Breakdown

Well, I broke. I don't know if it was seeing all the baby loot we acquired at the shower last weekend, or else the time I spent the other night considering the mechanics of baby clothes, with all of their snaps and clasps and tiny little safety pins, or else our trip yesterday to Baby Buy Buy Buy, when we selected a mobile for the crib of plush pastel little insects -- fireflies, ladybugs, caterpillars -- all sleeping peacefully and smiling gently from their cozy orbit, or else the moment in the store when I found myself binging on onesies, pink ones, yellow ones, with their snug matching hats and bibs and burp cloths, embroidered roses or butterflies or bouquets, imagining soft tiny sleeves filled with fat baby arms, imagining the snaps and clasps and pins securing a warm tiny body, imagining my rose, my butterfly, my bouquet -- sometime in the middle of all that, I admitted to myself:

"Ok, this shit is fucking cute."

30

Today is my 30th birthday. It's been a quiet day, but eventful in its own right -- a slow day at work, a trip down to L's office to surprise her at her baby shower, and a lovely taco night at home, punctuated by messages and phone calls from people I love. I always find that the fact of my birthday becomes a secret burden to shoulder. On the subway, at work, in meetings, on the street, you want to tell everybody, "It's my birthday!" But this is not something you can do in polite conversation. No one ever asks a question where the direct answer is, "It's my birthday!" It's not like people go around saying, "Is there a reason today is special for you in particular?" But that's ok. Carrying that secret is part of the fun.

This morning L gave me my birthday gift, and it's a doozy. She compiled all of the blog entries I've posted here, from January 2005 through December 2009, and had them bound as a hardback book: "Clarity," by MKD. She had a bunch of our friends and relatives write blurbs about the blog that she posted at the front of the book. She had a little "About the Author" section at the end. She meticulously formatted the book, and selected a cover image, and the right font, and she produced a book of my blog entries that's approximately 700 pages.

I was floored when I realized what she had done. At first I thought she had gotten me some random book called "Clarity" because it had the same title as this blog. Then I saw my own name on the dust jacket and just couldn't believe what I was holding. I took the book to the office this morning (wrapped in bubble wrap to protect it) and spent a lot of time today rereading the words I wrote back in 2005, before I was in law school, back when L was just my girlfriend, two apartments ago.

To be honest, it made me proud to read all those old entries in a book, continuously, one after the next. I could see some themes and common ideas emerge that I hadn't noticed previously. It helped me understand what I'm trying to write about. Although I was nervous to read my old stuff I was pleasantly surprised -- there were some good turns of phrase, and some old memories which were suddenly cast in high relief. It almost felt like a real, standard memoir -- maybe with just a little work to bridge some of the gaps, you could really have something. I've read it up to March 2006 and I'm excited to follow that old trail back to the here and now. I find myself stupidly excited to read about old trips, or the marathon, or fun times with L. Like I told my parents tonight, I find the book to be a real page-turner.

One of my colleagues at work today said that L had given me the best gift anyone ever could, because she had given me my memories. This is very true. I am astounded by my wife. I am so thankful for her and for the opportunity to look back and reflect on the last few years -- it seems like a good use of a birthday. It made me almost giddy to hold this thick old book of my own words, my own report of the last five years of my life.

As I mentioned earlier, L composed a brief little "About the Author" at the end of the book. She told me she had been very thoughtful about what she said and how she said it. She wrote:

MKD is a writer. He was born and raised in Virginia and educated at the University of Virginia, Columbia University and Fordham Law School. Michael lives in New York City with his wife and daughter. This is his first collection of writings.

When I read that I felt a pang of anguish and happiness and love in my heart. I thought: What a life ... To live that life!

---------
P.S. By the way, if anyone is interested in purchasing their own copy of this ridiculous book you can order it online for about $28 (to cover production costs). Let me know and I can send you the link.

Beautiful Saturday

Yesterday was a really magnificent day. The weather was a little warmer and the sun was strong in the blue sky. It was L's baby shower, so Melissa and Anna arrived early to set up and bustle around in the kitchen for a while. I had made plans with John to head down to Benny's Burritos for some margaritas while the ladies feted our wee baby.

I was in a good mood heading downtown; the air was crisp and the skies were clear. Upbeat music in the headphones, spring in my step. The Village sidewalks were crowded with people enjoying the day, out and about with their shopping bags or strollers. I got to Benny's around 2 and went inside; John wasn't there yet. I left the restaurant to wait outside on the sidewalk, to watch the people and enjoy the old neighborhood, when who do I see coming up but -- Ashesh! I have a distinct impression of seeing his face and the bright green triangle of his scarf. Even though he's only in Philadelphia (studying at Wharton; I think he's taking some kind of evening-division part-time GED prep class or something) I haven't seen him since he left the city last summer. We stood on the sidewalk chatting when who comes sauntering up but -- Russell! Russell lives in Colorado and spends some time in Virginia, and I only get to see him a couple times of year. I hadn't seen him since Thanksgiving and I wasn't sure when we would hang out next. A little while later John arrived, brandishing a bag from my favorite bookstore and laughing at my incredulity, and we went inside to sit.

