Just be-clause

I have been reading many clauses. Not in my official capacity, however, but as a homeowner. Specifically, as the owner of an older home. It is loaded with charm...and now, with a lot more.

I came home on Wednesday night, wearing my maternity top, and found a note from my dogsitter. He was concerned because there was water in the basement...and not "plain" water....but very dirty water. He said I shouldn't even go down there. He had also seen a mouse. Now, the water with you-know-what in it didn't terrify me, but when he said MOUSE I began to whimper and cover my ears. My little Molly thought I was sick and began to lick my face. (I sure hope she hadn't been in the basement....)

So I called Roto-Rooter and John the plumber said he could come over very late that night, but the next morning at 6 AM would be better. So I set my alarm for before six, got up and waited....for a long, long time. My cell phone, naturally, wasn't on. It wasn't on because I had left the charger in the office. It was a new phone...well, new to me. I had recently lost my third phone in about as many months. I looked on "Craig's List" and found one being sold by a guy called "Iz". I had to meet him in a parking lot. He brought his German shepherd. I brought cash.

While my phone was off, John was desperately trying to reach me, as he was apparently on my street...somewhere. I got to work on time, but was totally exhausted. Finally, John and I reached each other. I went home for lunch and found sewer trucks from the town on my street. I hoped that they had somehow caused my basement flood. I was trying to eat an egg salad sandwich that my mother had made and delivered to me. Then the town engineer showed up. Then the town plumber. Then my friend who was going to hem my curtains. My dogsitters and dogs, of course, were already there. Then John the plumber and his co-pilot began going up and down my stairs. "Look at my pants," one of them said, "they're soaking wet!" As their boots trod over and over my kitchen floor, the egg salad lost its appeal.

Finally, both plumbers faced me. "Bad news," they said. "We're gonna have to dig." (Have I mentioned that my husband was in another country and I hadn't been able to reach him?) "Can you dig?" I asked. "Sure, but not today...it'll have to be tomorrow." And then they showed me the estimate. I was very happy I hadn't eaten the egg salad.

I began to read clauses....and sign my name. Now, earlier that morning, I had read all the clauses in the contract for a new roof and signed my name to that. I realized that I was spending more money in one day on lousy stuff than I had ever though possible. Asphault shingles? A sewer pipe? Nothing I wanted, but everything I needed.

At night, I treated myself to "Vanity Fair" and actually read....at the counter of the Blue Ribbon Diner, with a coke and a cheeseburger deluxe in front of me. Exactly what Geneen Roth says never to do. I didn't care. I was reading Marilyn Monroe's secret diaries. I did not have dessert, but did stop and buy myself an entire box of dark chocolates. It was difficult to drive, put on my reading glasses (have I mentioned that I recently had eye surgery and don't have my new glasses yet?) and read the little writing on the inside cover of the candy box that showed the flavors, but I did it. Then, I went to Home Depot and Ocean State Job Lot and spent more than I ever have (a theme!) on stuff I never wanted. Mops, odor eliminators, disinfectants, detergents, tarps....all the "fun" stuff every girl loves to buy. The mopping of the kitchen floor was a difficult project, especially since I was exhausted and, at the same time, on a sugar high.

The next morning, a huge truck arrived carrying a back hoe. Then, my plumber friends arrived. I took the dogs to doggie daycare to keep them safe. That was the only bargain...they gave me a "two-for" price and put Halloween kerchiefs on Molly and Emily. Adorable! I called my insurance company and a company that handles hazardous waste clean-ups. When the guy told me what the clean-up might cost, I barely felt a thing.

I arrived home to find the two plumbers, the town plumbing inspector and the hazardous clean-up dude. My dad came over too. "It's really bad," said the hazardous clean up man. "Worse than I thought." More than the roof? More than the installation of a new sewer pipe? Yes. More. He handed me some papers, loaded with clauses, at the same time the plumber came in and showed me other papers. I signed them. I was no longer reading clauses.

The men all suggested that I go out and purchase stakes and crime scene tape to make a little fence so that Halloween trick or treaters wouldn't fall on my lawn where the digging had taken place. Sure, I thought. Why not? Right after I wash and disinfect my kitchen floor AGAIN. So, tonight I will go to the store. Not a fun store like Kohl's or Macy's...not even a semi-fun store like the grocery store. No, I will go to a hardware store and buy more things I don't want because my sewer pipe busted. I will not bother to read any warnings or clauses when I purchase these stupid things. I will be too tired, anyway. I might just re-read that Marilyn Monroe article, however. With ice cream on the side.

No, there isn't!

