the battle between the mice and the toys

I am often cynical, snarky, judgey and opinionated. But at this time of year I embrace another part of myself, the part that believes in magic, that finds nothing more nourishing that a lit christmas tree in a dark room, the part of me that feels a kinship with all people, and experiences a strong desire to hug strangers on the street and tell ladies on the subway how pretty I think they are. I'm fairly sure the holiday spirit is palpable like low pressure or fog. Yesterday, I watched it snow on stage at Lincoln Center, I watch the snowflakes dance (actual ballerinas, snow will never do any "dancing" on this blog, i promise). And when the ballet was over we walked to the subway in the snow, and I told PBT that I wished the holiday season could be longer, that it feels so fleeting. But maybe it is in that fleeting, in the very act of it slipping by that the magic occurs. It is a strange moment when we all are young, and we know it, and we know that it goes. In Our Town Emily is warned not to go back to the world of the living, she is told if she does, to pick a normal day, but she can't help herself and she picks her 12th birthday. Christmas time is this, it is a time we all go back to that is almost too special to bear. Maybe in these brief weeks we can each have a moment to realize life as we live it.

Then we can all return to our snark and our judgements, thank god.

the new you

Parenting, the source of love, a hot spring that burns you, that comes up between fissures in your soul and scalds you. It is miracoulous becuase you keep living, because you love it, because while you feel like this you are also doing mundane things like brushing hair and washing hands and saying "you can't wear them in bed, you've just worn them outside." And you hold and kiss and wipe and scold and laugh and warn and generally maintain safety protocals. You are the voice on the trian and they are aliens who've never ridden the subway, "Mind the gap!" "Don't hold the doors" "Don't train surf unless you want to die" "Don't laugh, dieing is not a joke." This is your life. But then in the middle of the night when you put blankets on a lump in a twin bed the lump says to the darkness. I love you mommy. And you think we are not on a train we are in heaven. We are in the sun and all you know is pure light. And the lump says "don't go. Peter Pan is on the cieling and he's locked in a cage." and you say, "we'll talk all about it tomorrow."

my alien

thumbs and other addictions

I recently wrote a blog post for my regular gig about thumb sucking and I started thinking about my own oral history, as it were.

I sucked my thumb until I was nine. I still remember how good it tasted, how rubbing my nose with a hang nail while thumb sucking was basically the greatest thing ever. I would occasionally do it at school, cupping my hands over my mouth and nose as if that somehow hid my actions. I was never made fun of, I must have stopped doing it at school before people really noticed. But then again, I went to a fairly vanilla school where there was no bullying and the biggest problem there was cliques. Yes, cliques, that I will go into another time.

So thumbs. For a kid who was facing her parents divorce, the thumb was a crucial form of comfort and sameness. And I was addicted. My parents and siblings were always trying to convince me to stop, making bets with me. My father and I had a running bet, if he quit smoking I would quit sucking my thumb or vice versa. They stopped short of dipping my thumb in vinegar, since they are good people. I couldn't tear myself away from this delicious habit. Looking back it was just like my experience as a smoker. I would resolve to stop the following day and I'd wake up, having forgotten my vow, smoke, have a Homer Simpson moment and then decide screw it, the day's shot anyway. Maybe my thumb sucking primed me to fall in love with cigarettes. Cigarettes: thumb sucking for grown ups.

I quit sucking much the way I quit smoking. I was forced to. Not by anyone, but by my body. As a smoker I developed asthma, had an attack and that was the last time I ever smoked. As a thumb sucker it was a little more gruesome. No, I didn't lose my thumb (though that was probably the only other thing that would've worked). I had a horrible bike accident the summer after I turned nine, the first summer my parents were separated. My Huffy off-roader (fine print, do not at any point ride this bike off-road. My brother missed these instructions and used to make jumps out of planks and firewood. Ah the 80's) had been handed down from my brother to my sister and then to me. Apparently seven years of hard riding is more than the limit for that model. As I flew down the hill anxious to show my dad just how fast I could go, no shoes, no helmet, I saw the front wheel wobble, a bolt having come loose, and then blackness. I woke up in the back of my dad's car, my brother holding me saying, don't go to sleep, don't go to sleep. I had knocked out three teeth, had a cut that ran from my upper lip to my hair line. Both knees were shredded, and I had cuts on most of my toes. My sister stayed behind while we went to the hospital to search for my teeth. She told me she followed the blood splatters, but it took three days to find them in the brush by the side of the road (she's the best). Magically, I didn't break anything. But, with no front teeth and a puffed up lip, sucking my thumb was out. I struggled to sleep for the first week, in part because I was cold and couldn't have a blanket over most of me since it hurt. But now I realize, it was also because it was the first time in my life I had to fall asleep without sucking my thumb. But don't feel bad for me, eight years later I found cigarettes.

Something that felt too raw to post at the time, now, almost a year later I can

Recently I lost someone. I should say a man I didn't know, or just knew of, a friend of the family, was lost. His family lost him, his friends lost him. He was lost at sea. A man I knew, or knew of, was swept from his boat, from the deck my brother and father had stood on just weeks before, hauling lines and facing winds. There was no difference between when this man was on his boat and when my brother and father were on the boat, there was no great disadvantage to his location, no lack of knowledge (of the sea or the boat or the wind), there was no lack of crew, no lack of expertise aboard. There were storms, and wind and nights, and shifts in watch and all had gone smoothly as it had for them for seven previous summers. But this day, this change in watch, there was a rouge wave, two in fact. And two men were washed out of the boat and only one man was washed back in. Strong winds and a broken rudder meant procedures could not be obeyed, meant that thrown lines dragged through water, through hands. The boat could not stop or turn. One man, trying to save two. One man, left in the water, stayed in the water. While my father slept in his bed, while my brother brushed his youngest son's teeth, they on dry land. They safe from waves. It could have been them. Strange that in our streaming, gleaming modern age, full of gps's and sonar and satalite everything, the sea still trumps all. Sailors can die today the way they have for a thousand years, and we mourn them. We see only black sails.