OFF THE 110

It's that wonderful list-making time of year, and August has come up with hers...for Santa.  At the top is a dog.  Another dog.  We have a dog, you know, a very big one, two kids, and a house the size of a postage stamp and a half.  I tried to explain to August how we really can't get a dog, not right now, not actually in the near foreseeable future.  She gave me this heavy-lidded, closed-mouth smile look and shook her head.  Poor Mom, the look offered, you just don't get it.
"Mom," she said, "Mom, just listen.  Do you remember when it was only Drake, and you were so happy with Drake that you wanted another kid?  Well, that's how I am. I'm so happy with Sakari that I just want another dog.  Now do you understand?"
Oh, I understand all right.

This morning over cereal, Drake told me that one of his movement/dance teachers at his school said to him that if he didn't bring an elastic for his long hair, it was going to go on his permanent record.  Not having a hair elastic for dance.  "Drake," I started.  Then we both laughed at exactly the same time.  How funny is it when your kids get how funny things are?

The first gay couple in Latin America is getting legally married tomorrow.  In Buenos Aires.  They won a law suit against the city government because they claimed that their constitutional rights were being violated in being barred from getting married.  They won.  And now they're getting married on December first (AIDS awareness day).  In the most wonderful, melodic, broken English, one of the partners, in an interview on the radio about his impending landmark marriage, said excitedly, "The rainbow is here.  You know, [singing] 'somewhere over the rainbow...' It is here.  The rainbow is here."
I'm going to try to remember that today.
The rainbow is here.

I love it when the employers I freelance for return my work queries with "No, we have nothing this week.  That job that we were supposed to get didn't materialize.  Sorry.  HAPPY THANKSGIVING."  No irony intended.  None taken.  Sarcasm served in return.  Can you tell?

We don't have any particular religious traditions at our house.  We have a non-secular Christmas, my daughter spins a dreidel and explains gelt to me, my cousin's kids get batmitzvahed, Jim's aunt puts in a good word to Jesus for us, my son knows the story of the Buddha, and Jim is working on his latest Zen Koan.  However, at dinner every night, Jim asks us what we're each grateful for.  It can be grand or small, something that happened that day, something in general, but each of us has to offer gratitude for something.  Sometimes the kids will be grateful for a particular meal, or a playdate with a fave friend, or a sleepover, or a cousin.  Sometimes they struggle to think of something, and want to "pass."  There are no passes--you've got to come up with something, anything.  I'm pretty repetitive.  At the end of the day I'm usually grateful for most of the same...health, family, good news...health, family...health.  A gig.  Being together with my family. A gig that Jim has gotten.  Friends.  And so on.

So, here it is, Thanksgiving, 2009.  And as many times, for as many nights that I say it, I will repeat myself:  I am grateful, very very grateful for my family and friends, for health and happiness and for the things I forget to be grateful for.  For breathing.  For solid ground.  For music.  For palm trees growing right next to oak trees.  ! Hummingbirds and those damn feral parrots. Magic marker drawings on construction paper. Found photos of people I love. Serendipitous encounters.  Genuinely funny stories.  I'll stop now.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Our just-bigger-than-a-breadbox backyard has always been a quiet, private haven--snug in between the backyards of two neighbors who, between them, have lived in their homes for nearly 120 years.  Their children long gone, their backyards are mostly silent, save for visits from grandkids and great-grandkids.  The fences along either side are sound-proofed with years of benignly neglected shrubs and trees growing in such a way that you can't tell on which side of the fence the bushes take root and which side they end.  The back of our yard butts up against a mini-canyon of overgrowth too narrow to build on, separating our backyard from the neighbors behind us, who we have never actually seen.  Actually, we've never seen ANYONE on the other side of the chainlink fence in the 11 years we've lived here.  So yesterday, when our dog Sakari was howling out back, I figured it was at some possum or even a coyote (yes, in urban Los Angeles, there are wandering coyotes).  I stood on the back steps and watched Sakari for a minute until I heard voices...small, high-pitched voices shouting "Keep going!  Look out! It's a jungle! Go!"  Several boys, maybe 7 or 8 years-old, suddenly tumbled into view, crashing into each other.  Sakari went nuts, howling and leaping in place (too scared to advance, he posseses only the size and bark, not the chromosomes of his boy-eating ancestors), and all together the kids saw him.  They screamed and started shoving each other back the way they came, yelling "A wolf!  It's a wolf!  Let's get out of here! It's gonna get us!" 
I heard them scream and fight their way through the uncharted brush back to wherever they came from (a hole in a neighbor's back fence?).  "A big black WOLF!  I swear!" were the last words audible through shrub-bearded fences.
And then, it was then that I felt that giddy, conspiratorial 12-year-old rise in me.  I ran inside and told Drake to get his WWII gas mask on and get ready to go out back if we heard Sakari howl again.
"Kids, there were kids in the backyard!" I told him. "They thought Sakari was a wolf!  If they come back, you should be there with your scary-ass gas mask on!"
Drake's eyes widened as his PSII control slipped from his hands.  "Seriously?!" he said.  "Where'd they come from?"
"Dunno!"
"Oh, my God, Mom, I'll pretend that I'm like that guy in the hockey mask... Wait for me!"
"What'll I be?" August asked.