(This surprise was orchestrated by L, of course. Amid the hubbub of her shower and everything else going on, she engineered an early birthday celebration for me. I was floored.)

It made me so happy to share a table with these guys. As we were sitting there, eating and drinking, I tried to take in how it felt - a beautiful afternoon outside through the plate glass windows of the restaurant, good drinks, catchy songs playing in the background, John on my left, Russell across the table, Ashesh on my right. A table of some of my favorite people, somehow finding themselves in this old dive. I had a dumb grin on my face, feeling happy and at ease and very thankful. I couldn't believe these guys would make the time to be here and shoot the breeze for an afternoon.

To be honest, during this whole pregnancy there have been some moments of extreme loneliness. A few weeks ago, when we were at the Buy Buy Baby Maternity and Childcare Emporium, I remember feeling very overwhelmed by the sheer amount of junk and information and decisions and childrearing philosophies that seemed to demand immediate analysis and commitment. I have missed having family close by, to impart some wisdom, offer guidance, and help contextualize this new baby into the larger story and tradition of our families. True, our families are never too far away, and we speak with them often and think of them even more often, but the idea of raising our kid here by ourselves can be daunting. We have relied so much on the new community we have knitted here, but I miss the old comfort and shared history of old, genuine friends.

That's why yesterday struck such a deep chord with me. After we left Benny's we made our way to Wogie's for a couple of beers. Finally we returned to John and Anna's, where we rejoined Anna and L. John cooked up a delicious dinner, we watched the Olympics and played some poker, sipping on Old Pogue and sambuca.

Yesterday I felt contented and grateful and at peace. To be honest, I felt a kind of easy happiness with life that I haven't enjoyed in a long time. I tell you, man -- with the love of a good woman, and the kind of friends who will come up to the city on a lark for a long, late winter afternoon of margaritas and poker -- these are the days and the people I can't wait to introduce to my daughter.

"The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit" by Sloan Wilson

"'I was my own disappointment. I really don't know what I was looking for when I got back from the war, but it seemed as though all I could see was a lot of bright young men in gray flannel suits rushing around New York in a frantic parade to nowhere. They seemed to me to be pursuing neither ideals nor happiness -- they were pursuing a routine. For a long while I thought I was on the side lines watching that parade, and it was quite a shock to glance down and see that I too was wearing a gray flannel suit.'"

When I was little, when we would go spend summer weekends at my grandparents' place in Rehoboth Beach, I was always drawn to the few old hardbacks on the bookshelves. I distinctly remember two of them, always found in their same alcove every year, next to an old photo in a plastic frame and a few hardy seashells: Sloan Wilson's "The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit," and a book by Ian Fleming on Jamaica. The Wilson book in particular stood out; the cover was old and tatty, a relic from the 1950s or 60s, and featured a man in silhouette wearing a fedora, hands clasped behind his back. Why didn't he have a name? Why was he in shadow? Like most objects and events of my childhood, I was vaguely afraid of this.

I was thinking about this book recently and bought it online on a lark. I found an edition from 2002 with an endearingly ugly cover -- preserving that iconic silhouette man -- and featuring a new introduction from Jonathan Franzen.

Reader, I loved this book. I don't know if I've ever read a book that so closely matched my own life and circumstances. I was expecting another typical post-war suburban angst book: man and woman in bitter marriage, loathed or ignored children, drunken escapades, casual violence, sullen train rides into the city. And yet: the protagonist here was a decent young guy with a smart, beautiful wife. He changed jobs in an effort to find meaningful work that challenged him yet allowed him time with kids. He was loyal to his old grandmother. He treated people fairly. He was honest with his boss when he could have been a yes-man. He struggled with his past in World War Two, with the violence and infidelities that had somehow made sense in a senseless place. Ultimately he reconciled his shameful past with the future he wanted to build for himself and his family. He did it with integrity.

I found this book to be so inspiring and appropriate for me right now. The author's afterword from 1983 highlighted how young people have always been very responsive to the novel; how they have understood, unlike the critics who caricatured the book as yet another backhanded slap at postwar life, that this is actually a story of unironic aspiration and resilience. I was surprised by the sourness of Franzen's introduction which highlighted some of the weaknesses of the book (notably its rushed, pat conclusion).

I consider it a real gift, and a funny little curlique of life, that I happened to read a book I've been toying with since I was a little kid at this particularly apt moment of my life. The edition that I just read was published almost 40 years after the original hardback I eyed for all those summers, yet the man remains, waiting to be read, waiting to be understood. The passage I highlighted above really bowled me over, and the lines that followed resonated as well:

"'I needed a great deal of assistance in becoming an honest man. If you hadn't persuaded me to play it straight with Ralph, I would be thinking differently now. By a curious coincidence, Ralph and a good deal of the rest of the world have seemed honest to me ever since I became honest with myself...I would have gone on, becoming more and more bitter, more and more cynical, and I don't know where that road would have ended. But now I'm sure things are going to be better. I've become almost an optimist.'"

