Alaska, Part III

Day 7

Two-mile jog at 5:30 (am!) to watch our entry into Tracy Arm, a waterway that runs past Sawyer Glacier. 

A naturalist on the bridge broadcast observations.  I saw glacial valleys, crevasses, morains.  The water was an eerie, Caribbean blue despite the cloudy skies.

I learned that the glacier’s blue color comes from the fact that glacial ice is so compressed—10 times as dense as the ice in your freezer—that the only light that can escape from it is from the blue end of the spectrum. 

I learned that ice floes with areas greater than 15 feet are icebergs, while those with slightly smaller areas are called bergie bits (a scientific term), and those yet again smaller are called growlers. 

After breakfast, Robert and I went down to the Promenade deck and camped out for an hour.  It was bitterly cold.  An attendant strolled by with a cart from which you could purchase Irish coffee.  Robert considered it but ultimately said no to the invitation to liquor up at 8:30 am.  We watched for Dall sheep, whales, and bear but didn’t see any.  I did spot an eagle on an iceberg and several flocks of terns.  Another attendant pushed a cart selling Nikons.  No one thought to sell blankets, which I would have bought.

Outside of Tracy Arm, we sailed through Frederick Sound.  Fog sat heavily on the coast, casting everything in eerie gray light. 

It began to clear a little.  Water like smoky glass, still and waveless.  Right in front of one of the Brother Islands, I saw a whale breech.  Far away but beautiful.  Five minutes later, another one with his tail in the air.  The naturalist pointed out that humpbacks eat 1,000 pounds of fish a day, so it is more efficient for them to travel alone.  Pods are rare.

Spent the afternoon in the Wheelhouse Bar, reading WE WERE THE MULVANEYS.  Loving it right from the start although, having read Oates before, I keep waiting for something grisly to happen every time I turn the page.  I finished THE HOUR I FIRST BELIEVED yesterday.  It is a vast, messy novel, and I’m not sure how I feel about it.  It is trying to say so many things, and some of it seems not to hang together well.  Also, I don’t like Lamb’s tendency to end sentences with ellipses: it is weak and amateurish.  Robert is reading (at my suggestion) THIS MUCH I KNOW IS TRUE, and I am surprised at how similar the plots are.  Several of the minor characters in THE HOUR first appeared in THIS MUCH, which I think is a nice touch.

Relaxing in our room at about 4:15, marveling at all the colors of gray—gunmetal, charcoal, silver, pewter—in the sky and sea and distant coastline, when we saw a whale blowing water and flashing his tail, and then another, and another.  Clearly a group of whales—is every group a pod?  I don’t know, but it was thrilling.  We were in the Gulf of Alaska, just about to head past Coronation Island.  Maybe this is where they congregate.

Evening was fine: delicate sunlight, a fragile blue sky.  We had drinks (me: champagne; Robert: Irish coffee) at Crooners, then met Roy and Josie for dinner.  Now watching “Oceans 12” in our room.  Outside, the ocean is gray and glassy.  No sign of whales, but I know they are there, steering clear of us, frolicking in our wake.

Day 8

TV on-board ship is repetitive and pretty mindless, except for CNN International, although it seems that every time I turn it on, I get Piers Morgan interviewing Ryan O’Neal.  Still, it’s better than the movies (“The Proposal,” “Eat, Pray, Love,” some ghastly thing about Goya with Natalie Portman being tortured by Javier Bardem) or, worse, the shipboard stations, most of which are meant to sell you something.  I like the map that lets you know where we are and the web-cam at the front of the ship.  But I could do without the porn-movie sax accompaniment.

Robert has a cold, so now I’m trying to avoid that and the norovirus.

It’s Sunday, but you lose track of the days out here, particularly when you don’t dock.  One day melts into the next.  Usually, Sunday is my least favorite day of the week (a holdover from childhood, when everything was closed and I felt bored and different from everybody else).  I always think that even if I didn’t have a calendar, I would know Sunday by the feel of it, just as I would know Friday—a happy day—and Monday—also happy, the beginning of the beloved routine of school.  But out here, it’s hard to keep it all straight.