But the boys were gone.  At least for the rest of the day.

And then I was mom again, and everyone wanted to know what we were doing today. And when would we leave, and would it be fun?  And why weren't we going to that other place? And what I really wanted to do was grab a nerf gun, get on some camo and sit in a tree and wait...to laugh that screaming, gasping, breathless laugh that lies dormant....

The Gold Line was free all day yesterday, so we took it down to Little Tokyo.  A good time was had by all.

My friend Meg has a blog, which she actually updates on a fairly regular basis.  I love it because she keeps it fed with an assortment of goodies...great pics, observations, tales of wonder and shit (literally), aggravation and joy.  But here's what I'm wondering: Do you ever get the feeling that your friends are actually way more honest than you could ever be? I do.  Now I'm skipping over that, like a puddle of tar-dirt rainwater when I'm wearing good shoes...

I called a friend yesterday, last minute, to ask him whether he could drop Drake at home after ping-pong.  Before I could ask, he said, "Are you nails still black?"
"Huh?"
"Are you still not biting them?"
Then I realized that he had actually read my previous post.  Almost simultaneously I had the feeling that I'd won first prize in my fifth grade reading contest and the feeling that I was suddenly wearing my stomach inside out.  Yes, you may observe, elation and anxiety in the same moment, which, I realized, is exactly what writing is for me, both those emotions vying for room in my chair.
I think I muttered something like: Oh God...I love that you've read...oh, man...great...shit...huh...so anyway.  And then I asked if he could drop Drake off.  Then I hung up.

And the other strange thing I realized is that no matter how grown up we are, we still have whomever we were at twelve in us.  All those years don't go away, they simply build up over one another, like rings within a giant sequoia.  Each year is there, supporting the next.  Which, hopefully, may explain why sometimes, for just a nanosecond, I look at my son and think that he's my brother and that I am twelve. Or that sometimes a feeling creeps up and is so specific that it can actually send me back--again, for just a nanosecond--to a time when I was ten...to remind me of, say, when Mark Wolters came over to my house to borrow my spelling book, and it was late, almost 8:30, and I was already in my flannel nightgown and my mother let Mark into the den and I was completely MORTIFIED that Mark Wolters had seen me in my nightgown--so mortified that the next day I hid from him in the coatroom closet so that he couldn't hand me back my book.  He found me in there, peeking around the corner, and tapped me on the shoulder.  "Karen, I was loo--" he started to say, but I grabbed the book without turning around and ran to my seat.

Part of one of those rings in the trunk that is me.

Gotta get those Halloween lights and ghouls down today.  Drake wants two more strings of twinkly Christmas lights...

Later.