Hey, thanks for your help

Speaking of work, today a secretary copped some major attitude with me for no reason at all. Since my assistant was out, I went to ask her to turn some documents into PDFs for me, since she works with the associate I was helping. Being the polite, professional, chivalrous dude that I am, I said, "Could you please help me? If you could turn these into PDF's and send them to me, that would be great." Note the use of "please," as well as that weird past imperfect subjunctive -- that was not accidental. This is my go-to grammatical construction to ask people to do things without sounding like a jerk about it. Feel free to try it, it will probably work.

In response to my request, she glared up at me and said, "Don't you have your own secretary?" Oh, snap. No, you did not. Being the unfailingly polite dude that I am, I sort of backed down, hemming and hawing about how I could do it myself. "No, give it to me," she sighed, and I gave it to her. Then I backed away meekly and returned to my office.

I sat in my chair for a minute and thought about what happened. And then I realized, this secretary is not older than me -- she is my age. And excuse me, but I thought one of the general ground rules around here was that if you're going to treat me like crap, you need to be significantly older than me. Filled with righteous indignation, and with a solid plan in my head (no more polite questions - only statements), I went back to her. No more Mr. Nice Past Imperfect Subjunctive Guy.

I said, "please give me the documents back." She was getting up and she said, "No, I'm making the copies now." She started walking towards the copy room. I followed her, saying, "No, give me the documents." She said, "No, no, I'm doing it." I said, "No, stop, give me the documents, I need them." I was looking for someone else in the hallway to make eye contact and share my facial expressions with, since I was almost yelling at this point, or at least someone who could maybe pin her arms back so I could retrieve the stupid documents.

Finally she relented and gave me my papers, and then I asked another secretary to help me, and she did so in a completely courteous and thorough way. It took her about ten minutes to do the job. I told a secretary friend of mine about this little fiasco, and she gasped and said, "But you're an attorney!" Yes, I am. But I never even thought about it like that -- I was more focused on the fact that this chick was my own age and was treating me like crap, and this time, for once, being the hierarchical and authority-fearing dude that I am, I didn't have to sit back and take it. But it was a pretty hollow victory, let's keep it real. My major triumph was that I got my papers back and didn't let her make my PDF's! Ha!

Why the face!? What is wrong with people?

Big lights will inspire you

Sarah's post about music and driving and "Empire State of Mind" definitely struck a chord with me, and reminded me of watching Alicia Keys perform "Empire State of Mind (Part II) Broken Down" on SNL a couple weeks back. This song shares the same chorus as the Jay-Z anthem, but Alicia's sitting at the piano for this one, singing verses about the city and its people until the drums kick in at the tail end. When I saw it on SNL the song gave me chills, over and over again, listening to her sing about the struggle of the city, how tired it can make you, but then turning on a dime and singing that sense of striving and urgency that draws people here like a magnet. It's a song that describes the place I've chosen as my home, and it seems like a challenge too, something to live up to. Even the way her voice swoops upward on that chorus, veering perilously close to cracking but finding that note and holding it -- somehow that captures it all, too.

It's been awesome to see the city adopt this song as an anthem. It makes me think about what I'm doing and whether I'm living up to it. It makes me feel like I spend too much time watching TV and eating Chipotle when I should be doing other, greater things. Like how the fact that I work in 30 Rock, just a few floors above the studios where they make SNL, can be such a bitter pill to swallow sometimes. What dreams I had for myself.

But hey - I'm still in New York. These streets will make you feel brand new.

"Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters"

I just read a really interesting book that was recommended to me by Ryan, husband of L's cousin Kristen (thus making him basically my brother): "Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters" by Meg Meeker. I have thought a lot lately about the kind of family life I want to build for the three of us: a specific architecture of values, traditions and habits that requires some purpose and forethought.

I was excited to read this on Ryan's recommendation, even though he warned me about some of the God stuff in the book. I felt like the author was writing from a very solid conservative Christian background, which is not exactly the environment in which we will be welcoming this kid. The approach to sexuality was drenched in horrifying statistics about HPV and other sexually transmitted diseases, as well as earnest hypothetical anecdotes about one day discovering that your own daughter is the centerfold model in your hunting buddy's new issue of Playboy. Statistically, this is very improbable. They only have 12 centerfolds a year!

On the other hand, though, nothing riles up my inner social conservative like the prospect of guiding my daughter through the next 20 years of our increasingly degenerate pop culture. I think about the TV shows L and I thoughtlessly watch, the winkingly obscene music I enjoy (see below), and I wonder how you can protect a child from that stuff when she sees the world innocently and genuinely, without that shield of irony and cynicism that we adults grasp instinctively. The book had some excellent instructions and reminders about a father's role in his daughter's life: his centrality, his moral authority, his modeling of the way men and women interact and how a young woman should expect to be treated. I found myself agreeing with much of it, and feeling a renewed confidence in my own instinct and the way that L and I can complement each other in raising our girl.

There was excellent stuff about the need for fathers to say "I love you," to show affection, to establish boundaries, to make yourself known, to truly listen, to take your daughter on special outings. I particularly loved the chapter on humility, which really resonated with me and seemed to go hand-in-hand with the value of empathy. The book made me excited to raise our girl and thankful to be able to look back and see so many ways that my parents did all of these things, all of these traditions and simple ways of living that I can't wait to pass along.

