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.

Joy (and A Video of My Son Dancing)

One of my best friends from college died on Friday.

 

To combat the sadness, I’ve been thinking about joy and what brings it to me.  Small things, it turns out.

--The first gulp of lemonade on a really hot day;

--Sitting on the front steps after my morning jog;

--Turning a cake out of a pan and feeling with my whole body that it slid out perfectly;

--A belly-laughing baby;

--Figuring out a plot problem in any novel I’m working on;

--Watching David Letterman with Robert;

--Getting a phone call and looking down and seeing that the last two digits of the incoming number are either “74” or “02”;

--Animals, especially dogs and chimps (and yes, I know chimps are nasty and vicious, but I don’t care);

--Shopping with Cara;

--The moment in a restaurant (especially with Robert) when the waiter brings the salad and I know that the whole meal is still ahead of me, to be anticipated, but I don’t have to be hungry anymore;

--Birds twittering (which I never used to care about at all—how is that possible?);

--Road trips;

-- Tom Waits’s “Heart Attack and Vine,” Johnny A’s “Oh, Yeah,” anything by Benny Goodman;

--Opening a brand new book;

--Watching my son dance.  Here is a video.  He’s the tall young man in the untucked blue shirt--#424—dancing with the woman wearing a black-and-white top on the right-hand side of the screen.  This is a jack-and-jill competition, which means they were randomly assigned to be partners.  He had never danced with her before.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w--V4LdtjA8&feature=more_related

Whatever joy I feel in watching him—which is considerable—is dwarfed by the joy he feels himself.  It is palpable in every move he makes.

A Little Old

Last weekend I drove down to L.A. to bring cookies to my thesis-writing daughter and a scratch cake to my son, recently bereft of wisdom teeth.   Daughter and I decided to bond over some retail therapy at an enormous mall in Glendale.  It was crowded and raining and I was tense, having already been in the car for six hours.

We entered a store, and immediately I noticed that the music on the loudspeaker was so loud that I had to shout to be heard.  “I hate it when the music is so loud!” I groused.  She said, “What?” and I said it again, yelling this time.  She laughed.  “You are such an old lady,” she said.

Something inside me snapped.  “You know what, Cara?” I said.  “I am an old lady!”  I felt incredible freedom—a sort of zinging inside my brain—as I said it.  I thought, Well, okay.  The secret’s out.

 

Except for one thing.  I was lying.  I am not old.

 

I know who Mumford and Sons are.  I can bench press half my weight.  I wear cool suede boots with brass studs.  I am, as I constantly remind my kids, adorable and hip.

 

I am the opposite of old.

As it happens, I am grouchy and curmudgeonly and a big complainer.  But it’s not because I’m old.  I’ve always been this way.

What I realized in the mall is that now I can chalk up all the weird things about myself—that I hate loud music in public places and camping and movies with car explosions and the way that nobody even cares about split infinitives anymore—to being old.

   

It’s completely fabulous, finally having an excuse.

   

While we were in the store with the loud music, I bought myself a filmy, float-y ecru-colored top patterned with figures of women in mid-20th-century hats and dresses.

     

I bought it because even though I know who Mumford and Sons are, I like to listen to Benny Goodman more.

Okay, maybe I’m a little old.