Justin Timberlake is getting old

I.

One of the coolest nights of my New York life took place on August 29, 2003.  The Video Music Awards production had consumed Radio City Music Hall and most of midtown.  As the night began I was with new friends (all of whom, with one exception, now lost in time) in an apartment on the Upper East Side, watching the show on TV.  Later that night Justin Timberlake was giving a semi-secret after-show concert at the Roseland Ballroom, and my friend (the one who endured) had somehow found out about it and procured tickets.  That afternoon I had gone to a thrift store near my apartment on Columbus to buy a cool new shirt.  I was ready. Around one in the morning we hopped in a cab to head downtown and joined the long line of people curving around the block to get in.

Inside we stood on our tiptoes and stared at the center of the world. He performed with Timbaland, Pharrell, John Mayer.  Relevant-at-the-time celebrities like Jessica Simpson and Cameron Diaz glowed in the balcony as cameras flashed before them.  The music was familiar and driving, giving us life.  Hours later we emerged into the darkest hours of the morning, exhausted and wide awake.  We were in New York City, young and broke and unstoppable.

It was almost a perfect night.  On the way in security guards had confiscated the disposable camera I had brought, and as we were leaving I realized I wouldn't be able to recover it -- they had thrown it away in the trash.  The camera had photos from a friend's recent wedding, and I was wracked with guilt and fear that the pictures were lost.  My friends implored me to get into a cab and leave, but I ended the night by myself sorting through garbage bags outside of Roseland, looking for a camera that of course I never found.

The pathetic ending, though, is necessary to demonstrate the reality of that spectacular night.  A better conclusion would have required flights of make-believe.

II.

Of course, that was now ten years ago.  And when I saw Justin host SNL a few weeks back, I thought, for the first time, that he looked kind of ... older.  Not that he looked objectively old or haggard, but that he no longer looked young.  He used to be the Justin Bieber of the early aughts, and now he's too old to get away with something as unabashedly silly (yet awesome) as "Beauty and the Beat."  He is in a different space now, ceding the teen-pop ground and moving on to a silkier, more mature R&B tradition.

One funny thing about my job working with college students is that I feel acutely aware of the passage of time, as I become older yet the cohort of people I work with remains static.  I see their experience of music become more and more estranged from my own.  When they find out I listen to JT or Maroon 5 or anyone like that they are often incredulous, as if I should be at home watching Lawrence Welk.

As a result I follow Justin Timberlake through music with the confidence that I can go where he is leading.  He is my spirit animal.  And the new album is fantastic: warmer than the last and with solid through-lines connecting its songs to the tracks on the 2003 album, "Justified," that was my soundtrack to those incredulous years ("Nothin' Else" to "Strawberry Bubblegum," "Last Night" to "Tunnel Vision"). 

Pop culture is a force of the young.   Maybe he is still doing those midnight shows, but I'm sure not going to them -- that particular moment has passed.  Now we dance in the kitchen with our daughters, cleaning dishes in the evening.

Central Park in fall

Good day with my girl

This morning we went on an epic outing. First we went to "go voting," then down to Columbus Circle. In Central Park we sat on a big rock, ate some snack pack, and read "Me and My Dad" twice. We played on the new playground and made up a game called "Up the hill, down the hill," and then trundled over to Alice's dentist appointment. A little traumatic, but about as good as can be expected. Afterwards she clutched her bright yellow balloon and we returned home.

After she woke up from her nap we "cooked" for a while and played with the turtle. It was a really good day.

And now on to the election results, and the regal trumpets of NBC news...

Riverside Park

New perspectives

 

 A few days ago I wrote a self-pitying blog post about how I don't feel like I have time to think anymore.  Can't afford the gym and am compelled to graze all night, so I feel like a fat-ass. Can't find new music to listen to.  Can't find a book compelling enough to finish.  Can't even fathom the idea of sitting down to write something meaningful.  Between work and home I feel like I have nothing else to give, so I was becoming accustomed to the idea that this was just how life would be, that you just kind of give up on everything else and keep your head down and watch your body become that of an old person.

I've been revisiting that draft post in the last few days, and I think I've done a pretty good job of taking concrete steps to combat it.  To wit:

1. I joined the gym at work and signed up for two classes on Sunday.  I went for the first time yesterday and it kicked my ass.  My body is sore all over the place now.  I felt so happy to be moving and sweaty.  At one point we were doing push-ups and the floor around me was slick with sweat that I could barely keep my bearings.  The last time I was in this gym was in 2005, in a boxing class that I loved, and it was a very odd sense memory to return to this place in a completely different life.  While I feel guilty about being away from the family during that chunk of time on Sundays, I think it's worth it in the long run, especially since A is usually napping and L can use the time to herself.

2. I bought "David Copperfield" at the bookstore and so far I'm loving it.  I was trying to read all these contemporary books that just felt very transitory and slight.  I like reading something that has endured, and Dickens is weirdly accessible to me -- it is popular entertainment, after all.  I'm excited to have one big fat book to chew on for the next two months.

3. Alice and I are doing a dance class at Alvin Ailey on Sunday mornings.  Bringing Alice to the studios where I used to do hip hop is hilarious.  Yesterday I could hear a hip hop class thumping in the room next door to us and it broke my heart (as we ran around with jingle bells tied to our wrists and sang songs about butterflies).  But I like having our own little thing together, and Alice enjoys it and I think it's helpful to teach her the basics of rhythm and movement.  L noted that Alice has been nicer to me since we started doing the class together -- it's our own little adventure, her and I.  The funny thing is that I feel weirdly competitive with the other little kids and their parents (mothers), like I want the teacher to be impressed that I've mastered these exercises designed for 2 year olds.  See me twirl the scarf!  I know what sound a froggy makes!  Watch me gallop!

