Going away

Sunny, Mandy, and I have always talked about going away together. We used to imagine a garret apartment in Paris where we would live poverty-stricken, adventurous lives and would know when not to enter our shared flat due to the colored bandana-over-the-doorknob system that told when one of us had a boy over. I love that we never imagined enough money to have our own space; it was always small and close. When Sunny and I met Mandy in junior high, we started sneaking out of our homes and trying to get in trouble.

I think we were all impatient for MORE: more age and freedom and independence. I know that more than anything, I craved experience. I wanted to rack up experiences like bright beads and wear them as a necklace, a hemp necklace. (It was the 90s). I thought about other girls I knew who followed rules better, many of whom I liked and were my friends but who I didn't necessarily feel as inspired by because they weren't as daring. I thought I'd rather question everything and make mistakes and learn my own way. I remember thinking, "I'd want my child to be this way."

This past weekend, Sunny, Mandy and I finally went away together to Union Pier, on Lake Michigan, with their girls Freddie Jane and Sarah Grace, aged 2-and-a-half and 2 years old.

Photo: Sunny Neater-Dubow

It was nuts in a really calming, wine-drinking, walk to the beach sort of way. In some ways I still see our cravings, the more-more-more thirst for whatever it is we want and in others a bizarrely complementary patience reigns. Slow to marry and mate, their babies are so young and we are all still young enough yet we're 20 years removed from our Paris dream, a dream that specifically wasn't important. None of us had a great love for the French, we just wanted to be out in the world. And we all got into it in our own way.

Photo: Sunny Neater-Dubow

I know that I'm old enough to be slightly terrified at the idea of all of the above: having kids, not having kids, having my kids be like me. When I was younger, I was glad I was so moody, petulant, and pissed off because I thought that meant I was thinking. Now I'm also glad I got out of a lot of scrapes in one piece because that thinking led me down some dark alleys.

I can't look at these little girls and wish dark alleys upon them for the sake of knowledge. I wish them confidence, joy, and curiosity. I watch them run around in circles, laughing and egging each other on and wonder if they'll get along when they're older. I think it's important that they see us make time for each other so that they'll value friendship. We laugh about how they might turn into princess-cheerleaders, so different than we were but we'll quell the cringe and love that about them, too.

I watched Mandy and Sunny sit on the floor and change their daughters into pajamas. Mandy passed a diaper to Sunny and I almost laughed by how similar they still looked to their high school selves, right down to their clothing. Everything has changed, and nothing.

Professional competence

I read the following in Adam Gopnik's New Yorker piece, Life Studies, and it rang true:

Whatever professional competence we feel in adult life is less the sum of accomplishment than the absence of impossibility: it's really our relief at no longer having to do things we were never any good at doing in the first place -- relief at never again having to dissect a frog or memorize the periodic table.

He had me at periodic table.

I know that my adult achievements are real but if I'd been forced to be a math teacher I would have spent my life convinced I'm a big dummy. Also, I read this article while laying in bed eating Swedish Fish, something I wouldn't have been allowed to do as a child. Sweet, sweet adult freedom.

Letters to Elinor

I met Elinor when I was 11 years old. I'd just flown across the Atlantic Ocean and was uncertain in the strange land I entered. ENGLAND. I wore my banana yellow stretch pants on the plane but not my favorite New York sweatshirt because of the American flag on the back; we were afraid that I'd become a target for Gaddafi, were he lurking about Heathrow that day in 1986.

I was already homesick on the flight with my leader, Marti, and the other three kids from the American delegation to our CISV camp. By the time I was shown my squeaky metal bed in the school dormitory where I'd live for the next four weeks, tears were rolling down my face. Marti had asked our parents to write us a letter that we could open right away. I read the letter and the knot in my stomach twisted but I felt a little, tiny bit better.

There was so much to absorb. I was surrounded by 11-year-olds from Brazil, Iceland, Korea, Norway, Luxembourg, Germany, Sierra Leone, and England. There were a couple of 16-year-old "junior counselors" from Philadelphia and Sweden and a handful of staff members, my favorite of whom was an Englishman with curly red hair who was eventually nicknamed Strange Tony. It didn't take long to meet Elinor, one of the two English girls, who I remember in a tight bun, with a crooked smile and toes pointed out like a ballet dancer.

We were rapidly thrown into camp life and new routines. We had roommates and sang songs around a flagpole twice a day and at meals. Each country had a national night and presented their culture with dancing, food, and small gifts to take home. On American night, I got out my petticoat and grass skirt and demonstrated square dancing and Hawaiian dancing, NOT AT THE SAME TIME. Though if we had mixed those two dances together it would have indicated how hard it was to define American culture and how we were kind of making it up. Jen, the junior counselor from Philadelphia, wore Mickey Ears, a Mickey Mouse t-shirt, and a red skirt as her national costume. She was probably more honest than us.