We’ve kind of lost the will to participate in the myriad activities offered: Trivia, Bingo, line-dance instruction, “art” auctions, talks on wolves, acupuncture, whales, naturopathic cures for stomach ailments, bridge.  We spend the days exercising, eating, reading, and sleeping.  In addition, I check the Internet every few days for about a half hour.  We eat dinner late.  By 10 pm, I struggle to keep my eyes open.

I think I have Robert’s cold.  Rats. 

The people next door smoke pot every day at 4 on their balcony.  The smell wafts over to our balcony, so I have to go inside.  From the room, I hear them coughing.  Once when I was on the balcony, I heard her making a phone call home, bragging in a coy, sly way about packing “some really, really good…refreshments.”  Robert and I call it their “high tea.”  Today he said, “You know that’s what they used to call pot, right?  We used to say we were smoking tea.”  I said I didn’t know, that I was bookish and weird in high school.  “You were just waiting for me and didn’t know it,” Robert said.  Then we both sneezed.

I finally hauled myself out of the room to do Trivia with Roy and Josine.  The place was mobbed.  We teamed up with an elderly couple, Paula and Ike, and their nephew, Josh.  Ike put his hand on my knee and said, “You and I don’t have to know anything.  We’re just here to look beautiful,” which I knew was well-intentioned but which got on my nerves nonetheless. 

Emotions ran high.  Josine knew the capital of Estonia; I knew that the three women who’d kissed on MTV were Madonna, Brittny Spears, and Christina Aguilera, and also that JFK had been born in 1917.  We were asked to name the disease indicated by the initials ASD.  Josh said it was Arterial Septral Defect.  When the correct answer was announced as Autism Spectrum Disorder, Josh stood up and yelled at the MC, “I’ve been a nurse longer than you’ve been ALIVE. Arterial Septral Defect is correct as well!”  We also got into a big argument about whether “shalom” means “peace” or “peace be with you.”

In the end, we won.  We each got a keychain.  I am exhausted.

Roy took us “out” for dinner tonight, i.e, to a screened-off area of the dining hall reserved for people willing to pay $20 for steak.  Rolled back to our rooms at 9:15.  Still light outside.  Sky and sea are glassy and gray, and snow-capped peaks—Canada—rise like jagged dog teeth in the distance.

Day 9

Two-mile run, but it was hard. 

We were only in Victoria for a few hours, and Robert and I weren’t feeling well.  But we bravely made our way off the ship and explored the downtown area for a couple of hours.  We started at the Empress Hotel, with its beautiful gardens and topiary, and wandered a bit. 

I saw three used bookstores in less than an hour, and several chocolatiers. 

Lots of pubs (The Scottish Pub, The Irish Pub, The Sticky Wicket).  That was the good thing about Victoria.  The bad thing was that there must be different laws regarding gasoline emissions: everything smelled vilely of diesel.  We ducked into a sandwich shop and had wonderful soup (chicken/corn/dill), and then returned to the ship.

We slept all afternoon, then ordered room service for dinner: club salads and chili.

I hate being sick and away from home.

Day 10

No exercise this morning.  My head hurt and my nose was running.   Everything gray and bleary outside.  Robert felt well enough to read but I did not.  Spent the day watching movies (“The Town,” “Pillow Talk”) on TV.

I love Doris Day, how she is peppy and chipper and brave about being a single gal.  I love the way she wears fur muffs.  I love how everything in her apartment is pink and white, and that she knows, just knows, that the right man will come along, and meanwhile, she is going to be happy and fashionable and really in her life.  She isn’t pining away.  She isn’t devastated by psychological trauma or a dysfunctional family of origin.

 

Our daughters could have worse role models.

Glad I made the effort to have a final dinner with Josine and Roy, who is also sick with whatever this is.  We talked and laughed.  Roy told us again about how his bridge group got run out of its appointed venue by a small band of errant Mah Jongg players.  Josine recounted another well-fought Trivia battle.  Sorry I missed it.  Said goodbye to Wilson and Dean, our fabulous waiters.  Wilson kept me well-stocked with caramel sauce.  He got it right away.  Sweet guy.

