The Green Bag and Old Henna Beard
A few days ago I wrote about a bag I got for my anniversary. It was green. It was perfect.
The bag does have one flaw, though, which is that when I put the wrist part around my wrist, it can sometimes fall off. Actually, it always falls off. The clasp is lovely but not effective. I plan to address this with the people at the boutique where it’s from, to see if I can be fixed. However, this leads us into the story.
I lose my wallet more than anyone else. Do you think you lose your wallet a lot? I am still confident that I am going to take the gold in this event.
Sound bad and it’s certainly inconvenient but it’s generally ok in retrospect—after I have canceled the credit cards being retrospect—because I also get it back. I get it back in more miraculous ways than anyone else, and more times than anyone else. These facts reconfirm that the universe and New York are for the most part fact a warm small places rather than terrifying crime dens.
Not that anyone has accused the universe or even New York of being a terrifying crime den.
Out loud.
(Mom.)
The most memorable time I lost my wallet was when I was least prepared to deal with it. I had been checked into the hospital and told that I would have a baby that night, and then everyone changed their mind.
As in, “Tada! We will send you home with no baby! We will send in a team of nursing assistants to help you get your socks back on. And we are sending you home with is a thing that is basically a gas can but you’ll note the unsubtle yellow color. Take it home and pee into until it is full, at which point you can return it to our lab, so we can decide to check you into the hospital again, to have another baby! I mean, the first baby! Except that no, once again, no baby, go home, you whale, is what we will say. We will say, ‘psyche!’ Then we will tell you not to get out of bed until we check you into the hospital a third time, and your spirit has been totally broken, and at that point, we may let you have a baby.”
(End quote.)
After I was released from the hospital that first time, I made Matthew carry everything, because I felt sorry for myself and my hands hurt from IV holes. We stopped and got some takeout (Greek) then jumped (lumbered) into a taxi. We told the driver where we were going and he made a grumpy noise about taking us to Brooklyn, saying “no no no,” and my husband, who was tired and jumpy like a gonna-be-dad and carrying lots of things, started reciting the civic transportation code. You know, the one about how the driver doesn’t have a choice, how he must take us anywhere within 5 boroughs, etc.
I demanded that we get out of the cab because I didn’t want someone crabby to start with and furious because Matthew was about to make a citizen’s arrest to drive me home. So I said “I know he’s wrong but let’s get out of the damn car and find another one.” And we got out. In my mind, I was only in charge of the giant yellow pee container, and Matthew supposed to take care of the takeout and my purse, plus whatever he had. Not being accustomed to purses, he left my bag in the cab.
And this proves my point: despite our differences with the driver, he happily brought it to Matthew the next day and dropped it off at his office.
See? Life is complicated, but largely good.
And then . . . (back to the green bag story.)
One recent day I was wheeling our blue stroller along with my green bag hooked to the back handle, having forgotten its tendency to disengage. We were almost home and I was thinking about getting Henry a slice at the new pizza place near our apartment. I wanted to stave off its inevitable closure, and also hoping to stave off the struggle for what to serve for lunch, which is (one of the) parts of the day during which Henry and I stare blankly at one another, and then he goes to the big kitchen cabinet and squats to the bottom edge since he can’t reach the handle and gets himself some crackers. Or French coconut cubes. Or cat food.
Pizza might help that situation. But did I have any money? Better check. Uh, wait, where is that fancy new bag, anyhow?
Oh, no.
I knew I’d had it when I dropped a friend off at her apartment building about 10 minutes before, about a third of a mile away. Then I continued down that street, crossed the street with the stroller to ask if Henry recognized the house we moved out of five months ago, then turned left onto the Avenue where we live. I remembered at what point I had crossed to the other side there, too, so looking shouldn’t be so hard. I remembered seeing a youngish Chinese man give me a funny look as I struggled the stroller onto the curb. Had I seen anyone else on the walk?
As I crossed the street and swept my gaze back and forth along both sides of the sidewalk, covering all ground, I saw another man I remembered seeing. He was wearing a knitted Patagonian style- ski hat, with flaps pulled over his ears, and a blazer, and despite this interesting regalia, his most distinguishing characteristic was a short-clipped beard that was mostly gray, but the tips of which had been reddened with henna. He had dyed his beard at one point but it was growing out, I guess.
