Simple Things, Important Things

In a conversation I had once with my sophomore English teacher, Mrs. Przeslawski (so many teachers in the Detroit suburbs had ponderous Polish last names), I observed that the bell had just rung and that several students in the hall would be late to class.

"They'd better run," I said to her.

"Oh no," she said. "No. Never. They're seniors. These are all seniors' lockers around here."

I didn't follow.

She squared her face toward me and gave me a serious look. "Seniors never run."

It is a lesson about pride I have carried with me through all my life. Better to come late to class quietly and calmly, with dignity, and suffer the consequences, than to arrive sweating and breathless.

To this day, for example, I never run for a bus.

I will turn a corner and see my bus barrelling through the green light toward me, careering toward the stop ahead. There are enough people at the sign that the time it takes for the bus to stop, for a few people to exit, and for those people to enter, I could easily make it in time to board myself. Only if I ran. Which I never do.

Once, and only once, since moving to New York did I run for the bus. And when I got there, the doors closed in my face, and the driver blithely drove away. New York bus drivers are merciless, but I can't argue. If he stops to let me on, it could give others behind me time to reach the bus and further delay all of us.

So the bus comes and goes. I continue walking to the next stop, glancing back over my shoulder, coolly, calmly, knowing another will come soon, and I won't have to break a sweat on my morning commute.

Other people, however, do run. From a precarious stance in the aisle, hovering over a woman with too much luggage or a man with halitosis and a dripping umbrella, I often see out the window someone tearing around the corner at a desperate gallop, panting toward the closing doors of the bus. They creak shut just as he or she arrives, and the best the hapless commuter can manage is an impotent bang-bang-bang on the windows all the way down the length of the vehicle, staring in with wild eyes and gaping mouth, or sometimes shouting something rather rude to the driver. I can empathize, but their effort is wasted: They are stuck at the stop anyway despite their run. They could easily have spared themselves the trauma.

Earlier today, as the Q33 was pulling away from the station at 74th and Broadway in Jackson Heights, a woman similarly reached the closed doors. She visibly chastised herself, or the driver, or fate, or the slow people on the stairs in the station a minute back — but she gave up the fight honorably and resolved to stand there, smiling, watching us take off.

The driver, a benevolent soul, glanced around him and decided it was safe to hit the brakes and open the door. He called to the woman, who was looking in the other direction.

"Hey. Hey, you! Come on. Get on!"

She snapped to attention and in one swift motion, she all but leaped aboard as the doors folded shut, and she was safe and on her way home.

She smiled radiantly, incredulously. She could not believe her luck — like a child who had just found the last Easter egg. "Thank you!" she said, dipping her Metrocard. She took a few steps in and grasped a pole at the front of the bus as the driver continued off the drive and the bus lurched onto the street.

Her reacton completely arrested me. It was so real and humble and grateful. I have never seen a driver stop like that, but it was ultimately a small, simple gesture, like holding a door. And she would have waited no more than 15 minutes for the next bus. But it obviously meant so much to her. I was totally charmed to see something so small matter so much and deliver such delight.

Greening

I could never live in a place where there is no autumn or winter. It makes springtime all the more miraculous. Do I have such a bad memory that new leaves are a delight for me year after year? Or is it truly amazing how, over the course of three days, a bright green parasol unfolds from nowhere over a drab streetscape? Even this place is beautiful.

Happy Night Shift Workers Day!

Believe it or not, but Wednesday (yesterday) was National Night Shift Workers Day. Working late nights can suck, but there is more to consider than the obvious problems of having a wonky schedule.

Someone dear to my heart went around the city Tuesday night to talk to people working the third shift and produced an awesome video story for ASAP, The Associated Press' service of innovative and original multimedia stories: Night workers get their day

Ironic, I think, that this national day of commemoration could not be observed by the folks for whom it was intended. They were all sleeping.

A Living Legend ... Lives!

All the way from the Lower East Side, where I work, to Midtown, I was singing, literally singing to myself (albeit under my breath).

Light the candles.
Get the ice out.
Roll the rug up.
It's today...

Yeah, I'm one of those.

Though it may not be anyone's birthday,
And though it's far from the first of the year,
I know that this very minute
Has history in it.
We're here!

The day in question was Wednesday, April 18, the day for which I held one ticket to a preview performance of Deuce, a new Terrence McNally play starring Angela Lansbury and Marian Seldes. It was my breathless anticipation of Ms. Lansbury that inspired my internal musical monologue — "It's Today," from the 1966 Broadway production of Mame. I had been weak in the knees for months since receiving a postcard advertising the show. And this was the day.



