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It Really is the Thought that Counts
Home Sick Home: The Problem with Travel

I’m Not a Moral  Person (But I Play One on TV)

 Good Karma, Bad Karma, and No Karma at All
Saving the Past One Reunion at a Time
A Wedding Toast to the Happy Couple
Nothing Says “Party” Like a Laptop and a Dark Corner
Happy New Year From My Husband and Jet Blue

It Really is the Thought that Counts

Because I don’t have what is considered a “real” job (I’m a painter), I don’t have to go to those things known as “real” meetings. But every now and then, I do have to sit down at a table in a building with another person and discuss a painting or a project. This happened just last week. While we were talking, the woman I was meeting with gave me a gift, even though the holidays were over. They say it’s the thought that counts, but in this case she didn’t even know she’d given me anything.
 

What happened was this: several months ago I agreed to do an art project for a venue in town.  Somewhere along the way, the project morphed from its original intent to something completely unintended, but still arty. Last week I took proofs to show to the person who’d invited me to do the project. By way of introduction, I said, “This is not like anything I’ve done before.” Without skipping a beat, she said, “I’ve known you for 15 years and I expected no less. You’ve never done the same thing for too long.”
 

With that, my life flashed before my eyes. There were the ballet lessons that barely lasted past the tutu fitting. The piano lessons that came to a happy end the year I told my parents I wanted to dedicate my life to guitar. The guitar lessons that ended two years later when I decided to teach myself flute so I could go to Mexico with the school band, and the flute-playing career that ended the day we returned to the states. There were the tennis lessons that led only to frustration and frizzy, summer hair, the candle-making business that was over by the time I was twelve, and the scarf-knitting frenzy that died of boredom while still gestating.
 

“But wait!” I wanted to cry out, “What about the horseback riding lessons that lasted, off and on, nearly ten years? The counseling career I had for fifteen years? The relationship I’ve been in for twenty?  The seven dogs I’ve had, with some overlapping departures and acquisitions, for thirty years? The writing I’ve done, beginning with a locked diary at age twelve, for thirty-five years?” Instead, I pulled out the artwork proofs and began to lay them on the table. Which is when, by virtue of my own protestations getting out of the way, I was able to see the gift.
 

The woman’s comment, about not doing the same thing for too long, wasn’t an insult. It wasn’t a commentary about my flightiness, my commitment issues, my inabilities, or my shortcomings. It was an acknowledgement, recognition of who I am. It was confirmation, that I had not only been watched, but seen, over fifteen years’ time. It was a mirror held up to my face, but not a cold, hard mirror. It was a living, breathing, thinking mirror, with other things to do, that nevertheless took the time to reflect something real back to me. It was the gift of being known.  
 

As I drove back to my studio I mulled over this more. A few weeks ago, a member of my writer’s group (to which I have belonged for ten years, I might add) commented that the six of us only know each other in a microcosm, that while we meet over the common and integral (to us) ground of writing, there are huge swaths of our lives that do not intersect at all. And yet we engage, passionately, and honestly, every two weeks, about writing. We really, really know each other—in the content-specific world of writing. Beyond that, we are mostly strangers.

And yet it is enough. Because while we can be known well, we can’t be known in entirety, not even to ourselves. It is, however, possible to be entirely unknown, to hide such large parts of yourself that you do not intersect with anyone on any meaningful level. I was there, on that lonely plot point, for very long stretches of time in my twenties and thirties. Which is how I know that the gift of being known is not just a gift someone gives you, but one you also give yourself.  Sometimes the thought that counts—how you think about yourself and what you’ll allow into your life—is your own.

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Home Sick Home: The Problem with Travel
 

When I was ten, I had a friend named Jill who doubled as an enemy. I’m not sure how we met, as we didn’t ride horses together or attend the same school or synagogue. It’s as if we were thrown together by some accident of childhood, the circumstances of which you simply do not think to investigate until years later, when the entire relationship becomes suspect and you wind up using it to talk about something else.

I remember exactly three things about Jill. The first is that she had an Easy Bake Oven, which, as a ten-year-old feminist, I secretly lusted after but would never stoop to possessing. The second is that she had a teenaged brother with shiny brown hair and dark, moody eyes. The third thing I remember is that within an hour of my arrival at Jill’s house, having baked something in the Easy Bake Oven and had a sighting of the brother, I would call my mother and announce that I hated Jill and was ready to come home.

