My dad is sitting at my kitchen table underneath a panoramic photo he took of the Rocky Mountains. He’s telling us about the dream he had while sleeping in our guest room.
“I go to check into our hotel and they give me the key, so I go up to my room and it unlocks but there is already a family in there,” he says, dashes of cloud behind him in the rectangle of blue sky.
I picture the hotel in his dream as an old Victorian with mismatched wallpaper, like Fawlty Towers, or like my house, and see my dad clambering up the stairs with his suitcase, come all that way. I see him in a foreign room.
Why does it feel so poignant to hand your parents guest towels?
My dad is really animated when he tells a story, waving his hands around from the banquette seat—it takes another week for me to realize he needs a hard-backed chair to sit on.
He goes on, “They’ve unpacked their bags, and they’re showering, and have taken all the beds! There’s another family in the room,” he puts his hands up like what can you do. My folks are both so amiable. “So I’m trying to be polite and make it work.”
Last year, my parents were supposed to visit the U.S., but three days before they were due to fly out my dad’s heart went into a-fib, and they couldn’t get on the plane. It took a whole ‘nother year, but then there they were, my mum yelling at me not to lift their giant bags into the car just like always.
I bought some bottles of Australian shiraz for my dad to drink with dinner, but he must have felt bad because he has gone out to buy some red himself. “Might as well try some of this Californian wine,” he says. Three sips later, he announces, “This is not much good at all.”
I tell him to tip it out and for godssakes just enjoy the Penfolds. Later, I look at the bottle and see the one he bought is “wine product,” a thin wash of 5% alcoholic cordial.
In the dream, he never complains to the hotel.
*
Japhy is going through a phase where he wants to sleep with the light on. I got him a button light he stuck to the slopey roof above his top bunk in the attic. Every night when I check on him at 11 p.m., it’s casting a small circle of white on his sleeping face, like he’s passed out in the dentist’s chair.
*
Noodles found a pair of ASICS Metaspeeds in my size at Goodwill. They’re $250 new because they have a carbon plate in the sole, but he got them for $10 in a women’s 8.5—the previous owner must have thought they’d bought cursed shoes when they started flying off the pavement. In fact, they were magic shoes and they had come to me.
You’re only supposed to use carbon plate sneakers for fast running on blacktop—they translate the energy when you land into spring-off power and can shave 3% off your marathon times—but I used them for run/walks around the neighborhood. I bounced along the dirt cut-through behind the football stadium, and it felt like using a jet plane to taxi around, miles from the runway, but never take off.
By the time my training began to amount to some semblance of fitness, the bottom had worn off the heels, the magic evaporated.
*
On the way to baseball camp one morning, Japhy and I hit a hard dead-end where a burned-out car sits in the intersection. The police route us around in a circle. There is no detour to get to the far side of it, so we head south over the train tracks and start guessing our way around to the next town.
The next day, I have both kids in the car when we drive through the spot. “Ooh! A birthday!” says Scout, seeing the balloons and candles on the sidewalk.
*
While they’re visiting, my parents provide live updates every time Trump does something new and terrible. The one thing Boomers cannot do is dissociate—that’s a Gen X/Millennial specialty. They cannot stop thinking out loud about how bad this all is; in fact, no one wants him dead more than the sweetest Boomer you know.
We see a friend who has just gotten back from a trip to D.C., where there were national guard and ICE sentinels on every corner, young men from the heartland largely wondering why people were yelling invectives and sandwiches at them.
He’s very good at letting people talk, my friend, and he says an older woman on the plane started chatting; healthcare spilling into politics.
“I shouldn’t say this,” she stage-whispered, someone’s mom, “but we need another Luigi Mangioni.”
*
Scout: Why do I love— who is the singer I love?
Me: Whitney Houston
Scout: Why do I love every song by Whitney Houston?
[FROM OFFSTAGE]
Japhy: Imagine Dragons is better!
*
We’re down at Faneuil Hall in Boston taking a walking tour with my parents and my FIL. Clusters of tourists are following local guides in tricorn hats, bonnets, and tights along the red-brick “Freedom Trail,” which leads to Falafel King. Our guide introduces himself, explains where we will walk, and asks if anyone has any questions before we start. Scout raises her hand: “Yeah, why aren’t you in costume?”
Our guy says he’s more “academic” and doesn’t go for that whole caper, but then when he’s talking about the 1765 Stamp Act, he gets the king wrong.
“Pfff, this guy is a joke,” my FIL says out the side of his mouth. Doesn’t even have the hat right.
*
My very tall boss brings his family over for a barbecue. He’s sitting in my backyard cradling his very tiny dog as Scout stands politely next to him and lets its teeny nose nuzzle her hand.
India Knight has argued that children should be taught how to charm; to be articulate and clever enough to conduct small talk with adults, rather than sit “silently, like puddings.” Our Scout does know how to charm.
“My mum works REALLY hard for you,” she says, looking my boss right in the face.
“We are … really lucky to have your mum,” he replies, charred eggplant on the table and a gun to his head.
*
This little anecdote from
was a gem:Early in my career, my boss took me out to lunch with an author and her husband. She was a novelist whose work had been published in translation, and he was an American guy, and together they had spent many years living abroad because of his job, which had something to do with agriculture. At lunch, the husband talked a lot about the details of his job. In the elevator back to our office, my boss asked me what the husband did for a living and I confessed that I didn’t really know — my eyes had glazed over the whole time he was talking because it was all so incredibly boring. “That’s how you can tell someone’s a spy,” he explained to me. The lesson of that experience stayed with me for years, unlike most other things that happened to me when I was 24 (I was a very high-functioning total stoner at the time): If someone bores you into a stupor when discussing their job, it probably means they’re a spy.
this entire oldie by James Wood (and oh man the kicker (hopper)):
What is peculiar, even a little bitter, about living for so many years away from the country of my birth, is the slow revelation that I made a large choice a long time ago that did not resemble a large choice at the time; that it has taken years for me to see this; and that this process of retrospective comprehension in fact constitutes a life – is indeed how life is lived.
did not know Devo (“Whip It”) was subversive (h/t J for the rec):
My dad, Robert, was a traveling salesman. He sold vibrating massage pads and fire alarms to farmhouses. He was enormously optimistic and encouraged us by saying things like, “This is America. You can be anything you want!”
I finally finished Good Material (review: good!), and simply don’t have the brain for anything too much right now, but am enjoying Jeff Hiller’s Actress of a Certain Age—I love him!
I took a writing class this summer w Sarah Miller, and it kicked my ass—highly recommend, and she is doing more of them!
The humor and pathos, Janet. This is where my mouth dropped open:
My mum works REALLY hard for you,” she says, looking my boss right in the face.
“We are … really lucky to have your mum,” he replies, charred eggplant on the table and a gun to his head.
I like Scout's oldest daughter vibe. It's going to take her far.