There she was on that glossy postcard with Seldes, a stark, black-and-white close-up, both women staring out at me, me, look at me! Lansbury, imperfect and utterly beautiful in heavy eyeliner, haughty and aloof, like a modern-day Marquise de Merteuil; Seldes looking severe, sharp and slightly manic, grinning like Cesar Romero as The Joker. Who could be sure if it was meant to suggest more about the characters or the actresses? Either way, it was instantly clear to me that I had to see the show.

I was easily the youngest person at the shabby-but-cozy Music Box Theater. From the back row of the orchestra seats, I could survey every head in the audience: 70% gray; 20% bald. Sandwiched between an overdressed (and overperfumed) wife and husband in their late 50s, and a lone woman in her late 40s who spent the 15 minutes before the show reading Money Magazine, I felt conspicuous and a bit precocious.

Lansbury and Seldes are two former doubles tennis stars, Leona Mullen and Midge Barker, respectively, who have reunited, after a long time apart, to make an appearance at a championship women's tennis match. Between volleys (cue SFX — pok! ... pok! ... pok! — and swiveling heads) they reminisce about their successful career together, relive some ancient rivalries, rehash the history of the Women's Tennis Association, complain a bit about the sponsorship deals of modern athletes, and talk a great deal about lesbians.

Leona is brassy, potty-mouthed, experimental; Midge is disciplined, clean-cut, careful. This is not what the publicity photos seemed to suggest.

I know little to nothing about tennis. I took lessons once, at age 15. I can serve a ball, but that's about it. (Incidentally, I was the youngest person in that situation, too.) No matter. Half the reason (if not the whole reason) you go to see a show like this, with someone so huge in it, is precisely because she is so huge. The lights go down. The curtain goes up. The audience erupts into immediate applause. And the actresses, lit softly, slightly from behind, stand there stoic, patient, completely immobile, as if they're not expecting the uproar, oh would you just stop clapping and let us get on with this, fortheloveofMike!

And you feel the swell of a Moment — something Important. You are a part of ... a Happening. History. The play itself is not so important. All I can think is: I ... am in the same room ... as Angela Lansbury.

A voice comes over the speakers: "Quiet in the audience, please." A tennis joke, I later learned. Professional players will ask for silence in the audience before attempting a serve, prompting a severe voice at the loudspeakers. Unfortunately, it felt forced and absurd and insincere to me. Ha ha, we know you know nothing about the show and you're just clapping for these grandes dames of the stage! A built-in joke drawing too much attention to the actresses and taking us outside of the play. But it got a chuckle from the folks.

It's just the two of them — with the exception of occasional, contrasting cut-aways to the two obnoxious tennis announcers, and a brief visit from a fan with an autograph book — sitting there. Someone suggested it's like My Dinner with Andre, without the dinner.

The sound was not so good. Lansbury seemed to stumble on a few lines, but she recovered gracefully each time. The show was still in its first week of previews, so I forgave the little slips. Truth be told, I had probably set myself up to be more critical of her than necessary. I was there to see her, after all, and was watching her more closely than anyone else. It's like when I see friends perform, or when I read something a friend has written: I am instantly critical, and all I see are errors. I take the high baseline of their talent for granted — of course, it's good! — and all I feel I can constructively offer is advice. (Though I am aware they, like all of us, want praise, too.)

Ultimately, the two friends let down their guard by and by, for maybe the first time in their lives, leading up to the revelation of a climactic truth.

I confess: I'm guessing here. But I know there was some sort of revelation, because I woke up just as the echo of the clincher was fading away and a long, quiet moment overtook the audience. A woman whispered to her companion. People shifted in their seats. And I lifted my chin up off of my chest and cursed myself for falling asleep.

Again!

As an intense wave of body heat coursed through me and I began to perspire a little, I could feel in the air that I'd just missed something essential. The one moment revealing McNally's purpose had just passed. I totally blew it.

Embarrassed and angry at myself, I could not let go of the moment all night. I re-enacted it discreetly on the subway ride back, letting my head droop slightly, over and over — this is what I did, this is what I did — as if to prove to myself that ... well, you don't have to be nodding off to look like this. Like ... a total retard. I punished myself by trying to remember the last thing I heard before shutting down and the first thing I heard upon waking.

I'm pretty sure it had something to do with a health-related revelation made by one of the characters half-way through the play, something you'd expect from a play about people in their mid-70s, but I won't know now until I read the damn thing. For all I know, Midge revealed she's a lesbian, or Leona revealed that she keeps her dead husband in the freezer in the basement. I find I have to read and see a play performed at least once, to really understand it, anyway. The actor's interpretation reveals part, while the bare words on the page reveal something else. Maybe it's a lack of imagination, a problem with attention span, my apparent narcolepsy.

