Thursday, May 5, 2011

Album Review: “The King is Dead” by the Decemberists, 2nd Draft

This album pulls you in with rousing harmonica, and asks you to stand up. It bellows and hums; it trills and clanks. Its mood and sound are down-home and upbeat, also quiet and pensive. There are plenty of other albums that could offer this; but on “The King is Dead” the Decemberists have gathered a group of particularly fine musicians—including themselves. Also, the Decemberists have in singer and songwriter Colin Meloy a man skilled in and unafraid of interesting language. The album's lyrics—sometimes intricate and mysterious, sometimes simple as garden dirt—are compelling because of Meloy's choice of unusual words. But he doesn't overdo it--he certainly knows the power of simple refrains. The album glides along smoothly and wholeheartedly. When its forty minutes are done, you are tempted to just start it again.

The King is Dead is a departure into breezy folk rock for the Decemberists. Based in Portland, Oregon, the band is known for long-winded, concept albums. Their 2009 The Hazards of Love was a rambling rock-opera thick with allegory and thorny plot lines. This is a nerd's nerd band, an English major or drama queen's band. Lead singer Colin Meloy--who writes all the lyrics and melodies, bringing the songs to the rest of the band nearly finished--is a lover of literature and language; historical allusions abound in his songs. On the band's 2006 album The Crane Wife, Meloy sings in “Sons and Daughters” about war and hearing the “bombs fade away”: “Take up your arms/ Sons and daughters/ We will arise from the bunkers/ By land, by sea, by dirigible.” But it is Meloy's clear, high-spirited delivery of the end-line notes that keeps the song hopeful and catchy. That and the joy of someone inserting a word like “dirigible” so artfully—singably—into a song.

But with The King is Dead the Decemberists break away from concept, go folk-rock-country and give plentiful nods to their influences—R.E.M., The Smiths, Neil Young, the Band, and Emmylou Harris, to name a few.  R.E.M.'s Peter Buck plays on three tracks, and Gillian Welch sings on seven.  “Don't Carry It All,” the ablum's opener, booms in with the stellar band's funky and classical mix: drums, bass, accordion, violin, mandolin, bouzouki, harmonica, pedal steel, and tambourine. Meloy entreats us to “raise a glass to the turnings of the season,” while revealing hints of his Irish heritage as his voice wavers and trills ever so slightly around words such as “trillium” and lines such as “upon a plinth that towers t'wards the trees.” “Calamity Song,” with Peter Buck on his 12-string, could be mistaken for early, jangly R.E.M. at its best, and Meloy teases with enigmatic, historical Michael Stipe-like lyrics: “Hetty Green/ Queen of supply-side bonhomie bone-drab/ (Know what I mean?).”  The song is a clear tribute to R.E.M.'s hit “It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine),” and its dream-like lyrics and powerful beat are dead-on.

Meloy's voice is round and rich; his enunciation, word play and word choice are charming on this album. The song themes can be playful, as in “Calamity Song,” and “All Arise” but also soft and comforting, as in “January Hymn” and “June Hymn.”  The two latter songs are beautifully simple, pastoral odes that quietly mark and honor how the earth changes month to month, with both songs having a subtle thread of entreaty to a loved or lost person.  In “All Arise,” a rousing, spin-your-partner kind of song, Meloy croons about a thief: “So the dollar shop shoppers/ Broke the lock and they knocked you down/ Better call the coppers/ If you need someone to push you around.” There are culverts, there are shotguns. The barroom piano and hoedown fiddle are the ideal accompaniment to the song's loose mood.

The King is Dead” is a celebration of life, complete with partying, funerals and those quiet moments pondering the jasmine in the garden. The musicianship is first-rate. The sound buoys you through every swell, and Meloy's voice and words are enthralling. It is worth listening to over and over again.

Album Review: “The King is Dead” by the Decemberists, 1st Draft

This album is addictive. Its gorgeous arrangements and compelling lyrics—sometimes intricate and mysterious, sometimes as simple as garden dirt—are irresistible. It bellows, it hums, it trills and clanks. But it glides along so smoothly and wholeheartedly, when its forty minutes are done, you just want to start it again. It is a near perfect album—whiny arguments about such music not being “your taste” and therefore no good hold no sway here. There is such a thing as objective quality: something is done so well, done to its utmost in its genre, that even if it is not your cup of tea, you cannot argue against its inherent excellence. The King is Dead is just that—simply and inarguably great music.

The Decemberists, based in Portland, Oregon, are known for long-winded, concept albums. Their 2009 The Hazards of Love was a rambling rock-opera thick with allegory and thorny plot lines. This is a nerd's nerd band, an English major or drama queen's band. Lead Singer Colin Meloy--who writes all the song lyrics and melodies, bringing the songs to the rest of the band nearly finished--is a lover of literature and language; historical allusions abound in his songs. On the band's 2006 album The Crane Wife, Meloy sings in “Sons and Daughters” about war and hearing the “bombs fade away”: “Take up your arms/ Sons and daughters/ We will arise from the bunkers/ By land, by sea, by dirigible.” But it is Meloy's clear, high-spirited delivery of the end-line notes that keeps the song hopeful and catchy. That and the joy of someone inserting a word like “dirigible” so artfully—singably—into a song.

But with The King is Dead the Decemberists break away from concept, go folk-rock-country and give plentiful nods to their influences—R.E.M., The Smiths, Neil Young, the Band, and Emmylou Harris, to name a few. R.E.M.'s Peter Buck plays on three tracks, and Gillian Welch sings on seven. “Don't Carry It All,” the ablum's opener, booms in with the stellar band's funky and classical mix: drums, bass, accordion, violin, mandolin, bouzouki, harmonica, pedal steel, and tambourine. Meloy entreats us to “raise a glass to the turnings of the season,” while revealing hints of his Irish heritage as his voice wavers and trills ever so slightly around words such as “trillium” and lines such as “upon a plinth that towers t'wards the trees.” “Calamity Song,” with Peter Buck on his 12-string, could be mistaken for early, jangly R.E.M. at its best, and Meloy teases with enigmatic, historical Michael Stipe-like lyrics: “Hetty Green/ Queen of supply-side bonhomie bone-drab/ (Know what I mean?).” The song is a clear tribute to R.E.M.'s hit “It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine),” and its dream-like lyrics and irresistible tempo infiltrate and don't let go.

Meloy's voice is round and rich; his enunciation, word play and word choice is charming on this album. The song themes can be playful, as in “Calamity Song,” and “All Arise” but also soft and comforting, as in “January Hymn” and “June Hymn.” The two latter songs are gorgeously simple, pastoral odes that quietly mark and honor how the earth changes month to month, with both songs having a subtle thread of entreaty to a loved or lost person. In “All Arise,” a kick-off-your-shoes and spin your partner kind of song, Meloy croons about a thief: “So the dollar shop shoppers/ Broke the lock and they knocked you down/ Better call the coppers/ If you need someone to push you around.” There are culverts, there are shotguns. With barroom piano and hoedown fiddle, it's as singable and danceable as songs get.

“The King is Dead” is a celebration of life, complete with partying, funerals and quiet moments pondering the jasmine in the garden. The exquisite arrangements buoy you through every swell, and Meloy's skill as a singer and song writer supply lush text and context for life's sunshine moments and for its storms. It is worth listening to over and over again.

Sunday, April 24, 2011

Another Roadside Attraction

Tom Robbins opens this book with two quotes. The first is from the gospel of John, something about all that Jesus did could not be contained in all the books in the world. The second quote (from someone named Lowell Thomas) is about how the Marx Brothers films would be a big hit with the Dalai Lama. This kind of juxtaposition is signature Robbins: unexpected, iconoclastic, silly, with some meaty bones thrown in for gnawing on while you guffaw, gape and blush your way through his book, whose central question is: What if the Second Coming didn't quite come off as advertised?”

A band of gypsies and circus cast-offs create the ultimate roadside attraction. Along with the hot dog stand and flea circus, there is “the corpse,” which has been hidden in a Vatican basement for thousands of years and which may or may not be “you know who.” There are ex-CIA operatives, shamans, and magicians. There is rock-and-rock, mushrooms of all kinds, and a thread of coarse sexuality. And it is all very vivid, just as Robbins likes it. His language is insanely heaped with wild metaphors and similes; his teeming adjectives appear to simply breed more and more vibrant adjectives (take “mashed banana sunlight”). The air between the pages is fecund and flip. His characters are subversive and fringe, but kind and open-minded.

Robbins was a student of art and religion, and he relishes weaving both subjects into his work. But he weaves disrespectfully, against the warp and weft. If you hold organized religion in high regard, you will not enjoy this book or any of Robbins' subsequent novels—this one, written in 1971, was his first. In Another Roadside Attraction, Robbins puts the feet of “the church” to the fire:

The history of the Catholic Church is written on charred pages splashed with gore.
It is a history of inquisitions and genocides, of purges and perversions, of ravings
and razzings. Yes, but through those same bloody pages walk parades of saints playing
their celestial radios and sowing their sparkles of love.”

