Arthur, owner of two chocolate labs – Cooper named after Cooperstown and Abner named after Abner Doubleday – and father of sixteen month old, Shea – not named after Shea Stadium, just left after spending the morning here installing Verizon FIOS or fibre optic cable. Now I’m as fast as La Rad at 15 mbps down and 2 mbps up.

Adam sent me this link. One of the better blogs around, I think. We never would have left early had she been onstage reciting 10$ For Groceries.

Our conversation as I drove Matthew to school this morning:

Matthew: “A kid at school owes me five bucks”.

Me: “Why does he owe you five bucks”.

Matthew: “He never stops talking and it drives me crazy. So I bet him five dollars he couldn’t go one day without talking. He couldn’t last even part of the day”.

This from the most verbose person I know. Needless to say I squashed the bet. But it got me thinking, if $5.00 is the going rate for people to stop talking, perhaps I’ll wage the same thing with the one and only Matt R.

La Rad

****************************

In the seasonal late fall rush, I went to our local tire dealer to get our winter tires put on our car and was standing in line with quite a few others. At one point the lone, harried but composed woman behind the counter jokingly offered employment to those of us waiting for her, noting the company’s good benefits package. And as happened several times while I waited, when it came my turn she also took a call while multitasking my keys and paperwork.

“Hello, Sullivan Tire, can you hold?”

Pause.

Then forcefully she said, “No!” and pushed the hold button, returning to my processing.

Sensing the question in the eyes of those of us waiting, who couldn’t hear the other side, she looked up with a smile in her eyes and said, “He asked if he had a choice … ”

El Kib

****************************

The road to Albuquerque was long and straight. Gopal, our driver, loved fast roads. He had driven the Bombay-Delhi road often in the monsoon and the hot seasons before he came to the states to work at the university. In India the traffic was heavy and slow, but this road had only occasional trucks and rental cars racing home for dinner across the desert.

We talked about mundane things while Gopal drove the straight road and passed cars every now and then. I was drousing in the rear seat when he turned across the yellow lines to pass a sedan, and I saw over his shoulder that the gauge hovered on 100.

But the road ahead was not clear. A van ahead bore down on us. Behind, in the right lane,
a third car had driven close to the sedan, getting ready to pass after us. There was no time and no space for us to pull ahead of the sedan, and the sedan could not slow down because the third car was close behind.

The oncoming van did not slow in its approach. There was no time for any of us to say anything. I screamed in my mind. A fatal head-on collision seemed to be inevitable. At the last second, Gopal yanked the steering wheel left to pull off the road into a stretch of gravel. We slowed to a stop. The oncoming van continued its high speed on past us, and the sedan and third car sped on towards Albuquerque.

It was several minutes before Gopal pulled back onto the highway. None of us said a word. There was nothing any of us could say. In my mind, in some alternate world, the Albuquerque Journal headline read, “Four car collision on route 25 kills 12. Road closed for 24 hours”.

–rakkity

****************************

“Diane, you know those radio shows I plug into my head before I fall asleep?”

“Please stop.”

“Don’t panic, this isn’t about plot lines. I can now answer that great riddle – how long does it take me to fall asleep? All I have to do is time how much of it I remember the next day. I did it this morning.”

“And? “

“Four minutes.”

Michael

*****************************

At dinner one night, Michael mumbles something incoherently, and I say, as I often do, “What?”

“You are deaf as a doorbell,” Michael says gallantly. “I thought you just had your doctor clean out your ears with a fire hose.”

“Da-ad,” says Matthew.
“It’s not that Mom is deaf; it’s that You are dumb.”

Diane

Diane

I had this conversation with my two favorite high school seniors, Matt, a complicated person whom you have met, good brain, bad student, and his best friend Joe, an artist and wrestler. (God, I love adolescents. What will I do without them? Oh, I remember, I work with them….)

Matt and Joe, on a brief visit to the house between godknowswhat and godknowswhat (Matt received his first college acceptance from Rogers Williams University today, a place in RI he knows nothing about but applied to as his safe school because his friend Drew, who almost burnt our house down by hanging his clothes on a lit light bulb for the night, got in.)

Joe: I got into Roger Williams too. It’s a really pretty campus. I visited on my way to URI, but I never found URI, so I didn’t apply there. Now, that’s a really good school I would not have gotten into.

Matt: I applied there. I haven’t heard yet. I probably won’t get in either because of my grades.

