A Different Kind of Nativity Story

“Watch this,” my sister nodded toward her daughters, then age 6 and 4, playing in the living room. Rachael, the older of the two, rolled the Fisher Price school bus up to the nativity set my sister had set out on the hearth of the unused fireplace in preparation for Christmas. I had noticed that the figurines were askew when I came in, but didn’t say anything; I figured that they were a casualty of having little ones in the house.

Rachael piled the three wise men, and whoever else was present at the birth of Jesus, into the bus. “OK, let’s go,” she called cheerfully to them. She drove the bus in a loopy pattern across the off-white berber carpet, all the while chattering to her bus full of biblical vagabonds. The bus stopped at some unseen wonder on the far end of the couch, in front of the end table.

“OK everyone, five minutes,” she instructed the wise men. With the help of Rachael, the passengers filed out and stood facing some unseen wonder on that side of the room. It must have been one of the wonders of the world, as that bus had to traverse the entire living room for them all to see it. I wondered whether they were viewing the Grand Canyon or Mount Rushmore, on the far side of the sofa that day. I wonder what Rachael imagined they were looking at.

“Time to go back, we're going to be late” she warned her passengers. They filed into the bus and stood on the seats. Their heads stood out of the sun roof, which I am sure must have been a chilly ride back to a manger in a barn at the end of December. She helped the “wise guys” and friends out of the bus and carefully arranged them around the manger.

She held up one of the wise men and examined the figurine carefully. “Hey,” she pointed to it, “Why isn’t he wearing shoes? Mom says I can’t wear sandals in the winter. It’s too cold.”

Want to Hear Something Creepy?

My mom arrived in North America in October 1961. (Well, that’s not the creepy part, just stick with me.) She went, alone, on a boat from Gdansk, Poland to Montreal, Canada. She was just 24 years old, and all she knew how to say in English were “Bristol Pennsylvania” and “Ham sandwich.” The boat she traveled on was called the Stefan Batory, and she found a way to game the exchange rate en route and made a bit of a profit before landing in Canada.

She had no idea how long the train ride from Montreal to Bristol would be. She stayed awake the entire time, terrified that if she fell asleep she would miss her stop and be lost without being about to communicate. She kept herself awake for 48 hours until her cousin met her on the platform in Bristol. She eventually made her way to Chicopee, Massachusetts where she met Dad. Then all of her siblings and parents ended up in America, and Mom wasn’t alone anymore.

On the day she died, October 4, 2001, we were going through old photos of her so we could put them up in the funeral home. There was a picture of Mom riding a motorcycle when she and Dad visited Poland in 1973 that just had to go into the collage. It was their first time back since they’d left more than a decade earlier, and I was born 9 months after the trip. There were pictures of all of us, and Mom and Dad’s wedding pictures. Dad scoured the house and couldn’t find the picture of Mom parasailing when they went on vacation to Marco Island. We tore the house apart and looked in every cabinet, every drawer and through every photo album. No dice.

Dad opened Mom’s memento box that she had kept on the floor on her side in their closet. The box had always been there. We’ve all seen it a million times when in there, but none of us ever thought to ever open it. It was just one of those things that we didn’t even notice anymore because it was always there.

I don’t think Dad ever thought to open it until that day when he was looking for that picture. Inside the box was a print of the Stefan Batory that Mom had saved from her boat trip. The picture was on the front of the dinner menu on the boat, and Mom’s legendary sticky fingers had swiped the menu and taken it from the boat as a souvenir. On the back of the print was the menu. That night’s dinner selections were written in Polish, and the date was at the top.

It was dated October 4, 1961—exactly 40 years to the day before she died. She was 24 on the night she swiped that menu. She was on her way to a brand new life in a new country. If someone had told her that night “Forty years from today you will die” she would have laughed at them. She was young, brave and invincible. There was a certain brilliance and vibrancy about Mom right up to the end, and I would have loved to see her in action at age 24. (Hell, I’d love to see her in action at age 72, which is what she would have been this year.)

Dad stared at the menu, speechless. I don’t remember who asked him what was wrong, but he showed us the picture and the menu and we all fell silent. The air in the kitchen felt heavy and none of us knew what to say. It was a feeling we all felt all day long. We fumbled around the house while picking out what she’ll wear. We all shrunk into ourselves, exhausted and drained from the day. My sisters made grilled cheese sandwiches that filled the house with a smell that nauseated me as I couldn’t stand the thought of eating anything.

We debated on whether or not we should put shoes on her feet. My cousin Theresa once told us a story about how Mom went to help pick out a suit for Theresa’s father, who was Mom’s older brother, when Theresa was making her father’s arrangements. Theresa had asked Mom if she should bring shoes for him as well. Mom said, “Of course he needs shoes. How will he walk into heaven without shoes on?” My sisters recounted the story and laughed at how it was “so Mom.” All I could do was cry because it was just “so Mom.” I can just see her saying it with that spunk that she had. It was the same spunk she used when she would yell at the ref at one of my high school basketball games. I can still hear her, with her accent and rolled r’s, “Ref! She travel! Blow the veestle!” And then she’d holler to me “Bih Jay! Dreeble! Dreeble the ball! Shoot!!”

The thing about the date on that menu haunts me still. I wonder if my 40 year out mark has passed or not. When Mom was my age, her 40 year mark had already passed; in fact, she only had 29 years left. I wonder when Dad’s was, as he’s 71 now. I look at my brothers and sisters and wonder if theirs passed or not too. Has Todd’s? Has anyone’s? My friends? Strangers I see when I am out and about? Unfortunately, not everyone will have a 40 year mark, and that bothers me too.

So, I pose this question to you, Internet. If you had the chance to know when your 40 years left mark would be, or when it was, would you find out? Would you live your life differently if you knew?

I wonder if Mom would have done anything differently.

Exposed Nerve

On Sunday it’ll be 8 years since Mom’s been gone. The last six weeks of Mom’s life did not at all represent who she was. Her cancer spread, and the tumors compressed her spinal cord and she lost all feeling and ability to move from the waist down. My sisters and I dropped out of our lives for those weeks and took turns taking care of her. I blew off work for most of that time, and only went 1-2 days per week.

I never really let myself fully absorb what was happening at that time. I slipped into denial robot mode and shielded myself from the possibility of losing Mom. Everything I did during those six weeks was done with the sole purpose of making her live. My mind assigned extreme importance to every little mundane task I accomplished every day. My first thought in the morning was how making her favorite breakfast would make her live. The laundry, done just so, would make her live. I concocted protein shakes with fresh fruits blended into them to make her live. I was careful not to get shampoo in her eyes, because one sudsy splash would tip the scales in the wrong direction. Any little thing could make her live, and denial robot had to perfectly execute every chore so not to risk causing her demise.

The denial robot mode fully took over. Nobody could talk about any other fate than Mom surviving around me. There was no other option for the denial robot. Mom dying simply did not compute. Period. It was exhausting. But when you’re a denial robot you never get tired. You push and push because nothing else matters. (My sister and I watched the 9-11 attack on TV, then simply turned the TV off and bathed and dressed Mom so we could get her ready for radiation treatment in Hartford.)