He picks on the Catholics quite a bit, but his bias against any and all dictatorial, didactic, hell-threatening religious institutions is clear. I read this novel at the exact time I needed it. I was in my early twenties, in college, and newly emancipated from born-again Christianity. Robbins style was music to my ears--ears that still had patronizing, pat sayings ringing in them about “God's will” and “resisting the devil's temptations.” His style is rebellious, taboo-busting, free-thinking, silly yet not stupid. His handle of language demands attention. I respected his writing, and I drank in his religious lectures within the story: all the religions are really based on the same idea, searching for the same thing. If there is a God, there's very likely only one of them and all the zealots, priests, monks, pastors and Sunday churchies are all looking at different sides of the same God, and coming back down the mountain with a different description. But damn them if they're going to tell the rest of us that there's only one path up that mountain—or that we have to go up it at all. Now that's music to sermon-weary ears.

I was also knee-deep in philosophy classes at the time I read this book and he tweaked that interest quite a bit. Many of my friends were art majors and I envied their creative outlet and talent; through Robbins I could live in that bohemian artist's world for a while. Hell, I could contemplate the varieties and utility of art, sex, religion and philosophy all on one page of this novel—while characters like Amanda, Plucky Purcell and John Paul Ziller gave me explicit examples to boot.

Robbins appears to be entranced by nature in this book, and if I hadn't already been a budding nature lover when I first read it, it would have shoved me off the couch and into the wild. Take this bit about monarch butterflies: “Indeed, wherever there is access to milkweed....there you will find monarchs, for the larvae of this species is as addicted to milkweed juice as the most strung-out junky to smack. His appetite is awesome in its singularity for he would rather starve than switch.” Robbins goes on for another page and a half about the monarch and their inexplicable migratory journeys—but in language unlike any science text I had ever read.

This book, along with Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, played heavily in my decision to buy a motorcycle—against the advice of every adult over 40 that had ever heard me say that cycles were pretty cool. How's that for literal rebellion?

Somehow Tom Robbins manages to be a deft writer, while cramming in over-the-top descriptors. He is both highly silly and heavily sexy, and sexist. He is both intellectual and low-brow. His writing makes me feel alive.

One last quote:

“She carried her excitement lightly, the way a hunter carries a loaded gun over
a fence. Warm chemical yokes burst in their throats. Ziller had the stink of Pan
about him. Amanda heard the phone ring in her womb. In the magnetized space
between them they flew their thoughts like kites.”


If you haven't read this book yet, or any Tom Robbins, you're in for an exotic treat--and a wild ride.

Sunday, April 17, 2011

She Would Be Proud

I have run a household since I was fifteen years old. As as a teenager I pulled through the death of my mother, then my father. Without parents, I survived the attentions of an over-opinionated, bossy aunt. At twenty I studied in London and traveled through Europe. I bought and learned to ride a motorcycle, and I didn't cry when I repeatedly burned my calves on the tailpipe. I put myself through college and then graduate school, through waitressing, scholarships and assistantships. I lived and worked in Japan as a newlywed. I have published a poem on living in Japan and a peer-reviewed academic paper on avian food-storing. I have worked at the University of Maine for the Vice President for Research, managing federal grants and research events with U.S. Senators in Washington D.C.. I can make mushroom risotto, bechamel sauce and a decent cheesecake. I know how not to overcook vegetables and I know the value of local food. I can change the oil in my own vehicle, fix an old toilet and install curtain rods—with a drill. And at any given moment, I can pretend I am calm and in charge when indeed I am ridden with anxiety, when all I want to do is to give up and call for my mother.

Losing a mother at any age is devastating. As a teenager, I kept my emotions at bay by burying myself in homework, books, and activities with friends. But I did feel sorry for myself when I stopped long enough to think about my situation: a mother who died a premature death at forty-six, an alcoholic father and my only sibling, my big brother, away at his first year in college. The self pity never lasted too long in one session, but it crept up regularly over the years.

Then sixteen years after my mom died, the grieving for myself was turned on its head by something I had always hoped for: the birth of my own daughter--my motherhood.

I was so used to thinking of my life story from my perspective—natural, perhaps--that I never really thought of how my mother must have felt before she died, knowing she was leaving two children behind—with a less than able father. When I became a mother to my first daughter Zoe, my grief perspective shifted. For the first time I was the protector, the mother. My god, I thought, how on earth did my mother leave? How excruciating the pain must have been for her, knowing how much I still, we all still, needed her. She was the center of the family, the magnet, the life-force.

I became a mother at thirty-one, barely. Coincidentally, this was the same age my mother was when she had me, and my daughter Zoe was born two days before my own birthday. I went through the seasons of my pregnancy thinking that my mom had felt the same pangs in the same months, and had to endure a heavy, hot summer before birthing an August baby. I held my daughter, and gaped at the improbable life of her, surely just as my mom gaped at me. Ah, but I would never leave Zoe too soon; that's where the similarities would end.

I was working at University of Maine when I became pregnant with Zoe. Not knowing what motherhood would demand of me, I boldly asked my supervisors if I could work from home while caring for my new baby. Amazingly, they agreed. After my six weeks of maternity leave were over, I reluctantly turned on the office computer. I knew in my gut even then that it was already too late. My world had utterly changed; my entire hierarchy of needs and ambitions had been rearranged by this baby. Caring for her eased my grief, it gave me joy like no other, it gave me more flesh and blood in my family—flesh and blood that came by way of my mother's DNA. It turned my focus from myself to someone else. And it was the hardest thing I had ever done.

When other parents heard we were expecting our first baby, they asked about names and joked about lack of sleep and our social life going down the drain. They kept it light and smiled saying our life would never be the same. The hubris I exhibited in thinking that we would be different, that life would pretty much carry on as usual, just with our baby tagging along. When all the baby accessories started cluttering up the house in preparation for the big arrival, I should have been tipped off. The high chair in the middle of the kitchen through-way, the wind-up swing squeezed in our small den, the playpen with the changing table on top, the musical bouncy seat, the baby bathtub behind the bathroom door. All the baby gear certainly messed with out usual orderly, attempt-at-zenful state of things. But then she came, and all the anonymous clunky gear was transformed into her things, and by association became beautiful.

Perhaps all of the worldly experiences, skills and jobs I engaged in up to age thirty-one helped prepare me for being a mother, perhaps only some of them did. Most of those experiences were all about satisfying my own needs and desires—but I did learn quite a few useful skills and gained confidence in myself. One would think that such world-tested self confidence would prove invaluable as a parent, but being in charge of keeping another person alive, helping that helpless being to thrive, tests confidence like nothing else. Zoe sometimes would cry for hours on end, and we could do nothing to calm her. I would nurse her for hours, nurse her while making work phone calls and answering work email. Then she would spit up what seemed like gallons.We called all our experienced friends for advice, I prodded my out-of-state mother-in-law for how she coped thirty years ago as a mother of newborns. I cried while singing lullabies, walking Zoe around and around the dining room table trying to get her to sleep, wishing my mother was there to take my baby in her arms. I made it through nearly nine months of working at home while caring for Zoe. Then her long daily naps became grew shorter as she began to crawl and sit up. I quit my paid job and breathed a hugh sigh of relief.

Those tough years of nursing and changing diapers in the middle of the night are over. Zoe is now seven, with a five-year-old little sister called Lilah. I have not gone back to a paid job. I am not working on a career, or building my resume. I mother, full-time. I do not neglect my own interests or needs. Time for those has slowly returned as my girls have gained independence. I exercise, I write, I read, I take classes and participate in groups who do these things. I make sure I have plenty of grown-up time. I put a lot of time and energy into getting healthy food for my family. I work hard at renovating and rescuing our old house. I have planted a lot of flowers and trees around this house. I take my girls to all kinds of places—forests, libraries, museums, farms, oceans, parks—and I truly enjoy spending time with them; they are thoughtful, fun people. I read, draw, play, joke, scream, sing, run, dance and snuggle with them. I tell them stories about the grandmother they will never meet. I breathe them in and let them see me cry.

I think my mother would be proud.

Sunday, April 3, 2011

Random Opinions


Eggs should be cooked slow. When are we are all going to realize this? I am tired of gnawing on people's rubbery deviled eggs at Easter get-togethers, and hearing them say, “Oh, they're so easy to do. I just leave them boiling on the stove, for 20, 25 minutes, whatever. The shells come right off.” No. You bring them to a boil, then turn the heat off immediately and leave them for 12 minutes, 15 tops if they are large and grocery-store bought. The organic, rock hen eggs I get from Fisher Farm only need 12 minutes. They come out soft and velvety. Same with scrambled or fried. Cook on the lowest heat possible. Have patience with your eggs!

People need to stop being so chirpy in emails and written announcements. All those exclamation points make me feel like I'm being shouted at all the time. The head of a local school group I am a part of simply cannot go a full paragraph without a minimum of seven exclamation points. As I read her exuberant updates of how the book fair or teacher appreciation lunch went, all I picture is her face stricken with an ear-to-ear smile, eyebrows arched to her hairline, eyes wide with the unbelievable sunshine of our school family. Emoticons also get on my nerves—especially the ones used to ensure someone you're “just kidding.” If you can't express your meaning with words, then take responsibility for it—don't fall back on little smiley faces. I enjoy droll wit and sarcasm, and it's actually entertaining to leave people wondering. And since when did a little mysterious facetiousness hurt our relationships? It keep things interesting. Perhaps emoticons bother me because they are a descendant of the email itself. I don't think I would mind if someone doodled a face on a hand-written letter to me. But back when I exchanged snail-mail letters frequently, I don't remember a lot of little smiley faces in them. They just weren't necessary. It's the hurried pace of email exchange that seem to require them. I guess I'm still a luddite at heart, grudgingly toiling away at the screen every day, loving its convenience but missing the breather we used to get between communications. Time between letters gave us pause, and perhaps we chose our words more carefully too.

