Thanksgiving Shopping

I haven’t written in a while. Don’t know why. Writer’s block perhaps. Bored perhaps. It certainly isn’t because life hasn’t provided more than its share of the bizarre worthy of putting down on paper (there’s an anachronistic metaphor).

If anything, I haven’t had the space in my head to really think about being coherent. That being said, if I did more writing, I’d probably have more space in my head to be coherent. That discipline thing has always been a challenge for me.

So I’ve been thinking more and more through the past week that I need to start writing again. And then, the breakthrough happened.

It was all because of a guy named John. That’s his real name. John. I’ve talked to John before, on several occasions. I think John is probably in management, but sometimes he works the cashier line at the Schnucks’ in Webster Groves. Schnucks’. “The Friendliest Store In Town.” Schnucks’ supermarkets made the front page of the WSJ a couple of years ago as having the shortest wait times for checking out of any major chain in the country. My anecdotal experience leads me to believe that that statistic is true.

So today Dan and I were doing our Thanksgiving shopping. All of it. From Wednesday evening through Saturday morning. Plus a few extras thrown in on top of all that. As I stood in the checkout line and watched John pass barcode after barcode over the little red laser light, I watched the number at the bottom of the video screen conveniently placed for everyone to see. It was growing, and growing. Over $260. I was – in a word – appalled. That was even after my 75 cent coupon.

Now as Dan will attest I am no stranger to getting into conversations with the cashiers at Schnucks’. One still remembers Mom coming through, and we’ve talked about that. I know too much information about some of these people. But I’ve never really talked to John.

So as I was swiping the card through the reader to pay for this monstrous grocery cart of gluttony, I said to John, “You know, where we shopped before we moved here – they would give us a free ice cream cone if we spent more than a hundred buck.” You go Stew Leonard’s. So John starts looking around “Here’s a pen,” he says as he tries to hand me a ballpoint. We laugh. He makes some snide comment I can’t remember. Dan and I walk out to the parking lot.

So there we are loading the mountain of groceries into the back of the car. And all of a sudden I hear “Excuse me.” It was John. He had followed us out into the parking lot. He says “This is instead of your damn ice cream cone.” And he hands me a $3.00 off coupon for my next visit to Schnucks.’

Except for the cursing, it certainly does seem like the friendliest store in town.

The "Pink" Bathroom

            Actually the pink bathroom isn’t pink at all. It’s peach. My fantasy is that it was inspired by some issue of Architectural Digest circa 1945. Peach wall tiles with black trim. Small peach and white tiles in a checkerboard pattern on the floor. A peach ceramic countertop with two small vanity sinks in opposite corners, complete with vintage American Standard faucets. Separate hot and cold faucets though.

            When we moved into the house, there were these stenciled patterns on the bathroom walls. In the pink bathroom, where a crown molding might go, there were intertwined painted ribbons, white and a kind of spring green. The panels beneath the sink, again primarily peach, had white roses and green leaves painted on them. Two sink mirrors with etched glass finished it all off.

            Now I suppose my parents figured this was the feminine bathroom, because the one immediately next door was essentially the same, but in green. Even though it too had the stenciled flowers on the drawers in a vanity and on the wall, it was, after all, green. The other strange thing about these bathrooms was that they have identical windows, double-hung, non-tinted, regular glass, that look out on the front yard. Which means that anyone in the yard, or in the street for that matter, can look into the bathroom and see you. The venetian blinds are supposed to help with that small issue of modesty, but that means shutting out all natural light, which enhances the somewhat depressed feeling now present in these one-time repainted, but not re-stenciled bathrooms.

            I’m thinking that master bedroom suites weren’t yet invented in the forties. So since my parents’ bedroom did not have its own bathroom, the four of us shared these two bathrooms. Mom, Dad, my sister and me.

            The strange thing I never quite have figured out was that until I was well into puberty, I was relegated to use the pink bathroom with my mother and sister. I must have been thirteen or so before I graduated to the green one, with its walk-in shower instead of a tub. And I had to share a sink with my father, who had some very distinctly different paraphernalia which adorned the white porcelain shelf. And there I stayed until I left to go to college.