4. Yesterday we also went to see the big new public art spectacle down at Columbus Circle, in which a Japanese artist has built a living room around the statue of Christopher Columbus on top of a six-story obelisk in the middle of the intersection.  I found the piece more powerful and compelling than I expected.  It was neat to see this old hunk of marble up close, and the views were great.  It raised interesting questions about private ownership of public art/spaces.  And it was amusing to watch Alice ignore the tremendous statue dominating the space so she could flip through the coffee table book at its feet. 

And that's it.  Right now I'm just trying to fight entropy and reclaim some things about life that I enjoy.  If it doesn't happen now, before this new baby comes, then I think we're in trouble.

Beauty/horror

Yesterday I saw the most disgusting thing ever.

Alice and our new nanny, Angie, were playing in Riverside Park near our office, so I stepped out to visit with them during lunch time.  Alice was excited to see me and we played on the swings together for a while.  Soon I had to say, “Daddy has to go back to work,” and Alice cheerily saw me off with an “Adios” and a few blown kisses.

I crossed Riverside Drive to get back to work and thought about my great fortune.  I’m able to walk to work and remain near my daughter all day long, and I work in an environment that allows me to steal a few summer-midday moments to see my daughter.  Even as I approached her at the playground, I could see that she was happy and well-attended; our urban summer baby. 

I was thinking these thoughts as I started climbing a stairway on the other side of the street, when suddenly I heard a low voice saying, “watch it, watch it.” A man in a white worksuit was sitting eating his lunch nearby.  He gestured and I looked down.  A few feet away from me there was a rat scrabbling slowly along the stairway, making a fearful noise, szrrrk szrrk szrrk.  His backside seemed to be covered with something that looked like dried bird poop, something sore and festering.  Flies were darting around as the rat jerked along the stair.  Szrrk Szrrk szrrk!  I gasped and bounded away, my knees high in the air as I registered the rat shambling along.

“That’s disgusting,” I said to the man once I made it past, feeling the blood along my temples.  “What is wrong with that thing?”  “I don’t know,” the man said, “and I’m trying to eat my lunch.”  My heart was thrumming as I walked away.  I thought about Ebola and “Contagion,” 911 and Old Yeller, killing something with a shovel.  When I was a block past I could hear a girl scream behind me.  “What the hell! What was that!”  By then I was back to the sanctuary of Broadway.   I decided that there was no way the rat would be able to make it all the way back to Alice on the playground. 

So what do you do after that?  I got my lunch, returned to the office, washed my hands.  Thought about Alice playing just a few blocks away.  Wished for a merciful death for the rat staggering through the daylight.

4th of July

Aboard the Staten Island Ferry

Staten Island Yankees vs. Jamestown Jammers.  Jamestown?

Alice loved the mascots, Scooter and Red

Alice with Red.  She was enraptured and terrified

Highlights of the game: ice-cold plastic bottles of Bud Light on a hot evening.  Someone near us fielded a foul ball and gave it to Alice.  All of our neighbors were tickled to hear Alice cheer, sing, and yell "Charge!"  The game ran 12 innings, followed by fireworks.  At one point the mascot Scooter was squatting down trying to "lift" a "heavy" barbell and the sound guy let loose a loud brrrrip, prompting Alice to note, "Scooter tooted, like me!"  We hustled to catch the 11 pm ferry home.  Alice was quiet and thoughtful on the long subway ride back.  Bedtime for her at 12:30.  Cold showers late at night to break the heat and end the day.  Happy birthday America. 

The summer

2008

2012

It was the summer of "Call Me Maybe," a song that I didn't know but seemed to like anyway.  There were downsides, of course, like the drug-related triple-execution that took place in a car parked a few blocks away from our home, but the evenings were so long and sweet that we could often stroll through the neighborhood after dinner, taking note of the flowers that had been duct-taped to a tree in memoriam of the three murdered drug dealers.  As the days multiplied the flowers began to wilt and droop in the remembered heat.

I would leave work on Fridays at 1 and then head to Lincoln Center to watch movies and eat popcorn in the solitary dark.  In the afternoons at work I would take a break to walk down to Chipotle to buy a Coke Zero, a concession to time and metabolism that I told myself I enjoyed.  Each day we waited for our nanny to give birth to her baby, but she usually didn't and so life continued normally. 

One Saturday I had to work for much of the day, and when I was finally released into the weekend I went to Five Guys to eat a burger and drink a real Coke and read a New Yorker article about the President's early years.  As a college student he had been no less self-serious than any of the rest of us.  Later we all went to the playground, where Alice enjoys dangling from any horizontal bar she can find, holding her feet in front of her.  Sometimes she and I hang simultaneously from the bars, myself well aware of the embarrassing effort required to maintain the position.

We all went to a Thai restaurant on Amsterdam Avenue, testing fate by actually dining at a restaurant rather than scurrying home with our meals cooling and congealing in their styrofoam.  The menu featured text in Thai and grainy photos of Thai markets.  Looking at it, smelling brief pockets of aromas from other people's entrees, brought me close to the memory of what it had actually been like in Thailand, those four years ago.  I was on the verge of remembering something real about it -- the sweat, the confusion, the happy blind confidence, the age -- but it disappeared before I could grasp it.

