Today is my 29th birthday, and I have a nasty cold but am writing something I like, and we’re away for the weekend so this is my view while I work, and later we’ll have cheese and crackers on the deck, and later still we’ll go out to a good dinner, and see good friends this weekend, and I really couldn’t ask for more.
I have documented my trials and tribulations with gardening this spring here and here.
(Summary: I planted things, I killed things, I planted new things.)
Now I am concerned that I am growing a tomato plant that will take over the world.
This is what it looked like on April 15:
This is what it looks like on May 24:
IS THAT NORMAL??
Look, it has outgrown the three-foot-tall stakes I put in to keep it growing straight. What happens now? Gardeners of the world: what do I DO? Get taller stakes?
When will it stop getting taller? I’m so excited, I’m so excited, I’m so scared.
M, while good at many many things, is terribly, terribly bad at paying his parking tickets. And when you have an un-garaged car that lives on the streets of Philadelphia, you get a lot of them.
Thinking about the number of unpaid parking tickets he has sometimes gives me mild heartburn, so I generally have made a resolution not to involve myself in this part of his life. But it pains me.
A few weekends ago, we went out for a drink with friends at Time, right smack in the middle of Philadelphia. We had been up in Fishtown with the car so we made the brave decision to drive there and try to find parking on the street—something that is extremely difficult to do on a Saturday night in Center City when it is raining. As it was. But, lo and behold: when we got there, there was a parking spot IN FRONT OF THE PLACE. A miracle! We gloated. We should have known then.
The night got better: also at Time was Mayor Michael Nutter.
High-fives were exchanged.
We stayed for an hour or so and then got up to leave, still marveling at all the luck we had had so far. We walked outside to the conveniently parked car…..
…to find it BOOTED.
While I put both fists into my mouth and chewed on them to stop the big fat “I told you so” from catapulting out, M got on the phone to the city. We had to drive down to DC the next day for a wedding. It was around midnight. The odds were not in our favor.
Our friends found the whole thing amusing:
M, in a low moment, contemplated the idea of going back into Time to plead his case with the Mayor.
All I really wanted was a photo of Nutter coming out of the restaurant in the same frame as M with his booted car.
Alas, it didn’t happen.
I went home and went to sleep. At three in the morning, M managed to get the boot-removal crew to come back around and de-boot him. The crew consisted of one middle-aged woman. According to M, she was very very nice. The next day, we drove down to the wedding in DC, where we spent the evening impersonating the respectable citizens that we clearly are not.
And his parking tickets are finally paid…..for now.
I am lucky to have such friends, and lucky also that one of them has a house in Amagansett, near the beach, that can become a homemade writers’ retreat when necessary.
The library in question:
The beach in question:
The friends in question:
The dinner in question:
The health concerns in question:
Just kidding.
As I promised in this post, I will now embark on a series of life recaps.
Starting with, clearly, the most important.
Yesterday, my little sister B graduated from Barnard College.
Here is how I generally picture her.
Here she is now, posing on Barnard’s campus with her adorable bf:
I was seven when she was born and I remember clearly holding her for the first time, in the hospital room. I wore a white bow for the occasion. She was eleven—a little kid—when I left for college four hours away and basically never lived at home again. In recent years we have become great friends—something that I never could have imagined when I was thirteen and she was six and I spent all of my time alternating between telling her to stop following me around and crying into my binder about my tragic teenage life.
Yesterday was an emotional roller coaster, compounded by the fact that the President of the United States spoke at her commencement ceremony. And triple-compounded by the fact that I went to Barnard too, and so had alternating feelings of pride-in-sister and pride-in-alma-mater and pride-in-president all the livelong day.
There were a lot of tears. And not just from me. Not naming names. Or initials.
It’s sort of hard to explain the setup of the ceremony, but it was on Columbia’s South Lawn, which is divided by hedges into three parts. In the center were the students and faculty and the stage. To the right and left were family and friends.
The proud parents:
This was our view of the ceremony:
(Hi, tiny President Obama!)
And this was our view of the monitor directly in front of us:
(Hi, enormous President Obama!)
It’s true—the man. Is. Charismatic. He is also really funny. You can read about his whole address here. I thought he was terrific—not too campaigny, respectful of the fact that his foremost duty was to deliver a commencement address. He spoke meaningfully about being raised by women and still being surrounded by the powerful women in his life.
And the Barnard women were, of course, phenomenal. Going places. Hillaries in the making.
Congratulations, little B: you make us all so proud every day, just by who you are. I can’t wait to watch you start your postcollegiate life.
And hey, for at least a year: NO MORE HOMEWORK!!!!!!
I have unintentionally abandoned you and for that I apologize.
By way of probably insufficient explanation: along with writing, I work full-time in education, where things sort of come to a boiling point at the end of the academic year and then calm down substantially over the summer. So for the past few weeks I was first running around, headless-chicken style, and second suddenly able to breathe deeply for the first time in months. I took the opportunity to refocus on writing, which I intend to do as intensively as I can this summer, while I have a bit more time to.
This lifestyle is something I’ve grown used to and have recently been seeing as a very great blessing. To have so many things you love to do. I’ve always had a lot of disparate interests and sometimes that makes for very little downtime. I described it to a sweet friend recently as trying to juggle three very valuable objects—writing, teaching, and music—when you only have the ability to juggle two. As I’ve mentioned before, music seems to be the one permanently lying on the ground, for now. But it’s all right—I’m at peace with it. And lucky to be holding onto two that I care so deeply about.
Anyway, by way of apology, I will attempt over the next couple of weeks to play catch-up on the recent events of my life, via photo montage.