            By the time I was coming home on breaks, Dad had “remodeled” the third bathroom in the walk-out basement. Ceramic brick tile adorned the floor, and it appeared my dad had gone around to various construction sites to get the tile for the shower.

            But in the past year Dad started using the green bathroom again. I cleaned up the one in the basement, which meant going through the drawers of a dresser which was in my childhood bedroom and getting rid of most of the accumulated crap. Ancient used tubes of Brylcream, bottles of Old Spice, rusty metal Band-Aid boxes, and some really old washcloths mysteriously disappeared into the trash.

            When Mom died and we moved in, it didn’t make sense on any level to be back in the masculine bathroom. So, perhaps appropriately, Dan and I took over the pink one. I mean the peach one. Thank God for my sister who was able to clean that one out. What a trooper. There was stuff in there neither one of us wanted to know about. Forty years worth. Expired bottles of things were a no-brainer. Angela managed to fill up a couple of garbage bags with most of the rest.

            So now every morning I’m showering in an ancient bathtub. Most people have the regular prerequisites in their tubs – soap, shampoo, a cloth or lufa of some sort. Me, I add to that collection abrasive cleanser and a sponge, which I stand on as I take my shower and try to work off some of the residue from the years. The walls to the best of my knowledge were last painted in about 1975, and probably haven’t been cleaned since, so in the moisture and dirt mixture on the wall high above the tile that you face while you shower, I’ve been able to write “Hi Dan!” much like you see tractor-trailer trucks going down the highway and some kid has written “Wash Me” on the back doors with their fingers. So far Dan hasn’t said anything, which doesn’t surprise me. Details like that don’t often catch his attention. He had three older brothers.

            Me – I’ve spent way too much time looking at these walls and trying to figure out what color could complement peach and black. I just haven’t been able to come up with anything that didn’t make me think of Baskin’s Robbins’. So when the local hardware store put Laura Ashley paint on sale at 70% off, I jumped at the opportunity to save a buck, took one of the wooden peach shelves

in to get a color match, and came home with cheap designer paint. Peach.

            Looking back, I can see that those early years in that bathroom are probably what turned me gay. I would lay there in the tub, gaze upon those peach walls and the white roses, and marvel at the work that went into creating this tribute to post-war interior decorating. Of course, although I don’t remember, other things probably happened in that tub as well. I was, after all, thirteen. This leaves me with a fascination with bathroom design. The really frightening things I have to admit is that many years later, when we were rehabbing our century-old Victorian in Connecticut, there was a small half-bath right outside our bedroom door. Since there really was no tile on the walls in this bathroom, we decided to put in wainscoting. We then picked out a wall paper – surprisingly yet stereotypically feminine – little primroses in vertical vines growing up the wall. I took a piece of the paper to the paint store, and in serious consultation with the guy who worked there, came home with two quarts of hot pink paint for the wainscoting. Neon. Cotton Candy pink. Or, since it was a bathroom, perhaps I should say Pepto-Bismol pink.

            It’s nice to be back in the “peach” bathroom.

War medals and what not

So today was a very rainy day. I had planned on working outside, but that didn’t work out. (Was that bad English?)

So we’re trying to clear out one of the many desks in this house to give to Dad for his bedroom so he has a place to sit and do stuff.

So we identified the desk.

So I decided to spend the morning emptying out the (only two) drawers in this desk and clear the crap away so he would have a couple of drawers in which to put treasures.

So I opened Drawer #1. Inside were peach pits. Very old peach pits. Lots of old business cards and other cards that certified my father’s memberships in professional organizations as well as the I Love George Bush Club.

Old pencils. Old pencil leads for mechanical pencils. Rubber bands so brittle they broke when I picked them up. Negatives of photographs on those little 110 pocket camera film which no one under the age of forty even knew existed. A Spanish postcard with a naked woman on it. Letters from my uncles. Flag pins with the Cross of Christ superimposed on them.