Can we please end the “adolescent jeans with the crotch hanging halfway down to the knees and the boxers showing” fad? Hasn't it been long enough? I am not a fashion policer, and I don't think it's an issue of modesty. It's just absurd and makes me seriously ponder the state of mind of some of our teenagers. But I'm sure that makes me sound rather ancient. Other teenagers probably don't have much of an opinion; those guys that shuffle around with jeans 3 sizes too big are just from another fashion, or social clique. They're harmless. And they are; but for some reason, I just want to move on. Skinny jeans are pretty ridiculous too, for that matter. Can't we settle on something in between? We can all pronounce our individuality with brand, or embellishments. I'm partial to Levis myself. My little girls love glittery things on their jeans; butterflies and flowers are big, and peace signs seem to be making a comeback.

Scent pollution is a serious problem. I applaud the doctor's offices that request that patients refrain from wearing perfume when they come to appointments. My husband's office has also banned heavy scent from the workplace. Can we ban it everywhere? The other day at the gym I was assaulted by the body spray from a fellow exerciser when she alighted on the machine next to mine. Instant headache for me and it ruined my whole workout. Another time, my husband and I took a cross-country flight that also carried the Don Juan of Drakkar Noir. We both had full-fledged sneezing attacks all the way to Anchorage. Fellow passengers were leaning away from us fearing we had the flu. If you shower pretty regularly, maybe use a little essential oil behind the ears, you should be all set. Let your natural scent waft out. It's amazing we as a species persist if pheromones are supposed to be major players in opposite sex attraction—how does anyone smell the love hormones under all those chemicals?

Excessive packaging is an even more serious problem. I can't stand the big plastic containers that house salad mix and strawberries. But those are the best deals and I grudgingly purchase them from time to time, wishing for less bulky alternatives. Yes, the plastic containers can be recycled in some places, but not all; it would be better not to use them in the first place. So many of our products come over-packaged. Laundry detergent and dish soap come in heavy plastic bottles when they could be sold in those plastic sleeves. Doggie bags from restaurants are handed to you not in simple foil and paper, but in a styrofoam clamshell often 3 sizes too big for your leftovers. Many children's toys are encased in shiny boxes and rendered immobile with metal and plastic ties, tape and glue. Does the Fisher Price Fun Castle really need to be packaged to sustain a space shuttle mission? Everything from batteries to grocery store sushi is encased in plastic tubs—are biodegradable paper containers really that much more expensive to produce? It's been a while since I read up on the cradle-to-grave environmental cost of various containers—the ecological cost of production, recycling or landfilling. But paper-made containers are for some reason less offensive to my senses. They just seem more natural, less processed. I'm sure it's mostly of matter of economic cost for most package manufacturers. Some companies are changing packaging, I know. It's just not happening fast enough for me.  I mean, am I truly expected to live a full life without those 3 pounds of strawberries and the Fun Castle?

People need to stop being so judgmental. A friend of mine told me this story the other day. My friend was at a her friend Claire's house, and they were talking about their kids. Claire's young daughter chimed in, “People that stop at two are just quitters,” referring to the number of kids people have. Claire just smiled at her daughter's clever parroting, and agreed. My friend was simply speechless; she is a mother of two shining young boys, and has had two miscarriages recently. Claire, a mother of three, knows every detail of the miscarriages. What are people thinking in moments like this? I have opinions about the number of children we have and the reasons why we have them, but this is an issue that should not be treated with casual judgmental barbs. It is thorny and fraught with personal and political issues. I have always loved that saying about honey going down better than vinegar. If you really want someone to listen to you, be kind. Talk less. Then when you do say something, people might just stop and listen. Regarding this matter of eggs—the number you choose or are able to fertilize (or the temperature you choose to boil at): all I have to say is: slow down, have patience, and go easy on your fellow beings.

Sunday, March 27, 2011

Would Homeschooling Be Worth It?


My friend and I have been talking about pulling our kids from public school. Bangor is reportedly a great school district, with very high standards and the test scores to match. The Assistant Superintendent of Schools reminded me and my friend of this the other day when we met with her. So why would I want to remove my child from such a great school system? There are many reasons why I think about it for my two daughters, who are five and seven. I like some of what I see going on in their elementary school, but I wonder: how much more would homeschooling do for them? What would our days be like and would my girls flourish intellectually and creatively—would they turn out to be better people? What would a local cooperative school look like—could the murmurings of several friends, also considering homeschooling, actually turn into solid action? And what would push us over the edge to pull our kids out of school? Will they be just fine if we leave them where they are?

My friend and I met with the Assistant Superintendent of Bangor Schools, Donna Wolfram, because we are tired of seeing reams of worksheets in our children's school days. We didn't understand why there was a significant focus on spelling and grammar so early, why the elementary kids weren't learning foreign language yet, and why there was so little science and so few field trips. Ms. Wolfram had answers for all our questions. There is a new curriculum this year, and some of the teachers have “gone overboard” trying to squeeze in every worksheet that is suggested, she told us. This is not necessary, and she definitely sees the value in more hands-on learning. She told us they are working hard at bringing in more and more hands-on projects to each learning unit, but it is a new way of instruction for the teachers. Admittedly, it is more work. But, Ms. Wolfram agreed that integrating math principles into art or music or science makes perfect sense, of course. She called it “inquiry-based learning” and she appeared to be all for it. Apparently, the school board is working at bringing foreign language learning into the K-3 grades; they are working at ramping up the science in the younger grades too, by integrating it into the existing curriculum. When we asked about the focus grammar and spelling, Ms. Wolfram explained that before beginning a foreign language, children must first comprehend certain fundamentals of their native language. Some of these efforts to improve the curriculum are thwarted by budgetary problems or security issues, she said. Field trips have all but disappeared for the students of Abraham Lincoln. And bringing in special guests or instructors—scientists or artists or authors—presents real security issues for the schools.

My older daughter Zoe loves the routine of school, and she is a natural rule follower. Reading came very easily to her and she devours books. She is in second grade now, and has so far scored average or above average in all the tested categories. But she does not easily ask questions or engage in group discussions; she needs prodding. She does not readily ask for help if she is confused by a topic, and I can imagine her pretending to her teacher that she understands something better than she truly does—simply to not appear slow.

Zoe loves all of the “specials” as they call them in school—library, art, gym and music. But art is now given only every other week, and so far the music program at Abe Lincoln doesn't appear to be much more than singing seasonal songs and banging on the odd instrument. However, the school does have a stellar gym teacher. She has won state-wide awards for her innovative programs. Gym with Mrs. Poisson is so fun, the kids don't realize they're exercising. In her phys-ed program, she uses creative games, scooters, role-playing, and dancing to music even the veteran third-graders think is cool. The dancing isn't just random fooling around, either. The children learn specific dances and then get to show off their skills at the school-wide family dance night. Like all the kids, Zoe loves the school-wide events: the book fairs, the family dance night, movie night in the gym, the spring fair on the school grounds. Lilah, my younger daughter, is in the half-day Pre-Kindergarten program this year, and of course already loves the specials and extra school events too.

The girls both also love their teachers; they are additional authority figures and guides, separate from their parents. Zoe has had very good teachers so far at Abe Lincoln—and we parents all know who the “best teachers” are and try to get our children into their classes. By sometime luck and sometime request, Zoe has had among the best teachers. I have volunteered in nearly all of Zoe's classrooms, and this has given me a great chance to observe the teachers in action. This year, while I was directing a math game at a table in Zoe's classroom, I watched her teacher expertly move the students through several different activities within an hour: individual reading, reading to another student, small group discussion with her, math game with me, and ending with all the students in a circle. I was impressed at how orderly the students were, but also remembered something the Asst. Superintendent said about the teachers telling her they need more time in the school day; they simply don't have enough time to accomplish everything that is required. It was all very orderly, but was it also rushed?

But if I home-schooled, there would be plenty of time, right? I have heard it takes only a fraction—maybe one quarter—of the time to teach your child the same things they learn in a group setting in school. The individual attention I, or even someone else, could give my children has got to be at the top of the list of why I would take them out of public school. All the varied ideas on learning I have heard over the years have been bouncing around in my head lately—children excel best in small groups or with individual attention; peer settings can encourage children in learning; children may learn better from someone other than their parent. But these are all generalized ideas. I need to figure out what is best for my own situation, for my own children. What would homeschooling--let's say a cooperative school--look like in my life, for me and my kids?