I thought of Jill recently, when my husband and I took a trip to Puerto Rico. We were desperate for down time, having worked all winter without a vacation. We made reservations at a hotel on the beach, overlooking a bird sanctuary. We left the dogs in the capable hands of the sitter, who had given us, as a Christmas gift, an entire weekend of dog sitting for free. We flew away from Chattanooga during the coldest week of the winter, arriving in sunny Puerto Rico three hours later, nothing but free time and tropical fun ahead of us. Within an hour I was so homesick I could barely speak.

It wasn’t Puerto Rico’s fault I was unhappy any more than it was ever Jill’s fault, although as I recall, as soon as Jill caught wind of my plan to flee, she would wrestle the phone from my hands and lock me in the rec room. San Juan didn’t have a cruel streak, unless it was the undelivered promise of tropical fruit everywhere I turned, but it was also hard to love. The three minute taxi ride from airport to hotel cost $25. Breakfast the next morning was a whopping $60. Then it rained for a few hours. Then my husband and I went out to the beach and stood knee-deep in the ocean and looked at each other. This is fun, right?  we said. Of course it’s fun! It’s vacation. It’s  SO fun! As I stood there and contemplated how fun it was, tears welled up in my eyes. I missed my dogs. I missed my bed. I missed my routine. I even missed my cereal.  

We walked out of the ocean and climbed into a hammock. As the sun warmed our bodies, I remembered with fondness a trip I’d taken to Miami with my parents at age twelve. Our hotel room faced the rear of the building, where six massive, noisy garbage trucks compacted the unmentionables from 300-plus all day and all night. I was so intrigued by the trucks and the trash that I took many pictures from our balcony. I have always remembered that trip fondly.

What was happening in Puerto Rico? I couldn’t say until the following day, when my husband and I finally found our footing. We stopped trying to have fun doing things that we do not find fun, like lying in a hammock after spending all night asleep in a bed, paying huge sums of money for paltry food in restaurants named after tropical plants, and walking for hours in historic towns that have been converted into planned souvenir villages. Instead we bought some maps, rented a car, rolled down the windows, and drove the island. For two full days, we sped along the coast, whipped around narrow winding roads, and explored miniscule ciudades clinging to the sides of the mountains. We ate eggs and cheese with plantain chips in tiny, double occupancy, non-English-speaking sandwicherias, hiked a rain forest, and tracked down a defunct coffee plantation. After many hours on the road, I looked over at my husband, who was beaming, and in that instant, and for the rest of the trip, I was as captivated and enthralled as I’d been thirty-five years earlier, when I discovered the trash compacting trucks doing their clandestine job right underneath my nose.

“Now, THIS is fun!” I said, with genuine glee. And I didn’t even cry.
 

I’m Not a Moral  Person (But I Play One on TV)
 

“Weeping Bachelor Leaves Nation Wondering.” This was the caption on the morning news a few weeks ago, under a photo of a man draped handsomely over a balcony rail, his face a contorted map of agony.  Unbeknownst to my husband and me, America had spun into crisis mode the previous evening when Jason Mesnick –aka “the bachelor” on the TV reality show of the same name—made the wrenching decision to end his relationship with lovely Melissa in favor of winsome Molly, causing a world of hurt and resentment not just for Melissa , but for a lovesick nation at large.  How, in good conscience, could he do such a thing?  

Prior to Jason’s turning the nation on its head and calling into question everything we thought we knew about love and honor, a young woman in California accidentally gave birth to eight babies and found herself the target of America’s unbridled wrath. Everyone had an opinion:  left-leaning liberals, right-wing conservatives, pro-lifers,  pro-choicers,  people who both hate and love Angelina Jolie’s lips, the medical establishment,  Ann Curry. . . the list goes on and on. But the consensus seemed to be that Nadya Suleman  was  singlehandedly bankrupting California, the welfare system, her mother, and her other six children, not to mention draining whatever reserves of patience our nation has for young people with questionable judgment.

And if Jason and Nadya weren’t enough to get your moral and emotional compass worked up, then how about the Dateline drama special, What Would You Do, this generation’s answer to Candid Camera, only with a twist: on What Would You Do, one actor does something heinous to another actor, to see whether a witness, who is not in on the joke, will intervene.  In one episode, a male actor slipped a date rape drug into a female actor’s drink, in full view of a woman sitting at the bar. In another episode, a woman saw her best friend’s boyfriend out on a “date” with another woman (actor) and had to decide whether to call her friend and tell her. 