Day 11

Wrenched my shoulder in the middle of the night, something I do when I’m sick.  But it was nice to wake up and see that we’d docked.  Nice to know that Cara will be driving in to pick us up in a couple of hours.

Nice to be home.

Alaska, Part II

Day 4 

Half-woke at 4 to daylight.  Got up early and ran 2 miles as we docked at Ketchikan.  Ship inched into the dock; it was nice to run without the wind.  Showered, ate, and walked through town, where brightly colored wooden homes are perched on brilliant green hills overlooking the harbor.

 

Lots of souvenir/jewelry/carvings/rock shops on Creek Street, the old red-light district. 

Took a funicular up the hill to see more totem poles, which are all over town. 

Also notable: beautiful plantings and flowers on many street corners.  Some of the flowers look almost tropical.

We walked out of the downtown, and then it was a little less manicured: lots of rusted-out cars, peeling paint, a Goodwill thrift shop, store fronts with “Everything Must Go!” signs in the windows.  This is the kind of stuff I like to see.  I like imagining what it’s like to live in places I visit, and I have a feeling that life in Ketchikan is hard when the cruise ships leave in September.

Factoid: Ketchikan boasts the smallest Wal-Mart in the world.  When it opened, it sold out in hours and had to close until it could restock. 

After lunch, I found a quiet corner of the Promenade deck and read and ate chocolate.  My kind of heaven.  Met Roy and Josine at 4 for Trivia.  Our group included a lovely young man from Sacramento and a husband and wife from Pleasanton.  Wife reminded me of my ex-husband’s wife in both appearance and inability to stop talking.  (“What car did Lenin outfit with skis?  Did Lenin drive?  Wasn’t he Russian?  Or Soviet?  Was he Russian or Soviet?  Were there Russian cars?  I don’t know anything about Russian cars.  Was this before World War I or after?  Did he say skis or snowshoes?”)  We didn’t do very well.  Lenin drove a Rolls Royce, but we missed it.

Sunny afternoon sailing up the Inside Passage.  The vistas were spectacular.  Sat on our balcony with Robert until someone next door started smoking weed.  There really is nowhere on a ship to escape entirely from other people.  Ironic, because that’s one thing that is apparently easy to do in Alaska.  And even I—bitter and complaining isolationist that I am—would feel so bereft and lonely if I had to be here for any length of time.  I would go mad with loneliness.  The beauty and serenity and bright, pristine splendor would be nothing without people around (whom I would undoubtedly work to avoid).

After dinner, we went to a revue in the Princess Theater: songs of the 20s and 30s by the Princess Singers and Dancers, who performed at about the level of a mediocre community college theater department. 

On exiting the theater, one of the young cruise directors asked me with a smile, “Did you like the show?” 

Being polite, I said, “Yes, I did,” whereupon Cruise Director called out, “Chester?  These people liked the show!”  “Chester” turned out to be the “feelings police” guy from yesterday.  He and his wife were sitting on a couch outside the theater.  “What ship are they on?” he asked crankily, not missing a beat.

I have decided that Chester and I are kindred spirits, and that I’m going to look for him tomorrow and sit as close as I can.

Day 5

Two-mile jog at six.   The water of the Inside Passage was glassy and almost black with the reflection of the steep hills rising on both banks, thick with untouched forest and brush.  Everything was green in a way that makes you think all other greens you’ve seen are something else entirely: a murky blue, or some version of brown.  Patches of snow lay at the top of the hills.  Sometimes you could see snow melt running into the ocean; sometimes it was frozen mid-fall against the crags.

From the ship, Juneau is much less picturesque than Ketchikan: all cinderblock and industrial browns and grays.  It has the distinction of being the only state capital without road access: everyone getting in or out does so by plane or ship. 

We docked at the base of a steep, green hill.  I was standing at the window and saw two eagles circling.  One of them landed on a tree directly in front of and slightly above us.  Fortunately, we brought binoculars.  I have never seen an eagle in the wild before.  Magnificent.

Robert and I walked through town. 