What did not escape my notice, however, was the sad central theme of the play. These two women are watching the match, talking, laughing, arguing, remembering. Living. Dying.

They can watch the world move on without them. They've made a mark, paved the way, and their public appearance at the tournament proves they are remembered well. But even as they are revered by the autograph collector and the color commentators, they are also dismissed as passé. They are no longer necessary to the next generation, except in the past tense. They are the old guard, and they must pass on the torch as their own flames burn low and blue and ever dimmer.

It's clear to me why the audience demographic was so specific. I felt like I was listening in on a conversation at the adult table at Thanksgiving. It's not so easy to separate the actors from the characters, after all. As a young person, to me this thematic notion of mortality is sad. But these women (the actresses and the characters), in contrast, have so much reason to celebrate. I can't bear to think that they will not be here one day, because we love and admire them. But maybe, the closer they get to the finish line, it just feels more like an impending vacation and a well-earned rest.

While they are still here, however ...

It's a time for making merry,
And so I'm for making hay.
Tune the grand up,
Call the cops out,
Strike the band up,
Pull the stops out,
Hallelujah!
It's today!

Poetry

Sometimes I think we get so caught up in the ordinariness of every day that we lose sight of the poetry around us.

Sometimes I think that ordinariness is exactly where the poetry is.

Kidney Tones (with apologies to Jeff)

From the cover art of Wain's 2001 release That Was Then, This is Now [myspace.com/wainmcfarlane]

These days, my good friend Wain sticks mainly to cranberry juice. He jokes now about his bar tab. Not long ago, he'd drop a twenty at the most on a night out, because so many people would buy him drinks and the bartenders would do him favors. But no one gets anyone a cranberry juice, even good friends. He has to buy his own. And at a bar they charge you like it's a cocktail. So now he spends much more not drinking than he ever did drinking.

He's no alcoholic, and this is no 12-step program. Trust me, if he had his druthers, Wain would be back to the booze — free or not. But he's got a problem with his kidneys that makes alcohol highly ... um ... disagreeable to his system. He's on doctor's orders. (And when that doctor is from the Mayo Clinic, one doesn't argue.)

Wain's kidneys are functioning at roughly 6 percent capacity. He needs a new one pretty badly. And as a musician, he doesn't have heaps of disposable income and he doesn't have great health insurance. He does have three things, however, in abundance: luck, friends and connections.

The luck came in at a bar in Walker, Minnesota, out in the north woods. He plays up there sometimes. At this bar, by chance, he met a doctor. That doctor knew a kidney specialist at Mayo. And suddenly there was Wain's golden opportunity. Introductions made ... 87 miles each way between Minneapolis and Rochester, Minnesota ... tests taken ... and voilà! We have a surgeon and we have a donor (one of Wain's brothers).

The friends came in shortly thereafter. A bunch of musicians decided to get together to produce a benefit concert on March 10. Wain fronted a funk/reggae band in the '80s and '90s called Ipso Facto, and he's been around the block a few times, having played with Prince's band, Dave Pirner, Jonny Lang, UB40, Tracy Chapman and scores of others. This is where connections come in.

A few years back, Wain's brother was Cyndi Lauper's tour manager, and she became friendly with the family. Wain tells me he once saw her at a party in a gorilla costume. A musician he mentored toured with her. When she performed at the Minnesota State Fair in 2004, she let Wain sing "Time After Time" with her, letting him ad lib a verse dedicated to his late sister. She brought him back out on stage for "Girls Just Want to Have Fun," which Wain and her bass player spun into an impromptu reggae jam.

A connection.

	[cyndilauper.com]

So, we are told, Ms. Lauper has graciously agreed to lend some of her time and abundant talent to the cause. And many other people he's worked with are helping out, too: Lifehouse, Mint Condition, Soul Asylum. You can read about it on her Web site.

Wain was our neighbor for more than three years. His wife Catherine, another good friend, was our landlady. He sang at our wedding. We planted vegetable gardens and herb gardens together. They babysat our cat. We've had Easters and Thanksgivings. We've dined on curried goat. We've toasted aquavit. He once gave us 15 lbs. of crab legs (there wasn't enough room in his freezer for 30 lbs.) because the parents of a kid he tutored are fishmongers and they paid Wain in fish.