I admit to being drawn in by Morality TV.  Is it right, I ask myself, to lead another person on in love if you have any inkling you might be unsure?  Would I have the courage to call a friend and out her cheating boyfriend? And how IS Nadya Suleman going to cope? I disagree (out loud) with Dr. Phil when he suggests she is addicted to being pregnant (“Too facile!” I shout), and I gasp in horror at the tiny, cramped house where Nadya is living with six children and one very angry mother. These are all issues worthy of consideration.

But while I am as titillated as the next person, I am also bothered by Morality TV, because I think it breeds a nation of armchair moralists. It conjures unflattering images of half-asleep Americans sunk into their living room chairs, gnawing on the moral bones of so-called reality while ignoring the real-life meat: the pressing moral issues (conservation, child welfare, animal welfare, homelessness) in our own life or community that are painful to address.

Which may be exactly why Morality TV is so appealing.  Like watching a cooking show instead of cooking, or an exercise video while sitting still, watching people wrestle with moral challenges as I shout out the right course of action from my comfy chair lets me feel virtuous without having to actually do anything of merit. It’s the same way I feel when I happen upon an old episode of Bob Ross demonstrating how to paint a cabin in the snow.  After twenty minutes watching him dab paint onto a canvas, I literally feel as if I have painted the cabin myself. 

 I am reminded of a commercial from the 1980’s where Peter Bergman, of The Young and the Restless fame, says, “I’m not a medical doctor, but I play one on TV,” and proceeds to tout the medical benefits of Vicks Formula 44. It doesn’t matter that he isn’t a doctor, only that he pretends to be one.  Television—including Morality Television—is a fairytale that sucks you into a deep well of myth, like a dream in which you don’t know you’re dreaming and you believe you really can outrun a train. I have to remind myself I’m not actually eating better, looking better, or painting better cabins for having watched “How To” on TV. Likewise, I haven’t done anything of import just because I brim with the appropriate amount of moral indignation in the privacy of my own living room. The danger, as I see it, is when playing at morality on TV becomes reality enough.
 

Good Karma, Bad Karma, and No Karma at All

When I was a teenager, my parents feared two things:   that I would smoke cigarettes, and that I would join a cult. Smoking cigarettes, they believed, would lead headlong into other activities, like sneaking underage into Charlie Magruder’s Pub to execute (perfectly) the Rocky Horror dance with nine other underage girlfriends.   As for joining a cult, I can only surmise my parents feared I would renounce my Jewish roots and completely lose touch with the value of a good TJ Maxx sale.    

 Cigarettes did not lead to complete debauchery. And although, in the 1970’s, no self-respecting airport was complete without Reverend Moon followers, the most interaction I had with them was at the Omni International Hotel in Atlanta, where I went to ice skate. They were fresh-faced kids with shaved heads and an unending supply of fresh flowers, which they offered along with the promise of a compassionate ear, should I wish to unburden myself of my teenage woes.  Because I already belonged to the cult known as Girls Who Love Horses So Much We Are Oblivious to Everything Else, I ignored them.  In retrospect, it occurs to me that the menopausal woman, brimming with woe and sorely in need of a compassionate ear, would have also been the perfect recruiting material.

The only other interaction I had with the cult was in college, when my friend Jack offered to teach me to drive a stick shift on the leaf-dappled back roads of Annandale-on Hudson. Just as I got up enough speed to shift into fourth gear, Jack pointed to a beautiful gate that led into a mysterious kingdom of small buildings.

“What’s that place?” I said.

“Reverend Sun Young Moon’s farm.”

I slammed on the brakes and shot into the open gate. A robed, kind-faced gatekeeper invited us to take a drive through the property. Was this a trick, I wondered? If we proceeded, would our parents track us down two years from now, deeply emaciated and in need of a professional  deprogrammer? I laid too heavily on the gas and a shriek erupted from beneath our tires. The car’s front end went airborn for a moment, and we sailed headlong into the kingdom of shaved heads and compassionate ears, where we might still be today had Jack not taken over the wheel and raced us back to the dangerous world of college and free choice.