As expected, the book hits hard with the God stuff, which I did not really enjoy. One big question L and I are grappling with is the role of religion in our kid's life, and in the life of our family. We're not actively going to church these days, and I'm struggling a lot to find a resolution that seems to carry some integrity with it. I want my kid to have a firm moral grounding, but I have so much doubt and anger towards the church's own moral authority. I don't want my daughter thinking she has to submit to a church that doesn't treat her as an equal. I don't want her assuming some of the chuch's toxic attitudes towards women and sexuality. On the other hand, I think the church has done a lot of good in the world, I think it maintains a strong intellectual tradition that I want to pass on, and I think its message about love, charity, sacrifice, forgiveness, and devotion is fundamental and something that a kid should begin to wrestle with. I don't know. Doubt is a part of faith, I know that. I'm just trying to reconcile all of this so that we can figure out what to do with our girl with some measure of integrity. Integrity, and not superstition.

Anyways -- "Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters." I really enjoyed it and I gave it to L to read, too. I mentioned architecture before and I think that's really what I'm trying to do: I want to think about this purposefully, to enter fatherhood with an idea of our compass and our goals for our life together. Now I'm just working on the blueprint.

D*** in a box

Man, I still love this song. It has been rumbling around in my head for the last month or so, and then I realized that somehow this saucy little number has entered my mental canon as a legitimate Christmas song. I can look forward to this chestnut every December for the next fifty years.

Of course the true power of the song was only realized a couple weeks back, when L's cousins Kristen and Ryan were in town and we wound up capping off a day of casual but sustained drinking with a three-hour bout of karaoke at a second-floor dive bar in K-Town, glued to the pleather benches until 2:00 in the morning, maintaining a steady flow of O.B. and generously sharing the tambourine, belting out "D*** in a box" as well as many other timeless classics. That was one hell of a night, although we paid the price the next day. Thank God they didn't have sake.

Anyways, I bought "D*** in a box" on iTunes the other day, and it isn't as good. It's a little more extended, and there's no laugh track. Although I can appreciate the production a little more, the song seems a little removed from the scrappy video that was so good a couple years back that I still can't get it out of my head.

Hello, 2010

Boy am I excited for a new year. Like most other people, I found 2009 to be pretty much a trainwreck, over all. A lot of time spent being unhappy or angry. It was a stressful year, a year of worry, a year of gritted teeth. It seems like all of the good things in 2009 will come to fruition in this new year: the baby, the new apartment, all of the other changes that will flow forward. Now that we are in January I am all set to fast forward to the end of March, thank you very much, to finally meet this kid and get the show on the road.

We had a nice New Year's Eve last night, ducking into Le Monde for a late dinner and enjoying the festive atmosphere in the restaurant. We came home through the snowy rain for some champagne and the final countdown on television. It was quiet but fun. Today has been the same, a lot of reading and napping and watching shows about the morbidly obese on TLC.

The good things in 2009: learning about the baby; the short-story course I took over the summer; a glorious week in Rehoboth in August; weekends in Miami and Cold Spring; good visits with family here in the city; finding the new apartment; going to Alvin; reading some good books. Compared to other years, this is a somewhat meager list in some ways, but I need to remind myself that this past year did have some good elements, even though for the most part it felt like a crucible that had to be endured, for reasons that aren't yet entirely clear. But a page has turned, and it's a new year and a new decade. Time to start again, and do it right.

Best books of 2009

In chronological order, here are the books that I loved the most in 2009:

The Stories of John Cheever
The Beautiful Struggle by Ta-Nehisi Coates
A Free Life by Ha Jin
American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld
Lush Life by Richard Price
Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America by Rick Perlstein
Netherland by Joseph O'Neill
The Other by David Guterson
Cathedral by Raymond Carver
The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert A. Caro
The Stories of Richard Bausch
The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power by Robert A. Caro
Fine Just the Way It Is: Wyoming Stories 3 by Annie Proulx

I didn't read as many books this year as usual, but in my defense there are some real door-stoppers on this list. I continued my exploration of the short story, starting with the master, John Cheever, and continuing through my second Carver collection (even better than What We Talk About When We Talk About Love) and read the stories of Richard Bausch. Discovering Bausch's work was a revelation; his writing is a synthesis of the writers who came before with a modern, literally Virginian sensibility that immediately felt familiar yet utterly new. I loved his stories passionately and they almost felt within my reach. The idea that my friend John actually studied short fiction under him is boggling.

Besides short stories, this was the year I discovered Robert A. Caro. The Power Broker is one of the best books I've ever read. It changed the way I look at New York, at government, at urban planning, at the use of power. More than once I have found myself in a sticky political situation at work and asked myself, what would Robert Moses do? It made me think about ambition and happiness and the tensions between the two. I also started reading Caro's unfinished four-volume biography of LBJ. Johnson, like Moses, was a real bastard, so it makes for fascinating reading. I am excited to continue the LBJ saga (he's not even a senator yet and I've read 700 pages about the man) in the new year.