I vividly remember her wake, when my cousin Anna had said to me “It gets easier.” Anna’s dad had died when we were seniors in college. Later on that night my cousin Theresa said, “You just have to live through the pain.” Her dad died when she was in her early 20s and I was only 7 or 8.

And it’s true. They were both absolutely right. I’ve said the same things to other people I know who have lost their parents. “The first 6 months will completely suck. Just get through them and you’ll be OK” I told them. Later on they told me I was right.

But my first six months were riddled with spontaneous sobbing at inopportune times and vivid nightmares. The denial robot’s battery ran down and left me to deal with what actually happened in those six weeks. Mom’s health gradually degraded until we were all with her when she took her last breath. And none of those things I did, that would surely make her live, worked. In those six months I waited for the answer to be revealed to me, but of course it never was. There wasn’t a chore I missed that didn’t make her live. It was the cancer that didn’t make her live.

Now here it is 8 years later. And while the pain of losing her has subsided, there are times when it bubbles to the surface. It's usually something entirely random that triggers it. Today a client at work called me from Bristol, Pennsylvania—where Mom lived when she first came to the United States. I’ve only visited Bristol when I was a kid. It wasn’t a part of my childhood—but I knew the story of Mom taking the train from Montreal, Canada to Bristol when she first arrived on this side of the pond. I spent the rest of the day walking around feeling like I had a stone in my stomach and I randomly burst into tears in the car on the way to dinner at a friends’ house tonight.

And that’s what nobody prepared me for when they were trying to comfort me at her wake. That it never fully goes away.

Belated

Sydney, Australia 10 September 1994

It was a Saturday night like any other in Sydney. The dorm I was living in had organized a pub crawl for that night and I, along with a large crowd of American and Australian students, boarded the city bus bound for downtown Sydney.

I don’t remember the details of where we went, but the idea was that we’d spend an hour at this pub, then an hour at the next, then the next and continue for a half dozen or so pubs. It was just long enough to get a drink, or two if you were ambitious, and then the crowd would move on to the next pub on the list. We pulled our hand-drawn photocopied maps out of our pockets, they were harder to decipher after each stop on the crawl.

I successfully completed the crawl and boarded the bus with my illegally gotten student rate bus pass. American students weren’t allowed to have them, only the Australians. I risked detection from a random bus inspector every time I rode on the bus, but I couldn’t resist the allure of a half rate bus fare. At the wee hours of September 11, I stumbled up the stairs to my 4th floor room. It was conveniently located right across the hall from the stairs, and one door away from the communal hallway payphone. I squinted as I tried to read the small note taped to my door. It was written in blue ink, in impeccably neat handwriting.

“Congrats BJ!! You’re an auntie!! Call home.”

I didn’t bother to unlock my door, and instead scrambled to the phone. I frantically dialed the international calling code, the calling card number, and drunkenly navigated the ridiculously complicated process of calling home to Connecticut.

“Mom! It’s me! I just got the news!”

“It’s a girl!” she cheered into the phone. She gave me the number of my sister in law’s room at a hospital in Hartford.

Your dad answered the phone, and you were crying in the background. I started crying too.

“Her name is Magdolene Jeane, and she’s perfect!” your Dad raved. “She’s so beautiful!”

Months later my brother sent me a video that was shot on the morning of your baptism. It was December, and I was in the throes of the Australian summer. I was living in a flat down the road, because the dorm was closed for the summer. The flat came equipped with a TV and VCR, but the VCR’s format was different than it was in America. I could hear the audio, but couldn’t get the picture. My flatmate Vanessa and I tried to get it to work, and I began to cry because I could hear your dad talking, but all I could see were the static-y squiggly lines.

I ejected the tape and ran to the media center in the library on campus. They had a machine that would show American tapes. I located it, and slid the tape into the VCR. With the headphones firmly in place on my ears, I pressed the play button.

Your dad’s voice guided me through the house until the camera panned to an infant giggling and bouncing in one of those jumpy swing things suspended in the doorway.

“And there’s my baby!” he cooed. His hairy hand extended from behind the camera and caressed your face as you smiled at your dad and the camera. Tears streamed down my face, and I laughed at the same time.

I didn’t meet you until you were 10 months old. You tottered up to me, after having just learned to walk. Without a hint of shyness, you smiled at me as I picked you up and held you for the first time.

And now you’re 15. You’re cool. You’re poised. You’re whipsmart. And I am so very proud of you.

You Know It Was a Good Weekend When...

...four nieces and a nephew vandalized the bathroom mirror with a dry erase marker....

...and then they camped out in the living room...

...after draining two flavors of slushie from the machine.

Both of my sisters visited for the weekend, and brought along their five kids and our aunt. On Saturday night we headed to Providence for Waterfire.

While we were at Waterfire Todd made a donation at the Dreamgarden. He handed two of our nieces a ribbon on which they wrote a wish. Their wishes will hang from this star for the rest of the summer.

Then each of my nieces and nephews were given a card to write down a wish. They each set their wish down next to one of these candles on the ground.

Rubber Sandwich, This is Night Hawk. Come in, Rubber Sandwich

Leave it to Todd to give our nieces and nephews secret agent code names. Back in June, 7 of our nieces and nephews invaded our house. On the Sunday morning of that weekend only 4 of the 7 were left. No, we didn’t sell them on the black market. They went home with their parents.

We took the remaining 4 geocaching on that Sunday morning. Todd decided on the way there that because we were going on a secret mission, we needed to have code names. He left them to pick out the perfect code name. Spencer, 11, named himself “Night Hawk” while Rachael, 15, named herself “Rubber Sandwich.” I let Cassidy, 5, a.k.a. “Rainbow” name me. She thought about it for a few seconds and promptly christened me “Beautiful.” She is still my favorite to this day.

My sister reports that my crack team of secret agents is still living incognito, even though the mission has long been over. All she hears at home are conversations between Night Hawk and Rubber Sandwich.

One night they all went out as a family with my sister’s boyfriend and his two sons. One of boyfriend’s sons is also named Spencer. They met a woman who asked my nephew, “So, you’re named Spencer, and he’s named Spencer. Does it get confusing with two Spencers around? Do they call you Spence to tell you apart?”

He replied, “No. They call me Night Hawk.”

Counting to Seven

1…2…3…4…5…7…

And then a sigh of relief that I reached seven. Had I only reached six, or heaven forbid only five, then surely one of my siblings would have skinned me alive and poured acid on my corpse for good measure.

Over the weekend my brother Kaz and my sister C trusted their children in our care. Kaz has 3 kids, age 8, 13 and 14, while C has 4—age 4, 11, 13 and 15. This is quite possibly the greatest compliment I have received from either of them. By doing this they are basically saying, “I trust you with my most precious of irreplaceable possessions.” It’s tremendously flattering and terrifying at the same time.

And boy did we have a blast.

The rules at Aunt Beej and Uncle Todd’s house are different than they are at home:

Rule 1. The only choices for breakfast are things like Trix, Fruity Pebbles, or Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Aunt Beej will also make a fruit salad for you, but only because she knows you like it.