We had breakfast in a café (scrambled egg on a panini and very good Earl Grey), then browsed in a used bookshop, where I bought WE WERE THE MULVANEYS, by Joyce Carol Oates.  It started to rain, so we headed back to the docks, where tour bookers were hawking excursions.  We boarded what looked like a 1950s school bus and headed out of town to the Mendenhall Glacier.  We drove past Mount Juneau, the base of whose steep face is considered the most dangerous avalanche location in the urban US. 

More beautiful countryside, pocked with suburban homes.  Tour guide said most of Juneau’s 30,000 people live out toward Mendenhall.  (He also said he was a Republican and that even though it “killed” him to say it, Gore was right about global warming, whereupon both Robert and I said, “Duh!” loudly.)  I saw lots of churches (Church of the Nazarene, Church of Christ) and lots of rusted-out cars on front lawns.  Tour guide informed us that if someone wants to move to the lower 48, there is no inexpensive way to bring his car along, so many are abandoned.

Glacier (in the heart of the 17 million-acre Tongass National Forest) is smaller than when I was here in ’95.  But still beautiful, still that breathtaking shade of toothpaste blue I have never seen anywhere else in nature. 

Cottonwood trees abound; when the sun came out, they gave up their snowy puffs, making lots of people sneeze.

 
Arctic terns swooped and buzzed the ponds.  A waterfall gushed nearby.

Last night, we talked to a Filipino waiter who waxed rhapsodic about the US.  He told us we have no idea how lucky we are to have access to $5 meals at McDonalds.  Food is expensive in the Philippines, he said.  “You know what I love about America?  Wal-Mart.  Target.  Costco.  Yes, I have a card.  I love the Philippines, but I love America also,” he said.  I thought about that conversation at the glacier.  I love my country for a lot of reasons.  For me, natural beauty is higher on the list than access to Wal-Mart.  But I see now how privileged that makes me.  I already knew it, but sometimes it’s a good thing to be reminded.

Dinner tonight marred by news that norovirus has invaded the ship.  I am trying hard not to panic but am also gratified that my isolationist ways may yet come in handy.

Day 6

Jog as we docked at Skagway.  If it weren’t for the two other cruise ships already in port, I would have missed the town.

Breakfast on the Lido Deck: fruit and coffee for me.  After a while, the excess of offerings begins to wear on me.  Robert loves it, though: this morning, he especially liked the smoked mackerel.

 

The staff is taking the threat of norovirus very seriously.  When you arrive at the restaurants, you must wash your hands with anti-bacterial soap that is provided at the front door.  Staff stand guard and make sure you use it.  At the cafeteria-style breakfast, you are not even allowed to use tongs to put food on your plate: another staff member wearing rubber gloves uses the tongs for you.

Skagway is small and has the look of a wild-west town in Wyoming, except that there are no high plains or tumbleweed or cattle.  Wood-planked sidewalks without curbs, Victorian architecture.

There is a structure made entirely of driftwood:

Ubiquitous diamond merchants, jewelry and souvenir shops, several saloons.  We ate fish and chips in one, then walked through more of the town.  There was a lovely museum housed in the first granite building in Alaska, once home to the McCabe College for Women, which was really a college-preparatory high school.  Boys and girls were taught Latin, Greek, modern languages, natural sciences, history.  It was only in existence for three years, when a public school was finally built.  The headmaster was Oxford-educated.

The day was almost hot, but the wind kicked up after 3.  I can’t stop thinking about that school, about being a young woman in Alaska in the 19^th century, learning Greek and Latin in a town five blocks wide, where winter days are five hours long.

These are some of the clothes that young women traveling to the Klondike were advised to bring at the end of the 19^th century:

1 pair house slippers

1 pair knitted slippers

1 pair heavy soled walking shoes

1 pair arctics

1 pair felt boots

1 pair German socks

1 pair heavy gum boots

1 pair ice creepers

3 pair heavy all-wool stockings

3 pair summer stockings

Some sort of gloves for summer wear, to protect the hands from mosquitoes.