No time for reflection.  On the way home we stopped at Columbia so that Alice could clamber among the steps and the fountains, resolutely independent and insistent that we keep our distance.  As the day dissolved around us we returned home.  When we walked by their street I thought of the men who had been murdered there weeks earlier; the street where their ghosts remained, where their ghastly car was long, long gone.  

Playground dynamics

I've been thinking about the fact that when you are engaged with your kid in a public space, like the playground or the bus, other people's kids start to gravitate to you.  By now I've gotten used to seeing parents at the playground who are totally disengaged from their kids -- they sit there reading their Economist or talking among themselves as their kids bolt around screaming their heads off.  I've been maintaining an attitude of low-level, simmering self-righteousness about this -- about the same level of ire reserved for smokers who fling their butts on the sidewalk and people who take up two seats on the bus.  Engage with your kids! That's the point of weekends!

Like most weekends, we spent a fair amount of Memorial Day weekend at Riverside Park enjoying the playgrounds. Alice has a nice routine where she clambers up the ladder or the stairway (which earns her a high-five from me), makes her way across the bouncy bridge, and goes down the big-girl twisty slide.  I kind of coach her along and narrate the action.  (It's not helicopter parenting, it's having fun and building confidence.) This weekend she started swinging on the monkey bars on her own, holding her legs out in front of her and just dangling there, her face an expression of quiet intensity that's usually only seen when she's trying to poop.

Sure enough, several kids started hanging out with us.  One little kid on the slide objected when I described him to Alice as a "little boy" -- "I'm a big boy!" he said ("Well, you're littler than me," I told him.)  Another girl, Inga, wandered over to us and got very bossy about the bubbles we were playing with.  I entertained her for ten minutes while her nanny was oblivious to the whole thing. 

Then today on the bus a little four year-old kid just started talking to us about nothing.  "I'm four and a half." "My name's John."  "My favorite bus is the M104, but sometimes we take the M4."  "My shoes light up when I do this."

Kids are drawn to other kids, and a lot of kids like to talk to Alice and learn about her.  But then some just seem very hungry for an adult to pay attention to them, to talk them through the playground, to provide some kind of order and cohesion to the experience.  It's very odd to be in that kind of position sometimes.  But I'm enjoying the process of learning how to talk with kids and entertain them and lead their pack.

September 11th, ten years later

For the last couple of days I've been immersing myself in a lot of the immediate coverage that followed the terrorist attacks ten years ago.  It's hard not to watch the footage without a rock in my stomach.  The newscasters' fumbling narration in real time, the background whine of sirens that seemed so feeble in the face of such destruction. 

When I think about my life, I tend to believe that the Modern Era -- that is, adulthood -- began when I graduated college and moved to New York in 2002.  September 11th occurred during the first few weeks of my senior year at UVA.  My memories of that day are stark and clear, and many of the people with whom I experienced that day are still deeply involved in my life (most especially, my wife).  When I arrived in New York months later that experience was still burned onto the short-term memory of the city.  Every summer hordes of young people arrive in the city determined to start their lives, and I felt proud to be part of the first wave of new arrivals following the attacks.  Yet I also felt like an interloper -- someone who skips the funeral but attends the reception afterwards.

Living in the city has given me a new intimacy with the events of that day, a new understanding of the geography of grief.  I used to run by Ground Zero all the time when we lived downtown.  My wife's old workplace was near the scene of a major staging area for the first responders.  The same hospital where the victims were sent, where Cardinal Egan stood outside administering last rites to the dead and dying, is where my daughter was born.

Today L and I took Alice downtown to get out of the house and go eat at a burger joint from back home.  Impromptu memorials had been established all around the old neighborhood, in front of firehouses, along the chain-link fence where people have hung dozens of ceramic tiles commemorating that day.  On the subway we saw many law enforcement personnel in dress uniform.  We saw people who had come from the major memorial service, relatives of the victims, including someone who wore a badge identifying them as a reader of the names.  I felt frivolous sitting there in my shorts with my soda, frivolous and irreverent in the face of their grief and the tragedy this city -- now my city -- endured. 

And yet life goes on.  Just like ten years ago, this weekend felt like one of the last vanishing weekends of summer.  Today Alice enjoyed her french fries and milkshake, and she was smiling and chatty for her momma and daddy.  Events that were unthinkable ten years ago have somehow been folded into our understanding of ourselves and our home, and we all move forward, more or less, with an even keel.  Resilience and grief, change and memory, ever forward, ever forward.

Hurricane Irene

The city is freaking out about Hurricane Irene.  It was a beautiful day today but there was a nervous energy in the street; the sidewalks seemed more crowded than usual, the lines at drugstores and groceries snaking down the aisles.  People clutching bottled water, toilet paper.  I went to five stores looking for D batteries to no avail.

My wife the civil servant is in Brooklyn tonight.  She is part of the city's emergency response team, working 12 hour shifts at an evacuation center in Brooklyn.  Hopefully I'll see her tonight before she has to report again for duty tomorrow.  Once the city's transit system has shuddered to a halt tomorrow afternoon, I'm not sure how she'll be able to come back home from Brooklyn.  So when does my wife come home?

The idea of going through a hurricane with just me and Alice, without L, is boggling and ridiculous.  I am very proud of my wife for the work she does and the spirit she brings to her job.  I hope she understands that she is doing important, humane work.  But her absence tonight - and presumably, through this long weekend of emergency - baffles me.