He was memorable, and here he was again. I stopped him to enlist his help.
“I lost a little green bag,” I said.
He hadn’t spoken yet, but I was already wondering how much English he spoke, so my conversational momentum was slowing just as I noticed a patch of that very same green color as the bag peeking forth from his blazer. His blazer which he was holding closed, against my gaze.
Umm.
Dropping your bag is different than having it stolen, I am well aware. But this posed a truly uncomfortable situation. I was becoming sure it was my bag. “The bag that was formerly mine.” Should I just . . . point? Would that be rude?
I just stood and looked at it.
He pulled it out. Well, no, he pulled my wallet out of his blazer. He’d already taken it out of the green bag. “This is yours miss? This with the $21 dollars inside?”
Points for calling me “miss,” but he had already counted out and taken the cash, so, no points. “I guess you can keep that,” I said.
And by that, I meant, “I will unwillingly forfeit $21 to cut this interaction short and get back my leather goods. And my plastic.”
“You are sure?” He was a little eager to keep it. “Because . . . ” And that’s when he did the gesture. It was one finger held vertically swirling around and around in the air.
“You see, I believe . . . ” and he thought hard on how to translate his belief into English while his finger swirled.
“You believe that what comes around goes around?” I asked.
“That is it!”
I let him keep the $21 and he gave me back my wallet and my green bag. I had lost my ability to buy pizza. I was angry. But I am lucky that I got my bag back. And I’m slightly worried because if what comes around goes around, things don’t look great for Old Henna Beard.
Civily Unionizated
This is not part 2 of the green bag thing, but rather:
My friend Louise is one of the most broadly talented people I know. She is always recording an album or writing a play or more recently, a book (go Lulu!), and had a large part in making this short, which is a lot of fun and also, has an important message.
You can find the video on YouTube here.
Marriage, Cheese, and the Advent of the Green Bag
We have been married for three years and maybe seven weeks. For our anniversary some nice things happened, and I am only getting to chronicle them now.
The First Thing
A brown box arrived via a person dressed in brown in a brown truck, and that was how we learned that our excellent friends had arranged for a special present for the anniversary.
Did they give us one three years and seven weeks ago? Apparently not, though I would have missed that one on the quiz. (Also, I can’t stand to think about them feeling guilty and worried, because it reminds me of the slew of excellent and generous friends I never bought wedding presents for in my broke and single days. A cold shudder, and an apology to the masses.)
But back to the happy, cheese-filled place: this year our friends enrolled us in a CHEESE OF THE MONTH club via the Bedford Cheese Shop. We will get three kinds of cheese every month for six months.
As I write, we have already received two installments. It’s exciting. So exciting that this happened: in the second, the dry ice was packed in an unusual way. It was disguised, in fact, as cheese. Everything that is wrapped in anything might be fancy cheese! I became very greedy and unwrapped this extra wax-paper wrapped thing to sniff and otherwise assess it . . . just before I realized it was actually dry ice! How dramatic! I am lucky that I did not evaporate!
We will get three kinds of cheese per month. Three. We have eaten a lot of it, and I made a riff on a gorgonzola sauce for pumpkin ravioli with one sort, and I made chicken with ham blankets and buttery soft Swiss double cream cheese with another sort. Also, we drink wine and eat cheese while making dinner and just generally live like kings.
This bounty, in addition to the accompanying bubble wrap that comes in the box every month for six months, is pretty great.
The Second Thing
On the day of the anniversary, I went out for a great dinner with my husband, at Savoy. As it happened I coughed like I was in the final throes of TB the whole time, but we had a super time and hopefully the other diners didn’t perceive me as too much of a vector. I had one half of a bacon infused old-fashioned cocktail, which is not as ridiculous as it sounds. Well, the one half part is, but the bacon part isn’t. It did not have a strip of raw bacon rimming the outside of a rocks glass, as I had momentarily imagined, or chunks floating within. It was simply delicious and the whiskey had a slightly smokey aspect. And, note to self: Wow, do I like spending time alone with my husband that is not cloaked in chores and tasks and decisions, and wow, is there barely any of that these days. Wowee.