Three weeks ago, a kind-faced, bald, robed man came into my art show booth in Houston. He beamed beatifically at each of my paintings in turn. Then he smiled at me. The last time I felt surrounded by such an overwhelming benevolent force was two days after my wedding when I announced to my husband that, although I had no issue with him, I did, it turned out, have an issue with the concept of marriage, and would need a divorce in order to go on living with him. He put his arms around me and hugged me tight.

                        “You’re out of your mind,” he said kindly.

                        I looked into the robed, smiling man’s eyes and felt myself fall into a well of gentleness tinged with fear so deep and disturbing that for a moment I forgot my manners. “Are you a Moonie?” I asked, incredulous.

            The robed man chortled.  “No,” he said. ”I’m a Hare Krishna priest.”

             He asked me about my paintings, how I got into art, what I did before I was an artist. I told him I’d been a counselor but that I’d had some issues with burn out. 

             “That’s because your karma is clean,” he said. (Really, he said that.) He went on to explain that it’s difficult for humans to deflect negative emotions coming from other people, and that a clean karma is what you wind up with when you cease to absorb others’ pain.

“That’s just modern day codependency theory,” I said, though I had to admit, Codependent No More, the self-help handbook of the nineties, had a better ring to it than, “Dirty Karma No More.”

As a priest,  he went on to say, he takes on the negative emotions from people and channels them back to God, like a human wicking device, although he did not use the term “human wicking device.”

                        “That’s fascinating,” I said. I was enthralled.

                        “Come visit us,” he said softly, still looking into my eyes. 

Which was when it hit me: somewhere in Houston there was a gate leading to a farm dotted with mysterious buildings, and it was there my husband would find me, emaciated and too kind, if I didn’t get out of the grip of this man. Either that or I would disappear from the face of the earth, only to resurface at the Omni in Atlanta, fresh- faced and holding a flower.

            I backed out of my art booth, nearly falling over my chair. My heart pounded so hard I thought it would explode.  ”You mean. . .to your FARM?” I asked. Why did I feel so strange?! Had I been hypnotized?!

             The priest looked at me like my husband had two days after our wedding when I’d temporarily lost my mind to fear.

 “No dear,” he said. “To our food booth. We have excellent spinach paneer. ” 

Saving the Past One Reunion at a Time

It has been a jam-packed month. Farrah Fawcett died. Michael Jackson died. And my thirty year high school reunion came and went.

I was a Farrah Fawcett fan in my teens. She was the icon of femininity in a post-sixties world that also gave us Nora Ephron and Stevie Nicks and Mary Tyler Moore and Mia Farrow. She had great hair and a knockout body and Lee Majors and perfect teeth, and as long as she didn’t appear within 5 million miles of my high school, I adored her.

The same day Farrah Fawcett died, Michael Jackson died. I was sitting on the red sofa in my living room watching the news when a picture of Jackson flashed on the screen with the caption 1957-2009. I was stunned. The international outpouring of shock and grief was moving. In the hours that followed, I too felt personally affected, though I couldn’t quite grieve. Farrah and Michael were the world’s losses, not mine, except in the sense that, because we create them, we are all part owners of our celebrities. But my day to day life hadn’t changed. I wouldn’t lay flowers, say a prayer, or shed tears. Still, I was sad. It was as if a hole had ripped open in the universe, and important people were falling out two at a time.

As for my thirty year high school reunion, I found out about it NOT because anyone tried to contact me—you know how difficult it is to find someone on the internet whose last name hasn’t changed and who still lives in the same state. No, I found out through a friend of a friend, who has changed not only her last name, but her first name too. THAT person they could find. I joked with my friend that the rejection doesn’t end just because you’re no longer in high school. We giggled. We said we were glad we’d moved on. That reunions were for people stuck in their past. And then I realized something important: I wanted to go.

But I couldn’t go. I had a show in Salina, Kansas, and by that I mean I had a date with two days of intense physical labor and a monster thunderstorm that would change the way I thought about rain forever. While in Kansas, I enjoyed the company of a host family who invited me to dinner on two separate nights. The husband was a fabulous cook, and I feasted on gnocchi and herb salad and fist-sized hunks of twice-fried croutons. The wife was a sculptor and their home was filled with art. My friend Mimi was also there. We talked about art shows and animals and relationships and careers.   

“Wow,” I said after a glass of wine. “And to think I wanted to go to my high school reunion.”

Peggy grimaced. “Why?”