Rule 2. Aunt Beej and Uncle Todd will take you to have an ice cream before dinner. It’s how we roll.

Rule 3. The dogs require a great deal of Frisbee throwing and chasing. They also require a great deal of cuddling and treats. This is your job.

Rule 4. The most important thing to Aunt Beej and Uncle Todd is that you are smiling, laughing and having fun.

I am pleased to report that all seven of the nieces and nephews who visited over the weekend followed these rules to the letter. Saturday we went to the Rhode Island Air Show at Quonset Point where I practiced counting to seven over and over as we made our way through the crowds. But the kids had fun watching the planes and playing in the inflatable amusement park section. (The zip line obstacle course was particularly cool.) We were most impressed with the Oracle bi-plane and the Canadian Snowbirds’ sequences. I got a good chuckle from the older kids as I yelled out, “Yay Canada! And I love your geese too!” after the Snowbirds concluded their routine.

On Sunday morning Kaz and Melissa grudgingly returned from their freedom fest overnight trip to Providence, and three of the seven went home. By five in the afternoon my sister C and her boyfriend returned from their jaunt to Mansfield, Massachusetts to see Jimmy Buffet, and an afternoon side trip to Newport. We gathered for a beer can chicken dinner punctuated by a few margaritas.

This morning I kissed my sleeping nieces good-bye as Griffen tried to scam a second breakfast off of my nephew. I feel a bit empty knowing that they won’t be there when I get home from work.

Ideas at Supersonic Speed

This weekend we will have seven kids in our house.

Seven.

Like, more than 6.

A few months back my sister called me up and said “Hey, I am going to Jimmy Buffet. Without my four children. They’re staying with you. Mmmmkay?”

Then a few weeks back we said to my brother, “Hey, we’re going to have C’s kids that weekend. Your kids don’t get to hang with them that much. Drop ‘em off and we’ll have a big slumber party.” Before I knew it my brother had booked an overnight on Cape Cod, and he’ll drop his three off at our house on the way. And then I’ll have to put out the fire left in his driveway from his tires peeling out.

I am ridiculously looking forward to having all of them in the house this weekend. Seven kids aged 5-15. What to do? What to do?

No, seriously, what am I going to do with seven kids for the weekend?

Then the idea came to me yesterday. It screeched across the sky in the airspace above my office in East Greenwich, RI in a blur of shiny navy blue. The Blue Angels have been rehearsing their near supersonic speed air ballet for the air show at the Air Force base in Quonset this weekend. Forget about light bulbs going on over my head. My ideas tend to come to me powered by jet engines.

Perhaps we’ll drag seven kids, in two cars, to the show tomorrow. Or we’ll force them to clean our house and wash our cars. Either way, it’s all good.

Blame it on the Kielbasa Nova

On Monday I was asked by my co-workers, "So, Beej, what did you do this weekend?" I casually shrugged and said "Oh, I went to my dad's house and made kielbasa," as if this is something that everyone does all the time. I said it in a tone that I reserve for "Oh, I went to the movies," or "Oh, we hung around the house."

"You did what?" co-workers asked.

Making kielbasa is something that my family does at least once per year. When I was a kid we'd gather at my grandfather's house--located in a scary neighborhood in Springfield, MA. His kitchen smelled like natural gas and garlic on the day that we made kielbasa. And every time I smell that combination, it reminds me of when I was a kid and watched the blue flame emerge under a pan on his stove. Dziadzu (Grandpa in Polish, pronounced ja-JOO) had a smoker in the basement of the 2 family house he owned. A Hispanic family lived on the second floor, and I remember my cousins and I playing with Mario, the little boy who lived upstairs, while my parents, Dziadzu, and my aunts and uncles made kielbasa.

Years later we made kielbasa at my Uncle Joe's house. Joe had the smoker in his shed in his back yard. My cousins and I ran around and played all day while my parents, the aunts and the uncles ground the meat, stuffed it into casings, set it to smoke in the smoker, and drank vodka. Then one of my aunts would take a sausage from the smoker, and cut it up so that all the kids could have a piece of it.

Making kielbasa on Saturday was surreal for me. I watched my nieces and nephews play in the backyard, and I taught them a few of the games that I played as a child when my parents were making kielbasa. Todd ground the meat with my sister and my sister in law. They took a handful of it and fried it up so that they could test the recipe, just as my aunts and uncles had done. My sister and Todd stuffed the meat into the casings, while my nieces and nephews carted tray after tray to my brother who was tending to the fire in the smoker in the shed.

I sat in front of the smoker, watching the thermometer and drank a few Mike's Cranberries. We laughed and joked. I stood in the doorway and listened to the kielbasa sizzle with one ear, and my nieces and nephews play in the other.

After about 3 hours the kielbasa was done. I carried a fresh link into the kitchen, peeled it and cut it up. I called out to the kids, and they descended like vultures. Before I knew it, the cutting board was empty, and I counted my fingers to make sure I still had 10. Dad cut up a few pieces in the shed and picked up his vodka laden drink,"You need to have fresh kielbasa with a chaser."

Here's the raw kielbasa, waiting to get smoked.

This is the ominous looking smokehouse that my dad designed and built. Dad's a very inventive machinist. He built those doors himself. Behind the doors he has a retractable arm that the rungs of kielbasa rest on. The whole arm assembly swivels so he can rotate the kielbasa so they will cook evenly.

Almost done. You can see the swiveling retracting arm mechanism here. Dad built that whole thing himself.

The smoker is deep enough to fit several rows.


Fresh smoked kielbasa. 20 of these bad boys are now in my freezer.

I Was Once the Spazzy Sister

Friday night at 8:30 or so I arrived at my sister's house. C lives approximately 3 hours away from me, in a small town on the Connecticut/New York state line. To get to her house I have to leave Rhode Island and cross the entire state of Connecticut. But half way there, in Cromwell, CT, there is a Dairy Queen that is always worked into my itinerary as I travel to and from C's house.

When I arrived, C and her boyfriend were in the kitchen having some wine and preparing the food for my niece's confirmation the next day. Her two oldest children, my 15 and 13 year old nieces, were out, and C's 10 year old and 5 year old were watching a Bond movie. I helped C in the kitchen as she had wine. At 11 or so her girls got home. She grabbed her coat and said "OK, we're going out. Let's go! Let's go! Let's GO!" We hopped into my car and headed to a bar.

At 1:30 we got home. I only had 1 beer, C had a glass of wine at the bar which added to the wine she'd already had at home. I hauled my tired self out of bed at 8 or so in the morning. C was already up. She'd already run 4 miles that morning, dropped her son off at basketball, took her daughter to the hairdresser, and was cooking for Saturday night's party. The itinerary for the day included finishing up the food, cleaning the house, picking up the 13 year old from the hairdresser, bringing the 15 year old to get her hair done, picking up the boy from basketball, going to boyfriend's house to iron a shirt, fixing the piano bench, sweeping out the garage, and a zillion other things. (Luckily Dad arrived early, so he fixed the piano bench. Dad's wife helped with the food, while I cleaned the house. )

"Beej, oh my God we have so much to do!" she whirled around the kitchen, gesturing wildly.