I looked at all of this and dug in. I had a stack of old business cards, including some of them wrapped in one of those brittle rubber bands with a piece of paper labeling them as “Obsolete Cards.” Glad we kept those. Anyway, I put them all together, a stack about six inches in length, and carried them upstairs and said “Dad, I have a project for you. Why don’t you go through all these cards and throw away the ones you don’t need anymore.” He said, at one point, “There’s a lot of memories in those cards.” My point exactly. Going through them would be so much better than just throwing them away, which he eventually did – to most anyway.

But while I was speaking with him, Dan came upstairs and was in the kitchen fixing lunch. I walked in and he said to me, “Why was your father decorated as a war hero by the Nazis?” WTF? “What?” I said. “There’s a medal down there with a swastika on it.” WTF? “What?” I said.

So I go back down and look in the pile that is still in the drawer, and lo and behold, there is a medal, complete with ribbon, and a bronze cross with swords and a swastika right in the middle. I grabbed it, went back upstairs, and said to Dad, “WTF?” Well, not really. But I did say “What the hell is this?”

Dad’s brother, as indicated earlier in this blog, was in Patton’s army in WWII. Evidently he picked up this medal – let’s not go to a discussion of how or where from – while he served in Europe. And he brought the medals home. Dad said he gave it to their mother. Most of her belongings are STILL in this house. So that made some sense.

Some quick internet research betrayed that this sucker is a Knights Cross of the War Merit Cross, a minor yet somewhat rare decoration given to individuals “for exceptional service in battle above and beyond the call of duty” by the German Army. There are variations on the medal, but that appears to be what this one was for. Also, evidently, Hermann Göring wanted one, but Hitler wouldn’t give it to him.

But I’ve got one sitting in a desk drawer.

I shared all of this with Dad and then had some lunch.

Afterwards I attacked the drawer again. More garbage. Cards. Scraps of paper with out-of-date addresses and phone numbers. A plethora of those silly little return address stickers from countless not-for-profits. And then…another medal.

This one was for women. Specifically women of Aryan descent. Pure women. Pure women who were doing their patriotic duty by having lots of pure Aryan children. They come in three varieties – bronze, silver and gold – depending upon the number of children a woman had. Need I say more.

These things are clearly, in a way, keepsakes. But it creeps me out that they are in the house. I said to Dad, “We won’t be displaying these in the china cabinet.” No. But pulling them out of a drawer of crap and putting them in a safe place seems to make some sense.

The family home as an archaeological project. It never ends.

Just my random thoughts of the day about politics

Is it just me or is the Republican party just getting scarier and scarier?

The New York Times today lists the following individuals as potential presidential candidates for the Republican party in 2012 (in order of appearance in the article): Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, Tim Pawlenty, Mike Pence, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee, George Pataki, Ron Paul, Haley Barbour, John Thune, and Jim DeMint.

Now I’m a registered Democrat, but only because I like participating in the primary process. I have rarely voted a straight-party-line ticket. Chris Shays had my vote in many election cycles as a Republican from CT-4. I also voted for Joe Lieberman, who basically is a Republican wannabe. I’m a big fan of John Danforth. And bring me any senator from the great state of Maine.

But Rick Santorum? Jim DeMint? Not to mention Russia’s neighbor. It scares me when I look at a list of Republican candidates and I find Mitt Romney attractive. I mean, what’s with the hair?

I actually find myself missing George I, Ron, and even Dick. These guys at least, in my opinion, thought a moment or two before they spoke. They may not have taken leadership positions in the ways I would have liked them to, but they did try to be constructive.

I feel like I’m in some sort of bizarre twist of the Twilight Zone. It’s the Twilight Zone because its all kind of spooky and weird. It’s a twist because it’s not pretend, it’s real.

St. Louis is a highly educated, progressive metropolitan area, by and large. Dan and I have always felt safe and, dare I say, welcomed here. Gawd knows the Housewives of Joy Avenue and I have hit it off, creating our own weird Wisteria Lane.