I think my favorite novel of the year was David Guterson's The Other. Beautifully written and artfully structured. I wrapped up the year with a volume of Annie Proulx stories, including a stunning piece originally from The New Yorker, "Tits-Up In A Ditch." The book also included "Them Old Cowboy Songs" and "Testimony of the Donkey," which were nearly as good. Now I'm devouring Stephen King's Under the Dome, which I requested for Christmas, and I'm loving it.

Looking ahead to 2010, I want to continue my trek through the life of LBJ, courtesy of Robert Caro, and I might tackle Moby Dick, too. I can't wait for Blake Bailey's Cheever biography to come out in paperback in mid-March. And then, of course, the baby arrives, and my reading life will change too -- I'm trying to do consume as much as I can before my attention is redirected.

Merry Christmas

This is our first Christmas alone in New York, uncomfortably far from our families. This afternoon we set out to buy a Christmas tree, my first in the city. Earlier this morning I stopped a guy on our block to ask where he got the Christmas tree he was lugging in his handcart -- for you non-New Yorkers, here they wrap your tree in tight netting for the trip back to your apartment. It looks like you are holding it hostage, but really it's a sign of good cheer and merriment.

As the afternoon started darkening we headed over to Amsterdam and La Salle to get a tree. We also needed a Christmas tree stand, and we assumed we could get one where we bought the tree. But, like Mary and Joseph getting rejected from all the good hotels in Bethlehem, this was not to be. We then embarked on a 40-minute trek through the neighborhood, stopping at many pharmacies, bodegas, 99-cent stores, houseware stores, and hardware stores until, again like Mary and Joseph, we finally found a reasonably-priced Christmas tree stand. Then we lugged the stand back to the original tree place on La Salle, and selected a slim little fir tree to wrap up in netting and parade back to the apartment: our festive little holiday hostage. As you can see, she's a real beauty.

Tonight we had lasagna for dinner, a nod to the Christmas Eve Stouffer's lasagna dinners of my childhood. Tomorrow we are eating L's classic beef brisket, which is marinating in our fridge. L bought some cheap stockings from a dollar store in Florida to bide our time until she finishes cross-stitching our real, long-term stockings, and we have a handful of ornaments we've gathered from the last few years -- a few brightly colored balls, a couple of random Bush-era White House ornaments, and some quality ones we got as wedding gifts. We have the ornament we received from my cousin who passed away (the card says, "special delivery from heaven") and the crystal snowman I received from my late Aunt Evie. It's a little funny because our tree is severely under-decorated -- we had to be strategic about where we placed the ornaments, because we don't have many. Originally I thought we should divide the tree into equal sectors and decorate accordingly, but for some reason this plan was not implemented. We didn't have a star for the top of the tree, either, so we ended up tying a bow out of a length of ribbon -- and it wasn't even a pretty bow, but more like a utilitarian shoelace bow. In the end, though, I'm very happy with the result. It felt lovely and genuine to listen to old Christmas songs and decorate our tree and welcome our family, in whatever small way we could, into our new home.

Merry Christmas, everybody.

Barrow Street

We just finished packing for the move tomorrow morning. It has been too busy a night to feel sad or anything besides relief that we are finished with the task at hand. Taking the pictures off the wall was kind of sad, though. The movers estimated that we would have 15 boxes per person, yet I think that we have about 50 total. A couple of minutes ago we shifted a few boxes to the side to veg out and watch some TV for a little while before bedtime. This week has been another epically bad week at work and all of my thoughts have been clouded by anger and sadness for the last 48 hours. I needed to clear my head, and packing up our house/lives has been a good distraction.

Barrow Street. We have enjoyed four good years here. This has been the home we returned to as husband and wife. We earned a couple graduate degrees here. We had some good professional experiences and some bad ones. Our marriage was formed here, and we endured those early crucibles here. Hell, the baby was created here. We've started new traditions here, like Faux Thanksgiving and those rituals that punctuate our daily lives together. I could tell you dozens of stories about every room in the house -- the places where we have laughed and wept and fought and made up and made out. It was all here. I am so thankful we had this time together, in this place. L and me. How we will bore our children with stories of these days.

I am really tired right now. I tell myself that we could always move back to this neighborhood someday -- there's always that possibility of return. I'm the kind of person who needs to find that doorway back.

Baby by Chipotle

Tonight L and I went out to pick up some Chipotle for dinner. We were both tired from work and our kitchen was full of broken-down boxes in anticipation of the move -- there would be no home cooking tonight. At Chip we saw the usual motley crew, and they were excited to see L in all of her pregnant glory (she is honestly a really objectively good-looking pregnant lady). One of them said she had a present for us, and she ducked in the back -- and she came back with the onesie you see above (sorry for that word, "onesie", which sounds like a game girls in Britain played in the 1940s) as well as a bib that says something along the lines of "When I Have Teeth I Will Want to Eat Chipotle Products." On the front of this onesie, it says "food goes in here," with an arrow pointing to the kid's mouth, and then on the back, it says "food comes out here," with an arrow pointing towards the rear end. This is not only factually true, but it's also classy.

We were both really touched by this. Will our child grow up to enjoy Chipotle? Yes. Will we dress her in Chipotle-branded clothing, making her into an adorably fat little billboard? Hell to the yes.