"Aw come on. We have 3 more hours. It'll get done. You cook, I'll clean, it's all good," I said reassuringly.

And of course it did come together. The house was clean, the food prepared and presented beautifully. Guests arrived and I filled their hands with drinks. C's house was full of people mingling, laughing and having a great time.

After my niece's confirmation we all returned to the house to sit around C's kitchen table to drink and to poke fun at C. We stayed up until roughly 2-3 in the morning. In the morning I heard C's footsteps walk down the stairs, and the front door open. C was out for her morning jog, after downing some ridiculous quantity of wine the night before. She dropped the 13 year old off for indoor soccer, taught Sunday school, returned and cooked breakfast for the 10 and 5 year old. Shortly after breakfast her boyfriend arrived, and they went for a hike just after I left for the 3 hour drive back to Rhode Island.

It used to be that people said that of the two of us, I had a lot of energy. But watching her in action exhausts me.

Impromptu, Surprising, Awesome

Todd and I had a long weekend last weekend. Here it is Tuesday and I am still recovering from not being at work on Friday. I reluctantly went to work yesterday, and I am still not quite ready to get back into the groove of going to work.

On Friday we headed to the boat to do a bit of work. This winter Sabine’s getting a face lift:

1. The woodwork is getting scraped and sanded down to the bare wood, and will get varnished.
2. The top of the cabin is getting painted. Our boat will no longer be classified as a 90 mile boat (looks good from 90 miles away) and instead will look hot.
3. We’re getting new hardware put on that will make using the sails easier, and just about eliminate the possibility of losing a finger when coiling ropes around the winches.
   The radar system, formerly only decorative, will be functional. There will be a wire that will run from the radar dome to the display that will actually make the radar system serve its purpose.
4. Years ago we bought an anchor windlass, and for one reason or another we haven’t installed it. This handy device will pull the anchor up for us. Our current windlass, otherwise known as my husband, is starting to get worn out.

Once these repairs are made, living on the boat will be a lot more comfortable. It will no longer rain inside our boat, and onto our bed. We will be able to see other boats in the fog. We will be able to anchor easier, which will make travelling cheaper as well—as anchoring for a night is free. What’s even better is that the professionals are doing 99% of this work. There will be no all-nighters at the marina with this project. There will be no asphyxiation on propane heat this winter. There will be no running back to the marina at a million o’clock every night to swap out the propane canisters. Life is good.

On Saturday my brother Kaz and his family came to see the boat. On the back of our boat we have dinghy davits, that are largely decorative as well. The purpose of the davits is to lift the dinghy out of the water while we’re underway. This will cut down on the drag and make the boat sail just a bit faster, in addition to keeping the bottom of the dinghy from soaking in the water and getting slimy. So Kaz, the super awesome machinist, will re-fabricate the davits so that they will be functional.

After we had lunch we said to Kaz and my sister-in-law Melissa, “OK, we’re keeping the kids. You can go home now. We’ll see you tomorrow.” They laid rubber in the parking lot, reveling in the possibilities of a night of freedom. The kids rubbed their hands together, considering the possibilities of a night away from their parents. We played indoor mini-golf. We baked a quantity of cookies that can only be quantified as obnoxious. We played shoot-em-up video games, we ate pizza. We made sundaes with way too much whipped cream, we watched a movie, we soaked in the hot tub while Maggie and Hali dared each other to get out and roll in the snow. (They both did.)

Sunday morning we drove to Connecticut to return the three scoundrels, er, kids. We exposed them to the unseemly life of no parental rules, then sent them back to their parents as any aunt and uncle worth their salt would do. Then we headed to my dad’s house to celebrate his 71st birthday.

Sunday night I found myself passed out on the couch at 8:00, barely to keep my eyes open. Monday morning I pressed the snooze button at least a dozen times.

Beejutante

“Doesn’t he know you at all?” Brent asked me on the phone and laughed. I returned to my dorm room senior year of college, and called my friend to tell him about my dad’s hare-brained request from that morning.

I had gone home for the weekend. I didn’t go to church with my parents, and they returned from 8:00 mass to have breakfast with me. My parents are very religious, and attended a mass said in Polish every Sunday morning at the very same church in which they were married. Dad still sings in the choir, as do my uncles, and over the years he’s made friends with the people he’s sung with since before electricity.

Dad sat across from me at breakfast and said, “I was talking to Mrs. M. this morning after church. She’s organizing the Polonaise Ball this year. She wants you to be in it.” The Polonaise Ball is kind of like a debutante ball for eligible Polish girls. Supposedly being asked to be in it is some big honor. But it was an honor that made me bristle as scooped up scrambled egg and spread it onto my toast.

“A debutante? Me? Are you kidding, Dad? There’s no way…” I sat across from the table and tried to get Dad to recognize me. I am his youngest daughter. I hold my high school record in the unfeminine shot put event. I had stopped shaving my legs in some rebellion against “The Man” and was probably clad in a pair of men’s jeans, a humongous flannel, and faux Doc Martens. I was the daughter who ran a drill press in his shop when I was on breaks from school.

“What the hell was I supposed to say to her?” he asked, as if the concept of saying “My daughter’s not really into that kind of thing” was such a foreign concept. “And now,” he added “I will have to face her every week. How am I supposed to say no to her and see her at church every week?”

“Wow, she must be pretty hard up for girls, if she’s asking for me,” I snorted. “Dad, just tell her I am not interested. Please. There’s no way I am doing this.”

“No, I will not tell her. If you don’t want to do this, you’ll have to do it yourself. But don’t just ignore her request. I don’t want her asking me about it every week,” he growled at me.

I found Mrs. M’s number in my parents’ address book, wrote it down and shoved the piece of paper in my pocket. I drove back to school, an hour and a half away in Rhode Island, and tried to come up with a reasonable excuse as to why I couldn’t possibly be included as a Polish debutante. Most of the excuses that I rehearsed in the car started with “Are you fucking crazy? Have you seen me lately? At the moment my hair is magenta! Surely we can agree I am not Polonaise material.” I knew I had to do better than magenta hair.

I walked into my room, and picked up the phone and dialed. “Mrs. M? Hi, it’s Beej. How are you?”

“Oh, honey, how are you? I haven’t seen you in so long!” she replied, excitedly. I was sure that the last time she’d seen me was at the choir picnic when I was 10. I had skinned knees from playing too hard. As a senior in college I had skinned knees from falling down after partying too hard.

“Listen, I am calling about the Polonaise Ball…” I began. I don’t remember how I worded it. Nothing I rehearsed in the car sounded right. I decided when I dialed the number that I would just wing it. I think the words “painfully shy” came out of my mouth, and the words “couldn’t possibly stand up in front of a room full of people while wearing a gown…” also popped out. At least feigned shyness couldn’t be covered over with hair dye, and couldn’t be shaved off my legs.

“I wish you’d reconsider,” she said, soothingly. “There are so many benefits you’ll miss out on of you don’t go. You won’t be introduced properly to the Polish society as an eligible young woman…” I bit my tongue hard to keep in my disdain. My brain was pounding with ‘You mean I’ll miss out on the chance for my life to revolve around making cabbage-laden food for some Polish guy who wears sandals with black socks? Oh damn!’