Another Thing
By my husband of three years, I was given a really splendid little green purse with red stitching. I got it for being a GREAT WIFE. Wow, do I love this bag, hewn of leather of the fine caliber that I am of wife! Hewn! But it also inspires me to try to be a better wife: either to stay as good as the bag, or let’s face it, to try get there in the first place.
The next installment will be be a continuation of this post about the adventures of the green bag.
Thankful for:
I was overwhelmed when Matthew suggested making the list in the car on the way to Thanksgiving, and I begged for a deferral. But birthdays and thanksgiving both require reflection on what’s going well. I guess that loss might, too.
So:
I am thankful for my husband, who has a really great sweater collection. He once had a coffee pot for 18 years without dropping it or getting tired of it, and that’s the sort of care he takes of his wife and son. Uh, we hope. He is extremely appreciative when I make curry for him and he lets me have his hand-me-down socks. I am relating these small details because when I talked about how smart and handsome and moral he is, it seemed like bragging. He is excellent at hugging.
I am extraordinarily thankful for our tiny modular family starring my favorite little Lego with the stick straight hair and the wide bright eyes.
I am thankful for my cat. She likes to sit in my lap, though we only talk about once a week these days. I feel like she embodies forgiveness, though perhaps what she embodies is desperation. Anyhow, thanks Kitty.
I am thankful for for my amazing parents and extended family, most of whom we saw yesterday (Thanksgiving) and without whom the last few years would have sucked beyond compare.
I am thankful for my brother-in-law. When I first met him 19 years ago at a summer dinner at my parents’ house, he ate a hamburger in front of me so slowly that I started to write him off as, I don’t know, someone who didn’t like hamburgers as much as I would have hoped. As suspect in some way. But he has taught me about even keel. No one’s saying I eat slow or have an even keel, but that man can put away the burgers: he’s just pacing himself. (Um, way to underdescribe someone who deserves a cape.)
I am thankful for my niece and nephew, who are hilarious and delightful, and who ushered me into aunthood. One notable part of aunthood is how tired you aren’t. Yeah. They also gave me a glimpse of the breathtaking love that comes with parenthood long before I had a child myself. The breathtaking love without the tiredness. Yeah. Their whole little act is rather misleading, if you’d like to know the truth.
I am thankful for my friends, old and yet it is like no time has passed when we see each other; and new yet with huge promise. I also love my medium-rare friends.
I am thankful for my excellent Brooklyn neighborhood, which makes me feel cozy and proud. Smug, actually. And I’m thankful for our new apartment! And the bathroom, which is really nice.
I’m thankful for the coffee drinks at Market in our neighborhood. It’s the most delicious coffee there is. If you don’t believe me, march right in there and tell them you want a latte.
I am thankful for my car, which works well most of the time, and is quite shiny even though I’ve replaced the bumper more than once in the two years I’ve had it. (If you want to know where to get a paint job you’ll be thankful for, give me a call.)
I am thankful for my health.
I am thankful to have a writing project that I enjoy so much. Thank you, blog.
I am thankful for the fact that I love stuff, and for the stuff that I love: great books, cooking, yoga, a few award-winning tv series, sleep, swimming, and coffee are some of these things.
And I am thankful for the fact that I am not done! There are plenty of things that will catch my fancy in the coming years — I mean you, Zumba, teaching, pet turtle, and Siberian butter — and so I am grateful for a sense of possibility.
Waterskiing: A Eulogy
Hi. A bunch of people have asked me to post the eulogy that I wrote for my sister’s funeral, which was two weeks ago yesterday.
I can’t format it properly in this template, and that is bugging me. Also, it was written quickly, and obviously, under duress, and, I’d like to develop the ideas further at some later point. But whatever, those are all apologies, and what you asked for was a eulogy.
Waterskiing
Waterskiing.
It’s a subject I know hardly anything about, and it’s not particularly funereal in nature, but I think you’ll see where I am going with this.