Perhaps this summer, it would happen like this: there is a small group of us, five families, who together commit to try a cooperative school for a year. This only comes to fruition after many get-togethers and into the night discussions in the living rooms of each other's homes. Among us, there are degrees in english, math, natural science, music, and education. We all live in Bangor and our kids, ranging in age from four to nine, have attended Abe Lincoln. Some of us do not work for pay, some have part-time jobs. We agree that we need to find a space, a set of rooms for instruction and projects. Already, this is an additional cost—and of course we are still paying our taxes that support public school. (We are looking into a voucher program, but with all the recent budget cuts in education and the new Republican governor, we are not hopeful.) We find a suite of three rooms on the fourth floor of a Central St. building in downtown Bangor, the same building as a yoga studio, a fiber artist, and a violin maker. The smell of fresh baked bread from the Friar's bakery fills the stairwell. The windows of our small suite of rooms look out over the canal.

The cost of all of the supplies--the curriculum we agree on, the desks, the chalkboards and charts, the paint brushes, the rulers, the books, the shelves—are split among the families. But it is difficult to keep track precisely. Some families are simply donating items—a computer, nature books, a globe. We have chosen a curriculum that is theme-based. It meets all the state and federal requirements but is designed in such a way that encourages active application of principles, such as building projects to integrate math, science and art. With such a small group, we have the opportunity to work on these projects daily. Our suite of rooms begins to fill up with mini plywood and clay cities, leaf collections, original plays and stories, and homemade instruments.

We design a schedule that has the children in the school room for most mornings. There are always two parents in the classroom, the schedule rotates but one parent from each family must offer instruction or assistance for the same amount of time each week. The first two hours of the morning are for more or less formal instruction, review, and discussion of the week's theme. The introduction and explanation of principles leads into active application, but sometimes the hands-on project is simply the lesson itself. After the group lesson, some of the older children work on unfinished projects, individual reading, or music practice, and some of them help with the instruction of the younger children. The older kids become quite proud of their ability to read, practice penmanship, and introduce beginning math principles to the younger ones.

One week our theme is color and we need to cover the topics of measurement (focusing on fractions) and perspective. We discuss what we could build that would require measurement—what does our classroom need that would be interesting and fun to build? We decide on building art easels. First, we talk about how we will find out how to build an art easel—the library, the internet? Yes, both. But for this project, we agree that getting a blueprint for an easel on the internet is probably the best idea. We search together and print it out. We make a list of the building supplies and tools we will need. The list is divided and everyone has items to bring in for the next day. When all the supplies are gathered, the building begins. We measure and cut, drill, screw and nail. We talk about halves and quarters of the boards, and the number of nails. We draw on the boards with pencils to illustrate the fractions. We divide the piles of nails into thirds and fifths. The children clutch the hammers earnestly, and with help pound in the nails. Two crude but sturdy easels now stand by the windows of the classroom. Tomorrow we'll talk about perspective, in art and in writing. We'll draw vanishing roads and big foreground flowers on our new easels, mixing the paint ourselves and discussing which colors recede and which pop out at you, which colors are cool or warm and why. We will write autobiography, and biography. We may head down to the bakery and interview the bakers on how they started their successful business and then put it in our school newspaper, which we pass out among the tenants of our Central St. building. When we go down for a sewing class in the afternoon, with the fiber artist on the third floor, we'll ask her for a little of her life story too.

In the afternoons, me and my girls have the freedom to choose what we do. We can engage in something fun and exploratory, or active. As a cooperative school, we join with other homeschool groups for weekly sports sessions at the Bangor Rec Center. These are in the afternoons, as are outings to the Maine Discovery Museum, the UMaine Art Museum, the Bangor Library, and the Fields Pond Nature Center. The local homeschool network is strong, with a lot of religious-based groups. Whatever the reason for homeschooling, however, we discover that we can learn a lot from those who have been doing this for a while. We discuss schedules and local activities with other homeschooling families. We ask around about the feasibility of hiring a native-speaking foreign language instructor.

It is a lot of work. This endeavor requires a lot more time, money and energy than dropping your child off at school every day. I can sense all us all asking ourselves weekly: is it worth it? Are we giving them a better education than they would get in public school, and can we maintain this project? What if a family or two decides to drop out? Then the cost per family would rise significantly. We removed our children from public school because we had the interest and momentum of a large enough, skilled enough, set of families. None of our children were in crisis in a public school setting. We simply thought that we could do better.

My own girls love the uniqueness of this small, special school at the moment, but it has only been a few months. It is difficult for them when they encounter former school friends—at a dance class or playground—and hear about what's going on at their old school. But the children are clearly thriving with more individual attention, more integrated learning that is active and creative, and more freedom to pursue their own interests. We will continue, at least for the full year. Perhaps we will gain more families and expand a little. We will learn more as we go along. 

But how do we assess our progress at the end of the year? Surely not simply by standardized test scores. That should be the minimum standard, if even that. The real measure must be the growth of our children's minds, their character, their resourcefulness, their spirits. It would be so much easier if there was “a test” for those qualities of personhood, but it looks like we as parents will just have to use our own standard of humanity to judge the progress of our children.

Sunday, March 20, 2011

Mother Pulse


My body throbs from the weight of it all. New blood is thundering through my veins, as if trying to find an exit. My swelling stomach is tight and heavy. My first daughter lifts up the inside of her wrist, pointing to her veins, “What’s this?” she asks.

It’s your blood, I say (it was my blood once).

She studies her veins, and asks me to wipe them away. “It’s your blood,” I tell her. Will you one day wonder at your birth, and at the origin of all things--will it be a miracle or simply an explosion of life?

She studies her faint blue veins, and asks me again to wipe them away. I bend to smell her skin. Her hand is pressed against my pregnant belly, for warmth, for comfort. Will you bend for your sister when I move on, when life changes again?

I bend down and breathe in her toddler head, her hand is pressed against my soft, shrunken stomach. My second daughter lifts up her wrist, “Mama, what are these?”

Will you bend for each other when I move on?

My body throbs from the weight of it all.

***

I am standing by the window over the kitchen sink, and he is putting her to bed.  I hear them through the monitor. They are upstairs in Lilah’s three-year-old bedroom, getting ready to sing their nighttime song.

Sons and Daughters, Papa.”

Alright,” he says, “You first, then me.”

I lean in to hear her small voice float out: “When weee arriiive, sons and daughters, we'll make our lives on the waaater. We'll build our walls, alumi-NUMMM. We'll fill our mouths with cinna-MONNN…”

He helps her some with the words, then sings this same refrain from the Decemberists' song again, in a warm as bathwater voice. I know he is leaning down close to her face and she is grinning wide, so proud that she learned this song from him, sung like a secret traded between them.

Outside the kitchen window, it is dark with only moony patches of snow glowing bluish. But a light rises in my throat; I swallow it back down and close my eyes to better taste its warmth.

***

After Zoë’s bedtime nursing I creep downstairs while he reads to her about moons and great green rooms. I pour my wine and take the glass out to the back porch – it’s mid-October and our days of outside evening air are numbered.

Through the kitchen window I see him fix a drink, and I wait for him to find me. Tonight, I hope he will look. Moments pass and I sip wine and roll my shoulders trying to purge acid from aching muscles. I wonder if I look as old to him as I feel.

I hear his feet scuff on the porch floor. “Oh, there you are,” he says, “I thought the Rapture happened,” and he smiles at our longtime, only half serious joke. He is still standing.

I stare at him. My pulse thrums. One heartbeat, two. “You thought it happened, and you got left behind and I went?”

Yes,” he replies, sitting down next to me, “You are a mother, you are good; you would go.”

I look away, and take a sip of dark wine. His words follow down my throat: absolution.

Sunday, March 13, 2011

Aunt Penny


“Jennifer, this is your Aunt Penny. I was thinking about your hesitation regarding the enamel cookware set I said I would buy you for your birthday. I realized you must be thinking of that cheap cookware they used to sell at the Five and Dime. No, no, this is Chantal. It is good, expensive cookware. Now, regarding the finish, I know you said you like the stainless, but I think that’s kind of trendy right now, and besides, the blue is prettier.

Well, I hope you’re out enjoying the good weather. When you live in Maine, you have to get out when you can. I know. Remember, I grew up in New Hampshire. Don’t call me back, I’ll try you again tomorrow. End of message.”


A shock of her dark hair went white when she was twenty-five. With this dramatic stripe set against her gray-green eyes, slim straight nose and full lips, she was a stunning young woman. A woman who refused at least two proposals and never married. Instead, she climbed the corporate ladder during the 1950's and '60s when there were few other woman on the rungs. Her hair turned completely white when she was in her forties, and she kept it short and swooping up. In her sixties, her high forehead was still smooth. Teetering over slim legs, her formidable paunch later in life was the result of Crohn's disease, a love of fine food with lots of butter, and years of three-martini lunches in the corporate world. 
 
Until I was nineteen, most of what I knew of Aunt Penny were the exquisite Christmas gifts she sent from California. From the San Francisco Music Box Company there was a white porcelain unicorn with a gilded horn, and a shiny black lacquer jewelry case with purple lotus flowers painted on the cover. There were green satin pajamas embroidered with Chinese dragons. There were cultured pearls in little silk pouches. There were crates of grapefruit and oranges. My mother regularly told me: be nice to your Aunt Penny. I obeyed and was always prompt with thank-you notes.


