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.

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.”

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.

Would You Go? (rewrite 1)

     What would you do if at the age of 24 you are given the chance to go half-way around the world, to a mysterious country, and make more money than you ever have in your whole young life? Enough money in one year to pay off all your student loans in one fell swoop. You might just do it. What would you do if the job is offered to you, but you are in love with a man, things are serious, and you know the job gig in Japan will not allow “shacking up,” meaning you can't just go together as partners. You can't do so because the job includes living in a house which is provided by the Japanese town that wants to hire you to teach conversational English and help plan an international winter arts festival. Shacking up is out of the question. You might just marry that man you are in love with and go to Japan for your honeymoon—for a year.

      We stored all our possessions with friend and relatives. We sold my plucky little red pick-up truck to a couple of nuns journeying to Mexico for a mission trip, and Michael's cherished VW Golf was sold off the curb by his dad after we left. But somehow we convinced Michael's sister to babysit my motorcycle. We packed all the new wedding gifts in boxes and were staying with Michael's parents in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. It was late Spring and already getting hot. We were waiting for the call from Matsuoka-san, the “Social Manager” of rural Higashikawa, Japan, that they were ready for us. The current English teacher was still living in the house that we were to move into; she should be going back to England any week now, he said.

      So we waited, and tried to study some Japanese. We memorized what we thought would be vital Japanese phrases, “Kyo no tenki wa do desu ka?”: What is the weather today? That didn't turn out to be the most helpful phrase in daily Japanese life, but we liked how it rolled off the tongue. “Hajimimashite. Oname wa Jennifer. Ogenki desu ka?” was much more useful: It's a pleasure to meet you. My name is Jennifer. How are you? But the phrase we ended up using the most? “Gomen nasai. Wakaranai”: I'm sorry. I don't understand.

      We had packed our precious music collection, a boom box, books, and photos of friends and family into sturdy boxes and shipped them to Higashikawa by “slow boat mail” weeks previous. Hopefully, we would arrive about the same time as our stuff. So, we waited in humid central Pennsylvania and paced the rooms of Michael's parents' house, filled with Lancaster County antiques, 1970's overstuffed flowery furniture, and photos of family on the old piano in the den. We ate homemade macaroni and cheese with stewed tomatoes and corn bread at dinner. We went to the City Line Diner for breakfasts of scrapple, blueberry pancakes and bottomless cups of coffee. In the evenings, we watched old Jimmy Stewart movies and played Hearts around the dining room table. We laughed together with Michael's parents about the mishaps at our wedding two months previous, like when Michael forgot to bring dress socks to the church. He and the best man had to run to K-Mart an hour before the wedding and they bought a cheap acrylic pair that rubbed on the groom's feet in his rented wedding shoes. Then one evening the call came. Could we leave tomorrow?

      The next 48 hours would be a dramedy of trains, planes and buses, all the way to northern Japan. We packed our backpacks and carry-ons, kissed family and friends good-bye and innocently set out for what would be a roller coaster year: stressful and hilarious, baffling and fascinating, rewarding and draining.

      We took off from the Lancaster train station, with its grand arched windows letting in the strong early morning sun while giant fans attempted to cool off passengers. Already sweating, giddy, nervous, we hauled our luggage aboard for the ride to Grand Central Station. Time was tight, and we had to get a cab from Grand Central to JFK. We checked our tickets and passports a dozen times on the train. Did we have everything? Surely we've forgotten something vitally important. What the hell are we doing moving to Japan where we don't know a soul and barely speak their language? I hardly remember rushing through Grand Central, my adrenaline took over. There was a sea of people, of all stripes and sizes. We managed to find the row of cabs outside and dramatically told the driver: JFK, as fast as you can. I do remember sitting back in the cab, for a moment thinking, “Look at us, squeezing through New York City masses and traffic on our way to JFK, on our way to Japan.” But I barely looked at the scenery. I didn't soak in New York's--America's--sprawling diversity. Very soon, Michael and would be America to each other, and to virtually everyone we would meet on the island of Hokkaido for the next year. For the first time in our lives, we would be the foreigners and there would be no disguising it.

      JFK to LAX, via Cincinnati. On the plane, we splurged for the cocktail, peeled the foil off the 6x8 beige rectangle that came as dinner, watched the in-flight movie, and wondered what Michael's parents were eating for dinner. There was a short layover in LAX, but we had to transfer to the international terminal, with our luggage. We boarded the shuttle bus, with our overstuffed bags, and dragged everything to the Japan Air check-in counter. We got in line behind neatly dressed Japanese business men and small, subdued families, all with similar hard-cased suitcases on rollers. We shoved our hiking packs forward in the line with our feet and shins. Checked our tickets again; yes, it's the right airline. It had been, what—about 16 or 18 hours on the move already? We were losing energy for conversation. We happily handed over our big bags at the counter and moved right through the security check toward the gates. Walking toward our gate, we looked at the time—still a couple of hours. We stared around at the acres of carpet, the hard plastic chairs and clusters of tan people in waiting areas. Outside, one more time, before getting in another tight-spaced vehicle--we both agreed on getting some fresh air. Why did we rush to the gate? Now we had to walk about half a mile through Departures to get out where the sun was shining—and then back through security again. Beginner's mistake. We did it anyway. Our flight to Tokyo was 10 hours.

      The flight was endless, and only made bearable by Japanese hospitality. The flight attendants, all female, were beacons of tranquility and refreshment, smiling beatifically with bright red lipstick and not a hair out of place, bowing as if grateful for the opportunity to serve. Did we want some hot green tea and rice crackers? A Japanese newspaper in English? They brought us hot facecloths on tiny lacquer trays before serving our bento box dinners of sticky rice, fish, pickled vegetables and fruit. We were not in Pennsylvania anymore.