I found some batteries at home and we have one good flashlight.  I pulled aside candles and matches.  We have enough food, I guess, and milk and water.  Water bottles in the freezer.  I guess we are almost ready, with almost everything.

The vise

I have been uncharacteristically worried lately about the state of things in our life (and that's saying something).  L and I have had some big talks about our family, our careers, our home, and our finances, trying to find the best way to manage everything in a sustainable way, a way that will keep us on a good path to prosperity.  In some ways I feel like the same few questions are constantly swirling around us, and each passing day pushes us towards an answer.  Can we stay in New York?  Can we stay where we are?  Does our life require changes, large or small?  (The questions are more specific in my mind, of course, but they thunder down to the same basic propositions.)  I worry about making a choice.  I worry about not making a choice -- that our inaction will lead us to an answer in itself, an answer we may not want. 

Sometimes I wonder if we are somehow being selfish, living in Manhattan and raising a family here.  Is it stupid to try to do this?  Does it matter that we still live in New York, since we are not exactly regulars on Broadway or at the museums?  Are we trying to accomplish something best left to the financiers and their dowager mothers-in-law?  Perhaps worse: are we the last ones left at the party, still toughing it out in Manhattan while so many of our friends have cycled in and out of the city?  And yet so much of our life is grounded in the structures of urban living -- walking to playgrounds, enjoying the parks, living in a certain kind of community.  I fear that if we lived someplace surburban, we would enjoy the luxuries of the 'burbs for a few months until we woke up in horror one day, realizing: I am bored.  And then it would spiral downwards, Revolutionary Road-style.  (Not to say that city life is inherently better or more exciting; just that it has clearly become our preference.) 

If I think about these questions hard enough, it feels like the floor gives way under my feet, and all of the structures we have created to organize our life - the jobs, the childcare, the commute, the apartment, the friendships - are ripped to shreds in a single thoughtless moment, and the stark precarious nature of this balance emerges.  Yet does life ever become more solid than this?  What exactly could I expect someplace else?

I hit the point a few days ago where I just grew weary of worrying.  We had a good talk with my folks about things, and I feel like we're doing the best we can.  We are not sitting back passively and letting the circumstances of life dictate our fates; we are doing everything we can to best protect and support our lives.  Beyond that I don't know what else can be done, besides work on my patience and serenity.  Like I was saying to L tonight:  I'm worried something will happen.  And I'm also worried something won't.

At some point, I have to take a breath and just stop worrying.

Photo: my favorite monkey at the Manhattan Children's Museum.

Neighbors

This morning at 8:30, I was walking out of the apartment to head to the gym, untangling my headphones in my hands, when I heard our next-door neighbor yelling for help inside his apartment.  "Help me!  Help me!  Is anyone there?  Please help me!"  I continued walking down the first flight of stairs before I stopped and came back up.  I called to him through the door.  From what I could understand, he said he had been stuck in his bathtub for two days, and could I go to the superintendent and get the keys to his apartment.  I said I would.  I went downstairs and knocked on the super's door, and got no response.  I called him and left a voice message.  I knocked on my neighbor's door and he started yelling again -- "Help!  Someone, please!" -- and his voice faltered.  He must have thought I had left.

I conferred with L and we decided to call the police.  She called 911 and spoke to the operators.  Soon other neighbors had gathered with us outside of his door: the neighbor who was the reason we called 911 the last time, a girl doing her laundry.  When the police arrived at the building, they buzzed our neighbor's apartment to be let in, which struck me as grimly hilarious.  Key in hand, the superintendent came spilling out of the elevator with the cops and EMTs.  Everyone went inside the apartment.  We hung back, afraid to look through the doorway.  They were worried about what kind of mess they might find.
  
A few minutes later they rolled our neighbor out in a rickety wheelchair that looked like lawn furniture.  He was wrapped from head to toe in a white bedsheet, with his skinny legs dangling and his gnarled feet dragging on the floor tile.  He was every figure of the Pieta.  His body was bisected by bright orange straps tied tightly to secure him.   They asked him his name and if he knew his social.  Soon he and the police and EMTs had all vanished back down the elevator.  L said, "Should we wish him good luck?," but by the time we tried to say it they had already gone.  Before they left one of the cops made sure his lights and air conditioner were turned off. 

A few of us were still on the landing.  The super said he didn't mind helping our neighbor.  He was old and alone, and not all there.  Lou Gehrig's disease.  From our apartment we can hear him playing classical music most of the time, and yelling to himself when he gets frustrated.

In the afternoon we saw the neighbor from the last 911 call, who said he was going to the hospital to check on the man.  Since he's all alone, you know.  But before he left for the hospital, our neighbor had to check the building directory posted by the buzzer to make sure he knew the man's last name.

Jury duty

I was on jury duty this week.  Unlike my first time as a juror, six years ago, this experience felt a lot more...coerced.  I felt like I had been conscripted into something unpleasant.  At every step of the way, people reminded us that it was our duty to be there, that it was an inconvenience, that we may be occupied for the next several weeks, that they would let us go as soon as possible but not yet, and that the fate of our democracy depended on our presence in the sad little waiting room.  It was like a hostage situation, but more principled.

I had two close brushes with juryhood.  The first case was an attempted assault.  Someone was accused of beating a Christmas tree vendor with a bicycle chain.  The second case was a murder and at attempted murder.  That trial would last several weeks.  The death penalty would not be an issue before us.  We were not to look up this case on the Internet.  There had been media attention before, and there would likely be more attention to come.  Can we handle that?