I don’t even know what some of these things are, but they make the whole endeavor of relocating to Alaska sound especially difficult for hands and feet.   We haven’t seen a lot of mosquitoes, which is surprising.  And here in Skagway, not many birds: just a few gulls, an arctic tern or two, one eagle.  Maybe we’re too far north.

Alaska, Part I

Day 1

 We couldn’t have picked a more spectacular day to depart from Pier 35 for Alaska.  Temperature was a nearly-unheard-of 77 degrees; sky was cloudless; bay was full of sailboats and gulls.  After the mandatory (and ridiculous) safety drill, we met our friends Roy and Josine on the Lido deck, where fruity cocktails ($9) were being hawked and a band played upbeat tunes (not one of which was "I Left My Heart In San Francisco").  A few passengers danced with crewmembers who tried gamely to look as though the whole thing was loads of fun.

It was lovely to sail out of the bay and watch San Francisco disappear. 

The Golden Gate arched against the sky.  I thought about the other passengers who love San Francisco the way tourists do (which is different from the way we natives do), and how leaving a city is not the same thing as leaving home.  My eyes got a little teary.  I’ll admit it.  The Cliff House was tiny on its precarious perch, the last landmark.

Our room has two twin beds pushed together, two small closets, a desk, a TV, a refrigerator, and a shower-sized balcony. 
The wall behind the bed and desk is completely mirrored.  It would be nice to be able to sit outside if we were going somewhere tropical, but very shortly after chugging out of the bay, it became clear that being outside and not doing anything was ill-advised.  They call it The Frozen North for a reason.    

We unpacked and Robert was delighted to find that his plan to smuggle in vodka went undetected by the authorities.  Amazingly, we were able to empty two suitcases and a garment bag into our dinky closets.  We met Roy and Josine again for a snack.  Fantastic fresh fruit, cheese, and lemonade. 

We had a drink (ginger ale: $4) outside the restaurant before dinner and people-watched.  As always, it’s my favorite part of any getaway.  If it were a competitive sport, I would win.  Lots of families with small children (school is out), lots of multi-generational families, many matriarchs and patriarchs in wheelchairs being pushed cheerfully by adult children who are way nicer and less grudging than I am.  Lots of people speaking different languages.  Many Asians, many Indians and Pakistanis.  Almost no black people.  Some people who are quite heavy.  I noticed several people with seasick-medication patches behind their ears and begin immediately to feel queasy.

Dinner was okay.  The highlight was definitely cream of porcini mushroom soup.  For dessert, I ordered vanilla ice cream with caramel sauce and told the waiter to hold the ice cream.  He didn’t get it, which made me a little grumpy.  This is the weird thing about cruise ships.  You start complaining about everything.  You think you won’t, but you will.  I don’t know why.  Suddenly, you feel massively entitled.  Or maybe it’s that even with all the activities, there really isn’t very much to do.

The ship was rocking quite a bit; Josine said she heard that tonight was going to be the roughest night.  So I took a meclizine and am now quite drowsy.  To bed.

Day 2

Exercise on the Promenade Deck.  I jogged over a mile and walked a mile and a half.  My ears ached from the wind.  There was no coastline visible, just endless vistas of gray, white-capped sea.  The deck has the feel of an earlier era: beautifully polished wooden slats, varnished benches and life-vest lockers, chaise lounges with navy-blue cushions arranged so that one can read and watch the ocean at the same time.  Vintage-looking clocks.  You can almost see Edward and Wallis Simpson having a stroll.

After breakfast (eggs, fruit, tea) and a trip to the “sundries store” to buy new batteries for my camera, I coerced Robert to indulge in my other favorite shipboard activity: trying to get away from other people.  I find that my curmudgeonly instincts are especially heightened when I am confined at sea with people I know I wouldn’t like on land.  I take offense when other people save seats, or sneeze without properly covering their mouths, or walk up the stairs without staying to the right, or neglect to say thank-you to the lovely people who wait on them.  I do not like it when children press all the buttons in the elevator so it will stop at every floor.  I do not like smokers.  (I know it’s really their nasty habit I don’t like, but I’m getting to the point where the distinction is largely moot.)  In short, I am not made for the communal aspect of cruising.  Fortunately, this is a big ship.  Robert and I hid out for a while in one of the nightclubs, empty but for a couple of gentlemen vacuuming the rugs.  We located a few venues (one of the theaters, the art gallery, the library).  And we ate lunch.  (French fries, cheese, more delicious fruit.) 

