memorial day

I wonder if I'll ever stop being surprised: Surprised that, no, I cannot just keep living my life the same way, no matter how productive I am, if no one is paying me. That, yes, the boy from when I was seven and the boy from when I was twenty-seven and my sorority great-grand little sister (or something) all got married in the same weekend. That the people I was surprised to see get facebook-divorced are engaged again. Surprised that my friends were trying to talk us into what was not necessarily a scheme but was, undoubtedly, a pyramid. That I can stay calm enough to actually be helpful when my baby brother calls from the Caribbean to tell me he is throwing up blood and on the way to the hospital (and that my credit limit might have actually been helpful, if it had come to that). Surprised to find out in a single day that two of my friends-- real friends, college friends-- are having babies soon (one on purpose, and both very excited).

I wonder when I'll stop being surprised to be a grownup.

We took off. We escaped to the beach with a swimsuit under my clothes and a tent and a cooler and sunscreen and all the things to make s'mores. We were going to camp, though it wouldn't really have been roughing it to sleep in the back yard of a house we had all to ourselves and I'm not sure it counts as camping when you've got a kitchen and two bathrooms and a washer and dryer and a television and a piano. But I got a cold, and we slept inside and that was fine, too. It was good to get away for a few days.

~b

let's go for a swim

I became a freelancer.

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

I have a cousin, Lillian, who is my opposite, not just because she has fair, straight hair and brown eyes and freckles, but because of. . . everything. She perms her bangs. She was practically born wearing sensible shoes. When she was 14, her dream car was a minivan. While the boy cousins and I spent our summer nights catching milk jugs full of tree frogs and playing sardines in the dark, she was probably watching The Sound of Music again. She played with dolls until. . . . Actually I’m not sure she ever stopped.

Lillian is a teacher for 4-year-olds. She’s slightly overweight and is married to a very overweight man and they have two obscenely overweight dogs and they all sit around and watch NASCAR. She eats fast food and posts inappropriately personal things on Facebook. She lives in the same small town she always has, in her husband’s house where she moved from her parent’s house when she got married.

I loved to dive when I was little: stretched out full and eyes wide open, even off the high diving board at swimming lessons. Lillian, though, with her goggles on tight and her nose held and her little toothpick jumps, still got nosebleeds in the pool about once a week.

And once, when she thought I was still under water, I heard her say, “I wish we could all be as brave as Beatrix.”

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

I became a freelancer, which is to say that I quit my job.

It was a brave thing to do, I think, but it’s a fine line. What if we take a dive off the highest cliff, not because we aren’t afraid of the water below, but because we are terrified of what might be up there with us?


~beatrix

what you give and what you get

It was a sad story. Really tragic, I thought when the show was over.

The cool, calm voice of my mother, embedded in my head, replied, It wasn’t a sad story. She went back to her husband and her life. She went back to her family. She did what she should do.

Years after it happened, my mom told me that one day she put my four-year-old self and my baby brother in our old brown station wagon and drove away. My dad was working, either at his regular job or the rapidly failing business that once-friends had abandoned to him. She left forever, but she had no cash and knew the credit cards wouldn’t work. She was running out of gas and didn’t want to end up, embarrassed and un-pitied, at her parents’. She didn’t know where else to go, so she went back home.

It’s the stuff Oprah’s Book Club is made of.

I don’t remember it.

It’s not a sad story, it turns out. It’s a story about responsibility and obligation and enduring.

My parents have been at the coast, odd for the middle of the week. My mom took a nap on a friend’s yacht and my dad caught the biggest fish she’s ever seen. She had to get off the phone so she could get back to shopping for beach houses before dinner.

It’s a story about rewards.


~beatrix

a snippet-- fill-in-the-blanks

A few weeks ago, over a 3-hour ham(and chicken- and veggi-)burger dinner with Ted and my cousin and his wife:

“. . . at our wedding.”
“Wait, so when is your brother getting married?”
“The 25th.”
“What? Of July? Of this month?”
“Yeah. They got a package at a bed and breakfast for nine people.”
“Wow. I would never be able to do that.”
“Oh, no. At our wedding we had people we just had to invite. . . .”
“Did you know that Dunkin’ Donuts has ninety-nine cent iced tea now?”
“Did you just try to change the subject?”

I’ll let you figure out who said what.


~beatrix

wedding of the century

Ted caught the bouquet. To keep if from hitting the floor, he says. With an outstretched arm and a measure of decisiveness, I say.

Maybe it was just a matter of perspective.

Boys can catch the bouquet, by the way, in Connecticut, where Grandmas can also marry their girlfriends in sweet ceremonies where the justice of the peace cries and the kids, grownups for all appearances, sneak rice from the restaurant kitchen in two coffee cups, to ensure a proper send-off.

We brought the cake and got in a fight in the car. We fight like my parents. That’s disturbing, but not altogether uncomfortable.