The Top Ten Songs of 2009

Whenever I need a break from (1) thinking about our mysterious incoming baby, (2) worrying about work, or (3) moping over our upcoming move from the West Village to upstate New York, I think about which songs will make my annual top ten list of the year. Music is the currency of my life, in a lot of ways, and listening to these songs already provokes such a rush of emotion and memory. Without further ado, and keeping in mind that this list is objectively correct and not up for debate, here are my top ten songs of 2009:

11. Kanye West, "Heartless" & Kris Allen, "Heartless" -- I spent a lot of time this winter listening to Kanye West's bleak, spacey new album. In January I spent several long Saturdays in Newark for continuing legal education, and I have one particularly tart memory of a late January afternoon on a platform at Newark Penn Station, waiting for the train to take me back to Manhattan, watching the snow flurry down through the overhang and onto the cold tracks below. In its own way, it was perfect. Later in the spring and summer I listened to Kris Allen's cover of "Heartless" -- he added a warmth and a fullness that was deliberately absent from Kanye's pulsing, insistent synethesizers. And, unlike a lot of acoustic/white versions of R&B or hip hop songs, Kris did not try to be cute and ironic about it. He played it straight, and the result was greater depth and some beautiful vocals. I wrote about it a little bit here.

10. Adele, "Hometown Glory" -- This summer, when I was really trying to focus on my writing and dig something deep, "Hometown Glory" was the song that opened me up to the process. When James was in town this summer we talked about this song, and I told him how this song just seemed to split me open down the middle. He asked me why this song had such an effect on me, and I really struggled to answer. Maybe the melody, I thought, or the lyrics about home or nostalgia -- but it really isn't any of that. I still don't quite know, but the song retains its undeniable alchemy, its potency. This song goes deep. I talked about it before here.

9. Drake, "Best I Ever Had" -- Ohhh! Heeeey! It's a hip hop love song, y'all! This song is so exuberant, it just makes me feel great. It makes me think of L. It reminds me of Method Man and Mary singing "You're all I need to get by." Drake's rapping and singing, finely retouched with some autotuning, seems genuine and heartfelt yet full of swag. This song makes me dance dorky to it, every time.

8. Ron Browz, Jim Jones, and Juelz Santana, "Pop Champagne" -- This was the song of the night the first time I ventured up to Alvin Ailey for some hip hop, back in January. To me this song sounds vaguely sinister, between the sing-songy chorus and spare instrumentation. Once you embrace that aggression, though, and make it work for you, this song has everything. I wrote about it a little bit here.

7. Black Eyed Peas, "Ring-a-Ling" -- This was another Alvin song. I have really come to appreciate Will.i.am as a producer, and this song, as well as "Imma Be," from the new Black Eyed Peas album, are fantastic. At Alvin, we were doing some popping and locking to this song -- two styles of hip hop I am not good at, not at all -- but this song made it work. The guys are rapping and Fergie is riding into the track on a wave of synthesizers like some kind of electronic sex goddess. The syncopated bass line and the relentless melody, skittering all over the place, capture the sheer impulse and dizzying logic of the late night call. And at the end of the song, when there's about a minute left and he finally admits what the song is about -- a booty call -- there is a slight shift in the music and you get one of those sequences that I just want to live in, when everything is working together and you can think of a million ways to fill the space the song creates.

6. The-Dream, "Take U Home 2 My Mama" -- Dream had a new album, not as good as the latter-day classic he created the last time around, but this one had its moments. This song is pure exuberance, kind of stupid, completely good-natured, like a hip hop golden retriever. This song is another good one for the corny dancing. Yet there are also a few plaintive moments in the song, perfectly balanced by his own smart-ass echo on the verses and his wordless appreciation of his paramour's assets: "her t****** like wooooooo, her booty like oooooooo." You know exactly what he means.

5. Mariah Carey, "Inseparable" -- Mariah's new album turned out to be awesome in a completely unexpected way -- she included a few slow- to mid-tempo tracks that to me captured the essence of 90s R&B. Something about the production, the wordy verses packed into the melodies, a certain sense of melancholy and nostalgia perfectly expressed in a minor key. I have read criticism of her that she doesn't sing in full voice enough, but this song, like several others in the suite, is remarkably restrained until the end, when the wall comes down and she is finally singing and emoting the hell out of it all. As she lets it all go her upper octaves come in and provide some texture, and she is off to the races. One thing I appreciate about Mariah is that I feel like her runs and ad libs are always absolutely focused and necessary - there is never a spare or inarticulate note. This song is my favorite on the album: "no one is inseparable...except for us." My neighbors must love this song too, because I sing the hell out of it whenever I can get away with it.

4. Ryan Leslie, "Out of the Blue" -- This is one of the best slow jams I've heard in a long while. I really love this guy's production, and his vocal range is right where mine is, so I have worn this song out. There is also a moment after the bridge when he is singing, at approximately 2:13-2:28, "I almost died when you left me, baby" -- and this line honestly gives me chills, even now, even when I'm running or standing on a crowded subway. For some reason he says "baby" more like "booby," and what is in his voice at that moment is so honest and genuine. The emotion in this song really strikes a chord with me.