We just saw Wain right before Christmas. And I guess we'll be back in March. Apparently he thinks we don't visit enough, so he's hauling out the heavy ammunition. I'll take any excuse to go back to my adopted home for a visit. Even in a month as c-c-cold as March. But it's not Cyndi Lauper who's luring us back. It's the prospect of being part of a concert full of people who are there to give their love to my friend.

(Truth be told, having Cyndi Lauper there, too, doesn't hurt.)

To all my Minnesotans: Please buy tickets!

Life Change

Though we often feel like helpless puppets in the manipulative world around us, I think we can often take some small comfort in the ability to make changes in ourselves, however minor, just to prove that we have some control over something.

I don't remember when it was or what prompted it, but I do remember that there was a precise moment when I decided to write my nines like upside-down sixes in one counter-clockwise motion from the top down, my eights as two circles rather than starting them like an S and crossing back to the original point, and my twos as they appear in print, with a sharp point where the arc meets the baseline rather than that loop many people use.

A friend of mine in high school wrote her nines like a lowercase G. I always appreciated her attempt to restore the curve to the descending half of the numeral, but ... well, it looked like a "g." I fancied that my version represented a slight improvement.

Similarly, I didn't care for the sharp point in the northeast corner of the shorthand eight. And, when written quickly, it looked like it had a couple loose threads that could get caught on a passing descendor and unravel the whole thing. The shorthand two looked sloppy and lazy to me, too. So, I sharpened my twos and rounded my eights.

Notably, perhaps, I did not opt to draw dashes through my sevens. That would have just been European and pretentious.

I began practicing my new twos and eights and nines immediately, secretly hoping someone would notice and comment on them. I thought they looked masculine and deliberate. Solid. Strong. Not loopy and soft. I found a new zeal for balancing my checkbook. I copied page numbers during college research assignments with glee.

For a time, I tried to extend this to punctuation. I tried to make apostrophes and quotation marks like little "sixes" and "nines" — out of a sense of correctness and a temporary aversion to hash marks and ditto marks — but that didn't hold for long. Who has time to fill in the little holes?

How does this demonstrate control? I guess it's just something little, a miniature reinvention. If only I could apply the same energy to, say, how much I drink every week — or how often I go to the gym.

Long in the Tooth

I've heard people older than me say things about aging like: "I feel like I'm the same person I was when I was younger. It's like I'm 25 inside. But I look in the mirror, and I see this old face."

Is this incongruity the same for all of us?

Sometimes I have to stop and remind myself: I'm living with my husband in a state I didn't grow up in, and I have for the last 8 years; I've graduated from college; I'm making decent money at a decent job; I can make my own decisions and determine my own road. I have to make my own decisions. What choice is there?

I suppose some people groom themselves to accept their own adulthood. And whenever it happens, they take the reins and ride off into the future. But me — I think I'm still at the bus stop sometimes, waiting for adulthood to pick me up.

Who in their right mind would allow me to just sort of take care of myself? You mean, they let me vote? They let me live on my own like this? If I wanted to buy a car or a house or open a retirement account, I can just ... do it? Who do I think I am?

I recently volunteered to speak at a career night event put on for some high school kids. I was part of a group of young professionals (professionals?) who talked about their jobs and answered questions from the attendees about skills, training, degrees, career choices. It seemed funny to me that I should be presented to these kids as a role model.

Are they kidding? My life, an example? I felt like all I could do was tell them what not to do. But I guess I've done OK, haven't I? Of course I can give some advice.

One of the first times I realized I was a grown-up — that I had truly left the nest — was in the health and beauty aids section of Target. I was buying dental floss.

Until I was 22 years old, my mom scheduled twice-yearly checkups with the dentist. Even when I was in college. I'd come home, and there'd be a dentist appointment tossed in with the obligatory visits to friends and family. And every time, the dentist gave me a toothbrush and a packet of dental floss. And because I hardly ever flossed, it was plenty to get me through the next six months before my next appointment.

Dental floss always stacked up at my house. My mom had baskets and baskets of it under the sink in the bathroom. Plain, waxed, mint waxed, cinnamon waxed, blue, green, white. I think I even used a packet of unwaxed plain once as kite string. We never wanted for dental floss at my house — ever.

Then I crossed state lines. Visits to Dr. Forrest ended. It took me a year before I got on the ball and made my own dentist appointment. And I had to buy my own dental floss. The multitude of options at Target is overwhelming.

Sometimes I still feel like the insecure teenager I was: unsure about his future but somehow not worried about it. But now I'm really just a much less insecure 30-year-old — but slightly more worried about the future. I have much less of it now. And I have the power to screw it up.

I wonder if I will ever feel my age, or will I also look in the mirror 30 years from today and wonder who the heck is looking back at me?