When I was in my early teens and Beth was in her mid to late teens, our family used to regularly vacation up at Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire. We’d go to a modest and yet fabulous lakeside motel that our parents had first brought Beth to when she was two years old, and we’d rent a cottage for a week. Beth spent a week at the lake in New Hampshire every single summer that she could, first with our parents and me, and then with her own family. If you are of a certain mindset, there is nothing in the world as calming and as transcendent as a swim in a bright blue lake. And Beth was of that mindset.
When we were teenagers, we would try to coordinate our trip with that of another family who vacationed at the same spot. They were from Massachusetts, which at that stage of our lives seemed, ahem, exotic and mysterious. Our family had blue-eyed daughters, but their family had dark-eyed sons. They also had a motorboat. The boat was small, and it was used, but I think that everyone involved would agree that our time in New Hampshire was one of best weeks out of every year.
During the day Beth and I would sit at the lake, reading novels or squabbling like sisters, getting hot enough and then diving in for a swim. We’d swim out to a floating platform, climb up, then try to soak the astroturf surface by all piling on and stepping hard on one corner at the same time.
Every once in a while, someone would get the idea to use the motorboat to waterski.
I’ll tell you right now: I have never successfully waterskied. I can describe the attempt, though. It goes like this: put on a floaty vest that doesn’t really fit, stick your head underwater to get your foot into a ski, then do the other ski, try hard to keep the skis uncrossed, push your hair out of your face, and position your hands on a scratchy, stripey nylon rope with a y-shaped grip. The boat driver looks back at you, and you yell “hit it” in as confident a tone as you can muster. The driver pulls the throttle back. The rope goes taut and you are yanked forward. Then you tumble to the side. Spray up your nose. Complete disorientation. You realize you’re toast and let go. No more than three seconds have elapsed since you yelled “hit it.” At least, that was my experience.
But Beth, Beth could get up on the skis. She was older than I was, and I liked to be able to attribute it to that, but she was also very strong. And even more than strong, she was stubborn. And it is her stubborn attempts at waterskiing that I want you to know about. I’ve thought about them a lot during the past few weeks.
So, when it was Beth’s turn, she’d put on the floaty vest, stick her head underwater to get her feet into the skis, push her hair out of her face, hold the rope, and yell “hit it.” The rope would go taut and she’d use her legs, keeping her center of gravity low at first, until she got her bearings. She’d use the strength in her shoulders, elbows and arms to steady herself. And if Beth ran into a problem, she didn’t flail around and let go right away. Instead, she’d use her body and her brain in tandem to compensate. To correct. To keep going. She could do this, and she knew she could do this.
Once, though, when she ran into what we would later categorize as an unsolvable waterskiing problem, and I don’t remember whether she’d been up for a while or if she was still trying to get up, she held on and on and on. She didn’t let go, even after she’d fallen. And because of her tenacious spirit, her refusal to give in, she actually got a pretty deep and intense abrasion on her leg from the scratchy nylon rope.
Here’s my point: if there was a chance that Beth could make it right, could get at least some measure of fun out of an experience, she was likely to keep trying, long after someone else might have given up.
Beth was diagnosed with ALS over three years ago. There are the obvious facts. It’s a highly debilitating disease. There is no cure. It’s always fatal. Beth felt scared, as anyone would, but for as long as she could, she applied her physical strength to the disease, and her stubborn character. She used her body and her brain in tandem to compensate.
For Beth,
* The chance to see Justin get a great report card, or hear about all of the characteristics of all of the different aliens that exist in his imagination?
* or have Amelia present her with a picture of a panda bear she made, or want to watch a Madagascar DVD for the 12 thousandth time next to her mommy?
There was absolutely no way Beth was going to let go of the rope.
Ice cream, fried clams, sunburn, black flies. The soft scent of pine needles in a New England summer still levels me, because, though I lost my sister the other day in a way that has brought us all here together, I lost parts of her first. There is the special dressed up grief we do for a funeral, but there has also been an everyday grief, a quiet, angry loss.
I’ve been looking at a lot of pictures in the last few days, of our whole family because we are all shuffled in together, but mostly, of course, of Beth. And I am glad to consider the elemental character of the robust and red-cheeked girl in a bright blue swimsuit, waiting for her next chance to dive into the cool clear lake.
Church Avenue Chomp 