      Narita airport, Tokyo: a sea of mostly black-haired heads on mostly small-framed bodies, with the occasional head lightened to reddish or streaked with a punky magenta. Eyes started to follow us as we stopped and stared in confusion at signs in both English and Japanese. In Japan, we would later learn, there is never, ever, a lack of customer service and everyone from a car wash attendant to the fancy department store clerk is dressed in a full, spotless uniform. We did not stand gaping for more than a minute.  Outfitted in a smart red and black knee-length dress and low heels, this smiling multi-lingual airport ambassador slowly approached us, asking if we needed help. She politely requested to look at our pile of tickets and with a confident smile told us we needed to transfer to Haneda airport to catch our flight to Sapporo, Hokkaido. Another airport, another shuttle bus, with all the luggage that we just negotiated through customs. We swayed on our heels just thinking about it. It was going on 32 hours with no real sleep for either of us. And, Miss Ambassador added cheerfully, pointing to a small airport map, to get to the Haneda shuttle bus you must ride the light rail to this area. We looked down at the map, our eyes glazing over, our shoulders aching from backpacks and airplane seats. She saw the weariness in our eyes. I will take you there, she said. Like grateful puppies, we followed her through the maze of Narita, to the entrance of the light rail station. She helped us buy train tickets from the hi-tech vending machines. We bowed our first full bow of thanks, and we left her to wait for the train. We thumped down on a railside bench, exhaled in tired relief at each other, then stared around in amazement at this immaculate, sunny rail station. There was not a scrap of trash or a scrawl of graffiti to be found. Not even a wad of gum on the cement. It was like Disney World, but without Mickey and Tinkerbell.

      It took close to two hours to get to Haneda. We checked our bags one more time and boarded for the short flight to Sapporo. Most Japanese people have small, elegant frames. But the younger generation is getting taller and taller, and the Sumo wrestlers have always been bigger, of course. On that flight to Sapporo, on a small puddle jumper plane, I had my only close encounter with what I believe was a Sumo-in-training, a very revered profession in Japan. We were some of the last to board the plane and as I approached my row, I saw a very large, tall young Japanese man on the aisle seat. His eyes locked on me too, for the briefest second. I could almost see the prayer floating above his head, that it wouldn't be me, the gaijin, the foreign woman, that would have the seat next to him. I stopped beside his seat. He heaved himself up gracefully, a long black pony-tail down his back. I nodded, half-bowed, thank you, sorry, excuse me. “Sumi masen. Dozo yoroshiku,” he replied and bowed quickly back: Excuse me. Please go ahead. We sat side by side, trying to pretend the other was not too close for comfort, trying to take up as little space as possible.

      In Sapporo, Matsuoka-san met us as we were leaving the baggage claim area, smiling like the cat who ate the canary. Two foreigners for the price of one! This was his lucky day. He laughed heartily over our stories of being lost in Narita, of the Sumo sitting next to me on the plane. We must be hungry, thirsty. We were, but also too exhausted to even register more than our desperate need to be prone in a dark quiet room that was not moving in any fashion whatsoever. We had been traveling for almost two days straight.

      Matsuoka bought us ramen noodles in the first airport restaurant we came to. Slurp them, he said, make noise while you eat! That is a sign of respect. We obediently slurped, while Matsuoka puffed away on his Mild Seven cigarettes, not eating, assessing our use of chopsticks. “Hashi! Chopsticks! You use chopsticks very well!” he said, clearly surprised and pleased. “How did you learn? Do all Americans know how to use them?” Uh, we don't know, we said. Do we guess at the percentage of chopstick agility in America or just tell him, yes, all Americans know how to use them?

      One more train ride, about 2 hours, from Sapporo to Asahikawa, a city of 350,000 about 10 kilometers outside of Higashikawa. On the way to the train, Matsuoka stopped in front of a huge beverage vending machine and asked if we'd like something for the ride. We peered at the drinks on the front of the machine: Pocari Sweat? Hot Kofe-Latte? Milk Tea? Hot Green Tea? All in a can. Wow. We chose coffee, Michael's black, mine with milk. The cans were hot in our hands as we trundled onto the train and marveled at this bit of new culture. We would come to discover that you could acquire almost anything out of a vending machine in Japan: beer, rice, cigarettes, noodles, neckties.

      We arrived in Asahikawa and stepped out of the station to throngs of people along the Kaimono-Koen, a sprawling shopping district. Young girls in patent leather platform boots and mini-skirts stepped around housewives with aprons, carrying bundles tied together with cloth. A loudspeaker high on a utility pole blared out tinny music. Bizarrely, about 75% of the cars were white.
       As we rubbed our eyes, trying to adjust to the scene, Matsuoka told us we'd be staying in a hotel here in downtown for one night.  The current English teacher will be leaving in a day or two. We entered the small lobby of the bland hotel, Matsuoka paid for our room and told us he'd meet us for breakfast. What time? Eight O'clock, he joked?   Noon, I think to myself, please, have mercy.  We made our way to the room and slowly opened the door. It was about the size of a king-sized bed, the entire room. But it had two slim beds on either wall, about a foot apart from each other.  We used the bathroom, giggling, deliriously at this point, at the array of buttons on what appeared to be a digital toilet. Then we fell into bed, the taste of hot canned coffee still on our breath.  We'd figure out how to flush the toilet in the morning.