But even here there is a twist of the strange. Today we had an in-home assessment for Dad. There’s a great organization here in town that helps support senior citizens (hate that title – open for suggestions) in their homes. The nurse came by today, along with some other woman whose role I never fully understood. After the initial preliminaries, the nurse asked us – keep in mind the was Assessment Inventory Question Number One – “Do you have any guns in the house?” I confess that I took the Lord’s name in vain. Not what I was expecting. Of course Dad’s response was typical Dad: “We gave all the good ones away.” Thanks Dad. Big help. Yes we have guns, but just the crappy ones.

That’s what scares me about these folk in the Times’ line-up. They all have guns, but they’re crappy ones. Sarah needs a helicopter to shoot hers. Newt just keeps getting rid of wives. Mike and Rick have their Bibles as protective armor. George Pataki? Are they serious? George Pataki? Has the New York Times looked at Albany lately? Not that David Paterson is Pataki’s fault – far from it. But his presence is still, again IMHO, a reaction to the Pataki years. Just look at who the Republican nominee is for the Empire State.

Okay, so I’m done ranting and raving for tonight. The next few weeks are going to be interesting. The next couple of years – well, I’m just afraid. Canada, got any room?

Birthdays

September 11 has become a rather strange day in this home. My mother was born on September 11, 1937, in Joplin, Missouri. Aside from the passing of years, there was nothing ever particularly noteworthy about the date. People born on January 1, always here “Oh, were you the New Year’s baby?” Or people born on the Fourth of July are subjected to wonderfully witty remarks like “Did fireworks go off for you?” Dad gets that a bit – he was born on July 3.

But September 11 was always, well, just there.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was seeing a patient of mine in my Connecticut office, and then I had the rest of the morning off. His appointment was at 8 AM, and we finished at the end of the therapist’s hour, that is to say forty-five minutes later. I climbed into my car to drive the long ride home of approximately one mile. I had the radio on, as I almost always did, and it was tuned in to WCBS 880 AM out of New York. In that mile, I was listening to the breaking news about a plane or something hitting the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Well, it was always bound to happen I thought.

I arrived home, and found Dan glued to CNN. I looked at the television images, and sat down, stunned. Shortly afterward, on TV, we watched the second plane hit the South Tower. Clearly, we were now in a new world.

Then we heard about the Pentagon. And the multiple rumors about other planes in other places, and those unaccounted for.

My sister lives in DC. My parents had no idea where their kids might be. It was not unusual for me to be in the concourse under the World Trade Center. I had no idea where my sister was, although I knew that the Pentagon was a good distance from her home in suburban Maryland.

So I called home, partly to wish Mom a Happy Birthday, but also to let them know I was okay. I couldn’t get through to DC, but I did get my (now ex-)brother-in-law an email, and he said that he and Angela were fine.

Mom wasn’t up yet. She, like myself, was never a morning person. And it was an hour earlier in St. Louis. So I talked to Dad, who was unaware of what was going on. “Turn on the TV,” I said.

Of course we all have our stories of that day. I heard someone on NPR this week say that it was our generation’s Kennedy assassination. Not sure that I totally agree with that conclusion, but I get the point.

But through the past years, I have felt badly for my mother. I remember when she said that she was changing her birthday. Her father’s birthday was September 3, and she told me in no uncertain terms that she was changing her birthday to that date. This was because she would go place and do things in the course of normal life and be asked what her date of birth was, and she would say “September 11, ….” And she would hear the articulate response, drawn out into a multisyllabic experience, “Ooooooh.”

Mom would have been 73 today.

I remember coming home from grad school one year, and just being down. I was in a funk and didn’t know why. It was Thanksgiving, and I had just celebrated my 27th birthday on November 20. This was in the days when people could meet you at the gate. I walked off the plane and the jetway, and I saw my dad, my mom, and my sister standing there, and it hit me like a lightning bolt. I was crossing a threshold. I saw my mother, and I realized I remembered her 27^th birthday. As I get ready to celebrate my own 50^th birthday, I realize I’m not as down as I was at 27, or 37, or even 47. Fifty feels okay. I’m not going to make my goal, I believe, of being in all fifty states by the time I turn fifty. Getting to Nebraska I could do on a weekend. But getting to Alaska – well, I don’t think that’s in the cards.