Joe: Well, I thought I’d go to Wentworth, but if you go to Roger Williams, I’ll go too.

Matt: I don’t think I’ll get into Goucher. I want to go to UVM or Goucher, but my grades aren’t good enough. Goucher is my really reach school.

Joe: Northeastern is mine. I’ll never get in.

Diane: Northeastern’s a great school.

Joe: I know. I’ll never get in.

Matt: I’ll never get into Goucher.

Diane: But they like smart alternative kids like you.

Matt: Did you know that Goucher requires everybody to attend a semester or year abroad, because they believe that you learn so much just by being in a different culture?

Joe: I’m not really interested in learning.

Matt: I’m interested in learning; I’m just not interested in doing reports of stuff you already learned.

Diane: Well, that’s the difference between high school and college. In college, if you don’t turn in your assignments, you flunk out. (Oh, for heaven’s sake, who am I?)

Matt: I always turn in my assignments if the teacher asks me to write something about something we didn’t just talk about.

Joe: You’ll do great in college. I’m afraid I’ll be in a big lecture class thinking to myself, what am I doing here? I should have stayed asleep. Or maybe I just won’t go. That’s what I’m worried about.

Matt: But what if you get to go to another country and get credit for that?

Joe: Well, maybe I’ll go to Wentworth. They don’t require a year abroad, but everybody does have to do a month divided between Germany and Italy.

Matt, evil grin: Hey Joe, you know I’m going to Italy in June? ….With my girlfriend?

Joe: Matt, I’m going to kill you. Maybe I’ll go to Italy with Wentworth. Going to Italy is my only goal in life. Maybe I’ll go with 3 girlfriends. Then, after two weeks, I’ll say to my three girlfriends, “We’re staying here.” and I’ll say to Wentworth, “What? I didn’t know we were supposed to come back.”

And off they went, on to life and higher education.

In the meantime, Mike and I are going to Portland ME today to the Pomegranate Inn. I am so excited, you’d think we were going to Italy.

Matt is excited, too. I said, “No parties, Matt. No more than your 5 best friends in this house.” (What am I thinking?)

“Okay” he said, “That sounds fair.”

“And no alcohol,” me.

“Leave your itinerary,” says he, “and call me when you get to the inn.”

“Tomorrow?” I say.

“Yeah,” he says, “I want to know you’re safely there.”

“You do?” says I.

“Yeah.”

Joe: I love this house.

Matt: (to me) I do too. If I killed you, would I get this house?

Diane: Yup. And our insurance too. Actually, if you want to kill us, now is the time.

Matt: Why?

Diane: Because we’ll borrow on the house to pay for your education, and then we’ll drop our insurance because you’ll be independent and won’t need it. (What am I thinking?) So if you’re going to kill us, now is the time.

Matt: Well, it wouldn’t be worth it.

Diane: That is the nicest thing you have said to me in a year.

Matt: Yeah, well, call me when you get to Portland.

And off they went, to wherever they are from which we will not hear again for a long while, despite our regular “family” dinners Sunday through Thursday.

Another photo (click on it) of Joan and Wally’s wedding, thanks to Joan.

Jeffrey is, first, my brother Peter’s friend. From high school.

After Peter moved here at seventeen, having graduated from high school a semester early, Jeffrey would pilgrimage to Cambridge to visit, and that’s when he met Dan. Let’s say 1970 to maybe 1973.

The most memorable time we had together (from my view) was our trip to Popham Beach, a then little-known area with a tiny island you swam to. Unless it was low tide, in which case you walked across the wet sand. We’d arrive late afternoon, wait for the tide to shift, carry our goods to the island, set up a makeshift camp and watch the water seal us off.

In those days Dan guarded our low tide domain from intruding strangers by standing Gryphon-like on the exposed rocks – buck naked. Stoned, naked or not, he was also the only one of us who’d already sired child, been married, and divorced, and secured a real job.

Jeffrey’s visits dwindled, Peter left, our lives acquired the quiet desperation of a Fellini film, and many, many years passed until one day Dan and Jeffrey met again, here in Acton in my kitchen.

Dan walked in and saw someone he almost recognized sitting at our dinner table. Jeff looked up and saw a guy who’d worked at Raytheon, owned a laundry van, lived on Richdale Ave. with Peter, had two sons (many people still aren’t aware of that), been divorced twice, and on and on.