On October first I stopped biting my nails and chewing my cuticles, a disgusting thing I've been up to for humminy-hoo-ha years.  Oh, I've quit before, but the lure of so many unspoiled fingertips, and the sensory satisfaction of the perfect tear and pull always brought me back...  Ah, those benign addictions. 

It's gross, I know, but I've stopped...again.  And truth is, I've never stopped long enough to actually warrant a color deeper than clear or translucent bubblegum pink on my nails.  But on Sunday I was looking at three weeks of nail creeping over my fingertips, so when I painted August's nails BLACK to go with her witch's costume, I painted my own as well.  BLACK.  BLACK nail polish.  Am I late to this train or what?

So I'm painting August's nails, remembering to wipe the barest lines of over-polish with the cap of the brush. "What are you doing, Mom?"  she asks.

"Just making sure the polish is perfect."

"Oh, I thought that's what you were doing."  Pause.  "Mom, you know, there's no such thing as perfect, but something can be great.  I think they look great, don't you?"

Oh, God. Yes, dear, there is no such thing as perfect.  And why didn't I think of that first?

My nails have been black for 4 days now (I've added a coat daily).  

Yesterday I went on a job interview.  My first "real" job interview in about 12 years.  I wore a flowered cowboy shirt, nice jeans, heeled sandals and my black nails.  I gestured more than usual, tapping those babies on the table to make a point, and I have to tell you, I felt--I dunno--empowered by those relatively stubby black enamel bits at the ends of my fingers.  Man, I'll say it:  I love my nails black.  Love 'em.  And I will until I don't.  (Just like when people ask whether my kids get along.  "they love each other...until they don't" I invariably answer)

Okay, just then, I stopped to stare at my nails for 30 seconds.  It's good to have a small, painless, harmless obsession.  Keeps me from howling in the wind and scaring the children.

Back to work.

Happy Halloween.

That is, the next best thing to Halloween?  A thunderstorm...during the day...one that lasts more than 15 seconds...preferably in the morning before school starts or on the weekend so as to actually experience water falling from the sky. That's what we had this morning at about 7:30. And you'd have thought that aliens landed in our backyard the way the kids were whooping and shrieking.  RAIN!  IT'S RAINING!  Can we feel it?  Can we go outside?  Can we be in it?  Will it last?  
Questions of the ages, indeed.
Yes, go outside.  Get wet.  Feel it.  It won't last.
August is out the door before I can finish.  A few minutes later she comes in with her hair and T-shirt dripping.  "Look!  Look!  I'm all wet and it isn't even cold!"
Okay.
"This.  This is why I want to go to New York, Mom.  Rain."
Okay.
"This and snow. I've got to get to New York."
Okay.
By the time I get to the front door to drive them to school, the magic had stopped. 
Magic, indeed.

Friday night was movie night, so we rented Houseboat with Cary Grant and Sophia Loren.  About fifteen minutes into the movie August turned to me and said, "Mom, I already know exactly where this story is going.  It's not a surprise." Pauline Kael would be proud.

Saturday we two are scouring stores for bargain accessories for August's very well-planned Halloween costume.  At a stop-off for coffee and somethin' sweet, I ask August whether she wants the marshmallow sticky thing, the danish sticky thing or the iced cookies.  As usual she asks what I'd pick...what do I think...what would I choose?  I tell her that it's her choice.  I lean down to tell her that I can't know she would want, it's not about me.  She smiles this very knowing wry smile, grabs my face in both hands, looks me in the eye and says, "Mom, it's all about you."

God, I burst out laughing.  Then when I'd composed myself I realized how freakin' weird that was coming from a seven-year-old...my seven-year-old.  I mean, how'd she get in my head?