“Thank you for the opportunity, but I think I will have to pass. Thanks for thinking of me,” I quickly blurted before hanging up the phone. I stared at it for a few minutes, as if it grew a layer of mold in the time I was talking to Mrs. M.

I dialed Brent’s number and heard him laugh. "Hey, you're lucky I am not doing this. I would probably make you go with me, and you'd have to wear a tux," I laughed back. Then he stopped laughing.

Inauguration

I don’t like discussing politics, and I sure as hell never considered writing about them on my blog. Mostly it’s because I fear I’ll look uninformed when I express my opinion, despite my CNN, NPR, cnn.com, and msnbc.com addictions. Today I am deviating from my usual political hermit crabness, and will write my first politically themed post here on A Life of Adventure, so there you have it—history in the making.

For the first time since the Clinton administration I am excited about presidential politics. When I was a freshman in college I voted for the first time. I stood inside the booth and flicked the lever next to Bill Clinton’s name. I stood there for a moment looking at all the buttons, names and levers and felt the butterflies in my stomach wake up. The second time I voted for him, in 1996 was when I first lived on my own. I registered as a voter in Massachusetts, and I walked to a local school a few blocks from my first apartment and pulled the Clinton lever again and hoped for another Clinton victory. My wish was granted.

I have come from Republican parents. While my brothers have largely carried on the Republican gene, my sisters and I are more left-leaning. When home from college, and in the period between college and moving out of home, I worked for my dad at his machine shop. I worked with my brothers and my sister on a daily basis. It was my job to do anything from answering the phone, drilling holes into pieces of metal, entering data into an ancient amber screened computer system whose information was backed up to tapes at the end of every day. I spent most of my time working in the office along side my die-hard Republican Limbaugh listening brother, Walter. Part of my duties was to answer the phone during the 12:00-12:30 lunch period. Walter usually ate at his desk, and blared the first half hour of Rush Limbaugh while he ate and while I was held prisoner in the office, chained to the ringing phone.

“Listen to this guy, Beej,” Walter prodded, “he’s the God of politics. He’ll teach you something.” So I listened. And I hated every minute of it. But I still listened and tried to give it a chance.

“If he’s so smart,” I began, “why doesn’t Rush run for President? All I hear his him bitching about this and that, and then telling everyone over and over how smart and great he is. I don’t really hear anything interesting here.”

“Then you aren’t listening. You’re what’s wrong with this country. You elected that idiot we have in office now,” Walter sighed, referring to President Clinton.

“I don’t think he won by only one vote. In fact, I think he won by a lot of them,” I replied, cheekily.

“You know what I mean, it’s people like you that elected him” he growled, and bit into his sandwich. I gazed at Walter’s blue eyes, an anomaly in my brown-eyed family, and not for the first time wondered if he was adopted. There was no way to logically infer that we’d come from the same womb.

On a November morning in 2000 I stretched on the floor of my gym as I watched the news. I didn’t stay up the night before to watch the election results. I couldn’t bear to. Still a Massachusetts resident, I cast my vote for Gore, and hoped for the best. I watched the drama unfold with the election results in Florida, and bit my nails down to nubs hoping for a miracle. I did the same in 2004. It’s not that I was a Gore fan, or a Kerry fan. I would have voted for a panda bear if one ran against Bush. The choices for President for those two elections didn’t interest or inspire me. “At this point, I am voting for the candidate I dislike the least,” I would dejectedly sigh when the conversation turned to politics.

In November, Todd and I watched the election results roll in. At the top of each hour, the newest tally was presented from which ever state closed their polls. We watched politically themed movies like “Black Sheep” and “American President” while we waited to be updated every hour. We cheered every Obama victory. We watched McCain’s concession speech, and commented on how classy it was. We sat up and watched Obama’s victory speech, and giggled excitedly. We barely slept that night for the excitement.

I’ve been listening to the preparation of the inauguration on NPR in the mornings on my way to work. More than once I’ve felt the slight sting in my eyes as I feel like I am about to cry out of joy and excitement. For the first time since my first time voting I am excited and inspired by my country’s President. Mr. Obama, please don’t let us down. There are a lot of us out here rooting for you.

Feed the World

When I was a kid, my Uncle George (the only uncle I have whom I’ve ever addressed with his English name) had the best record collection. He had a stereo in the basement, where my brothers, sisters and cousins would all hang out when we were visiting the great old Victorian that they lived in.

The basement was fully furnished. One side, if you turned left at the bottom of the stairs, was set up with a bar, and he had lighted Tuborg beer signs on the light wood paneled walls. Bench seats were built into both sides along the walls, and the center of the room was left empty—plenty of room for a bunch of kids to bounce around as they danced to George’s Rolling Stones and Beatles records.

The other room, a right from the bottom of the stairs, was the stuff of imagination. The only source of light in the room was recessed into the walls, to illuminate whatever he had displayed on insets in the walls. There was a huge drafting table on the far wall, and that’s where the stereo and the records were stored. We had to stand on a chair to reach the record player to change the record, or to move the needle back so that we could play the same song over and over again.

To the right, just as you walked into the room was a small work bench with shelves above it. On the shelves were numerous beakers, a Bunsen burner lighter (you know, one of those squeeze-y things with the flint in the metal cup), test tubes, and a vial with litmus papers in it. I still have no idea what Uncle George was doing with all this stuff; I suspect that these items were just a part of his eclectic collection. At the time I pictured Uncle George wearing a lab coat and swirling some unknown liquid in a beaker on the days when we weren’t visiting. He’d take the rubber stopper off a test tube and sniff the contents of the test tube, then dip a piece of litmus paper in it and examine the paper under the short fluorescent light that hung over the bench. Then he’d frustratedly pour something else into the beaker and swirl it around again. Then, disgusted, he’d put it all away and go upstairs for dinner.

He also had old army stuff on display in the room—old helmets, a gas mask, and a huge military radio system in the middle of the room about which we used to fight over who got to be Radar when we were playing M*A*S*H. Next to George’s vinyl collection, the military radio--complete with headphones, and numerous cords, switches, and plugs—was the coolest thing in the basement.

But his record collection still held the number 1 spot for coolest thing in Uncle George’s basement. On one visit Uncle George held up a record for me and explained that all the better songs were on side A, while all the other songs that the band didn’t like as much were on side B. I recited all the Rolling Stones songs that I liked, and he concurred with me on most them. He wasn’t entirely convinced that “Ruby Tuesday” was the world’s best song, but said he understood why I thought so.

When I was 10, I saw the video to Band Aid’s “Feed the World” which was the British pop singers equivalent to the “We Are the World” that the American pop stars put out sometime around 1984-1985. I declared “Feed the World” way cooler than “We Are the World,” and found vindication when the record showed up in George’s collection. I was visiting one afternoon when my cousin Joanna put the song on. Then we listened to it a dozen times more, and tried to identify the names of the singers. We easily picked out Boy George and Simon LeBon, and we tolerated Bono as he sang. (I wonder if now Joanna, just like me, tolerates Boy George and Simon LeBon and smiles when she hears Bono’s voice.)