Well, I guess I could, probably, but it's not really a good time for me to spend a month as a juror.  Not when we're going to Spain and already got Alice a passport, a hellish process involving four post offices in two states.  When I made this excuse before the judge I felt very spineless and pathetic, whimpering my way out of jury service.  I was excused and sent to a different room upstairs where I got my letter stating that I was done with jury service until 2017, which so far is convenient for me.

Last week was exhausting, with graduation activities and jury duty.  This coming week I have two work retreats, and the slow transition into the summer season of the academic calendar.  I'm also trying to submit a story to a few publications/contests with a May 31 deadline, so that should keep me occupied too. 

911

L arrived home late from work, around 9.  I had put the baby down and had ordered a pizza for us.  L had just walked in and was standing in the doorway of the apartment, talking to a woman in the hallway.  The woman was wearing baggy gray longjohns, clutching a cordless phone and her eyeglasses and a pen.  Apparently her boyfriend, who lives with her, was drunk and raging.  He had smashed his hand through some glass case in their apartment and was bleeding.  He had locked her out.

L invited her inside to have a place to think for a few minutes.  The woman said she just wanted him out of her apartment, but she didn't want the police involved.  She came in and stood in our doorway for a few minutes, then returned to the hallway. We offered to call the police but she declined.  The woman suggested that maybe we could ask him to come into our apartment for a few moments, and then she could return to her apartment and lock him out.  We said no. 

The man opened the door to his apartment and started yelling at her again.  He moved into the hallway, bleary-eyed.  L, the sentinel, held our door open in case the woman needed it.  The man was blathering on and on.  He started referring to us and pointing to us.  "Now my neighbor won't even talk to me!" He started comparing himself to Libya, saying it would take more than one policeman to take him down.  He talked about the Irish.  Staring at L's face to not look at the man's, I kept asking her: should we call the police now?  Are we justified now?  Finally, feeling vaguely threatened as he shuffled into the middle of the hallway, closer to the woman and our door, I called 911.  Not the first time I've done it, here in this city of shit and blood.  I put on a fleece and some flip flops to get ready.

A few minutes later I heard distant sirens, then three cruisers pulled up in front of our building.  A group of policemen swarmed inside.  Someone from dispatch called me to tell me to buzz them up.  When they poured out of the elevator I gestured to the poor woman who was standing forlornly by the stair railing, and they directed their procedures and protocols at her.  One officer, calm and low-voiced, hung back to talk to me about the call.

A little while later I got another call from dispatch, telling me to buzz up the ambulance crew.  I also thought, where is our pizza?  It's been thirty minutes.  Maybe the law enforcement can let our pizza guy in.  The ambulance crew had arrived because the man was apparently bleeding from the broken glass he had smashed.  A little while later we heard yelling from outside -- it was the man, now on the sidewalk, surrounded by cops trying to secure him onto a gurney to go into the ambulance.  He was hollering, howling at them.  Craning out of our window we could see him thrashing on the ground, the lumpy mounds of the officers' backs surrounding him.  Someone was pinning him to the ground with a knee.  Suddenly I saw our pizza delivery guy, toodling along on his bike up the block, past the spectacle of double-parked law enforcement vehicles with their lights ablaze.  "Well, at least the pizza's here."

A few minutes later the man was secured in the ambulance and the cars dispersed.  His antics made me feel more justified in calling 911 in the first place.  The cars and ambulance revved up their lights and sirens to facilitate illegal U-turns on our block, and then they were screaming up Broadway, away from our home. 

The pizza was lukewarm and doughy when we finally ate it.  We wondered what it would be like when the man inevitably returned to his apartment, to the woman in longjohns.  The city is a forceful, unrelenting place on nights like this.  Discretion, or the opportunity to ignore your neighbor, is a luxury.  What were we supposed to do?  Wait for the woman to get hit?  Wait for the drunken man to sober up, stop bleeding, stop pounding on the walls? 

What if we had just closed our door?

Blizzard/Christmas

It's a blizzard night in New York as I write this.  The streets are quiet, muffled by snow and not yet lined with the tracks of cabs and plows.  Street signs blink their litanies to empty sidewalks.  From here, snowflakes are swirling and diving in all directions above the ground.  Our windows are speckled with snow and ice but the pink sky looms beyond, a haze of snowy light lacquered onto the darkness.  The snow dampens everything.

We had a very nice Christmas this year, the three of us.  On Christmas Eve L made a beef brisket, beets, roasted potatoes, green and yellow beans, and salad.  Our appetizer was parsnip and leek soup.  Dessert was double chocolate-chip muffins, with some vanilla ice cream.  Our friends came over, along with their daughter and one set of their parents.  We had a great meal, a long, warm night, listening to the same set of Christmas carols several times over.  And the most exciting element of Christmas Eve -- Alice started crawling!  Finally the pieces clinked in her head -- she could move from lying down to sitting to scooching to pulling herself up to crawling, like an extremely methodical elementary-level break dancer.  She started trundling all over the place, from the family room to the kitchen, pausing to slap on boxes or pull down Christmas gifts or check out the wheels of the stroller.


On Christmas day Alice wasn't that into the presents, although she enjoyed tearing apart tissue paper.  We went to church, where of course they asked us to bring up the gifts to the altar, which gave me something to worry about for the first 2/3rds of the mass.  But it was wonderful, with an amazing choir that really knocked the carols out of the park.  This Christmas I thought a lot about the Christmas story as the story of a child's birth and as an experience of new parenthood, which tapped into some deep and visceral emotions at unexpected times.  I suppose every parent thinks their child's birth is worthy of the choirs of angels and the shepherds and the magi.  Or at least a room at the inn; how could a parent abide with the indignity of their infant among the livestock and the hay?  Somehow it was all enough to get me choked up a little during "Silent Night," which had never happened before.   