It feels familiar.

We made up after the party started. There were quick kisses and whispered apologies. It was a celebration of love, after all.

Then there was toasting and lunch and Ted clobbered his cousins so he could snatch that bouquet.

~beatrix

this easter. . .

We ate matzo for breakfast then went to church-- mostly to see my cousins.

I helped him find the verses in the Bible, then prayed that the pastor wouldn’t say anything embarrassing. God doesn’t answer every prayer.

It’s Easter, but sushi is half-price every Sunday.

~b

rumors

“I heard a rumor that you and Ted might be moving in together.”

I was on the train out of the city with Ted’s cousin when I realized that the only thing more exhausting than a family might be two families.

We went to Princeton for his family’s Seder, and after the meal I could hear Ted’s dad from the other end of the table. Palms flat on the table, he was explaining to Ted’s old cousins:

“Well, Ted’s lease is up in June, but Beatrix’s isn’t up until the end of the year. . . .”

So, you know, I guess it was a thing. A thing about which my parents should probably be informed.

My mom had a hard time explaining how she felt. Which I understood:

“You sound exactly like we do when we talk about it.”

She told me:

“I think it will be fine. I think it makes sense for you.”

I never expected glowing excitement over the living-in-sin thing. So, I’ll take it.


~beatrix

a big thing, but not with capital letters

My dad was slightly concerned that we were coming to visit because of a Big Thing.

But my mom assured him that the two of us had cooked up this plan and Ted didn’t even know anything about it yet.

We-- my mom and I-- decided it was time, and I told Ted to free up a weekend. He’s going to Georgia.

I realized later that I’d sprung it on him rather suddenly, but I’m too excited to care. And anyway, he deserves it.


~beatrix

it makes my last post seem a little less crazy. . . a little

I had turned my back to the boys, and beer was running down my chin. Two-thirds of the way in, I gasped for air before beginning again.

College was worth it like never before, and those sorority dues were paying off.

Ted had assured me I didn’t have to do this if I thought it would end badly, but it was going great, and I could hear them getting excited.

Ted’s friend I’d only just met declared, “If she’s pulls this off, you’ve got to marry her.”

And Ted’s brother claimed, “That is my future sister-in-law.”

I turned around as triumphantly as is possible when you are wiping beer from your face with the back of your hand, and raised the empty pitcher.

Those boys were easily impressed. There was only a glass and a half of beer in that pitcher, maximum. And once you say you can do something, you kind of have to do it.

“That’s my girlfriend,” Ted put his arm around my waist. No one ever said he fell in love with me ’cause I’m so classy.

Later I was standing on the sidewalk waiting for people who were still inside, a course your night tends to take when you’ve been drinking beer out of pitchers.

I don’t know how Ted’s brother’s thought began, but it ended, “. . . when you get married. Or maybe I’ll be in the wedding. . . ,” with a characteristic raised palm and shifted chin that means question mark.

“Of course you’ll be in the wedding,” Ted told him.

I told Ted I only want three bridesmaids, and he said he could probably narrow his people down to three.

“Oh, and my brother,” I added.
“But will he go on your side or my side?”
“My side.”

And then Ted told his brother’s friend he could be an usher.

~beatrix

his baby cousin

We were getting our coats on, which involved hugs and teasing and goodbyes and a crowd gathered around the front door, when a skinny, sweatered, 11-year-old arm threw itself around me from behind.

This isn’t the way I’ve ever celebrated this holiday. Except for the turkey, not a single food on the table was the same. I have my own little cousins who greet me with forceful, running-start hugs. This isn’t my family.

This cousin-- She’s brilliant and talkative, and sometimes it’s easy to forget that she’s really only eleven. But this hug was the unencumbered sort that you only get from little kids. Sitting on the passenger’s side, I realized that as much as I like her, if I let myself be completely honest, letting go of caution, I could flat-out love her like I’d always had her.

I like these people, even if they have mashed potatoes for Thanksgiving.

This feels like a Thing to me.

And I think the glisten, highlighted by his parents’ taillights, on Ted’s cheeks might mean I’m right.

~beatrix

where we come from

Once, my baby brother said if I got married on Game Day, he wouldn’t come. And it’s probably true.

’Cause where we’re from, college football alliance is something like religion. “The Cliffords. . . they’re Presbyterian,” you might say about an entire, extended family, “and Tech fans.”

But maybe it’s more like ancestry. Us, for example-- we’re Scottish and Irish and some Cherokee on my maternal grandmother’s side. And we’re UGA fans (though I didn’t go there, and most of my family didn’t either), but we’re Auburn fans on my paternal grandfather’s side.

And on a Friday night, when I said, “Oh, tomorrow’s Game Day,” Ted said, no it’s not, because to him Game Day is Sunday.