I can't fully explain it, but this week there simply isn't time enough to read. I read two books last week, both by authors I have talked about before. Then, I found myself down to one library book. It is by Jennifer Weiner, whose book about the political wife whose husband cheats got a lot of attention. I read that one. Ho hum. But, I took another of hers out of the library anyway because sometimes, I just like to read books that DON'T make me think. This one is called "Best Friends Forever". It seemed appropriate, as I had plans to meet the friend I have had the longest. We have been friends for fifty-four years, starting when her family moved into a new house next to ours. We were four. She is stunning. She looks twenty years younger than most women our age. Part of this is due to the fact that she has never gained weight. Most of us struggle on a daily basis. Maybe she does too, but she must not give in to the Dunkin' Donuts Pumpkin Muffin (I heard on a morning show that it has 600 calories and has more fat than a huge bacon cheeseburger).

We were to meet at a Panera after work. I brought my jeans to work...the ones that I think make me look tall. This is because they go to the ground and I sort of have to step on them. I also had on my "good" white shirt. Some fashion designer says that every woman must have a good white shirt. I felt...OK. Not great, by any means. Then, unfortunately, I saw myself in the bathroom mirror at work. It is difficult to see anything in that mirror, as the bathroom at work is so dirty, but I saw myself anyway. Yikes! I looked like one of my grandmothers, and not the one everybody called "adorable". I just couldn't stand to meet my beautiful, thin friend looking this way.

I had an hour. This is the hour I could have spent reading. But I went to J.C. Penney's instead. It was a hot day. I was tearing around the store grabbing anything that might help. First, of course, I grabbed some hold-in underwear. Then I found a black blazer in a size that, honestly, I never thought I would wear. I grabbed some t-shirts, as I always like that Bobbi Brown look...jeans, crew neck t-shirt and blazer. My outfit was almost working. Then a very grumpy senior came in the dressing room with two long sweater tops. "I was gonna get these sweaters," she announced to the saleslady, "but they're MATERNITY tops!" She handed them over with disgust.

"Let me try them on," I begged. They were roomy and covered me from neck to mid thigh. One was red, this season's "it" color. Last week I bought a red sweater to see another old friend and when I saw the pictures I turned white. Not a good look on me. But this sweater...it had everything I needed.

It was time for my dinner and I ran to the cashier, bought the underwear and sweater, dashed back to the dressing room, changed into them, and got to Panera on time. I had a salad, just like my beautiful friend. And on the way home, I think you know what else I had, because right across from the Panera is a Dunkin' Donuts. I have finally found the perfect sweater to wear when I am "muffin topping".

A picture is worth.......

Can a well-written book deliver the emotional impact of a documentary film? I recently finished "The Invisible Bridge" by Julie Orringer. Orringer concentrates on the experience of Hungarian Jews during World War II, and uses one family and their friends as her vehicle. The protagonist, Andras Levi, is meant to be an architect and is accepted at an avant-garde Parisian college. In Paris, he meets and falls in love with an older woman who is also Hungarian. The first part of the novel concentrates on their growing romance and the parallel growing threat of the Nazi party. The couple eventually marries and returns to Budapest, where the Hungarian government has protected Jews from the Nazis far longer than in most European countries. However, Jewish men are sent to work details in the most dangerous parts of the war. Orringer's descriptions of these camps makes for compelling reading. Yet, there is still something too sanitized about this novel. I could feel Orringer trying to horrify her readers. I always felt her presence, looking over my shoulder wondering if she had done her job. I enjoyed this book, and learned from it, but I wanted more.

I got almost more than I could handle when I went to see "A Film Unfinished." If you haven't heard about it, don't be surprised. It only played for one week at the local art cinema in our area. This film was made by Nazis as anti-Jewish propaganda in 1942, in the Warsaw ghetto, right before the residents began to be sent to annihilation camps in great numbers. As someone who has read about the Warsaw ghetto since junior high, has looked at still photos of the ghetto in Warsaw, and has seen just about every film made about the plight of those massacred by the Nazis, I still wasn't prepared for the punch to the gut this film gave me. The Nazi party sent a crew of filmmakers into the ghetto for a very brief time. Many scenes were staged; some over and over. Yael Hersonski, the screenwriter and presenter, found survivors of the ghetto who comment about the scenes in the film as we watch. Hersonski has also pored through journals kept, in secret, by many who lived there. These provide a valuable context for the images we see. The Nazis attempt to show that Jews are so insensitive and uncaring that they will even let other Jews suffer and die. There are staged scenes of Jewish people eating in restaurants while others lie on sidewalks right outside, starving to death.

However, in any situation where horror abounds, human beings go into survival mode. Anyone who works in a highly stressful situation where he or she is surrounded by the suffering, the hopeless, the severely mentally ill, abused children, the dying, learns to cope. We look away. We make bad jokes. We stop crying. We become cold in order to keep on doing our jobs without falling to pieces.