Why indeed? High school was nothing but five years of unremitting misery. Of the two friends I still keep up with, neither was going to the reunion. It was being held at an apartment clubhouse, a venue I swore off ten years ago after dancing on a couch at an office party and blaming my behavior on the hideous furnishings.

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A Wedding Toast to the Happy Couple
 

 My twenty-two year-old niece got married in Colorado last weekend. She moved away from Atlanta with my sister and her father when she was seven, and because we are not a family whose strong suit includes relationship building, we barely kept in touch. Due to this egregious lack of contact, in my mind my niece has been frozen in time for fifteen years, while, outside of my mind, she has been busy growing into the bright and beautiful woman I saw last weekend.

The wedding was held in a conference room in a building on the Boulder college campus. There were about seventy-five guests, and in an interesting reflection of the bride and groom’s laissez faire style, they married themselves. There was no rabbi (the bride is Jewish), no Sheikh or imam   (the groom is Arab), not even that great equalizer of disparate philosophies, a justice of the peace. There was just the bride and groom, each with a podium and microphone, delivering a discourse on what love means to them, why they were getting married, and what kind of future they are and are not willing to settle for. A life of creating art, living simply, speed chess and idea- hashing: Yes. A lifestyle dependent upon riding the mind-numbing treadmill of the average professional career path: a resounding No! Both my niece and her husband create digital “paintings,” romantic depictions of women and fantastical creatures on the edges of abysses, waterfalls, and mountain ranges. They hope to make their living selling them, and if that doesn’t work, then they will create and sell something else. Above all, their intent is to push and pull each other along on the road toward a Joseph Campbell-ian existence of economic and emotional bliss. What they will not sell is their souls.

My sister made a toast. “Your father and I made the same proclamation twenty-six years ago when we married. It’s a noble goal.” She laughed. “Good luck with that.” The room laughed with her. Who hasn’t proclaimed him-or-herself an unwilling participant in a life predicated upon work that is unfulfilling?

Turns out, my husband.

We chatted about the wedding the next morning over cold pressed coffee that lit up our brains like fireworks. My husband, who was raised in a tiny, rural West Tennessee town with little opportunity for economic success, said, “When I entered my twenties, I just wanted to know where to find that mind-numbing professional treadmill so I could get ON it.” His comment underscores an important fact: it takes security to contemplate relinquishing security. My niece and her husband, while not well off, are comfortable enough to entertain the possibility of discomfort.    

My husband and I stared across our coffee at each other. Eight years ago we pledged mutual support for our personal and professional goals. To push and pull each other along on the proverbial road to our individual and collective bliss. We discovered we were each capable of more than we thought, but there were bumps in the road as well. I’m not as kind as I thought I was. He’s not as forgiving as he thought he was. The road is long. Happily, the car is sound.  

Pursuit of nonmaterial happiness is a worthy goal, but a successful marriage is elastic, allowing for the shape shifting nature of self. My hope is that if my niece or her betrothed has a change of heart, and decides that happiness lies in an MBA, their relationship can stretch to accommodate that too. Like their fantastical creatures overlooking broad vistas, they stand at the trailhead of their own private landscape as something they’ve never been before: married, with dreams.

May the bliss be with them.

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Nothing Says “Party” Like a Laptop and a Dark Corner

Apparently there is nothing that screams, “I’m available for conversation” like taking your laptop to the remotest corner of a sandwich shop well after lunch hour and sitting with earplugs in and your back to the room.  This I learned over the weekend while my husband manned his photography booth at a show.

“I’m going to get some writing done,” I told him, packing up what I thought was my laptop but which was in fact a super-powered magnet with the ability to draw lonely waitresses, recently divorced men, the bored, and short-order cook-poets from miles around and deposit them, one by one, at my elbow.   

“What’cha doin’?” asked my first visitor, a cute young waitress who kindly gave me plug-in rights near her station, and who then went on to tell me her name, her birth history, her rental status, and a few choice tidbits about her boyfriend. I immediately forgot her name, although the fact that she was from Maine and her parents almost named her Mary instead of what they actually ended up naming her, stuck with me. Then my phone rang.

“What’cha doin’?” asked my husband, obviously bored.

“Oh, just working.” I smiled wanly at the waitress, who had been draped over the chair beside me for the duration of her monologue. Sensing I might be a while, she reluctantly wandered off to bus a table. “Gotta go,” I told my husband, shoving my earphones back into my ears and turning happily back to my laptop.