Which brings me to Jeff’s memory. As I see it. Each time I drop in on my parents, and stay at his and Karen’s house, I hear new and exciting things about my own past, or I’m presented with trivia from my present. “Doesn’t your brother-in-law have the same truck you have?” Now why would he know that, much less remember it? Near the end of my last visit I began calling him something like Brain Boy, Or Super Nova Memory. I’ve forgotten.

But even the mighty are made of flesh and blood. A couple nights before the end of my last visit, we had this conversation.

“What did you do today?” Jeff asks.

“I shopped at Schnucks for food, I drove to Barnes and Noble and bought another radio CD, and I stop ped by Fifth Third Bank to check on my parent’s safety deposit box. But the bank was closed.”

“You mean First Federal?”

“The one across from Wesselman’s near Turoni’s Pizza?”

“Turoni’s is not there, it’s over near … oh, yeah that is a Turoni’s. But it used to be called … ”

And then I saw it. For the very first time. That desperate, searching, memory-passing-before-my-eyes look. Jeffrey froze for two and half beats – not long for me, but a lifetime for him.

“It was called … the Forget Me Not Inn.”

Saturday we celebrated Emma’s 14th birthday. (Quicktime 1.2mb), .avi Note the classically trained voices.

**************************

Mike,

Despite mosquitos, high winds, rain squalls, opaque waters, cancelled tours, expensive menus, rampant alligators, poisonwood trees, sparse net connections and blistering sunshine, we had a great time in the Keys.

Ernest’s fingerprints were everywhere. As the photo shows, I left my own on top of his, on his battered Smith Corona.

rakkity

rakkity,

And I thought the photo showed you typing your next vacation/blog story.

My mother taught me to type on a Smith Corona and we did have a machine like the one pictured. I remember that monstrous carriage return.

Mike

Found next to my computer .

Found in my mailbox this morning from a vacationing rakkity.

Found next to my computer .

Found in my mailbox this morning from a vacationing rakkity.

I’m working again. My sister-in-law, Susan, has returned to her new life in Minnesota, and the imaginary but oft-used brake pedal on the passenger side of the truck, where Diane sits? Gone. It is the dead of winter but a new year.

I climb solid wooden steps and pause at the door to the red-framed real estate office. My workday is over and I laugh at my Rube Goldberg fix of this poorly installed front door. The building is out of square, the door is too, but now when someone slams it, it stays shut. At least it’ll keep out the winter winds, and I know, Mary Ellen, the receptionist, will thank me. But Mary Ellen has gone home for a short visit to the Cotswolds, and as I push through the door, Eileen stands to greet me.

“You’re here for the keys to the rental unit?” Eileen asks.

“I am; I’m Michael,” I extend my hand, “And you must be filling in for Mary Ellen?”

“No, I’m a broker. I only work two nights a week. I was widowed and needed a job, but then I got married and … “

“You don’t have to work as much.”

“Right.”

Eileen is tall and slender. Her blond hair contrasts with her red lips, and she’s wearing a blue dress with three inches of white lace covering her bosom. A youthful style to be sure; I’ve seen my teenage son’s friends dress this way.

“You were widowed?”

“My husband died when I turned fifty, and my youngest moved out to go to college.”

“Ouch. That’s an empty nest.”

“My friends complain about their kids going off to college and being alone. I tell them, ‘You don’t know what an empty nest is.’ ”

“What did he die of? Look, I know I’m getting personal here. Stop me if you want.”

“Bill had cancer. He was diagnosed in ’92 and remained healthy until ’98. Then it came back – four kinds, but originally lung. When he died… I can’t describe how lonely I was. Some people say the worst thing is when a child dies, but then you’re… you’re still in your spouse’s arms.”

Eileen had so quickly dispensed with what I’d always considered a given, and I didn’t know what to say. I fumbled, “How long ago did Bill die?”

“Six and half years. I went back to work as an airline attendant. I had to do something. I was so lonely. Then I switched to real estate, and then I met my new husband, Jim.”

“What’s dating like in your fifties? I guess it can be exhilarating, but talk about awkward?”

“It was awful. And I couldn’t find anyone. I go to a church with three thousand people and there wasn’t a guy there for me. I found Jim through Match.com.”

“Online. Good for you.”

I settled into a soft, gray, upholstered chair from someone’s living room. I felt self-conscious about sitting down. It meant I was here for the duration, and I needed to explain my interest.