There is a memorable scene in "A Film Unfinished" where one of the survivors (who was a young girl when she lived in the Warsaw ghetto) describes walking past dead bodies every single day without looking at them, so she would be able to keep on walking. Then one day, she tells us, she falls into a body. She can't avert her eyes this time. She is hysterical. But, when she goes home, her mother comforts her with a piece of bread and jam, and she goes on. She survives.

Every day, we watch or listen to the news. We see hungry children, victims of natural disasters, people who live without enough food, water, clothing, and shelter. We see the victims of war. These human beings are our fellow travelers in this life. Yet, most of us generally ignore the plights of those who are not our own relatives or friends.

The images from long ago in the Warsaw ghetto moved me very deeply. However, I know that the lesson I need to take from "A Film Unfinished" is that hatred, genocide, and war are all around. I just need to open my eyes before I fall into a dead body.

21st Century Sweathogs

Michael Kanaly calls his newest novel, "Room One, A Story of Public Education". It is that, but it is also the story of the pain teens feel when they are sure they will never succeed; the story of first love and how fragile it can feel; the story of a great teacher who can make students find their gifts and believe in themselves; the story of the isolation teens feel on most days.

Like Holden Caufield, Thomas Berg is failing every subject in high school. Berg long ago gave up trying, as the public school system shuffled him from one class to another, finally demoting him to the worst place in Roosevelt High, "Room One". Kanaly takes a risk in writing this book in the first person, but the risk pays off, because the reader can truly feel Thomas Berg's confusion, anger, fear, loneliness and hopelessness. Room One is filled with kids like Thomas, but Thomas knows, deep in his soul, that he doesn't really belong there.

In describing the sense of isolation students like Thomas feel, Kanaly writes:

"....the other thing that Victoria and I share, indeed the thing that binds all Room Oners, is the sense of exclusion we are forced to live with on a daily basis. We are separated from the other students, rightly or wrongly, by our Room One status. This is true, no matter what anyone else says, or pretends to believe. Once a kid is sentenced to Room One, or its equivalent, this exclusion completes a process that, for most of us, began early on in our so-called Educational Experience...."

I have worked with kids like Thomas and the Room Oners for over thirty years. I have tried to teach them, inspire them, defend them, protect them, and find them the help they so desperately need. I have seen the scars from the cuts they have made on their own bodies, listened to them bang their heads against cell doors when separated from the families who have abused and neglected them, pretended not to see their embarrassed tears as they struggle with addiction, and watched their faces close when they hear their own parents say they do not want to ever see these children again. I love these children, and it is clear that Michael Kanaly does, too.

He honors them in this book, by presenting characters who talk and behave just like real teens do. From the start, the reader senses great tension and a foreshadowing of things to come. Will Thomas find love with the girl of his dreams? Will he be foolish enough to be sucked into the dangerous antics of the Wolf Pack? Or, is there a chance...even a slim one...that Thomas will be able to overcome the negativity that public education has filled him with and succeed?

Anyone who has a teenager, works with teenagers, or simply wants to read a compelling story of what it is like to be in high school right now should read this superb book.

Oops, I read it again...

I have been trying very hard to find a new book to read; a new AUTHOR to read; even a new book by an author I already know. I visit the library at least weekly and take out armfuls of books. I search among the "old" and "new" books. Often, I read the first chapter and realize that I do not care one bit what happens next. Recently, I read an entire book without caring what would happen next. It was one of those books with recipes in it, too. If an author has to add recipes, perhaps she doesn't have enough of everything else. But I finished that book, just to prove that I don't toss every new book aside. Still, it has been several weeks since I have found a wonderful new book. After taking out four books the other day...and finding RECIPES in one...I picked up the yellowing old paperback "Something in the Wind", by Lee Smith. I guess Lee and her publishers don't like this book, because they have never re-issued it. But, as I have written before, I love this book. Brooke Kincaid, the privileged daughter of an attorney and a southern belle and the baby of her family, suffers the loss of her "intended", Charles Hughes, when she is about to graduate from high school...well, private girls-only prep school. Brooke devises a life plan to cope with the emotions she doesn't want to feel. She will act like those around her by watching, listening, and emulating their actions. At Christmas, when she tries to buy her current beau a gift, she ends up buying a huge glass ball (the kind that "snows")with a tiny village inside instead because she wishes she could live there. Brooke even thinks of herself as "Brooke". But she can't always keep her own feelings buried. And when she meets Bentley Travis Hooks, the son of a Baptist missionary, the real Brooke begins to come to the surface. Their love affair is the one we all had our freshman year in college...if we were lucky;passionate, romantic, and life-changing. There are no recipes in this book. Lee Smith has never had to put anything in her stories or novels except great plots, unforgettable characters, lush southern scenery, and a dash of magic.