Jennifer--Sandra, your mother, was a sweet woman, and you have her disposition, but she got pulled into that fundamentalist Christian church and your father followed like a puppy dog, because he loved her. And she was stronger than him. She was obviously everything to David.      
My mother died when I was young, too, you know, younger than you were when Sandra died. Your Aunt Jane and I were sent to live with my Aunt Dorothea. David, because he was the male, stayed with our father. David was never good at staying in contact with me, or Jane. So don't expect your brother Geoff to take care of you now. He's just like your father, and you are not a princess. ”

The first time I remember meeting Aunt Penny, I was twelve. She came to our house in Massachusetts. She had arranged the meeting to introduce my father’s “other daughter” to my older brother Geoff and me. My father, Aunt Penny’s older and only brother, had been married 10 years before meeting my mother. His one-year marriage to Barbara had been successful in producing a child, Linda, my half-sister, but unsuccessful overall—they divorced within a year. Before this meeting, I had never met my half-sister.

My mother died three years after that strange family reunion. My father died four years after her. By then, Aunt Penny was a self-made millionaire on the threshold of retiring from an executive position at a large pharmaceutical company. She had not planned on having an orphaned niece on her hands. My brother had already graduated from college, but I was just beginning. And there I was in front of Aunt Penny: perhaps a worthy investment. My acne scars clearly would require minor cosmetic surgery, and my high school education—small, private Christian schools—would necessitate my going to a large university, perhaps UNH, where she matriculated. My Boston accent could be remedied with some discipline. She flew me out to Los Angeles to begin the hefty task of my improvement.

Jennifer, what are you using on your face now? I hope it's not cold cream; it will utterly clog your pores. I'm sure that's what Mrs. Kippin uses. That family is very generous to be letting you live with them in New Hampshire right now. Have you properly thanked them? They are lovely, but by god, they are the Archie Bunker family reincarnate! That huge recliner and the linoleum in the living room! They are certainly not helping you get rid of that accent you still have—really, Jennifer, it just sounds so uneducated. Of course I had to meet them myself to thank them in person for letting you stay with them. But you realize, you are a adult now, Jennifer--nineteen years old. I know these church people have helped you a lot, but they do not have all the answers in the universe. I hope you are reader like your brother. Have you read any Stephen Hawking? Or Richard Dawkins? Those Christian schools probably taught you nothing about evolution and real science--just that Creationism balderdash. I'm a biologist and I know, Jennifer. It's pure bunk. The universe is billions of years old and genes run the game. You need to reeducate yourself. Novels are fine, too, of course. I'm never without one. Somerset Maugham is one of my favorites. Have you read any Somerset Maugham?”

Who?” I reply.

Of Human Bondage is on my lap, as I sit in Aunt Penny's Florida room in Florida. I helped her pack up her California house and unpack it again in Ponte Vedra Beach. She retired at 65 on the dot, not a week longer. She was done with12-hour days and traveling to Japan and Washington D.C. several times a year. She also quit a life-long smoking habit the same year, cold turkey, without a relapse. Each time we slide into her royal blue Cadillac, she pops a breath mint in her mouth, calling it her “cigarette.” The Cadillac sails along the pristine lanes of her gated community and the white leather interior smells like money. The seats are cavernous and slippery; I feel like a doll-girl sitting in them. She lets me drive the car though, but only after a dinner out when she's had one too many martinis—which is after every dinner out. She usually does not drink until five o'clock, but it is every day, and the booze either makes her mean, sentimental, or some combination of both. The unpredictability of where she will land emotionally is the scary part of spending time with her. Her brother—my father—was an alcoholic; she is clearly an alcoholic, but a successful one, a highly functioning one.

I sip red wine as I read, my feet on the edge of the ottoman, knees propped up holding the book. The afternoon light is coming through the wooden shutters onto my face and hair. I feel Aunt Penny watching me from the kitchen. Out of the corner of my eye, I see her raise her camera, adjust the zoom and take a picture of me.

Jennifer, I can't believe you are getting married! You will be only twenty-four next year! There is graduate school to think of. Who is this Michael? Do you know his family? Well, you can always get a divorce. I want to come up for your graduation and give you a party; the Hilton in Harrisburg is nice enough. Invite all your friends, and Michael's parents. We'll need to size each other up. But the Harrisburg area is the rust belt, Jennifer; it's so unattractive. I hope you go somewhere else for graduate school. Are you looking for a job in the meantime? You'll need a sincere suit; appearance is half the game. Heels too, for god's sake, Jennifer, don't wear those awful clod hoppers you tromp around in.
I didn't help you with college because I wanted to see if you could finish on your own. Years ago, things didn't work out very well with Linda when I helped her with school—her drug problem, you know. Thank god she got through that stage. But I will help you with graduate school, when you get in. Just send me the bills.”

Aunt Penny started coming to Maine for a week in the summer, when Michael and I moved there for me to go to graduate school; she loved coming back to New England. She came here as a girl with Aunt Dorothea. The family had a house in Salisbury Cove back then. Now retired, she would rent a house down near Bar Harbor, and invite Michael and me to come from Bangor, have dinner, and stay over for a night. The year she rented the house right on Salisbury Cove, it was late September. (She didn't want to fight the summer crowds and it was still plenty warm.) It was 2001. Michael and I had already been to the rental house and had a pleasant visit with Aunt Penny over the weekend. It was now the work week. The evening of September 11th, we drove down to stay with Aunt Penny and together watch the coverage of the Twin Towers. Two days later, with no flights leaving Portland, she left Maine in her rental car and got herself home to Florida in three days. She was 76.

Obituary: Marietta Carr
Marietta Carr died Aug. 8, 2003. She was 78. Carr received a B.S. in zoology from UNH in 1947 and worked at a number of hospitals before joining Abbott Laboratories, North Chicago in 1967. She was named the first woman manager at Abbott in 1968. She joined Alpha Therapeutic Corp., where she was vice president of regulatory affairs—the first woman vice president of a pharmaceutical company—from 1978 to her retirement in 1990.
She is survived by her nephew, Geoffrey Carr; nieces Jennifer Carr Isherwood-Iobst and Linda Carr Farrell, and cousins. Memorial contributions may be made to the Marietta "Penny" and Jane Carr Endowed Fund c/o The UNH Foundation, 9 Edgewood Road, Durham, NH 03824.



Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Let Me Go


I have a streak of independence that is a source of both adventure and trouble in my life. I'm not sure if the cause of this streak is nature or nurture, but I do know that too much independence can make relationships difficult when you are older. When you are younger, it just gets you into trouble. I had a fair amount of trouble and close calls growing up, mainly because I loved the freedom of just going, without a lot of discussion.

I grew up in a town called Winthrop until I was twelve, and being a latch-key kid gave me early freedom to roam our town. East of Boston, Winthrop is about a square mile of peninsula that sticks out into the Atlantic and is packed tight with people. Not many of us had yards to speak of. Our “back yard” was a fenced-in cement lot, walled high on the back side. There was a steep slope of weeds above that back wall, and a bit of grass and some trees in the neighbor's yard. But if you knew where to look, a jungle lurked just across the main drag. On the other side of Revere St., or route 145, that snakes through town, was a body shop for boats owned by friends of ours. Across from this body shop, was a large vacant lot in which “urban bamboo” grew thick and undisturbed. In that dense underbrush, we kids escaped to Vietnam and China, without telling our parents a thing. Crossing that busy street on my own was apparently not even worth discussing. I don't remember asking, just yelling as I ran out the door, “Going out to play!”

From third grade on, I was allowed to walk home from school alone. But instead of heading directly to my house, only two blocks down, I went in the opposite direction to spend more time with my friends. This meant we ambled through the highlands of town, where Ann and Shannon lived. Sometimes I would stay with one of them, for Ring Dings and General Hospital, or homework if Ann's mother was home. Sometimes I would head home after taking my lengthy detour, down stone public stairs that run here and there over Winthrop's steep hills. Dart across the busy intersection, up the back stairs of our triple-decker to the second floor. Fish the blue house key out of the clothes pin bag hanging on the wall, and let myself in.

But if I was spending time with my Shirley St. friend, Krystal, we tended to end up by the beach. Winthrop Beach gets battered by storms regularly, as do the houses lining Shore Drive. To break some of the ocean's force, banks of huge boulders were brought in and placed in strategic sections of beach. Above one of these sections is a tiny catwalk built into the towering beach wall. The catwalk is not even a foot wide and looms about 30 fifty above the boulders and crashing sea water. And where else would a couple of ten-year-old girls go when their parents think they are both jumping rope in the other's yard? Krystal and I would inch along the catwalk in our white Keds, chomping Hubba Bubba gum and discussing who was cuter—Jay or Eddie?--while injury and death danced invisibly around us. We were oblivious. Once, when were 10 or 11, Krystal and I made it all the way into Boston's Downtown Crossing by ourselves, to go to some fancy candy store. That time we got caught though, lingering too long and slowed by rush hour subway traffic on the way back; we were late. We were grounded. But it didn't matter. We went, and we made it across the border to taste freedom. We were ten years old and we would own the world—just as soon as we were let outside again.

We didn't spend the summers in Winthrop. My parents rented a spot for our big RV at a campground in East Bridgewater. We started camping there when I was very young, three or four. At Square Acres Campground, there was Robins Pond to swim in, a big grassy field to run around, tall pine trees to climb. There was enough dirt to make plenty of mud pies. My parents still worked in Boston most of the summer, commuting during the day. My brother and I were left in someone's care, I assume, but I only vaguely remember reporting to anyone else's trailer. The campground was called Square Acres because it was home to local square dancing events. The main hall on the grounds woke up with music and dancers every weekend night.