After church we went to a delicious brunch at our friends' -- amazing quiche, french toast bread pudding.  Our friends got us amazing gifts.  Because my friend John always has these amazingly cool sneakers that I never have the guts or panache to purchase myself, he bought me a pair -- I was overwhelmed.  It was the perfect gift, since I would never dare to buy them, but would always covet them and rue my own shoe conservatism.  (I am not a good gift-giver; I'm not good at projecting what others would want.  I'm too much a creature of habit to make that imaginative leap.  This is a handicap I try to overcome every year.) 

The rest of Christmas day was quiet and relaxing at home.  We were all very exhausted.  Our exhaustion rolled pleasantly into today, and we were happy to bundle up at home amid the Christmas lights and the pleasantly churning snowstorm outside.  We ventured out late in the day, packing up Alice in her new snowsuit from Great Grammy and Great Grampy, and went up Claremont to 116th, then through the bright lights at Columbia, then down to the subway at 110th.  We passed several restaurants that looked warm and inviting, a perfect place for a drink.  But this is not the kind of winter; maybe if the baby wasn't an issue, or if money wasn't an issue -- but two strikes was enough today.  A year ago we could have gone in for a nice beer or a warm drink and an appetizer -- would have sat in the warmth and let our noses run as we took a moment to watch the snow fall on Broadway, resting and enjoying a few moments of conviviality before venturing back into the predictable discomfort of a storm.  But this is a different kind of winter.



I am excited to see the city that will greet us in the morning!  What a blessing to have our family tucked in at home as the snow globe whirls on around us.

Christmas tree

Last night I went out and bought a Christmas tree from one of the street-side vendors.  This is one of those New York Christmas traditions that redeems an otherwise cruel and unforgiving place.  Transforming small patches of sidewalk into a temporary pine forest; the strapping, friendly, Portland-esque people who staff these stands at all hours of the day and night; the merrily pathetic Charlie Brown trees and the flimsy plastic shelters the Portlanders stay in to stay warm -- all of it creates a very plausible, useful, and reasonable amount of genuine holiday cheer.  Just this morning on my way to work I inadvertently got caught walking between a father and his kids and their local Christmas tree saleswoman, who the kids had clearly met before.  "Wave hi to Molly!"  the father called out.  "Hi, Molly!  Have a good day!"  Although I felt like a tool for blocking the wee moppets' view of Molly, this encounter made me happy.

Although I was pleased with our tree, I immediately had concerns that it was a little on the shrimpy side.  Yes, it's kind of narrow, but the price was right, and we're not exactly living in Versailles anyway.  You always find the tree to match your season, and I think we found the right one. 

L and I decorated tonight accompanied by Toni Braxton's Christmas CD, "Snowflakes," which was released in 2001 and has become a holiday classic (the same way the N'Sync holiday CD is a classic for my parents, my sister, and me).  There's one song on the Toni album, "Snowflakes of Love," that always struck me as treacly and overly sentimental. "On this day, snowy day/Let me thank you for the joy you're giving me/I'm so happy/I have snowflakes of love smiling down on me."  Who could actually feel that way?  No one feels that way.

And yet, last night I was listening to the song, sharing a quiet moment with Alice as we danced slowly and contemplated the tree.  "Reminiscing, I get so happy/I just break down and cry."  No tears were shed, but at last I could understand that the song had been waiting for me for nine long years.

One night

I.
Only after the tornado had swept through did he dare go out in the night.  From the window he could see the rain boring down as cars cowered on the sides of the streets.  Cords of lightening marbleized the sky and flashed through the apartment, keeping his daughter from sleep.  After it was over the sidewalks were streaked with long isles of silt left by the overwhelmed storm drains.  But people were venturing out, and the strange tornado had passed.

II.
He met his two friends at the wine bar.  Above the din he could hear R&B songs he loved and knew well.  Occasionally voices would sing along with them.  The bar closed at a fairly early hour but they were still there as the tempo of the music picked up, as the bartender strutted behind the counter.  After the bottle of red was gone they ordered sangria.  This place made him feel sleek, that the people in the room were like the multitudes inside him.

III.
They went to another bar, smaller and emptier.  He found refuge in vodka.  One of his friends had to leave, but the two remained.  The bartender was an artist who had made the earrings she was wearing.  She wrote down the address of her blog on two scraps of paper for them.  At some moment, when the two friends were talking about old and sad topics, he had enough of those old and sad thoughts.  He ordered some shots and decided that they would stop talking about the matter when the drinks arrived.  So they downed the shots -- the bartender poured one for herself, too -- and moved on, and his happiness returned.  A girl behind him was dancing to Lady Gaga, her arms long above her head, her eyes closed, smiling.  "Don't call my name, don't call my name, Alejandro."  He felt such joy and love!  The liquor had served its purpose.  The music, the dancing, himself and his friend at the corner of this bar.  Her earrings. 

IV.
Now they were in an empty diner.  He ordered spaghetti to sober up.  He didn't have any cash and the place wouldn't take cards.  He walked carefully to an ATM two blocks away and withdrew some money.  When he returned his friend was low in the booth and it was time to leave.

V.
They were sitting on a bench in a median on Broadway.  Occasional white headlights coming forth, red taillights receding.  He closed his eyes to resolve himself, yet his mind pitched and rolled on its conflicting orbits.  The spaghetti returned, long and shining white on the soil.