I look at 23 year-olds today, and I try to imagine what my mother was like when I was born and she was 23. A child. But those are conversations that will be revealed in another way and in another dimension of reality. For the time being, it is September 11. And I am profoundly aware of the tension between celebrating life, and mourning loss.

From Nine Years Ago

September 14, 2001

I thought I'd let some of you know about my day yesterday.

I went into the city early for a 7:30 AM appointment with a patient. Walking down Lexington from Grand Central I could see the smoke. The patient didn't show up and I still haven't been able to connect with him. He's relatively new, an investment banker, and I realize I don't know where his office is. A couple came in at 8:15 for their appointment. He had seen the first plane hit and was obviously traumatized. They left at 9:15, and I didn't have any more appointments until 5:30 in the afternoon. All morning long I had been hearing sirens.

So I went for a walk. The first thing that I encountered was a block from my office, on 34th Street, where a convoy of some ten army vehicles were heading west. I headed downtown and crosstown, knowing that there were police barricades at 14th Street. When I got to Sixth Avenue, I got my first live view of the smoke-filled void. Those of you who are familiar with the city and have been around know what that feels like. I remember when I visited New York for the first time as a nine-year-old child, the Twin Towers were under construction, half-way high. In the years since I've lived in and around New York I've become quite accustomed to turning a corner here or walking down a street there and having them be a part of the landscape. The void is real.

Of course I was like all the other obnoxious New Yorkers with their cell phones and I was talking on it as I was going down the street. Engrossed by what I was witnessing and the conversation I was having on the phone, all of a sudden I realized that I had crossed 14th Street and gone through a police barricade without evening realizing it. The police were supposed to stop everyone and only let residents and emergency workers south of there, but in my jeans and preppy shirt I guess I just blended in with everyone and no one stopped me.

So further south I went. Now things were substantially different in that there were no cars or trucks driving around, except for emergency vehicles with flashing lights. There were few people on the street, mostly local residents who were out and trying to live their lives. People walking their dogs. Some shops were open, mostly corner delis and small restaurants. The smoke ever billowed before me as I went. I reached Houston Street, the second police checkpoint after the one at 14th. It was clear these guys were more intent on keeping people out. Appropriately. So I decided to walk to both ends of Houston and just see what was up. The street itself, one of the few two-way streets in Manhattan, is separated with a median running down the middle. On one side of the median, block after block, large dump trucks were parked. On the other side, again block after block, were refrigerated trailers -- as in tractor-trailers. Police were everywhere -- not just NYPD, but from all over the country. Soldiers or guardsmen with automatic rifles were visible. I walked to West Street, which runs along the Hudson River. There was a huge staging area for the emergency workers and volunteers at Pier 40 at the end of Houston. It was here that I got the view that is so familiar to us all of the New York skyline -- without the towers. I walked out to the median in the middle of West Street and just stood, stunned, watching the smoke rise above downtown. Behind me there was a group of police stopping all sorts of vehicles -- cars with flashing lights, police cars, dump trucks, supply trucks, busses filled with firemen. Each was stopped, some searched, some cars turned away. I watched as a group of firemen from somewhere -- there jackets said PRFD -- got out of a station wagon and came out to the median, waiting for a bus with some room to take them down to Ground Zero, as it's being called. Other trucks and busses would come back up on the other side from downtown -- busses empty, trucks filled with pieces of what used to be a building. As one person was quoted saying in the newspaper, "I never expected to see the World Trade Center go by me down the street."

I stood there for fifteen minutes or so. I wasn't alone. One guy was on his cell phone. I stayed off mine because there was something about being there that felt sacred. Other people were taking pictures -- press perhaps. Others were I suspect from the neighborhood, just out feeling I imagine as stunned as I did.

