A n n a r c h y

The stage: A small wooden deck with sturdy balusters, overlooking a vegetable garden in late season.

Enter main character: Gigi, a 6-year-old Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. It’s clear from her saunter that Gigi is unhurried and uncomplicated, and her portly figure implies a dog who is enthusiastic about her meals. Suddenly, Gigi sees something that piques her interest, and a drama ensues.

Scene 1: Gigi spies a green tomato that has fallen from its vine in the garden. From the glint in her eye and quickening of her step, it’s clear she considers the green tomato a tasty prize — a kind of lucky harvest her enterprising belly has stumbled upon.

Scene 2: Lacking a working knowledge of spacial relevance, Gigi attempts to reach the tomato by squeezing her ample physique through the (blasted!) unforgiving deck rails. In an instant, she regrets the enthusiasm with which she enjoyed last night’s second helping of chicken pot pie, delivering in response to her successful, if pitiful, whining. She wonders whether she might have managed the evening just as well with less, and whether that might have made all the difference, right now. [Read more →]

Popularity: 12% [?]

We set off on foot, the six of us, under an azure sky as big as the ocean. The breeze off the water smelled of salt and September, and the dune grasses bent toward each other, whispering the news that fall was coming.

It was a picture-perfect, precious August day, the kind of day that a talented someone with a camera might photograph and print onto a postcard, which someone else might then buy to send to a friend, to show how big the Maine sky can look over an endless sea; and how the line from the midday crowd snakes lazily out of the soda fountain, through a squeaky screen door propped open all day, in turn, by the backside of whoever happens to be waiting for service next; and the way the wild beach roses that grow straight out of sand, impossibly, cascade over a split-rail fence, tumbling like curls over a toddler’s forehead.

The idea was simple: Each of the three teams of two was armed with a single list of two-dozen things to scavenge from around the tiny seaside village of cottages and a few public buildings. Things as in things: a bit of beach glass ground smooth in the surf; or a bit of clothing lying abandoned on the beach, stiff with sand and salt; or a ripe rose hip, red as a miniature candy apple. And also things as in information: the year the Curtis Guest House opened for business, or the color of the roof at 18 Maine Street, or the first name of the formidable guy behind the tall oak counter at the post office.

Each team paired a grownup with a teenager (or near-teen), and so Rachel and I became partners. In some ways, Rachel, who is almost 13, and I, some 30 years older, we were a fitting pair. She and I approached the list seriously—and, I thought, intelligently: Scrounging the more common facts in a guidebook that we found lying around the house. There was an efficient economy to finding the name of the present village Association president as it was printed in the book, rather than, for example, having to step into the association office and actually asking. [Read more →]

Popularity: 21% [?]

The Boston outlet of Morton’s, a Chicago-based steakhouse chain, sits across the street from Boston Harbor in a newly developed part of town called the Seaport. Inside, Morton’s has a clubby feel—all hushed tones and white linen and dark paneling. The bad lighting makes it hard to read the prices, which are high, so perhaps that’s the point. I guess it’s a very nice restaurant, but it reminds me more of the kind of place my parents might think of as a very nice restaurant: When a group of us walked in one recent night, it was a little like entering a private inner chamber. We weren’t exactly rowdy—but, still, it felt like the Laugh-In party of seven had just crashed Masterpiece Theatre.

Morton’s is known for its beef. Right away, after you’re seated, a waiter trots over, parading raw steaks on a wheeled display cart. He takes a lot of time, table side, to explain the various samples of meat and the characteristics of each cut, but still I can’t grasp the difference between a porterhouse, or a NY strip, or a double-cut filet. In my mind, I instead give each a name: One as big as a shoebox. Oval with bone. Size of a Chihuahua’s head.

Each steak is gargantuan, with the overfed and solid look of a linebacker. The other things on the rolling display are huge, too: An entire head of broccoli, a potato the size of a shot-put. But what caught my attention was a colossal green-black lobster perched on a plastic tray, his powerful claws neutered by thick rubber bands. The creature was motionless, so it took me a minute to realize that it wasn’t, as I originally thought, dead. Its slick antennae whips suddenly twitched and its stalked eyes seemed to dart about, as if to silently signal a frantic recommendation that diners try the steaks. [Read more →]

Popularity: 32% [?]

On Thursday, my son finished up his junior year of high school, and today his dad, little sister and I drove him 75 miles to the Rhode Island School of Design, where he’ll spend the next 6 weeks immersed in Art. He’ll spend much of that time muddying his clothes in the ceramics studio, with his hands elbow-deep in clay that turns magical in his two hands — hands that have turned sinewy and strong from all his time at the potter’s wheel.

He hugged me and patted my back with those hands when we left to drive back home. He’s gone to summer camps before. But this was the first time that he didn’t push me toward the exit with impatience, counting the seconds before I would stop embarrassing him, or smothering him, or fretting too much, or whatever it is that I do that usually drives him absolutely crazy. “Thanks, Mom,” he said instead.

We were standing in his dorm room, the place that will be his home for the next six weeks. I don’t think he was talking about the twin-sized bed I had just made up for him, with the freshly purchased extra-long sheets and the fleece blanket from his bed at home. He seemed to be talking about something else entirely, and it was that other thing that caused a sudden lump to rise in my throat. [Read more →]

Popularity: 44% [?]

As I sometimes reveal here, there is something universal about the awkwardness of family.

About a week ago, two childhood friends launched a site to document as much. The results — in the vein of LOLCats and Stuff White People Like — are hilarious:

The Choker: “This is what happens when your male role model is both a priest and a gym teacher.”

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My Two Dads: “You may use your calculator for this equation.”
(Favorite comment: “I am very confused by this. Is the guy in the front right like a neighborhood computer guy who helps them out sometimes?”)

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Popularity: 67% [?]

I’ve been thinking about Things That Scare Me for a while, and when I wrote it, it turned out much longer than a blog post. So here’s an excerpt, including photos of the video shoot in Steve Garfield’s dining room cum video studio.

A few weeks ago, I had to film a video greeting that would be shown to 14,000 people who had registered for an online conference my company was holding. It was a short video – no more than a minute or so. All I had to do was smile warmly and welcome folks for dropping by – sort of like a digital version of a Wal-Mart greeter. It sounds easy enough – fun, even – but for some reason the prospect of the filming completely unnerved me.

Maybe I was worried about the number of potential eyeballs gawking at my every move. Or maybe I worried about stumbling over my script, like saying shit instead of sit. (And the more I worried about that one, the more convinced I became that it was going to happen.) Whatever the case, certainly that Tuesday when I entered my friend Steve’s house in Jamaica Plain, near Boston, and Steve pointed his camera at me and told me to start talking, I worried about all of that at once. I felt excruciatingly self-conscious, awkward, and scared.

I was what grownups in the 1970s called a “nervous” child. I worried constantly. I was afraid of lots of things – snakes, the dark, monsters, our house catching on fire, deep water, loud noises, being kidnapped, the school bus, Russia, talking to adults, answering the telephone. I was thin-skinned; it was easy to bruise my feelings. Everything embarrassed me.

Typically, this came out at night. During the day, I played outside with the other neighborhood kids and – other than taking pains to avoid a few key triggers – generally got along okay. But at night I’d lie in my twin bed watching the shadows on the wall, and imagine all sorts of horrors that would twist my insides into a coat hanger.

“Mom!” I’d yell, as suddenly another thought occurred to me. “When was the last earthquake?”

From her recliner in the den she’d yell, “Go to sleep!” [Read more →]

Popularity: 74% [?]