Back in the room, we fell asleep.  Up in time for afternoon tea (scones, jam, egg-salad sandwiches, walnut cake).  Bloated and leery of our room and its wall of mirrors, we made our way to Trivia.  Notable questions: Who invented scissors?  What color is the cross on the Swedish flag?  What is the biggest opera house in the world?  Roy is a chemist and knew about hydrogen.  I knew who lived in the 100-Acre Wood.  We got 16 out of 20, but were bested by another team.  We vowed to do better tomorrow.

We tried to read on deck, but even in my winter coat, I was freezing.  We relocated to the Wheelhouse, which is a nice bar/lounge.  I’m reading THE HOUR I FIRST BELIEVED, by Wally Lamb.  I almost gave up on it a few times, but now I’m glad I stuck with it.  It’s just the right kind of book for a trip like this: one you can read in spurts, then put down to watch the lady at the bar try to sing along with the piano player’s “One Singular Sensation.”

After dinner, we went to one of the theaters to watch a musician/comedian.  He told us he has been doing cruises since 1977, which made me feel too sorry for him to like him much.  Plus he likes puns and sings ‘70s songs in funny voices.  No patience for this on dry land, let alone on the high seas.

Day 3

There are 11 decks on this ship that are open to passengers: Fiesta, Plaza, Emerald, Promenade, Dolphin, Caribe, Baja, Aloha, Riviera, Lido, and Sun.  Our cabin is on the Aloha Deck, aka Deck 11, which means that we do a lot of elevator-riding or stair-climbing in order to get places.  I avoid the elevators for the most part (because they put me in alarming proximity to other people), so I get a work-out on the stairs.  You run into the same people over and over on the stairs, it turns out.  I imagine we’re like-minded in other ways as well.

 

After my jog, I made my way up to the salon (Riviera), where Gordana cut off two inches and regaled me with stories about women who do silly things to their hair.  She says women from the UK have the strangest dye jobs, and that the fact that my hair is in such good condition is because I don’t color it, but if I would like to, she would recommend a shade of red.  I told her that I’m 54 and this is what I look like, for better or worse, and she laughed nervously, as though I had inadvertently identified myself as peculiar and she was a little embarrassed for me.

Lunch poolside (Lido), where the sun had shown itself for the first time in two days.  We had hamburgers and hotdogs, but the wind was blowing my new haircut around and I finished fast.  Went off to read in a quiet lounge and was suddenly overtaken with intense sleepiness.  Found our cabin and slept hard for almost an hour, missing Trivia (and probably pissing off Roy and Josine).  Now I remember why I don’t read in the middle of the day.  Also, I think there’s something about being off the Internet that is discombobulating.

Formal night, which means men wear tuxes or suits and women wear sparkly dresses. 

Frankly, I was interested to see what some of these people were going to wear.  It was great fun to sit in the atrium, drink champagne, and watch the show.  Nearby, an elderly man and woman were having a conversation:

Woman: Doesn’t everyone look nice?

Man: This is such a load of crap.

Woman: Always a smartass.  What’s wrong with you?

Man: I don’t have to tell you.  What are you, the feelings police?

The man was genuinely disgruntled.  I love “the feelings police.”  I am going to have to think about that and see where I can use it.

Robert and our friends are at a magic show.  I hate magic.  Basically, it’s just someone tricking you, and then you have to applaud them for it.  I’d much rather watch the ocean slip by.  It’s 10:40 pm and the sun hasn’t set yet. 

Memory, 1982

In 1982, my then-husband and I moved to Berkeley so I could go to graduate school.  My friend Jim got us an apartment in the building next door to his.  Growing around the front door was a huge, trailing jasmine in full bloom.  My mother stood under the doorframe and said, For the rest of your life, when you smell jasmine, you will remember this place.