I remember the first time we went to watch one of the weekend dances. I sat on a built-in wooden bench against a back wall, my feet dangling. All the dancing couples were decked out in matching outfits, the women in frilly poofed-out skirts or dresses. The men wore bolo ties or scarves around their necks, their shirts almost as frilly as the ladies'. Oh, all those layers of lacey crinoline that showed when the ladies spun! It looked like whipped cream to my four-year-old eyes. Topped with a bone-colored ten gallon hat, like a country music crooner, the caller shouted,“Allemande Left with yer left hand! Back to yer partner fer a Right 'n Left Grand! Ace of Diamonds, Jack of Spades....Meet yer partner & all Promenade.”

My eyes were glued to the colors swirling, legs and arms gliding, couples inches from bumping into each other, but managing not to. The caller's directions were lilting gibberish to me, but the dancers responded on cue, twirled in circles, in groups, mysteriously doing the same things. Everyone was smiling. The caller's deep voice rolled out: “Aaaaaaand Do Sa Do and Circle Right, come back to the square, yes that's right, now hold them tight. Bow, bow to your partner, bow to your corner!”  I was hooked.

Maybe it was the next weekend. We were sitting around the campfire with another family. There was a lot of grown-up talk. The marshmallows were done, but it was too early to go to bed. I was picking up sticks to throw into the fire, kicking dirt around. Then I heard the music from the hall. I heard the caller's voice rising up and down, like a wave of caramel. I could see the colors and the lacey whip cream in my head already. I knew just where I'd sit. It was just dusk, but dark enough. I turned toward the hall and just went. The hall was only a stone's throw away, but through some tall pines. I tripped over big tree roots and peeled pine needles off my palms. I slipped through the first door I saw and climbed up on the bench. There they were, a rainbow of whip cream dancers.

I'm not sure how long I got to sit there, how long it took an adult around the campfire to notice that I was missing. Maybe twenty minutes, a half hour if I was lucky. I think I remember my mother telling me she knew right where to look for me.
I've been escaping ever since, resenting the obligation to tell anyone where I'm headed. I'm not sure why this is, or what caused my independent streak--nature or nurture. Like everything else, it's probably a bit of both. I was not born an overly cautious child, and I was given a lot of freedom in those impressionable years. I gained confidence in my ability to look after myself, and find ways to entertain myself.  I also like my own company.

This would make anyone walk the ocean catwalk and leave the campfire alone, wouldn't it?

Monday, February 21, 2011

Rewrite: Halloween, Devil Dogs and My Mom: Before and After Jesus

     Before my family became entrenched with the Evangelical Church, and was still obliviously, even cheerfully, freefalling toward hell, Halloween was a big affair. My older brother Geoff and I dressed as ghosts and devils, wizards and fairies. My mother came to my kindergarten class in a full white witch costume, complete with a glittery eye mask, wand and iridescent robe flowing down around her large frame.

     For the big night, we would drag out the Vincent Price 33s and put the stereo speakers out onto the porch roof. We darkened the house and lit the windows with rows of candles. When Geoff and I went door-to-door in costume, Mom would chide us if we didn’t say “trick or treat.” It was rude, she lectured, to ring the bell and just stand there with your jack-o-lantern bucket thrust forward. It didn’t matter if it was obvious why we were there, or if Mrs. Wertzman clutched her chest and gushed over how horribly cute we were. There is Halloween etiquette; you must always say “trick or treat,” and preferably say it with some enthusiasm and graciousness. It was within the rules for someone to offer a trick instead of a Charleston Chew, she warned. And if that ever happened, you’d better act appreciative and say thank you. Thank the Halloween gods, that never happened. It was bad enough that Mom made us freeze 95% of our Halloween loot, to be doled out in small increments over the next several months.

     It was the 1970s, and my mom was with millions of others exploring all the new, promising lifestyle trends--spiritual and dietetic, New Age and “All New You in 30 Days on Grapefruit”--with great zeal and optimism. She was out to find the Answer to Health and Happiness. She read all the current books, on biorhythms and probiotics; she peddled my brother and I to our elementary school on her adult-sized tricycle with the huge basket on the back. She was no purist, however. Mom loved sweets and we regularly stopped for soft serve ice cream, “creamies” we called them, in downtown Winthrop, Massachusetts, where we lived. So if I wanted a Devil Dog or Snickers bar after school, I either had to go to a friend's house or sneak down to the corner store with silver dollars snitched from my dad's top dresser drawer; our house was free of sugary temptations. And Mom was continually trying to find the right “life diet” for us all.

     I remember a parade of various small appliances cluttering our kitchen counter—a yogurt maker, a juicer, a food preserver—all promising renewed energy and health with incredible convenience. I remember bits and parts of each machine: the neat row of cups inside the yogurt maker, the thrill of plunging carrots through the juicer, and the neato vacuum feature of the preserver that sealed up food into airless plastic bags. Those machines each had their 15 minutes of fame on our counter. But some of my mother’s healthy prescriptions for our family remained more or less constant. Every morning, Mom doled out four small bowls of raw wheat bran mixed with applesauce. I usually managed to choke mine down. Unless of course, our happy, hungry black Lab named Sunshine came wagging through the kitchen when Mom’s back was turned. That dog probably had the cleanest colon—human or beast—in the entire neighborhood.

     Another daily must was a handful of vitamins. These were all neatly sorted into day-of-the-week vials and stored inside little yellow plastic chests. The chests had flip-top covers and fit only six vials; I guess even avid vitamin eaters get the Sabbath off. Every morning, I staged a mini-drama of torture, choking down the chalky pills. Only the small, aerodynamically-shaped vitamin-E provided any relief in the ordeal. Meanwhile, my stocky older brother, just to piss me off and gloat at having an unusually large trachea, would pour the entire vial of pills into his throat at once. And despite the bran and vitamins, we still occasionally succumbed to the common cold. That called for my mom’s concoction of apple cider vinegar, honey and water, to be drunk in large quantities for as long as symptoms persisted.

     She was also a strong believer in the powers of honey. One summer, when I was around 7 years old, I picked up a burning candle and spilled quite a bit of hot wax onto the bare skin of my chest. Mom grabbed a bottle of honey and poured it down my front. Legend has it that this saved me from getting any scars from the burn.

     At the same time of my mother’s foray into health foods and remedies, I remember vague references and episodes regarding her interest in more otherworldly, even occult-ish matters. She was fairly certain that she and her best friend Ray could communicate via ESP. She held a séance once in our dining room, and over time garnered a small collection of books on the occult. I imagine she got a thrill from pushing the limits of her conservative religious upbringing, as she spent her formative years at an all-girl Catholic academy. That period of flirting with the darker side of things didn’t last very long, however.

     Mom's contagious enthusiasm and optimism made her easy prey for pyramid schemes like selling HerbalLife, Amway and Evangelical Christianity. By the late '70s, the Charismatic Catholics had a hold of her, and soon she found the Evangelicals. It was time to rid the shelves of the ouiji boards and any literature bearing pentagrams.

     As the story goes, my mother was doing just that one afternoon, piling the sacrilegious books into a box, when my father appeared in the doorway of the den. He stood, stock still, looked her right in the eye, and said—in a deep voice unlike his own: “Don’t touch my books.” I came to understand years later, with the help of the church, that it was Satan himself that spoke those words to my mother, and not my reserved, normally unexacting father. But after that afternoon, our lives were never quite the same.

     We were all saved by Jesus at the Parkway Assembly of God in Revere. We were baptized in a miniature, sunken pool hidden beneath the staging behind the pulpit. We were at church three times a week for Sunday service, Wednesday night bible study and Friday night youth group. I was no longer a Girl Scout, but now a Pioneer Girl. Mom made signs saying “What Would Jesus Do?” and taped them up around the house. The next Halloween, my mother fashioned a homemade costume for Geoff. He was a Christian Soldier. With tinfoil-covered cardboard, she made for him the Armor of God, straight from Ephesians: the shield of faith, belt of truth, sword of the spirit, breastplate of righteousness, and a helmet of salvation. I got to dress up as a cat, but it had to be a white one.

     After inheriting some money, my parents moved us from Winthrop to Groveland, Mass., when I was twelve. They bought a sprawling modern A-frame house complete with intercoms and a two-car garage on 20 acres. Mom pictured having small church services in the huge upstairs room, with its vaulted ceiling and two-story windows pointing heaven-ward. My brother and I started private Christian school. We started a garden and picked raspberries from the dozens of bushes on the property. Bible studies and church potlucks were the social events at that house. My parents kept their jobs in Boston, and commuted every day, an hour each way, listening in the car to “Christian self-help tapes”: James Dobson's “Focus on the Family,” or Tim LaHaye or Jim Baker. Living in that house, my mother and I read the book of Revelation together when I was thirteen. She quit her job at Logan International and planned to get her real estate license. But she kept losing energy, and couldn't breathe. All the vitamins, all the bran and applesauce in the world couldn't make her lungs stronger. It wasn't cancer, but some indistinct respiratory disease. When I was fifteen, she went to be with her Jesus.