Three lines in, I sensed a presence behind me. I removed my earphones and turned around.   

“What’cha doin’?” asked the smiling, quizzical face. While I didn’t know the man at all, I knew the grin well. It was the grin of the Recently Divorced.

“Working,” I said. Just as I started to re-insert my earphones, he laid a hand on my arm.

“My ex-wife,” he began, “just published a book. You’d like it.” I considered telling him my still-my-husband husband takes pictures, and that he would like those. This is a very fun game that you can play with virtually anyone you have never met before.

Recently Divorced then went on to explain, without preamble, that women and men are different.  “The man,” he explained, “has lots of compartments for things.” He meant, I came to realize, that the man has a brain which is capable of thinking, while the woman does not. “The man can juggle ten different tasks at once,” he continued, “while the woman can handle only one at a time. Am I right?”

“Water? Coke?” said the young waitress, hand on my shoulder.

 I shook my head. My phone rang again.

“I’m hungry,” said my husband.

“I can only handle one thing at a time,” I said.

Recently Divorced leaned on my table. He smelled of Nicorette gum and damp wool. “You see, my ex thought I was going to buy her a whole bunch of dresses when we got married. But I told her my previous wives had made that mistake too.” He pointed to his head like there was something in it. “Compartments,” he said.   

At this point the cook approached. He nodded at my laptop, which took me by surprise, as I’d  forgotten I had it with me. “I write poetry,” he said.

My phone rang. “I sold one,” said my husband.

“How about tea?” asked the waitress.

Recently Divorced winked and made a clicking sound with his mouth before ambling away, and for fifteen blessedly unpopulated minutes, I returned to my work.

The next time you see people you don’t know in dark corners with laptops, you should really go over and make conversation. The more vapid, pointless and personal, the better.

They would love that.  
 

Happy New Year From My Husband and Jet Blue

My husband is a natural storyteller. This is because, unlike me, he retains details salient to the story he’s telling. While I begin every tale with an apology for all the ways I know it will break down in my hands, he forges forward with confidence. Sometimes the story is an old favorite, like the one about the time we drove from Georgia to California, so sleep-deprived that when the state checkpoint officer asked where we were from, then what fruits and vegetables we had, we began to list, frantically and alphabetically, the fruits and vegetables indigenous to Georgia.

“I only want to know about the ones in your car,” said the officer.

But the most recent story my husband has been telling is one he heard on the news two years ago. It’s about the pilot who executed a perfect landing in a Jet Blue plane in spite of the fact that its front wheels were turned sideways. My husband had watched it in real time.

“The pilot circled for three hours before attempting to land. He put his back wheels down first, and only when the plane could no longer stay aloft did he allow the front, sideways-turned wheels to touch.”

There were sparks and flames, but when the plane came to a halt, all 146 passengers were unharmed. The detail my husband most likes to emphasize is this: when the pilot put the  sideways-turned wheels down, he did so precisely on the center line of the runway.

“And then he rode that line until the plane stopped.”

The last time my husband brought up this story, we were walking our three dogs down our quiet, dark street after work. It was a week before Thanksgiving, and we were expecting twenty people. His parents had just announced they could not travel, which added a ten-hour round trip to West Tennessee, leaving us one day in which to thoroughly clean and disinfect our dog-centered household, bathe three dogs, secure and cook two turkeys, and prepare the spare bedroom for my mother and her boyfriend, a feat requiring more disinfecting, squirreling away of incriminating diaries, and executing corners on sheets that would make a hospital bed weep with envy.

“We could save time and fly to West Tennessee,” I joked, tripping over a dog in the darkness.

“Remember that story about the pilot who landed that plane two years ago?” my husband said. “The front wheels were turned sideways and yet he rode the center line all the way until he stopped.”

 “OK,” I said. “What is it about that story?”

“It’s just amazing,” he said. “So many things could have gone wrong. And yet everything went right.” My husband tripped over a dog.

As we neared the house at the end of our walk, a vision of the coming frenetic holidays  exploded before my eyes. Which was when I realized: my husband was telling our holiday story, every salient detail of chaos intact, all our petulant longings for control, revealed.

He’s such a good storyteller.

Happy New Year, and may you ride the center line of your life all the way down 2010.

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