And now, a creepy stock-photo bear card to better express my feelings:
When I was a kid I associated Bruce Springsteen with women in their thirties and forties who liked leather jackets and jumping around with their hands in the air. I didn’t quite know what to make of him. Then when I was 16 my aunt introduced me to Springsteen’s album The Ghost of Tom Joad and it was all over for me. I was in love. Also, depressed.
I was learning to play guitar at the time and “Straight Time” was easy to play once I figured out how to fingerpick. And I played it a lot. Later in life I’d sometimes play it out at shows.
It wasn’t until college that I discovered that Tom Joad wasn’t Springsteen’s only mopey, acoustic (read: my kind of music) album. Nebraska was the original, maybe the superior. And then I was even more hooked.
My friend and college roomie Christine recently decided to do something brave and wonderful: start acting again, after not acting for most of her twenties. She’s a peach, and she’s in this play, based on the aforementioned album.
Here’s what the Sun-Times has to say about it:
http://blogs.suntimes.com/music/2012/05/bruce_springsteens_nebraska_ha.html
Go see it. And then tell her she’s great, from me.
One thing I try to remind myself of daily is how grateful I am that there are people who read what I’ve written. It never fails to give me a little jolt of sentimentality and gratitude to be scrolling down and down and down and down through Tumblr and suddenly to see that little orange bookjacket: there it is, from out of my brain and onto my computer screen and then from out of my computer screen onto bound paper and then into a camera and then back onto a computer screen, or many of them, in this case.
There is no nicer feeling than hearing from readers. Look, teenage Liz: readers.
(Thank you.)
April 2012
18. Unorthodox by Deborah Feldman - For work book club. The autobiography is about a woman who grows up in, then leaves, the hasidic jewish community in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. I had so many thoughts and opinions about the book that it’s probably best to say them in the book club forum. If you’re looking for a book to start a conversation, Unorthodox is a great one. OH! Almost forgot! I read Unorthodox via a friend’s ipad. So weird…
19. Wild by Cheryl Strayed - Are you a human being? Are you a human being with thoughts and/or feelings? Yeah well, you should probably read Dear Sugar. Then you should probably read Wild because Chery Strayed is hero status all over the place. Wild is about her journey hiking the Pacific Coast Trail and even though I have no interest in doing that whatsoever, she still made me believe that I can do whatever the hell I want in life. So that’s pretty great.
20. A Moveable Feast by Earnest Hemingway - This month I put the finishing touches on a trip to Paris this summer! So you know, obviously this had to happen. My friends may not be Scott Fitzgerald or Gertrude Stein (because they’re dead, otherwise I know we’d be tight) but I know they will be spectacular company in the city of light. Seriously can’t wait!
21. The Magician’s Assistant by Ann Patchett - Ann Patchett writes some of the best “now you’re hooked” books. If you need something for a short trip or plane ride, she’s your girl. The Magician’s Assistant definitely fit the profile because it had magic, family secrets, drama, and even with all that a sense that the story could actually happen. You don’t find that very often.
22. Heft by Liz Moore - Any hype Heft gets is so completely deserved. As I was reading it I kept thinking “Yes! This is my kind of book!” I’m not sure I could do the story justice by trying to summarize it here, but I will tell you that on the surface the book seems lonely or about the idea of loneliness. It is not that, though. It is a story of hope and finding connection. It was even a two day read for me, if that means anything about its abilities to capture an audience. I definitely look forward to whatever Moore writes next.
Sometimes, you send me e-mails for things like cookies and tours of the Mutter Museum, and I think we’re friends.
Sometimes, you send me coupons for Aerial Yoga classes:
And I feel so betrayed.
You don’t know me, Groupon. You don’t know me at all.
since I’ve had such a nice weekend, and also since I’ve done one of these picture-heavy posts. So sure, why not.
On Thursday, my friend Alex Gilvarry and I did a reading at an amazing gem of a bookstore called The Wellington Square Bookshop in Exton, PA.
It’s beautiful (see above), and they have delicious snacks. If you are ever within a 100-mile radius of this place (that means you, Philadelphians), it is absolutely worth your while to take a trip there. If you’re nice, the owner, Sam, will show you his rare books, including a first edition of Ulysses signed by James Joyce that left me feeling a little bit breathless with emotion just prior to my reading.
He will also encourage you to play with his extensive collection of wind-up toys.
Here’s Alex, reading, and Sam, actively not playing with his wind-up toys.
The other funny thing about the reading was that Sam and manager Ryann, perhaps speculating that we might be car-less, arranged for a stretch limousine to pick us up in Center City.
Alex and I had all kinds of plans to play it cool and act as if it was standard practice to be transported to all readings in a limo but I immediately dropped the facade as soon as I met our driver, George. I believe I said something along the lines of “I haven’t been in a limo since my senior prom!” In case you’re wondering: why yes, there were fancy-colored lights on the ceiling.
Saturday two dear friends came to visit and see the new house. Luckily, Saturday was beautiful and we walked them off their feet, all the way to Reading Terminal to get one of these:
(Apple dumpling. With heavy cream.)
And then over to Rittenhouse for sitting and people-watching:
(M, with toothpick)
(Jess, with part 1 of plan for world domination)
And then in the evening, snacks on the patio, and then in the later evening, dinner at Monsu:
And then in the late, late, late evening, a birthday party for a friend:
(Jess and I, making a concerted effort to actually take a picture of ourselves. I think the last one we have together is from grad school in 2009).
And then in the morning, brunch at Talula’s Garden. And goodbye to great friends.