Found a WWII gas mask (hopefully never-been-used) for $10.50 on Ebay for Drake's costume.  He's putting together some scary-ass version of the Scarecrow from Batman, tearing up his Jedi cape from last year to duct-tape around his body.  This afternoon we're going to comb the nearby thrift stores for brown tights, kickass boots (for August and Drake) and other accessories for the greatest holiday event of the year. That is, the kids' greatest holiday--Halloween--always has been.  And decorating the house, even though no one actually trick-or-treats here on the hill, is one of their fave traditions.  Yesterday we added two more headstones, an extra string of purple lights, and another hanging bloody ghoul to the annual display on our front yard-cum-graveyard, then draped the whole place in cobwebs.  Last night, after Drake turned on the lights and bats and bloody dismembered hands, we all stood across the narrow street admiring our handiwork.

19 more days 'til Halloween and counting.

Drake has to have his hair out of his face in order to play his cello at school.  So an 11th grader was assigned to him to help him wrestle his rat's nest of a do into a ponytail.  Alas, Drake was about an inch short in the front, so the upperclassman (who himself wrestles his shoulder-length dreds into a nice neat base-of-the-neck ponytail) suggested bobby pins...man.  "They'll work, dude, trust me."

I never imagined how hard it would be to demonstrate the workings of a bobby pin.  This morning, over Drake's Cocoa Puffs, I tried.  I might as well have been showing a trained bear how to use a toothbrush.  At least a bear would have cried out in pain a lot less.  I opened the skinny metal thing in my right hand and with an exaggerated twisting of my left, demonstrated the subtle lifting of the hair, followed by the right-handed capture by the pin with just the barest scraping against the scalp.  Who would have thought that the first of my kids I'd be explaining the mechanics of a bobby pin to would be my 11-year-old son?  He practiced in front of the mirror for about ten minutes, then showed me the five-bobby pin handiwork on his head.  I tried not to laugh, but August made no such attempt.  She squealed, then I left the room to spit up my coffee laughing.

"What?" Drake called.  "What?  I did it, didn't I?  Now what do you do when you bend forward, then stand up, and the hair falls out of the stupid bobby pin?"
"Watch closely, my son.  I will show you the secrets of the bobby pin, but you must not divulge these secrets, for they are handed down from generations of unruly-haired Jewish, Italian and Russian women...."
"Mom!  Couldya just show me how to make-em stick?!"
"Yes, grasshopper, I want you to watch closely as I demonstrate..."

But Drake was out the door, clutching the entire cardboard of bobby pins in his hand, before I could finish.

When he gets home today we will go over his Latin assignment.  I can't wait.

Drake started middle school today.  Here on the west coast, they call it middle school instead of "junior high." Crazy, either way, because I remember walking him into the little sandy yard on his first day of pre-school--sandbox to the left, wooden choo-choo train in primary colors outside the entrance, big, lined dry-erase boards with pictures of birds and reptiles, labeled cubbies, and little carpet mats for "quiet time."
Drake's new school goes through 12th grade, so this morning I dropped my son off at a place with boys who shave. Some are taller than me.  They're got drivers licenses and dreadlocks and crew cuts and braces.  Drake is almost 5ft, but he's still only 64 pounds dripping wet.  It's a music school and he's elected to play the cello, which will be like carrying his sister on his back.  Good thing he didn't pick stand -up bass (if only because we can't get a new car to fit it in, like my friend Timberlie will have to do, although she's in denial about it). 
Drake is thrilled.  I'm thrilled...it's just that he's suddenly in middle school, and I can't remember the time between his first day of Cottage Co-op Pre-School and today.  I know there have been, like, nine years in between, and I'm sure I'll start to recall some moments, but for now they're like Polaroids taken only a second ago.  They'll crisp up, those memories, but right now there is only that first day when he was 2 1/2 and packed a spare "overnight" diaper (just in case) in his Spiderman backpack and a change of clothes for after-mud/water play, and there is today. In Drake's backpack, Sept 8:  5 bucks for lunch, a copy of The Odyssey, Greek Myths and Heroes, an algebra book, a skateboard wrench, and a notebook binder for sheet music.

August starts second grade.  I could tell she already misses her brother being at the same school.

Happy new school year, y'all.