So he cares about professional football and he doesn’t play golf and he’s never had a Christmas tree.

“If you ever live with me, you’ll get to have a Christmas tree.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. You can put whatever you want on it.”
“Whatever I want?”
“Yeah.”
“Jew-y things?”
“Yeah, if you want. We always had a Star of David on our tree.”

Which is true because one Christmas Eve my dad brought home two department-store presents, one in in red and green with a Christmas ornament, and one blue and white with a Chanukah ornament. They turned out to be gloves for me and my mom, but they didn’t fit and we returned them.

~beatrix

My big fat Italian family

I'm amazed at how many of the people who read this blog are from overseas. I love reading their own blogs and hearing each culture come through their words. (Mr London Street just wrote a charming story about an American friend who began to adopt a distinctly British attitude about expectations.You should check it out-- after you finish reading this, of course.)

The differences between Americans and everyone else (as Americans tend to categorize the world) are numerous. We tend to look at these differences on a psychological level but they go much deeper-- cellular even. If you ask a European about his heritage, he'll likely give you a single answer. If you ask an American, you'll usually hear a long list of places of ancestry. (Another sweeping stereotype for you-- Americans suck at math unless dealing with the many fractions of various nationalities that make up their heritage.)

For example, I am half German, a quarter Polish, and a quarter Italian. I may also be Scottish too depending on how deep you want to look into the questionable background of my great-grandfather. I am a typical American; a living mosaic of the those who emigrated to the states over the last few hundred years in search of a better life.

Except for one thing: Americans like simple as much as they like variety. For all of my cultural diversity, I am usually written off as 100% Italian. Granted, I have dark features and my last name ends in a vowel but I think the categorization goes further than that. Just as in eye and hair color, I believe that there are such things as dominant cultures in our genes. The resulting cultural tendencies are so forceful that they can overwhelm everything else, and try as you may, it is impossible to escape them.

I came to this great revelation during my family vacation in the middle of a day at the beach when my aunt offered me a snack from her beach bag.

"Are you hungry Harper? I made gazpacho."

Gazpacho. My aunt brought soup to the beach. And since you can't have soup alone, she also brought french bread, a variety of cheeses, and olives. To the beach.

One great thing about being Italian-- you'll never go hungry.

-Harper

Pity party

I'm throwing myself a pity party, and you're invited!

The family trip was a disaster. Not in the, "My family is so weird!" kind of way. A disaster in the "Do you mind if I spend Christmas with you because I've burned bridges with every person on the planet who shares my DNA and I have no where else to go?" kind of way. I'm working on several vignettes for you all to explain in a humorous way how exactly my family unit disinegrated in a few short days, but right now I just want to feel sorry for myself. I mean, "Long December" came on the radio today and I cried.

Is there a time when you can stop trying to put your Humpty-Dumpty family back together again? If all the king's horse and all the king's men couldn't do it, where does that leave me?

-Harper

National Lampoon's family vacation

I had promised tales of debauchery and sin but I got out-debaucherized rather quickly. Plus, I'm about to embark on a family vacation and there's nothing less sexy than forced family fun.

I shouldn't complain. While we've certainly had drama over the years (I mean, who hasn't had their own brother arrested?) my family is for the most part very nice and normal. In a way I wish we were all a bit more nasty-- it's hard for others to grasp the subltety of my family's form of warfare.

Let's take last Christmas, for example. My father's wife Karen (which, any child with a remarried parent will tell you is different from a step-parent) gave me some extra-special gifts.

Karen: Harper, this is for you.

Harper: Karen, thank you- it's the Van Morrison CD I wanted... But, what is this post-it note on it?

Karen: The post-it was to let you know that it's regifted. I already had the CD so I thought I'd give it to you. Open this one next!

Harper: Oh look, it's a book with another post-it reading "This has been regifted."

Karen: The cover may be a litte warped because I read it in the bathtub.

I admit that from time to time we take some creative license with this blog. I wish I could say that I had invented this scene, mostly because I wish I had never held a book that my father's wife had perused while soaking in the bathtub. But it's all true, down to the post-it notes.

Wish me luck during my family vacation. Anyone out there have equally horrifying family tales they'd like to share?

-Harper

something like the second scariest question ever

Four days, a three-day weekend, and two outfits-- it just doesn’t quite add up. I just kept ending up in Brooklyn and not leaving. There’s sun and lots of food and hours of awful reality shows and naps. There are lots of great naps.

Everything is good, but I feel like something is stirring.

He asked about my plans for the next weekend. He told me what he was doing. I’m ignoring it until he makes it impossible not to.

We’re sitting on his bed, kissing and cuddling when he asks me:

“Do you want to come to Princeton next weekend?”

I sit back. He’s going to a big family graduation party, and I’m not sure I’m ready for that.

“I don’t know.”

That’s all I’ve got.

~beatrix