Then she arrived. Early twenties I suspect. I didn't notice her at first, but then I noticed that as some of the trucks were coming back up from the site, she would hold up a sheet of paper with the picture of someone on it. She would hold it up high, wanting the drivers to see the picture. She had a ream of paper, all with a copy of this picture of who, her sister? a friend? I don't know who the woman in the picture was, but she was beautiful, young, blond. Her nickname, according to what I saw on the paper as the woman came to the other side of the median to show the picture to the passing busses filled with firemen, her nickname was "Maggie." And she worked on the 96th floor of Tower 1.

I had to leave. I started back up Houston. It was noon. I was hungry. I needed not only food, I needed something familiar, something that felt okay. Dew Drop Inn. Great place on Greenwich Avenue. One of my favorites. I headed for it. Still no traffic, nowhere in Greenwich Village. Most shops were closed but some where open. The Dew Drop Inn was not. So I headed back north, bought a paper, went through the 14th Street barricade, and re-entered the free world. I was on Seventh Avenue, right at St. Vincent's Hospital, the primary ER for all of this. There were news trucks with their satellite dishes everywhere. One truck was covered with flyers like the ones the woman had on West Street. In fact, there was "Maggie" taped to the side of the truck. I would discover for the rest of the day that signs like these of missing people were up all over the city. I was close to Maryanne's. The first time I went to Maryanne's for Mexican food was 17 years ago when I was in seminary. Seemed like a good place to go back to.

Finishing lunch I realized I was close to St. Peter's Episcopal Church. The rector there, Dennis Winslow, is a good friend. He and his partner Mark live in a great apartment on the Jersey side of the Hudson. I had heard that they had heard the first plane come in low, and went out on their balcony and watched the whole thing. I was wondering how they were holding up, so I walked a few short blocks over to the church to see if Dennis was there. He was. He and Mark were having lunch, and were getting ready to return to the Seamen's Church Institute, a great old outreach agency downtown. In the middle of it. They said the institute was open to emergency workers, giving meals, water, a place to rest. What the institute didn't have was electricity, so they couldn't photocopy the flyer they had to get word out to the thousands of rescue workers telling them they were open for business. So Dennis had copied the flyer on the church copier. And they had some big boxes of candles and other supplies that they were taking downtown. They asked me if I wanted to go. I declined. I helped them load their van with the supplies, and then changed my mind. I decided to go. And so I'm heading back downtown, this time in a car.

As we anticipated getting to the checkpoint at 14th Street, I told them that if there was any problem I would get out and let them go on their way. They were both wearing clerical collars, which often works as a passport. The sexton from the parish was in the car with us. At Union Square, 14th Street and Broadway, we hit the first check point. Our ID's were all checked, Dennis told the police what we were up to, and they waved us through. Heading down Broadway, we were on the other side of town from where I had been earlier. We were downwind. The smoke hung over lower Broadway like fog. It smelled --reminding me of the rare times I've smelled a burning home. Somebody behind us -- the only other vehicle moving on lower Broadway besides us -- blew their siren to get by. At Houston Street again we had to go through a checkpoint. After the second checkpoint there were even fewer cars and people on the street. Like a ghost town. And yet I saw a woman, wearing a face mask so as not to breathe the dust, walking her dog, which did not have a face mask.

At Canal Street, we came to the third checkpoint.

I am blessed to be too young to have been drafted into Vietnam, and too old to have volunteered for the Persian Gulf. But I can sadly say that I have now been to a war zone.

Below Canal, everything began to be a little active again. There were people in the streets, clearly residents of the neighborhood, most wearing face masks or bandanas. Emergency vehicles were everywhere. Lots of people in camouflage with guns. Flags were flying. The air was thick with smoke and dust. Tension was palpable. And yet, at the same time, because it all of a sudden was so real and so immediate, there was not a sense of fear. People were doing their jobs.

We arrived at the Seamen's Church Institute and unloaded the van. Their appreciation of what we brought was filled with joy, and yet that appreciation was immediately followed by "Can you get us some hamburger and hot dog buns? Also, we need Advil, Tylenol..." and the list grew.