It was a very ordinary one-bedroom apartment on the third floor.  It had an ancient kitchen with pale yellow tiles edged in black, and shag carpeting that Jim described as “owl-shit green.”  The ex and I slept on a platform bed in the dark bedroom, under a blue and white-flowered Laura Ashley quilt. We had a black-and-white TV in there.  It was about the size of a toaster.  I remember watching Michael Jackson do the moonwalk on that TV.

We didn’t cook a lot, or rather, we didn’t cook well.  I made a lot of pasta (which Neil Heidler ate too much of and threw up all over the owl-shit green carpeting).  The ex gloried in a dish of his own devising: vegetables sautéed in our big, red wok, then mixed with cream of mushroom soup and served over rice.  Needless to say, we ate out a lot.  On a limited budget, we often went to La Fiesta, a hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant on Telegraph.  Strawberry sodas and cockroaches on the walls.  Blue tiles inlaid on the tables.  Still the best Mexican food I ever ate.  I wonder if it’s still there.

I remember sitting cross-legged on the bed and doing accounting problems.  Standing by the bookcase in the hallway so I could talk on the phone.  Watching my husband perform at a terrible little club on Shattuck whose name escapes me, nicknamed “The Toilet” by the other musicians who were drawn in by free beers.

One of our neighbors was a woman named Andrea, and we got to be good friends.  She was working on a doctorate in archaeology and wanted to meet men in the worst way.  We used to laugh a lot, but I can’t remember why anymore.  We lost touch.

My close friend Sherry lived across town.  Every Thursday night, I would go over to her apartment and watch Cheers and Hill Street Blues.  (I think Thursday was the night the ex played at the Toilet.)  Sherry had a huge crush on Ted Danson.  I loved Daniel Travanti.  Sherry and I aren’t friends anymore.  I miss her so much.

The ex and I went to Tilden Park almost every weekend.  We rode the merry-go-round.  I always got a brick of pink popcorn at the concession stand.

He liked to jog, in those days.  It staggers me to remember that I did absolutely no exercise at all. 

I thought about all this this morning as I jogged past a house about a mile away from mine.  In the yard, a huge hedge of jasmine bloomed.  It almost stopped me in my tracks.

Pomp and Circumstance and Pasta Salad

My daughter was graduated from college last weekend.

It was at once like all other graduation ceremonies (black gowns, boring speeches, worries about the weather) and unlike all other graduation ceremonies (because my daughter was one of the participants).  While I sat there, I thought about my own graduation from college 32 years ago.  At the time, I thought I had set my life on a nice, straight track.  

I don’t even have words for how that turned out.

I also thought about how hard my daughter was to nurse.  She was always stopping and looking around, losing interest in the task at hand.  After a few weeks, I thought, To hell with this, and buttoned up.  I thought she was going to be distractible and unfocused, a person who never finished anything.

As it happens, she is still impossible to feed.  She won’t eat most meat, or beans, or bananas, or mashed potatoes.  She still eats cereal dry, with her hands.  When she makes a salad for herself at a salad bar, she returns to the table with a mound of black olives and a mound of shredded carrot and maybe, if she’s feeling adventurous, a slice of cucumber.

But this girl who has never eaten a ham sandwich was just graduated from college.    Over the course of four years, she endured the usual dramas in the housing, friend, boyfriend, and unsympathetic-professor departments, but she persevered.   She wrote a senior thesis in which words like “filmic” and “diegetic” figured prominently.  While she was writing it, she called me a lot, panicking.  But she stayed focused.

Graduation ceremonies are, in at least one way, remarkable.  You—the parents—are all sitting there feeling very private feelings, calling up your own memories.  But inexplicably, alchemically, you feel a connection to all these strangers, and their rightful pride in their children somehow ends up enhancing your pride in yours.

After the ceremony, we ate lunch on one of the college’s beautiful lawns.  My daughter had pasta salad: pasta, tomatoes, lettuce, carrots.  She didn’t eat the lettuce.  She doesn’t like it when the pasta and the lettuce are touching.    

Old Age

My 91-year-old mother has some sort of dementia.  Not Alzheimer’s, probably.  She gropes for words, can’t remember what she did three hours ago, insists that I grew up speaking Hungarian, as she did.  She calls my partner “Richard.” 