Every year I look forward to hearing “Feed the World” on the radio at Christmas time. It brings back the excitement when I saw it in Uncle George’s collection and the afternoon I spent with Joanna listening to the song. But it also makes me a bit sad every time I hear it. The song is actually quite a sad song, designed to make the listener feel guilty and donate to the cause of feeding the world. The first time I hear the song every year, without fail, I start to cry. I call myself a big dork, and laugh as I brush the tears off my cheeks.

Today I was in my car doing the last bits of Christmas shopping. I endlessly pressed the scan button, looking for “Feed the World.” I lamented hearing the “War is Over” John Lennon Christmas song, I rolled my eyes at “Santa Baby” and I gritted my teeth against that piece of crap “Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time” and once again wonder how nobody has yet gotten around to destroying every copy of that song in circulation.

Just as I got back into my car, I heard the familiar chimes . I squealed in delight and cranked the volume up, and was instantly transported to Uncle George’s basement.

Insanely Jealous, Yet Ridiculously Proud

Last week I talked to my oldest brother, Walter, for a bit. I haven’t talked to Walter in awhile, and normally conversations with him are very on the surface. We don’t talk too much about the intricacies of our lives, and we don’t know much about what goes on day to day in each other’s lives because we talk so infrequently.

But on Friday we talked for a good 15 minutes, a record, and the conversation left me grinning ear to ear. Walter has 3 kids: a pair of boy-girl twins that are 11, and a daughter who just turned 9 last month. The twins started at a new school, a magnet school that is located about 30-40 minutes away from their town. The new school has had a very positive impact on my nephew, Robby. He hated going to school, refused to crack open a book and couldn’t get up out of bed in the mornings because he dreaded school so much.

This year is different. The bus picks up the twins at 6 AM, and Robby cannot seem to stay in bed at 5 when his alarm goes off. He leaps out and is ready to take on his day. Walter also reported that Robby can’t seem to put books down either. His approach to school has been the exact opposite of last year. He looks forward to it. He devours his homework. I could feel the pride come through the phone as Walter talked about him. I could just see the gleam in his eyes, and my pulse began to quicken in response.

Robby has been rewarded for his hard work and good grades with a once in a lifetime opportunity. He is going on a trip to Washington DC in late January. Specifically his trip will fall on January 20th. And while on his trip he will attend the Presidential inauguration. His school managed to secure a few dozen seats at the ceremony, and then they will attend a ball at night. Rumor has it, the new President will stop in at the ball and Robby might have a chance to see the President in person.

For that I am insanely jealous.

Yet I am also ridiculously proud.

“Way Better Than I Thought”

A few weeks ago, before the school year started, I had a phone conversation with my 14 year old niece, Maggie. It was a few days before she was going to start high school and her mom—my sister in law—had told me that she was nervous about it.

“You know,” I said to her, “I remember I was nervous about starting high school. I mean, there would be so many kids who were older than me. I mean, the difference between a 14 year old and a 17 year old is pretty big. The seniors even looked like they were bigger than me.”

“That’s exactly it,” she replied. “They will be a lot older than me.”

“It’s going to be OK,” I said in what I hoped was an assuring tone. I had gone to a microscopically small high school, just like Maggie does. “You’ll meet the seniors everywhere, and you’ll make friends with them. You’ll sit next to them in band, you’ll play sports with them, and all that stuff. And yes, some of them will be jerks and some of them will hurt your feelings. It’s just life, you know? You’re going to meet a jerk everywhere you go, right?”

“Yeah, I know that,” she sighed. I could hear the tension in her voice, and my heart broke just a little bit at hearing it.

Her first day of school came and went. The first week came and went, too. I held back on calling her to find out how it went, because I wanted to give her a chance to settle into it first.

Tonight I called her, “So, you’ve been in high school for a few weeks now. How’s it going?”

“It’s way better than I thought,” she replied, excitedly. “I am having a lot of fun.” She told me about how for the first few days she hung back and tried to get the lay of the land. Then a senior girl she knew approached her and introduced her to some people, and now she’s making friends every where she goes.

“There’s this weird boy in my grade, everyone calls him weird. And, well, he is weird. But one day I talked to him, and he’s so cool! We’re really good friends now,” she reported.

“The weird ones are almost always the more interesting ones anyway,” I mused. I love hearing about the world from the perspective of my nieces and nephews. Maggie told me how her French teacher is “so weird” and I thought back to the odd French teacher in my own high school, and how the Spanish teacher is always made fun of in every single high school all over the US. She went on to tell me about how she asked her math teacher why certain theories are true, and the teacher basically responded with “That’s just how it is.” Maggie expressed her frustration at that answer, just like I had at age 14. I sat there wondering if things had changed at all since I was in high school. I heard her talking about some of the same exact things that I observed when I was in school. Then I shared with her one of the more important things I learned about math.

“Maggie, there are certain things in math that are just given, and you’re going to have to accept them. You are curious and you want to know the why about the what. But it’ll make you nuts. If you just accept that certain things just are, then you’ll be a lot happier,” I advised.

We talked some more about her friends, and she said “You know, I can see it in the other kids how they try to be cool, and all I just say is ‘Hi, I’m Maggie’ and I am making friends and having fun, you know, just being myself.”

I sat there holding the phone and listening, as I grinned ear to ear. Maggie has stress induced alopecia. Just before the school year started, her hair fell out of her hair in clumps, to the point where she wears a hat or a bandana to cover it. And tonight she expressed such confidence and such comfort in her own skin. This 14 year old girl has lost most of her hair, and already knows that all she has to do is just be herself and she’ll have a blast in high school no matter how her hair looks.

I have never been more proud. And I have never been more inspired.

Spreading the Wonder

There’s something magical about taking people sailing who have never been on our boat before. There’s something inherently beautiful about the look of wonder on the faces of our guests the first time the sails fill with wind and the boat moves without having to rely on the rumbling engine. I love hearing the questions about the various pieces of equipment on the boat, and smile about the time my brother Kaz once asked me “Hey, what’s that propane tank for?” and I dryly responded “The grill.” My dad once lifted up the plastic scissor-like object off the foredeck and asked me what it was for. When I informed him it was the pooper-scooper for cleaning up after the dogs, he winced and dropped the gadget where he'd seen it and unconscioulsy wiped his hands on his pants.

This past weekend my sister Chris and her 4 kids came to visit , and we took them for our first sail ever on Saturday. It was fun to watch my nieces and nephew, whose ages range from 4-14, stumble around on the boat as it moved beneath their feet until they eventually moved comfortably as they got used to the motion of the waves against the hull, and the slight tilt of the boat as the wind filled the sails. My sister, a mother of four who is accustomed to being at the center of the action, sat aside as I showed my nieces how to raise and lower the sails.

“It’s so nice to just sit and do nothing,” she said, sipping her wine.

“Yeah, and how often do you get to do that? Just enjoy,” I replied, laughing. She lounged on the deck of the boat, and stared up at the sails and the sky.