     I no longer go to church. I do not believe in sin or heaven and hell. But I do believe in feeding the body and spirit in all kinds of ways, like my mother did at one time. I give my children vitamins (chewable) and sprinkle supplements in their applesauce. There are no Devil Dogs in my house, but we do eat a lot of ice cream. And if one of my little girls wanted to dress as a devil for Halloween, I'd make her the costume myself.

     They told me Jesus saved my soul, but they turned out to be wrong; I saved myself.  And if I believed it could be done, I would sell my soul to have one more day with my mother.

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Dinner Party at Aunt Penny's


      “Jennifer, You'll be in charge of setting the table. Melissa is our guest and we shouldn't work her too hard. I've invited Joe and Estelle, Harold and Isabelle, George and Gertrude. I bought a whole salmon that I'll poach. A creamy dill sauce will go nicely with it. Boiled new potatoes, asparagus, and we'll make a tossed salad with that S.S. Princess Louise dressing. Did you know I acquired that dressing recipe on a cruise to Mexico? I had to trade Miguel--the darling concierge--a small fortune to get it,” Aunt Penny barks a smug laugh as her eyes relive the memory.
      We are sitting in her sunny breakfast nook, my college friend Melissa and me, Penny's niece. Aunt Penny sits back in her chair, swoops of white hair glowing in the light, her large stomach a small mountain of intimidation resting on her slim thighs. That mountain was made from at least three gin martinis a day for thirty years, I say to myself. I have memorized her drink order, from many a dinner out: “Gin martini, Bombay, if you have it, straight up, ice on the side, olives, but only the big ones. If you don't have the big ones, then a twist.” Melissa and I sit quietly now, awaiting further instruction.
      “You have to be careful who you invite to small dinner parties,” Aunt Penny instructs, stretching out her long fingers, eyeing the pearly paint on her nails.  “Joe will talk anyone's ear off, but Harold and George are pussycats and will balance out Joe. God, how much can you stand of Dr. Joseph Gilbert's tales of thoracic surgery and Leeds—he's an Anglophile and should have just stayed there if he liked it so much. At least he follows football. In dinner conversation, fall back on sports, never politics, when in doubt. Do you girls watch sports”
      Melissa and I stare at our plates for a moment, a little terrified of giving the wrong answer. But you can hardly fake being a sports fan, so we apologize, confess that, no, we don't watch sports.
     “Well, that's fine. You two don't have time for television anyway, with all the studying you have in college. I never watched TV when I was your age. I only starting watching football when I retired, to be sociable. It's horribly violent. Barbaric, really. But there's golf. Everyone around here plays and watches golf, of course. Did you know Tiger Woods was playing here just last month? A lot of fuss. I like Mick Mickelson, myself. ”
      We sit mutely in full agreement, fiddling with our grapefruit spoons, the damask napkins sliding off our laps. She continues her debriefing on tonight's guests. “Estelle is good at making everyone feel comfortable, Isabelle too, but Estelle can egg Joe on too much. His nickname for her is Monkey, can you imagine? Mind you, Estelle has been my best friend for thirty years, and she's a dear, but they both go on and on about their beloved Britain and I want to shoot myself. Not everyone finds the subject so fascinating. Gertrude, I'm not even sure how much English she understands. You will probably not comprehend a word she says with her thick German accent. She clearly married George for his money; he's as homely as a warthog and she's, well, you'll see, buxom and bleached blonde hair. A trophy wife, no doubt.”
      Melissa and I nod, the obedient pupils of the retirement-age dinner party. We swallow our opinions and judgments about Penny's judgments. Penny (christened Marietta) is sixty-seven, recently retired to a groomed, gated community in northern coastal Florida, a complex called Sawgrass that is also the headquarters of the golfing world's PGA tour. She retired from Los Angeles, and was supposedly the first female vice president of a major international pharmaceutical firm. When she answers her home phone, it is with a punched, “Penny Carr!”-- as if she were still behind the corporate desk. She never married, although she assures me, she had several proposals. Her house looks as if it were furnished by the Smithsonian—historic, exotic, tasteful and utterly breakable. In the living room, the oriental carpets are white with blue, pink and green filigree. The upholstery is either all white or silk pastoral scenes of women with parasols—even the Queen Anne dining room chairs are padded in complete white. Hand-painted cloisonne eggshells nest in gold rings on a side table, next to a tall wooden statue of a tribal god and a pale green marble dish. The deep red carved Japanese cabinets in the dining room smell like cedar when you open them. There are drink coasters on every surface.
      Aunt Penny looks at Melissa's lightly rouged cheeks and lip color. “Jennifer, why can't you put on some make-up like Melissa? You could use some color. You've got your father's pale, English skin. Lipstick is always a good idea. Do you do your nails?”
      I lift my trimmed blank nails slowly up above the table. “No, I see you don't. Well, I keep mine painted when I haven't got a lot of gardening to do. My toes, too. It's pretty, and there's nothing wrong with being a little pretty, Jennifer. A little glamor. Women in my generation know about glamor, hair done, proper shoes. You girls with your long straight hair, and those shoes--God, Jennifer! What did you call them? Doctor Martens? They look like the kind of shoes they made polio survivors wear when I was a girl. Ghastly, Jennifer. I need to take you over to Neiman Marcus for some decent shoes. Are you wearing that London Fog that I bought you? A good trench coat is priceless. Melissa, do you have a good trench coat?”
      “Oh, Yes, I do, a navy blue one” Melissa replies quickly, nudging my foot with hers under the table. What a liar. I'll get her and her breakfast lipstick later, when we're alone.
      By mid-afternoon it's time to set the table. Melissa and I go into the dining room and begin getting out the china, crystal glasses and silver. Two glasses, three forks, a dinner plate, a salad plate...I call out to Aunt Penny, who is in the kitchen wrapping the whole salmon, head and all, in cheese cloth, a Williams Sonoma apron cinched neatly around her girth. “Aunt Penny, how do the glasses and silverware go again?”
      “Look it up! It's in the back of the Joy of Cooking. I have it marked.” I slide quietly into the kitchen and find the cookbook on a shelf near the breakfast table, and bring the book back into the dining room. Melissa is standing by the table, her eyes wide and hands behind her back, afraid to move the crystal stemware around too much. We manage to put the table together and go into the kitchen asking if we can do anything else. Aunt Penny tells me to get some dill from the herb garden outside. I freeze. We didn't eat many fresh herbs growing up and I don't think I know what dill looks like growing in a garden. As if she can read my mind, Aunt Penny says, “You do know what dill looks like, don't you?”
      “Uh, I think so.”
      “Honestly, Jennifer, didn't your mother teach you anything? Follow me!” We go out the patio door to a little patch of plants growing by the house. Aunt Penny bends down with a grunt and snips off some feathery fronds from a small bushy plant.
      “This is dill.” She holds it up to my face, hot with embarrassment. “There is rosemary. Oregano. Basil. Thyme. Mint,” she points sharply to the other little plants. “It's time you learn these things, Jennifer. You're twenty-one years old.” She turns briskly and I follow her back into the house, wishing I had the guts to stand up for myself, wishing I could do more right now than give her the finger behind her back.
      It's five-thirty. Aunt Penny is dressed in a long silk blouse and flowing dress pants, a thick gold chain with a small jeweled magnifying glass around her neck. A silver serpentine ring winds its way around the ring finger on her left hand. She's just made her second martini from the bar set up on the kitchen counter. Melissa and I shuffle around in our hippie skirts and peasant shirts. Aunt Penny asks me to set out some cheese and crackers and a bowl of nuts. She eases herself into the white armchair in the living room and puts her feet up on the ottoman, admiring the bright mauve of her toenails through sheer stockings. While in the kitchen, I pour myself a large tumbler of Cabernet and set out the cheese and crackers.
      Aunt Penny spies my glass choice. “No, Jennifer. If you're going to have wine, get a proper wine glass.” I return to the kitchen.
      At six o'clock, the doorbell rings. Joe and Estelle come through the door, with Harold and Isabelle on their heels. Aunt Penny gives perfunctory cheek kisses to everyone, while Melissa and I stand to the side, silent, smiling. The group turns and Aunt Penny introduces us with a strange mix in her eyes and voice: pride—to be the temporary owner of such youth—and disapproval, that our appearance doesn't exactly scream Audrey Hepburn and Jackie O. While she's making introductions, and her friends are showering us with welcomes and questions, Zsa Zsa Gabor and Jimmy Durante walk through the door. The wave of flowery perfume and cologne that enters with Gertrude and George is stinging; it's so thick, I swear it's visible. I involuntarily take a step back while George thrusts his hand forward telling me I must be Jennifer, so pleased, so pleased. Penny has told us so much about you. Gertrude beams the smile of someone with no children of her own and I pray that she will not kiss me. She booms forward, her bosom like the bow of a ship, and I silently hold my breath, feeling a thick smudge of lipstick on my cheek. She titters and wipes it off with her thumb, “Zo Zorry!” I am five years old. So why do I have the urge to flee outside for a cigarette and brandy?
      Aunt Penny orders everyone into the living room and announces that we are to get our own drinks; she's being casual. Joe sidles up to me quickly, asking me about my studies and my older brother Geoff, whom he has met and likes very much. Aunt Penny is in the kitchen, getting the salmon out of the oven, putting the potatoes in a covered dish. She peers around the doorway into the living room, and calls out to me. Melissa follows. “Jennifer, I really could use your help right now. Joe will monopolize you for the whole evening, if you let him. You have to circulate; it's rude not to.” She turns her green eyes on Melissa. “Melissa, go talk to Joe about something he knows about.”
      At the table, the conversation flows freely and centers on Melissa and me. Joe and Estelle want to hear all about my recent semester in London. I tell tales of living in the home of a divorced vicar who boarded university students for extra money. I talk about the shows I saw and the Shakespeare class I took. Joe is bursting at the seams. He jumps in to tell a story of brilliant show they saw at a “theatre in the round” in Stratford-Upon-Avon, and how they got their tickets to the sold-out show.  Joe has just begun when Estelle jumps in, on the edge of her seat.
      “No, no, Joe! That wasn't how it happened at all!”
      “Monkey, don't shout!” Joe shouts.
      My eyes dart over to Melissa, whose face has crumpled in an attempt to stifle a shocked laugh. The table grins and lets Joe and Estelle argue over their story. Then I catch a glimpse of Aunt Penny, who has not been the center of attention for quite some time. She stiffens, places both hands flat on the table, and with Joe in mid-sentence, mid-story, blurts, “Alright, we have to move on to dessert. I bought the caramel flan from Contessa's, and everyone will eat some.”