VI.
He and his friend were walking up the street.  He suddenly realized that the darkness was paling, the sky softening into day.  He was embarrassed to see the morning come.  He wanted to be home.  He told his friend to get up, that now they should say goodbye and find a cab and abandon whatever was left of the night, before the light of a new day shamed him further.

VII.
He came home quietly into the gray light of the apartment.  His wife was on the sofa nursing their daughter.  She spoke softly, to avoid startling him, to welcome him back and to say good morning.

Independence Day weekend

We had a wonderful weekend.  But right now I am sitting at the table in our godforsaken apartment as the ceiling fan shoves great glaciers of hot air around the room and as beads of sweat gather at my temples.  It is so hot.  The heat bundles itself in these rooms and starts weighing down.  I expect the bed to buckle at any moment.  And it's 11 o'clock at night.

Friday:  We took the D and Q trains out to Brighton Beach and Coney Island.  Brighton Beach is the home of a large Russian population, and we ate lunch at a boardwalk Russian cafe, where we tried borscht for the first time.  Pretty darn good!  Like a weird gazpacho!  The quiet of Brighton Beach and the width of the boardwalk there reminded me of Rehoboth.  We walked across the hot sand to the water -- the sand of course being riddled with broken glass, because since this is New York City every nice thing must have an edge to it, which means that your typical idyllic beach will be liberally sprinkled with shrapnel -- and found the ocean to be freezing cold.  We continued up the way towards Coney Island, where we fought the urge to buy fried things and took in the spectacle.  I appreciated the history -- the parachute tower from the 1939 World's Fair, the amusement park rides from the same era.  Following our beach tradition, we had some photo booth pictures taken, and were happy to include Alice for the first time.  Later we ventured out onto the pier, passing fishermen and families and men cat-calling the women.  Looking back towards the beach, seeing the Wonder Wheel and the housing towers and the train snaking through it all, I was struck by the vastness of New York City.  Here we could feel ocean breezes, hear the caw of seagulls, see the wide blue sky over the water.  How many worlds, how many places this city contains.  (Walking along the beach, I was also struck by the sheer brazenness of people -- the  wildly inappropriate bathing suits, all those swathes of unrequested flesh -- that actually made me feel embarrassed for them, on their behalf, but I preferred to focus on the breadth of the City, thanks very much.)

Brighton Beach

Sunday: I started out Independence Day with a nice long run in the morning through Riverside Park.  As the heat settled on our skin and in our clothes, we walked down to Lincoln Center to watch a movie, baby in tow.  Here is our thinking: we did this last week with a matinee of "Toy Story 3," where the theater was empty and Alice was as well-behaved as one could reasonably expect.  L would jump out of her seat as soon as the baby started to fuss, and there was no issue.  Sunday we figured we would go see "Sex and the City 2: A Big Mistake" (see the pun there!) because (a) it's long, (b) it's playing in a place that's air-conditioned, and (c) everyone knows it's horrible, so no one will be there and it won't be a big deal with the baby.

Well, apparently the bitter old women of Manhattan did not get that memo, because they were out in full force.  Why were they seeing this movie everyone hated, six weeks after it originally came out?  Worst of all, the theater was configured in such a way that you entered by the movie screen, which means all the other patrons see you as you come in.  I could feel a collective wave of feminine disdain overtake us as we entered with our stroller, so we hustled to the back row to suffer the withering gaze of some freedom-hating old hag.  When I came back from getting popcorn, I actually took off the hat and sunglasses I had been wearing, so people wouldn't think I was the jerk who brought a baby to the movie.

But you know what, haters?  We did bring a baby, and she did great.  L had to take her out a couple times, and I had a few artificial coughing fits to camoflauge her gurgling, but she did great.  No crying. (We did note the fact that under normal circumstances, we would be part of the disdain brigade, harrumphing about how a movie theater is a completely inappropriate place to bring a baby, but thanks to the challenges of parenting and perhaps even a slight mellowing of my temper, perhaps I am evolving.)

Unfortunately, the movie was horrific.  It was really offensive against the middle east, and somehow the characters were even more insufferable than usual.  Why does Charlotte have a full-time nanny?  She doesn't have a job!  All the characters who were mothers sucked at it.  And their partners, the fathers, were simpering and spineless.  And the karaoke scene made me want to gouge my eyes out.  Other than that, two thumbs up!

We walked back to the piers on 125th Street and set up an impromptu picnic to see the fireworks.  We made friends with the sweet family to our left and watched the sunset sink across the Hudson.  The weather was perfect and the people were friendly, kids chasing each other and people eating sandwiches on their blankets.  When the fireworks started we found that our view was blocked by a clump of trees -- and then hundreds of people were shifting and jostling for a better view -- but at that point it didn't matter.

125th Street piers

Monday: Today I took my first Manhattan bike ride, after a morning stop at the local bike shop to outfit the old bike I had as a teenager, which has been dormant for about 15 years.  After pumping the tires, checking the brakes, and buying a helmet, this evening I rode down the Hudson to about 72nd Street and back.  I know it's no excuse for an actual workout, but it felt great to move, to force some air around me in the illusion of coolness.