But first we had another task to do. We were to distribute the flyers. We were joined by a woman from General Seminary who had been volunteering down there. The four of us grabbed masks, and went out to pass out flyers and get them to the command centers. We got as far as Wall Street, but there we encountered huge numbers of workers standing around, looking. It seemed that they had evacuated "the pit" because of fears that One Liberty Plaza – a 55-story building -- was about to fall. We also discovered that word had spread around about the Seaman's Institute, and that for the current shift they didn't need the flyers. We decided to go back, and people later could spread the word for later shifts. No one was working at the moment, and so we headed back to the Institute.

Lots of firemen, police, and other rescue workers came through. They looked tired. They looked numb. They were grateful for a place for a rest. The people at Seamen's Institute welcomed them as if they were welcoming them into their homes. Truly astonishing. Hospitality in the middle of hell.

Dennis and Mark were going shopping. I needed to get back to my office. My 5:30 was to be a phone session with a hospital chaplain. I had two hours to walk the six or so miles back uptown. Passing through the checkpoints heading uptown was no problem. When I got to the twenties or so, I noticed people were looking at me strangely, and then realized I had a very dusty face mask on the top of my head.

Three sessions. What should have been a "light" day was capped off by one more intense experience, this one rather wonderful. As the Metro-North train pulled into the station at 125th Street on its way back to the comfort of the suburbs, a half dozen firemen got on the train, carrying their equipment, going back to whatever town they came from. And the entire car of passengers burst into applause.

I'm lucky. So far I don't know of anyone who I know who was in this hell. I'm lucky. The comfort of my life is not significantly challenged by these events. I'm lucky. I could go to that hell and then leave. And yet I know I do not even begin to know how much my life may have changed. I was interviewed this afternoon by the communications director of the Diocese of Connecticut for our diocesan paper, and she asked me if I was angry. A little. But not really. Not much. I'm still, like all of us, much too numb.

As I write this a woman is on Channel 5 with a picture of her husband who worked on the 107th floor. She just gave her home phone number if anyone might know anything. How can we not be numb? The alternative is too overwhelming.

Trees, cars, and Facebook

Life is a full-time job. Managing the “stuff” we have makes me want to give it all up, and move to my favorite beach spot, the Sandy Point National Wildlife Refuge on St. Croix. When I was there, it was just a place on the beach. Now it’s a Refuge. That’s my point.

The day began with Ray’s Tree Service calling to say that they couldn’t take down the 70’ black walnut tree today, because the guys at the electric utility wouldn’t come out in the rain to take down the power lines to the house. Weenies. This call came in as I was on my way home from dropping off the car for an oil change. I didn’t stay for the oil change, because I needed to get home for the tree guys. Oh well.

So I walked back to pick up the car at around 1 PM. I had told them I would be back around noon. At 1 PM they hadn’t done the work yet. I went to lunch. Then I went back, and they still hadn’t done it. I just asked for my keys, and left the dealership. A little pissed. I called our sales guy, and complained to him. He’s coming on Monday to pick up the car to go get it serviced.

Then AT&T tried to bill me $190 for installation charges that were supposed to be for free. I’d like to bill them for the amount of time I spent on the phone trying to fix that little glitch.

Now here comes the fun stuff.

While I was having lunch today, for some reason I thought about a woman who had been a roommate of mine during my senior year of college. Yes, I lived with two women. Best roomies I ever had. As I thought about the one, I thought about her boyfriend, who was also a friend of mine. I hadn’t thought about him in – well, years and years. I mean after all, I haven’t seen either one since I graduated from Rice in 1983.

Then this afternoon, I get this thing on Facebook where he had found me a “wanted to be my friend.” How weird was that. And wonderfully cool.

So I’m trying to explain this twenty-first century phenomena to my Dad. He said, “You want to pay attention to that. Let me know what happens.” And as he completes his words, I get an email from the woman. She wants to be my friend too.

I have to confess that Facebook is kinda cool. I’ve reconnected with a lot of people who were important to me at different times of my life. Of course, there are those who you wish would just go away. But overall, I find the interconnectivity at this time of my life comforting. It’s nice to know that people still want to be my friend.