Back to the Beach

When I read "Those Who Save Us" by Jenna Blum, I was hooked from the first sentence. I especially loved the way Blum portrayed each character's multiple facets; kind and cruel, good and evil, strong and weak. I have recommended this book to everyone.

In my "beach book" mode this summer, I have read far too many books with one-dimensional characters. So, when I saw that Blum had written a new book, "The Stormchasers", I was thrilled. This time, Blum tells the story of twins. When the book opens, they have not seen each other for twenty years, much to the dismay of Karena, a reporter. She is always searching for her brother Charles, a stormchaser who is bipolar and refuses to take medication. She cons her paper into sending her on assignment with a group of stormchasers in order to find Charles. First, Karena finds love with stormchaser Kevin, and then she finds Charles. The scenes between Kevin and Karena are tender and sweet, and their romance is easy to feel. The book never succeeds for me, however, because I found nothing to care about in Charles. It goes without saying that anyone who suffers from severe mental illness has a tragic life. And Blum makes Charles unable to tolerate medications, so that his illness is life-long. But,even when Charles is on his "good" behavior he is not a character I could care about. In fact, I found him boring, and hoped he would get lost for another twenty years.

A few years ago, there was a great holiday movie, "Love, Actually". It was comprised of all kinds of love stories and one of them concerned the devotion a sister has for her mentally ill brother. I remember thinking, when I watched it, that the sister was simply avoiding her own life by being so devoted to her brother.

I felt the same way about Karena's obsession for Charles. As Blum portrayed him, he simply wasn't worth all the time, love, worry, and angst that Karena spent on him. He also constantly addressed her as "sistah", which was as annoying as Kevin calling her "Laredo". These are perhaps small points, but they kept the characters one-dimensional, the last thing I would have expected from Jenna Blum.

So, I went back to the beach, specifically Nantucket, and a new book by one of my favorite authors, Nancy Thayer, called "Beachcombers". This is Thayer's twentieth published novel. Her writing is smooth and comfortable, her characters are people I want to meet, the places she mentions are places I want to see. Take this one on your vacation, no matter where you go.

There once was a book about Nantucket.....

As I suspected I would, I read all of the Elin Hildebrand books I could find on the library shelves...."Nantucket Nights" about a woman who disappears while swimming at night, "Castaways", about a couple who disappears while sailing and a woman still reeling from her twin's death on 9/11, "Barefoot", about a woman undergoing chemotherapy for lung cancer and a young man still dealing with his mother's suicide, and "The Blue Bistro", about a hot restaurant's final year because...yes, the chef is dying. So, I endured the terrible heat wave reading about people on Nantucket while our two little air conditioners bravely tried to keep two little rooms cool...but what I was really reading about were rich people and death. Beach books about the dead and dying must be a new type of literature..."buried in the sand lit"??

These are not books that made me think but entertained me. The young couples in "Castaways" (except for one rich duo)have jobs including police chief, teacher, farmer, restaurant hostess and musician, yet they take group vacations without the kids to Vegas, Mexico, South Beach, England, and "The Point", which is the most expensive resort in the Adirondacks. (I just checked, and rooms for two are either $1,350 or $1,850 per night.) Plus, they own real estate on Nantucket! The assistant restaurant manager in "Blue Bistro", who arrives in Nantucket penniless, can almost immediately afford Jimmy Choo and Kate Spade shoes. In the world Hildebrand creates there are no poor or unattractive people. There I was, sweltering in my size fourteen shorts from Boscov's, drinking ginger ale out of a plastic cup hoping for a trip to "Cracker Barrel" and reading about elegance and beauty and beaches and...oh yeah, death.

As I read about the beautiful people in Hildebrand's Nantucket, my memory pulled me to our visits to Misquamicut Beach on the coast of Rhode Island. There, everyone seemed to have a minimum of three tattoos and though the women were "plus size" they proudly wore two piece bathing suits. The men smoked cigarettes non-stop and swilled cold beers, and the kids wore loaded pull-ups and ate french fries with a side of cotton candy, the kind that comes in a plastic bag. (I just checked, and an entire house in that area can be rented for $1,500 per week.) I know I would read a book about the folks who vacation there, because right now I am reading a book of short stories about just these people. The stories are funny, beautiful, thought-provoking, deeply sad, and make me wish, more than anything, that I had the author's gift. The book is "Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-eyed Stranger" and the author is my idol, Lee Smith.

Enjoy all the beach books you want this summer...but when you want to think and feel and be happy just to be alive, read one of Lee Smith's new stories.