I am sad a lot now.

The weird thing is that my father died when I was 19, and I would give a lot if he could have lived into old age.  I miss him every day. 

But I miss her, too. 

I call her every night.  Usually, we talk about three things: the weather, politics (“Do you watch Rachel Maddow?  She’s such a doll.”), and whether she went for her walk.  Recently, her foot has been bothering her.  The half-hour walks have become 15-minute walks.  I think it’s an omen.

My mother has become less hard-edged in old age.  She oozes love. She hugs receptionists.  Once a woman who complained about everything her friends did (“She walks too slowly!”), she now has mostly nice things to say about people, assuming she approves of their politics.  It’s a nice change.  And lucky.  Dementia can make you nasty.

Last night, at dinner, she told the waiter at the Lark Creek Café how old she was.  I almost fainted into my steamed asparagus.  One of the hallmarks of my mother’s life has been her easy ability to lie about her age.  I didn’t know how old she was until I was 20.  Even then, she told me that she was 57, and told my brother that she was 56.  Lying was something she did even when there was no benefit to be gained.

As soft and mushy as she has become, my mother is still infuriatingly stubborn.  She lives alone and insists on driving.  (A few months ago, I stole her car keys.  My brother had new ones made.)  She has control of a lot of money, and she Will Not Let Go.  I have begun the process of taking that control away.  She wants to argue about it with me all the time.

It breaks my heart.

At dinner last night, I needed a tissue, and she rummaged in her purse to find one.  She pulled out a paper napkin wrapped around a brownie.  “I forgot about this,” she said.  “How long has that brownie been in there?” I asked.  “Oh, I don’t know,” she said.  “I got it at the JCC.  They serve lunch for six dollars.  The meatloaf is fantastic!”  Then she leaned in close and whispered, “But everyone who eats there is so old!”

Finishing What I've Started

I am working on a manuscript.  I have written 91 pages.  It will eventually be a good middle-grade novel.  I’m almost 100% sure it will sell.

I started this novel over two years ago.  Since that time, I’ve written and sold another manuscript, and written and submitted yet another to my agent.  (She’s still considering it.)  Meanwhile, I cannot finish this particular book (tentatively called Three).  It’s driving me crazy.

Part of the reason is that it’s a story about three kids—two girls and a boy—and different chapters are told from different points of view.  I have a hard time juggling that.  I have to remember obscure details about each character, and the longer I take to finish the book, the harder it is to recall them.  Recently, I decided I wanted to make a small change in the boy’s home life.  It took me weeks to incorporate it, and long after I thought I was finished, I kept finding references to the boy’s parents that no longer made any sense.

 

It is said that all writers have manuscripts in their desks (or on their computers) that were 1) never finished, 2) finished but never sold, and/or 3) abandoned for various reasons.  I have a few of these.  In one, I tried to fictionalize my mother’s experience growing up in an orphanage.  In another, I wrote about a crazy family loosely based on the one into which I was born.  I think I stopped working on these because I realized I would be divulging other people’s secrets.

  

Family loyalty is a double-edged sword when you’re a writer.

Another reason it’s hard for me to finish Three has to do with the fact that one of the characters is poor.  I spent yesterday working on a scene in which she has to figure out how to make a dinner for herself and her father out of rice and a quarter of a brick of cheese.  I felt a huge responsibility to do justice to the scene without sentimentalizing it.

After I wrote it, I felt sad and weary and spent.  It wasn’t until long after dinner (organic baby greens, roast chicken, root vegetables) that I realized why.

 

Caring about the characters I’ve created is a good sign.  It means they’re real to me, which usually means they’ll be real to other people.  But knowing that they’re living in dire circumstances makes it hard for me to want to spend time with them.  I find myself stalling: running errands, making phone calls.  Anything to avoid thinking about a kid who has to lie about why she never has enough money to get a smoothie after school with her friends.

So I’m writing here about Three in the hope that I will now feel compelled to finish it.  I will tell myself to woman up.  I will stop whining.  I will get over myself and just do it.