Sunday, February 13, 2011

Halloween, Devil Dogs and My Mom: Before and After Jesus

       Before my family became entrenched with the Evangelical Church, and was still obliviously, even cheerfully, freefalling toward hell, Halloween was a big affair. My older brother Geoff and I dressed as ghosts and cute devils, wizards and fairies. My mother came to my kindergarten class in a full white witch costume, complete with a glittery eye mask, wand and iridescent robe flowing down around her large, pear-shaped frame. For the big night, we would drag out the creepy Vincent Price 33s and put the stereo speakers out onto the porch roof. We darkened the house and lit the windows with rows of candles. When Geoff and I went door-to-door in costume, Mom would chide us if we didn’t say “trick or treat.” It was rude, she lectured, to ring the bell and just stand there with your jack-o-lantern bucket thrust forward. It didn’t matter if it was obvious why we were there, or if Mrs. Wertzman clutched her chest and gushed over how horribly cute we were. There is Halloween etiquette; you must always say “trick or treat,” and preferably say it with some enthusiasm and graciousness. It was within the rules for someone to offer a trick instead of a Charleston Chew, she warned. And if that ever happened, you’d better act appreciative and say thank you. Thank the Halloween gods, that never happened. It was bad enough that Mom made us freeze 95% of our Halloween loot, to be doled out in small increments over the next several months.
      It was the 1970s, and my mom was with millions of others exploring all the new, promising lifestyle trends--spiritual and dietetic, New Age and “All New You in 30 Days on Grapefruit”--with great zeal and optimism. She was out to find the Answer to Health and Happiness. She read all the current books, on biorhythms and probiotics; she peddled my brother and I to our elementary school on her adult-sized tricycle with the huge basket on the back. She was no purist, however. Mom loved sweets and we regularly stopped for soft serve ice cream, “creamies” we called them, in downtown Winthrop, Massachusetts, where we lived. So if I wanted a Devil Dog or Snickers bar after school, I either had to go to a friend's house or sneak down to the corner store with silver dollars snitched from my dad's top dresser drawer; our house was free of sugary temptations. And Mom was continually trying to find the right “life diet” for us all. She was bright and adventurous, eternally optimistic. As a young woman, before marriage, she earned her private pilot's license—just for the fun of it, and because she knew she could do it. My father was the skeptic, the quietly stewing, secretly smoking, drinking, barroom intellectual. Dad didn't exactly put all his chips in with Mom on every trend, large or small. But you would never know it, if there were protests or misgivings, they were drowned out or swept away by the sheer force of Mom's irrepressible spirit. How, then, could this exuberant, life-loving woman end up dying at the age of 46?
      Mom's contagious enthusiasm and optimism made her easy prey for pyramid schemes like selling HerbalLife, Amway and Evangelical Christianity. As for her flings with the health food movement of the 1970s, I remember a parade of various small appliances cluttering our kitchen counter—a yogurt maker, a juicer, a food preserver—all promising renewed energy and health with incredible convenience. I remember bits and parts of each machine: the neat row of cups inside the yogurt maker, the thrill of plunging carrots through the juicer, and the neato vacuum feature of the preserver that sealed up food into airless plastic bags. Those machines each had their 15 minutes of fame on our counter. But some of my mother’s healthy prescriptions for our family remained more or less constant. Every morning, Mom doled out four small bowls of raw wheat bran mixed with applesauce. I usually managed to choke mine down. Unless of course, our happy, hungry black Lab named Sunshine came wagging through the kitchen when Mom’s back was turned. That dog probably had the cleanest colon—human or beast—in the entire neighborhood. Another daily must was a handful of vitamins. These were all neatly sorted into day-of-the-week vials and stored inside little yellow plastic chests. The chests had flip-top covers and fit only six vials; I guess even avid vitamin eaters get the Sabbath off. Every morning, I staged a mini-drama of torture, choking down the chalky pills. Only the small, aerodynamically-shaped vitamin-E provided any relief in the ordeal. Meanwhile, my stocky older brother, just to piss me off and gloat at having an unusually large trachea, would pour the entire vial of pills into his throat at once. And despite the bran and vitamins, we still occasionally succumbed to the common cold. That called for my mom’s concoction of apple cider vinegar, honey and water, to be drunk in large quantities for as long as symptoms persisted. She was also a strong believer in the powers of honey. One summer, when I was around 7 years old, I picked up a burning candle and spilled quite a bit of hot wax onto the bare skin of my chest. Mom grabbed a bottle of honey and poured it down my front. Legend has it that this saved me from getting any scars from the burn.
       At the same time of my mother’s foray into health foods and remedies, I remember vague references and episodes regarding her interest in more otherworldly, even occult-ish matters. She was fairly certain that she and her best friend Ray could communicate via ESP. She held a séance once in our dining room, and over time garnered a small collection of books on the occult. I imagine she got a thrill from pushing the limits of her conservative religious upbringing, as she spent her formative years at an all-girl Catholic academy. That period of flirting with the darker side of things didn’t last very long, however. By the late '70s, the Charismatic Catholics had a hold of her, and soon she found the Evangelicals. It was time to rid the shelves of the ouiji boards and any literature bearing pentagrams.
      As the story goes, my mother was doing just that one afternoon, piling the sacrilegious books into a box, when my father appeared in the doorway of the den. He stood, stock still, looked her right in the eye, and said—in a deep voice unlike his own: “Don’t touch my books.” I came to understand years later, with the help of the church, that it was Satan himself that spoke those words to my mother, and not my reserved, normally unexacting father. But after that afternoon, our lives were never quite the same.
      We were all saved by Jesus at the Parkway Assembly of God in Revere. We were baptized in a miniature, sunken pool hidden beneath the staging behind the pulpit. We were at church three times a week for Sunday service, Wednesday night bible study and Friday night youth group. I was no longer a Girl Scout, but now a Pioneer Girl. Mom made signs saying “What Would Jesus Do?” and taped them up around the house. The next Halloween, my mother fashioned a homemade costume for Geoff. He was a Christian Soldier. With tinfoil-covered cardboard, she made for him the Armor of God, straight from Ephesians: the shield of faith, belt of truth, sword of the spirit, breastplate of righteousness, and a helmet of salvation. I got to dress up as a cat, but it had to be a white one.
       After inheriting some money, my parents moved us from Winthrop to Groveland, Mass., when I was twelve. They bought a sprawling modern A-frame house complete with intercoms and a two-car garage on 20 acres. Mom pictured having small church services in the huge upstairs room, with its vaulted ceiling and two-story windows pointing heaven-ward. My brother and I started private Christian school. We started a garden and picked raspberries from the dozens of bushes on the property. Bible studies and church potlucks were the social events at that house. My parents kept their jobs in Boston, and commuted every day, an hour each way, listening in the car to “Christian self-help tapes”: James Dobson's “Focus on the Family,” or Tim LaHaye or Jim Baker. Living in that house, my mother and I read the book of Revelation together when I was thirteen. I would have two more years with her, and only one more in the “big house.” She quit her job at Logan International and planned to get her real estate license. But she kept losing energy, and couldn't breathe. All the vitamins, all the bran and applesauce in the world couldn't make her lungs stronger. It wasn't cancer, but some indistinct respiratory disease. We sold the big house and moved across the river to Haverhill, to an ugly green and white ranch. One year later, when I was fifteen, she went to be with her Jesus. He may have wiped my soul clean, but I still haven't forgiven Him.
      I no longer go to church.  I do not believe in sin or heaven and hell.  But I do believe in feeding the soul and spirit in other ways.  I give my children vitamins and sprinkle probiotics in their applesauce.  There are no Devil Dogs in my house either.  But if one of my little girls wanted to dress as a cute devil for Halloween, I'd make her the costume myself.