3. Mariah Carey, "Obsessed" -- Ok, this is a dumb song. I understand that. But it was produced by The-Dream (as was "Inseparable," no. 5 above), and I just like it. I like all the broken up "oh-oh-oh-oh-oh"'s. I like The-Dream yelling "Ay ay ay ay!" in the background. Like "Hair Braider" from last year's list, this song is not particularly ingenious or clever or otherwise meritorious, but sometimes it's enough to make you get your groove on while riding the subway, tapping your foot or snapping your fingers or even flexing your butt to the music and assuming no one can see you. And any song giving a shout-out to a dude's napoleon complex is kind of funny.

2. Jamie Foxx and T-Pain, "Blame It" -- I was really late on this song, but it propelled me through the first half of the year. T-Pain's verse is more lively than Jamie Foxx's, but the chopped up chorus is irresistible. This was another Alvin song, but they played it only once, as the class was leaving and we were all filing out, so I was getting my bop on and shuffling across the floor with my jacket and my bag over my shoulder, stopping a minute to groove with the teacher and her pals. It was the kind of song and moment that I really missed.

1. Beyonce, "Sweet Dreams" -- The video to this song actually does it justice -- it captures the groove, the sensibility, the sense of strangeness. I like the ambivalence of the lyrics, the poetry, the changes in mood. I have been interested in this song for months now, thinking about the disparate elements and how they come together, and I think it's a really fascinating piece. My favorite element is the roiling bass line, which envelopes the melody and folds itself around you. Sometimes I listen to the song just to follow that low groove, listening to the song dance on top of it. And then the bass finally relents as the song fades: "Either way I don't want to wake up from you..."


So those are the ten songs that sum up this past year. If you read all this way, kudos and thanks. Once again, it's all about the music that moves me to get my groove on or sing my heart out or take a pen to paper. In a certain way, music does more for me than anything I read or see -- finding music to love is like discovering a new vocabulary, even though I feel like the words I use to describe it are so limited. But it's undeniably there.

Music makes me so damn happy.

30 Rock

Even in dark December, there are moments.

Dismantling

Strange weekend at home. My parents are moving from Virginia to Austin in a few weeks, and they have been busy packing up the house. As it happens we are moving that same day from our home in the village to the new place uptown. Originally we planned to pick up a U-Haul on Saturday in Virginia, load it up with the bed, rocking chair, wedding gifts, and books for the baby, and then drive it all back to New York on Sunday. I was nervous about timing, though, and traffic, and work. So we decided to pack up the truck and drive out late Saturday night.

As I sorted through all of the old stuff in my closet, I tried to move too quickly to feel sentimental. I let my eyes fall on old programs, tickets, letters, awards, cards, trophies, yearbooks, and threw most of it away. I saved the journals and the photos. I couldn't let myself think too hard about any of it.

Last night, after we had a great dinner with my parents and sister, we loaded the last of our stuff into the mighty U-Haul and pulled out. We left so quickly. "Don't think about what's happening right now," I said to L, and to myself. I tried to honk the horn jauntily as we pulled away into the night. That was my last time in that house, the last sight of my parents and sister waving from the driveway. Inside the house was a tangle of half-packed boxes and old objects on their way out of the house and our lives. Things had already changed.

It was a weird feeling driving through the cold night from Washington to New York. We left after nine and arrived around 2:30 in the morning. The highways were dark and vacant, no traffic anywhere. The U-Haul rattled mercilessly, cold air hanging around us in the cab as the engine wheezed below us. We listened to pop songs and NPR, kept our jackets on. As L closed her eyes in an attempt at sleep I sang along to the music just to make a sound. The string of headlights on the other side of the highway flattened into a broad smear before my tired eyes.

Driving through a cold night in a truck that isn't yours, carrying your old bed and the rocking chair from which your parents read to you as a child, from which you can still remember sitting in your dad's lap with his soothing arm around your shoulders, listening to the deep timbre of his voice and relaxing into the comfort and security of another night's sleep.

And now: we were hurrying towards a new room, a new dad, a new sleepy child. There was a reason we couldn't wait. Despite the late hour and the cold air and the thoughts kept at bay, it still felt, in its own pained way, like some kind of beginning.

Gratitude 2009

1. For my lovely wife and the clearly gifted child she is carrying

2. For friends, the ones who are seen regularly and the ones who swoop into orbit, comet-like, more rarely

3. For the family we're going home to this weekend

4. For parents who are gutsy enough to go west, looking to start fresh with the liberal politics and live music scene they so profoundly appreciate

5. For the few and hardy people at work who say "please" and "thank you," sometimes even in the context of discussing work assignments

6. For Chipotle

7. For the neighborhood where we've spent the last four years building a marriage and a new phase of our lives, anchored by the small daily relationships that somehow create such a deep sense of connection and community

8. For the three-bedroom manse waiting for us in Manhattanville, for the clean white walls and shiny hardwood floors and sky-filled windows that will soon house us and our tiny little new person

9. For the neighborhood to come, for Riverside Park and Morningside Heights and the new rituals we'll discover

10. For "Imma Be" and "Ring-a-Ling," two songs by the Black Eyed Peas that have really gotten under my skin

11. For the works of Robert A. Caro, whose massive biographies of Robert Moses and Lyndon Johnson have made me think a lot about the relationship, tensions, and balance between happiness and ambition

12. For our health

13. For this moment in our lives, and recognizing the good fortune of a happy marriage, prenatal normalcy, gainful employment, and reasonably successful urban living

14. For maintaining a clear vision of how we want our lives to be

15. For the tenacity to make that vision happen

16. For yams

Some of these are thanks and some of these are prayers, but maybe that is a meaningless distinction. Happy Thanksgiving.