This afternoon, after lunch, I took Alice home alone so that L could enjoy a small piece of the day.  The baby and I stayed in the cool oasis of her room. We read my favorite children's colonialist allegory, "The Story of Babar," as well as "Make Way for Ducklings," and a brief selection of "Moby-Dick," which she did not enjoy.  Then I was holding her in my lap, and we were both sitting there rocking, me relaxing in the cool air and quiet moment, feeling her weight on me, and the baby with the pacifier in her mouth, restful in my arms.  I looked at her and she was smiling sweetly, even with the pacifier, and then something happened and she was looking so clearly in my eyes, and smiling so broadly -- I started speaking to her and she would coo right in response, her mouth wide and open and happy, her eyes so intent on mine, laughing together.  At that moment I expected her to speak, to say my name or her own, or to tell a joke, or to laugh like her mother.  For a second she was not a baby, but my friend.  A brief moment of such connection.  During those moments I wouldn't have been surprised by anything.  It was so lovely.

Eventually it passed, and her adorable haze returned, clouding her thoughts, her needs.  But that moment!  My mysterious daughter.
 

It's been a wonderful weekend.  Now time for a last cold shower, and an escape into sleep, on top of the sheets, under the fans.

Parks and recreation

We had a great Memorial Day weekend.  The weather was sunny and clear, the throngs of people abated, and we had three days that reminded us why we love living here.

Saturday: With Alice strapped into the Baby Bjorn on my chest, giving me the opportunity to develop new and unexpected constellations of sweat over the course of a long hot Saturday, we walked all the way from 125th Street to Lincoln Center, in the low 60s, and back -- for a nice urban hike of six miles.  On the way down I was constantly aware of heads turning to stare at the baby, women gushing and cooing over her cuteness.  As parents, we tried to respond modestly ("oh, thank you" with a demure smile) but eventually gave way to bald-faced honesty ("yes, she is!").

One highlight of the day was exploring the new developments at Lincoln Center.  I am constantly amazed by the renovations I'm seeing throughout the city during these lean years.  Where is the money coming from?  Who decides that now is the time to invest in public art and topiary sculptures?  I have no idea, but I'm thankful someone is deciding this.  The most exciting thing at Lincoln Center is a new parabolic lawn -- a sloping wafer of green that serves as the rooftop of a new restaurant and curves upwards to audacious peaks overlooking the streets below.  The edges are lined with glass or metallic fencing, creating unexpected promontories with their own peaks and swells.  It is remarkable.

They've added a lot of other exciting stuff there, too, including the elegantly powerful new fountain, ringed by a sleek black bench; a new grove of trees with plenty of chairs and benches; and an intriguing shallow pool intersecting with a sloping, warmly-colored plaza.  In The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs pointed to Lincoln Center as an example of bad urban planning: a broad, single-use space, devoid of foot traffic and isolated in its cold grandeur.  It seems that some smart people have heeded her critique; every new development I saw seemed designed to create a richer, more livable, more welcoming space.  And they are succeeding.

Sunday:  On Sunday L and Alice met me at the gym downtown after a good workout.  Once I emerged from the locker room, all fresh and clean, L put Alice in my arms (which were shaking at that point, due to the rigor of the workout).  A few minutes later I handed the baby back and L looked at me and said, with the kind of sneer I thought we were no longer using in marital conversation, "Are you still sweating?" I looked down at the oblong stain on my shirt.  I smelled it.  "No, she peed on me."  So we ended up going to the Gap to buy a new shirt for me to wear for the day.  Thanks a lot, Alice.

Later we made our way back to the park on the Hudson, where we read and people-watched and let Alice nap on the blanket.  We saw a few reality show celebrities and plenty of people who had clearly been working out for months and months just to be ready on the first plausibly shirtless day of summer.  It was a good reminder of the pros and cons of living in the Village.

Monday: Today I cleaned out my computer, which gave me a disproportionate sense of accomplishment.  And in the evening I went for a run along on the Hudson, on the new route I've found for myself: taking the path on the waterfront from 125th to the 79th Street Boat Basin and back. It's about five miles, and the path hugs the shoreline the entire time (a few sections are next to the West Side Highway, but it's easy enough to focus on the water -- on the boats bobbing along the piers, or the bridge standing tall in the distance).  The path is organized so that pedestrians are on one side, regardless of which direction you are travelling in, and bikers and Rollerbladers are relegated to the other side.

Today there were a ton of bikers in my lane, which posed a problem.  Do I fall off on to the shoulder, and risk stumbling into the inhospitable water of the Hudson?  Or do I bolt into the wrong lane myself, thus perpetuating the original transgression?

I approached the dilemma with the same passive-aggressive, slow-boil approach that has served me so well in the past.  As the bikers came barreling towards me, at first I did nothing. Then I gave one of my tried and true Dirty Looks.  Then I threw up my hands in a gesture of disgust.  Then I started saying, "you're in the wrong lane."  Finally I was confronted with a knot of idiot bikers, coming at me at the same time as the other side of the path was clogged with others.  I had nowhere to go.  "WRONG LANE!"  I said, a few times.  One chick in a sundress and bike helmet actually had to sort of stumble off her pedals to catch the bike with her feet to avoid hitting me.  I ended up maybe six inches from her handlebars.  "WRONG LANE," I pointed out.  "Sorry -- where was I supposed to -- the bike," she explained, but not very nicely.  "You should be in the other lane, that's for bikes," I said, doing my best to explain the clear symbols and words that were paved on the surface of the path in numerous locations.  I mean, Excuse Me New York.  I concluded the conversation with that sound you make when you're huffy and catch the air in the back of your throat in something that's halfway between a sigh and a grunt -- if you've ever talked to me in person you know what I'm talking about -- and that was it.

All in all, a great weekend.  I love this city.