“Your story is compelling for many reasons. My wife’s younger sister just died after a long illness, and unexpectedly my wife’s older sister’s husband had a heart attack in the middle of the night and died. Plus, I worked for an internet website which advertised for Match.com. I know those online companies work, but I know people – mostly older people – are leery of them.”

“Many of my friends were, before they heard my story. Now I sit down with them and sign them up and help create their profiles. Match.com should pay me. People think they’ll meet an ax murderer online. They could meet one at church too. You never know.”

“You go from married with children to no husband and kids that only visit? Please, again, I’m not prying but you’re so direct about all of this.”

“When my husband died, two friends, who were also forty-nine, lost their husbands. I’d known Jane and Rebecca through my church. We’d organized dinners, and helped with fund raising. We were close before, when we had husbands, but after, we got much closer. We went to the movies together, we’d take long walks together, and sometimes we’d just hold hands. I call it severe mercies.”

“Severe mercies?”

“Rebecca, Jane and me. We’d all lost our husbands and that’s terrible. But without each other I don’t know how we’d have survived. My husband’s was the only lingering death, which is very different from Jane and Rebecca, whose spouses had heart attacks. I’d time to prepare – they didn’t. Jane met guys online too and is getting on with her life; Rebecca’s stuck. I don’t know if she’ll ever get past her husband’s death. She reminds me of my mother. My mother was widowed at fifty-three and never remarried. I was so frightened I would become my mother.”

“And your mother probably wanted you at home. Wanted the company. I have a friend who moved in with her mother.”

“No, not at all. My mother encouraged me to date. But as I say, I couldn’t find anyone my age. They’re all twenty-five or seventy-five. I was frantic.”

“Until you met Jim. And he moved here?”

“No. He’s from our town. When he answered my online profile, I told him I didn’t want to travel more than five miles. He said, ‘Well, you’re in luck.’ “

“And did you write a lot before you met? An online romance first?”

“No, and I advise people against that. You create fantasies no one can live up to. We wrote two or three times and then we met at the restaurant, Crossroads. Jim had been widowed only six months.”

“So you met for drinks or dinner?”

“At the bar. We’ve been together since. Married a year and a half now and so much in love.”

“Maybe this is a strange question. Do you feel odd to have moved on with your lives? I mean, so in love and so married and now so in love and so married again.”

“No guilt at all – for either one of us. Our spouses are buried in the same cemetery here in town. The one on Concord Road with the perfect stone chapel visible from the street through the oak trees. When we drive by we wave and say, ‘How’re you doing.’ I know they’re both with the Lord.”

“Like the book The Perfect Storm, this is the perfect story. Except, well, everybody had to die first.”

“And my mother predicted it. She saw how upset I’d become at not finding a companion. She said, ‘Don’t worry, the wife of the man you’re going to meet hasn’t died yet.’ ”

Mark and Ginger called yesterday to say they had two extra tickets to “Joey and Maria’s Italian Comedy Wedding” at the Matrix Club in Boston. The dinner theater production was their daughter, Molly’s, idea, but she was back in school in New York and couldn’t accompany them.

It wasn’t until we’d picked the best seats, closest to the stage that Ginger announced, “Did I mention this is an audience participation event?” Of course she hadn’t, because she knows Diane would have never agreed to come. However, Mark had THE prime seat and a willing temperament to occupy it. In fact, he gave the cast members more than they could have imagined.

See for yourself.

Thanks, Molly, for an uproarious night out.

Mark and Alfredo Fettucinie

Diane and Ginger doing the Macarena

(click on photos to enlarge)

Mark and Ginger called yesterday to say they had two extra tickets to “Joey and Maria’s Italian Comedy Wedding” at the Matrix Club in Boston. The dinner theater production was their daughter, Molly’s, idea, but she was back in school in New York and couldn’t accompany them.

It wasn’t until we’d picked the best seats, closest to the stage that Ginger announced, “Did I mention this is an audience participation event?” Of course she hadn’t, because she knows Diane would have never agreed to come. However, Mark had THE prime seat and a willing temperament to occupy it. In fact, he gave the cast members more than they could have imagined.

See for yourself.

Thanks, Molly, for an uproarious night out.

Mark and Alfredo Fettucinie

Diane and Ginger doing the Macarena

(click on photos to enlarge)