “Goddamit,” he says under his breath, to no one in particular. Then comes the endless detangling of lights (“Goddamit!!”), and my favorite part: the box of ornaments. Most of our Christmas tree ornaments are flimsy or plastic—cheap molded candy canes painted with red, uneven stripes; cardboard stars dipped in white glue and

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Innocents At Home

It snowed the other morning north of Boston. It was the first, early snowfall of the season, if you take a very literal view of the term “snowfall,” because the flurries that fell didn’t amount to any real accumulation. They stuck tentatively to the ground, in clusters, like they were as surprised to be landing on the lawn as we were to see them. My 11-year-old woke and from her bedroom upstairs, and I heard a noise that sounded like she stepped on a puppy’s tail. She was squealing not about sledding or school closings, as you might expect. Instead, she hollered as she charged down the stairs, “Yippee! We’ve stopped global warming!” Her comment came without a hint of irony. How heartbreakingly innocent is that? She bounded into the kitchen and gave me a quick, happy hug. She might now be almost as tall as I am, but as

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Punked

When the flight attendant advises that passengers place the oxygen mask over their own faces before assisting those traveling with them, I always interpret this imperative more broadly—that I should take care of my own needs first, whether or not I’m strapped into an airplane seat, 30,000 feet in the air. Day to day, this doesn’t really happen, of course. What with dogs needing kibble and work needing to get done and kids needing an occasional warm embrace or a ride to school… my own needs often wind up in the back seat, shoved in the cushion crevice along with candy wrappers, loose change, old gum. But one thing I do hold sacred: In the morning, I don’t want anyone to bug me before I’ve cleared that first cup of coffee. Around my house, my daughter has learned to steer a wide berth for the 5 or 10 minutes it

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Birthday Boy

Thirteen years ago today, we threw a first birthday party for our blond, apple-cheeked boy. Three months later to the day, he would be dead, from a virulent and rare form of strep. One day he was sitting in my lap with a book, clapping his hands when we came to his favorite page. And within 48 hours he was gone. Thirteen years sounds like a long time, doesn’t it? It’s not. The therapists say losing a child is one of the most wretched things to experience. It topples the natural order of things—your children should bury you, not the other way around. It’s completely upending. Worse, it mixes an odd cocktail—one part furious anger and one part defeated vulnerability. Shake it. Shoot it. It stings all the way. You gradually learn to stomach it, to cocoon it someplace inside, because it’s dangerous and scary to walk around like that.

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