Changes

There were two significant things today amidst the usual daily cacophony.

First, L went to the doctor to check out the baby, our little man. And it turns out that baby...is a GIRL. It's a Girl! Not a Boy! This news left us both reeling. How did they miss this information? Are they using a sonogram or a dowsing rod? What year is this? It's very weird how you can spend a month imagining a very particular life for yourself with the utmost certainty that those ideas will be realized. For some reason the most vivid thing I could imagine was introducing my kid to other people, saying, "this is my son, X," as a shy toddler hid behind my legs. This was the vignette that gave life to otherwise abstract ideas of fatherhood, identity, and devotion. And now I am reworking those ideas, those scenarios, to wrap my mind around the idea of a daughter. It's surprising how quickly the track shifts. Worries about autism give way to questions about how girls pee. It seems as if life is now cast in a different yet more revealing light. From our little man to our sweet girl, the way it was before we even knew it. Our girl.

Second, today we were approved to sign a new lease on a three-bedroom apartment in Morningside Heights, right on the edge of Manhattanville. The apartment is on the top floor of a pre-war six-story elevator building. The rooms are large and flooded with light, with pleasantly warped hardwood floors and crisp white paint over the walls and moldings. The kitchen is large, although a little dated. L and I both realized that this was a good apartment as soon as we entered. The price was fantastic and it's right by the 125th stop on the 1 train, an easy 20 minutes from my office. It's farther north than we expected, and I worry about some of those ramifications, but now we've got it and we have a new home waiting for us. We'll be moving in around the middle of December.

So today has been a day of change. We knew these changes were coming, that this would be a season of transition. In a few weeks we will be taking our stuff and our lives and the new idea of our daughter to a new home, the place where she will enter this world and experience some love and solace and security. I feel very aware that we are entering a new stage in our lives. I can see how these last few years -- our years in the village, years of walking to the bookstore and the gym, years of idleness and books and wealth and thought -- are giving way to something else: possibly something more grounded, more tightly woven. Days of looking out over the roofs of Morningside Heights, wandering with our daughter through Riverside Park, singing her songs she can't understand yet. Teaching a new person empathy and kindness.

There is so much excitement to bear, but there are also fears and doubts. Change requires endings and beginnings, and I've never been able to face an ending without some measure of doubt and nostalgia for the places left behind. Today seemed like a a prophecy, and it left us exhausted.

Luxury, thy name is Trump

L and I had a very enjoyable long weekend at the Trump International in Miami. From the moment I opened the trunk of the cab at the Miami Airport, only to discover a tidy pair of men's briefs lying there, I knew this would be a special weekend. And it did not disappoint.

We never left the Trump compound. We hovered near the pool, splashing under its waterfalls and looking out to the ocean just beyond the deck. We ate at the Trump restaurants, unless we ordered room service, or unless I had a pina colada for my meal. I read a Richard Yates novel, "Young Hearts Crying," which was beautiful and inspiring. I read the Atlantic and the New Yorker. I kept my phone off for hours at a time. It was wonderful.


Take a look, then, at this photo, because it captures most of it. See the pink sky rolling slowly from the horizon. See the lifeguard cabana keeping vigil down by the sand. See the tips of the palm trees. See the bowl of tortilla chips. See the LBJ biography I'm starting to read. And see a pina colada, soaked in rum even up through the straw, decked out with a cherry and a thick wedge of pineapple. It was a delicious cherry.

"Key be to lock"

Last night at hip hop we were doing some hard, intricate stuff, to some new song built around that old Digable Planets couplet, "We be to rap what key be to lock." There were a lot of regulars there and there was a great energy in the room -- the air felt hot, electric. Some of our teacher's cool hip hop friends came in and joined the group, and that amped things up too. I saw them and I thought, hey I can do that. By the end of the night I was sweaty and my knees hurt from jumping and coming down just so, but it was fantastic. On my way out one of the teacher's friends stopped me to give me five (or do that urban handshake thing, you know) and was complimenting me and saying I was the one to watch. He turned to my teacher and then she said, "Oh, him? That's my man, I love him," all matter-of-factly, like it was as obvious as anything. "He goes in."

Tomorrow L and I are going to Miami for three days of sun-splashed leisure. It is a rare vacation in which none of our relatives are participating (except Little Man, of course). We're staying at a fabulous Donald Trump resort property just a little bit north of Miami, with a beach and several pools and plenty of restaurants. I don't know if we'll ever venture out of Mr. Trump's comforting, opulent arms to actually check out the city, but I think some beach-side R&R will be enough. We will read books, L will get tan, I will get tipsy. And I love the fact that we're staying at the Trump International. If there's not a solid gold bidet in our room, the concierge is going to hear about it.