Chris has never seen me sail before. I’ve been a sailor for 10 years, and I’ve never had the occasion to take her out because her kids were younger and needed more of her constant attention. She watched me haul in the jib sheets to tack the boat and trim the sails. She watched me command the helm while Todd set the anchor, then pulled it in. Then I took the helm again as Todd and our 12 year old niece, Madison, took the sails in and then when we motored into the mooring field and he picked up the mooring lines and tied them to the boat.

“Wow, Beej, you really know what you’re doing,” she slightly gushed.

“I can fake it,” I shrugged.

“Don’t let her fool you,” Todd beamed at Chris, “Your sister’s a sailor.”

“I dare you to take your hands off the steering wheel,” our 10 year old nephew, Spencer, interjected, trying to incite daring recklessness in his aunt.

I took my hands off the wheel, shook them around over my head with reckless abandon and said “AAAAGGGHHHHH!!!!” He nervously laughed and stared at me in awe. In Spencer’s experience, in cars and motor boats, one does not take their hands off the wheel for fear of losing control over the vehicle. But on a sailboat it’s different, and I explained it to him. Things happen a lot slower on a cruising sailboat like ours. I told him that it’s still vitally important to pay attention at all times, the captain doesn’t have to grip the wheel constantly when there aren’t any obstacles near by. Spencer seemed intrigued by the concept, and tested it out when it was his turn to take the wheel.

One by one they explored every inch of the boat, above and below decks. Rachael learned to raise the sails. Madison recited the names of the sails and ropes that operate the sails that she had just learned from her Uncle Todd. Spencer checked the depth gauge at the helm and periodically reported the current depth of the water beneath us. Cassidy stood on her 4 year old tip toes and strained to see over the compass located just behind the steering wheel, as she captained the boat.

And I fought back the tears of joy and pride at having my family thoroughly enjoy something that is such a large part of my life.

Mom with the Sticky Fingers

I had posted on one of Kevin’s entries about the spirit of my kleptomaniac mother, and thought I’d share a few of my mother’s sticky finger moments.

Mom wasn’t really a shoplifter, per se. She didn’t go into stores wearing a trench coat so that she could stash things under it. But she was a firm believer in the idea that she should not speak up when the cashier made a mistake in her favor. Years later I am still reprogramming the part of my brain that won’t speak up, so that now I actually do speak up when the cashier makes a mistake—even when it’s in my favor.

Now when I do speak up when I am in that situation, I can almost feel my mother’s hand on my shoulder and her voice saying in Polish, presumably so the salesperson can’t understand what the imaginary voice is saying, “Quiet! You’re getting that for cheaper!” By not speaking up, Mom collected a variety of goods including a camera, and a sled for one of her granddaughters either for free or for some drastically reduced price.


The Legend of the Blue Bin
Mom was notorious for finding useful things on the side of the road as she was driving along. Sometimes she’d find a bungee cord that was in perfect condition, or she’d find tools that had fallen off of a truck. One day, when cities and towns first started collecting recyclables with the regular trash pick up, she came home with a blue bin that said “Western Massachusetts Recycles!” on it. We didn’t have trash pickup at the curb in our town at that time, so we didn’t see trash cans and bins on the street in our neighborhood.

She burst into the garage after coming home from work and said “Look at this great bin I found on the side of the road! This would be great to keep all the garden stuff in, wouldn’t it?”

“Um, Mom? That’s a recycling bin. Somebody put that on the side of the road so the garbage man would empty it.”

“Oops!” she laughed. That bin is still in the garage to this day. I think it contains a volleyball, and various odds and ends in the garage.

Ill-Gotten Umbrella
Several years before the blue bin incident, when Mom used to drive a school bus, she used to go on an outing with the other bus drivers at the end of the school year. One year they all went to Boston for the day. In the afternoon it began to rain as Mom and the bus drivers were shopping in Fanieul Hall. She walked into the Swatch store to buy an umbrella. She stood at the counter and waited for the clerk to finish talking on the phone. She waited for several minutes, and the clerk never acknowledged that Mom was waiting. Mom didn’t want to keep her friends waiting, so she put the umbrella back and left the store, figuring she’d come back for it later.

Awhile later, she went back to get the umbrella. The clerk was still on the phone, and Mom waited with cash in hand for the woman to stop talking. Again, the woman didn’t acknowledge that Mom was waiting. “I know how I’ll get her to pay attention,” she thought as she turned on her heel, umbrella in hand. She walked toward the door of the shop, then out the door. She turned and saw the clerk, still chatting on the phone, and opened the umbrella to shield herself from the rain and kept walking.

Happy Birthday, Dad

My dad just turned 70 yesterday. It's amazing to think of all that he's seen in the last 70 years. Dad was born in Poland in 1938, and grew up in post-war Poland. He has memories of his village under siege as the German and Russian fronts duked it out literally on his front lawn. He traveled to America when he was 23 years old so that he could start a new life. It took Poland three years to grant him a passport so that he could leave the country, so as a 20 year old he was already thinking of his future and how to make it better in the land of opportunity. He's watched his new country go through changes, and noticed how much his home country grew and changed every time he went back.

He met my Mom, somehow convinced her to marry him and they raised five kids. He worked himself to the bone so that all of us wouldn't go without and so that we would all go to college. He grew more tolerant over the years, as his children grew and went through their stages. Now he can sit back and watch his 11 grandchildren grow and go through their stages--and watch his children grow into adults, spouses and parents.

Dad, thanks for everything you've ever done for me.

Happy birthday.

This is me, Dad and Todd at the surprise birthday that my brothers, sisters and I threw for him on Saturday night:

Guardrail

Nobody needs to tell me how amazing you were
I watched you fight and I watched you stand down
And I wonder which one took more guts

I wish I had your strength
I wish I had your brain
If only I had half of your energy

But I’m scared, I’m sick and I’m starving
I pulled over on the highway
To hold the guardrail in my hands
And I wonder what’s gonna happen next

We gather and we clutch the pieces of who you were
I wear your earrings, I walk around in your clothes
And I stare at your photo and wonder where that better place is
That everyone keeps talking about

And I’m scared, I’m sick and I’m starving
I pulled over on the highway
To hold the guardrail in my hands
And I need someone to tell me
What part of the equation I got wrong
And I wish someone would tell me
If I am doing this right now
Because I don’t know how to grieve
And right now I’m too tired to try

October 4th, 12:15 PM has carved its way into my brain
12:14 and 12:15 are radically different
No matter how hard I try
12:16 will never be like 12:14

It used to be I could tell you exactly how long it’s been
At any given moment right down to the minute
Obsessed I calculated over and over
Please don’t leave me alone with my thoughts too long

Because I’m scared, I’m sick and I’m starving
I pulled over on the highway
To hold the guardrail in my hands
And I need someone to tell me
What part of the equation I got wrong
And I wish someone would tell me
If I am doing this right now
Because I don’t know how to grieve
And right now I’m too tired to try

Nobody needs to tell me how amazing you were
I watched you fight and I watched you stand down
And I wonder which one took more guts

I started to write this the night you died, and kept working on it for over a year after. It's an angry song with dissonant, incomplete sounding chords. Every time I sing it, I feel ripped open and raw. But I still sing it.

It was 6 years ago today that I said my last words to you, “Thank you for everything. I love you.” I have missed you every single day since then. Some days I laugh at the way you didn’t understand that the word “junk” didn’t have a plural and you’d say “I have to put away these junks.” Some days I cry when I remember how your hair had fallen out to the point where you had to wear a wig. Most days I marvel at the life you led, and want to be like you—indestructible, unstoppable, brilliant, tough. I will tell your grandchildren all about you, I promise.

"I've Been Looking So Long at These Pictures of You, That I Almost Believe That They're Real..."*

All through my childhood Mom and Dad always had the camera around. Every little milestone was documented, every sports award night, every band concert, every graduation, and every vacation. Not only were the little milestones documented, but just the little things like when our cousins would come over, the camera would come out and Mom or Dad would snap a few shots.

When I was a little kid I stood around when photos were being taken quite a bit. I used to think that it would be cool if the film captured 1-2 seconds of sound when the picture was being taken, and then when you looked at the picture later on you could hear that 1-2 second sound byte. So if we were taking pictures at a birthday party, you might hear a second or two of the people at the party singing "Happy Birthday" or, inevitably, the sound byte would be of everyone in the picture saying "Cheeeeeeeese."

Then I would wonder what sound would go with the picture when ever a picture was taken. Then I'd try to remember that sound when I looked at the pictures when they came back from being developed.

I still catch myself wondering what the sound byte would be when a picture is being taken. I still catch myself trying to remember the sounds from that moment when I look at a picture later on.

*The Cure, "Pictures of You"

Let Me Tell You About My Sister

Friday night I was driving to my sister C’s house. She lives about 3 hours away from me. C’s son would be making his First Communion on Saturday, so I drove over on Friday night to help her get ready for the party.

C and I are 5 years apart, and we’ve pretty much constantly been in different stages of life. She was in high school when I was in junior high. She was in college when I was in high school. She got married when I was 17; she had kids when I was in college. She had more kids when I was finished with college.

Now she has 4 kids, and is rarely in the same place long enough to talk on the phone or write an email. She’s a mom of 4, and I don’t have kids. So, lately there really hasn’t been that much that we have in common. I can’t relate to PTA meetings, she can’t relate to going sailing, or camping on a weeknight, or the other stuff I do. But we do connect now and then, and it’s cool.

As I was driving to her house on Friday night I remembered a trip C and I took when I was 17 and she was 22. She was married, and I was a senior in high school. We decided to take a weekend and go to Newport, RI together. I went to her house after a field hockey game, to shower and then we’d go. When I got there, she had just finished making her husband a pot of chili for the weekend. See what I mean? I was playing field hockey that afternoon, and she was making chili for her husband. Back when she played field hockey I was probably being potty trained, or something like that.

We got in the car and headed east. She was driving, and I sat in the passenger seat with my hair still wet from the shower. She rubbed her eyes, and started howling in pain. Apparently the jalapenos she’d cut up for the chili left oil on her hands, and the oil stung her eyes.

“C, pull over,” I said. “Use my hair, it’s still wet.”

She pulled the car over and grabbed my head, and began mopping her tearing eyes with my wet hair to ease the pain in her eyes. She finished, and let me have my head with the rest of my body on the passenger side of the car. Then we proceeded to have fun in Newport all weekend. That was the weekend I so rebelliously got my ears double pierced, and lied about my age on the form at Barry’s House of Scrimshaw to do have it done.

C, thanks for a great weekend (if you’re sitting still long enough to ever read this) and thanks for taking me to Newport that time. And I’ll always let you mop your stinging eyes with my hair.

Ode to my Brothers

I have 2 brothers, Walter (8 years older than me) and Kaz (4 years older than me.) There are qualities about my brothers that I really really like. Walter was always way more than tolerant than humanly possible when I needed someone to play with my stuffed animals with me when I was a little kid. And he, like all my other siblings, took me along with him to the mall, basketball games at the high school, etc., when he got his driver’s license. He didn’t seem to mind 8 year old me hanging on his 16-year-old arm when we Christmas shopped in the mall.

Kaz taught me how to shoot my first lay-up at the basketball hoop in the driveway of our childhood home. When we were kids we played endless hours of wiffle ball in the yard. We created a wiffle ball stadium complete with home run fence (the line of bushes on the edge of the yard) and a scoreboard we’d fashioned out of scrap wood and paint. Wouldn’t you just know that Kaz has constructed an ice hockey rink for his kids in his own yard? And he has painted lines on the cul-de-sac in front of his house for various sports to be played on.

Kaz is also an insanely great guitarist. He’s one of those annoying people who can play a song by ear almost instantaneously. He can play all of Ozzy Ozbourne’s "Crazy Train" note for note. I can’t hear an Iron Maiden or Pink Floyd song without thinking of Kaz. I used to accompany Kaz with an occasional harmonizing vocal, or a bass line tapped out on my Yamaha keyboard, until I learned to play guitar too. I can’t play by ear to save my life, which is why I write my own stuff.

I can rely on Kaz to quote a line from Caddyshack on a moment’s notice, and I know he’d quote lines from the Spinal Tap movie, if only he’d finally rent it and get it over with already. Kaz can make me laugh to the point where I have tears streaming down my face.

I had the pleasure of spending Christmas Eve with my brothers and my Dad this year. Christmas with my brothers is a lot of fun because they have 3 children each, and having children around at Christmas really makes the holiday fabulous. The suspense in their faces at present opening time, the ripping of the paper, the squeals of joy when the presents are opened—I love it!

Not only was Christmas fun because of the kids, but because the amount of laughing I got to do with my brothers. This Christmas Eve Kaz and I were singing Hall and Oates songs over the table to each other. The way Walter snickered when he came in from outside wearing a cowboy hat and I had said "Oh, hey Hoss" was just priceless. (But then we got into a discussion over who wore the black cowboy hat on whatever show that was, was it Little Joe or Hoss?) I mean, how great is that??

Walter got me an awesome gift this year. When I was in Kindergarten my Mom had bought me "Misha" the official mascot of the 1980 Olympics being held in Moscow that year. I promptly named the bear Jennifer, after my best friend in Kindergarten. Eventually, over the years I wore Jennifer out or grew out of her. I don’t know which came first, the wearing out or the growing out. This Christmas Eve I was opening a gift from Walter, wondering what it could be that he and his wife were so excited about giving me. Inside the box was Misha, or Jennifer, whatever her name was. They actually found me a new 1980 Olympic mascot. It’s in perfect condition, unlike Jennifer’s eventual sad state after being drug around everywhere 6 year old me went. (Misha now proudly sits on my desk at work, where nosy dogs won’t get it and rip it to shreds. With all the other random stuff on my desk: sea monkey tank, fruit lights strung about, fruit stickers on my monitor, a sign that says in Polish "Caution! Angry dog!" nobody here—at my Office Space-esque workplace--is surprised to see a bear on my desk. )

Thank you to my excellent brothers for an amazing Christmas. You guys rock, your kids rock.

Oh, and here's a picture of Misha.