I wasn't homesick anymore. We took day trips to castles, the North Sea, and to an amusement park where I went on my first rollercoaster, something I'd been afraid to do before. I created a dance routine to Madonna's Material Girl with the other American girl and we performed at the camp's talent show AND a local bar. We'd been split off into pairs to spend the weekend with families in Newcastle and my host family took us to their neighborhood squash club's bar. The only time I was at a bar in Ohio was when my mom's soccer team went for food after games and us kids were allowed to run around. This time I was showing off my MOVES under spinning multicolored lights and a parquet floor.

On the last night before we flew home, we all pulled our mattresses into the gymnasium and had a slumber party. We were crying and beside ourselves, beyond consolation. Of the almost 40 kids at our camp, Elinor was one of those I became closest to. I learned about the village she grew up in, Otley, in North Yorkshire. I'd spent a month in her country and now liked English sweets - Polo mints and Cadbury Flake. I drank tea with every meal. I laughed a lot in general and with her in particular. She was smart and thoughtful, never a mean girl.

For years afterwards, I wrote letters to the other campers. In time, my connection to some of them faded but Elinor and I were faithful writers. Into our teens we wrote regularly and joked that a letter of less than ten pages long showed a problem in our friendship, something like a lack of commitment. Fifteen pages, maybe even twenty, was more like it.

I saved my babysitting money and visited Elinor in England the summer before my senior year of high school. When I was 24 I saw her in England again and met Yohan, her husband. Around our mid-twenties, however, our friendship got lost in the shuffle. For a number of years we didn't check in, much less write long, meandering epistles beginning "Dearest Elinor" and "Dearest Jess". At some point I searched for her online and found her email. And then Facebook happened.

Right around my wedding last year and just before I left for tour, I got a gift from her: a journal, a silver ring and a letter. On a day off in Toronto, I sat in a coffeeshop and wrote back. It felt good to write a letter. With a pen! Like in the olden days! It was a rusty process and it took awhile to get my thoughts flowing but I did it. And the feeling of weighing words before putting them to paper, of the pen in hand, and even of the metal flap of the mailbox snapping shut is rewarding. Almost as thrilling as seeing a letter that someone has taken the time to write to me.

I got a letter from Elinor last week. She sent it to my parents' house, she knows how often I move. She included photos of her toddler, threw in a sly reference to her maternity leave for baby 2, and made a casual remark to the fact that we've been writing letters to each other for TWENTY FIVE YEARS. And I don't care how far technology takes us in the next twenty five, when email may seem obsolete and archaic, I hope I'm still writing letters. I appreciate their weight.

homeless art and giant pickles

A few hours after I wrote about the so-called ghetto last week, I was going through old photos and found something. It is a photo of a diorama I made in sixth or seventh grade art class and I clearly spent some time constructing the simple three dimensional scene out of pieces of poster board and colored pencils. When I saw the photo the other day, though, I gaped because it is a homeless scene. I MADE A HOMELESS DIORAMA? I do not remember this but I'm not surprised. This diorama illustrates that my house may have been in Hyde Park but my school was in the hood.



The D and D Deli was a store across the street from my elementary school, Sands Montessori. Sometimes, if I wasn't taking the bus home and my mom was picking me up, I was allowed to buy a snack at the D and D Deli, Lemonheads or Fritos or some such thing. I never did buy a giant pickle in a plastic pouch, bobbing in its own green-tinted juices, though I saw a lot cross the deli's threshold. Those pickles totally freaked me out.

Hopefully a good pedicure will erase the first year of college

So my mom has decided to clean out the attic. What this means for me is that every time I go over to my parents' house to do laundry, I get a box of my old stuff to go through. We'll decide what to throw out and what to keep and judging by the three boxes I sifted through last week, the choices pretty much make themselves.

Some of the things I threw away: torn up leather sandals from 1992, 19-year-old papaya-scented hairspray, a city No Parking sign that I'd hung in my bedroom in an attempt to feel like a bad ass at age 16, and photo developing solution two decades past its expiration date.

Somethings I found and kept! CISV village t-shirts circa 1986 from my camp in Newcastle, England. This week I've sported my old sweatshirt from Iceland and shirts from Korea and Norway. The fact that I can still wear a shirt I wore in 1986 says much about how freakishly fast I grew as a kid and how flat-chested I have remained as an adult.

Also of great joy and fear in equal parts is the big, big box of letters that I received, and much more painfully, sent over the years. At some point after high school, Andrea sent me all the letters I'd written her since ninth grade. I've read a couple and they make me want to put my head under a pillow and scream. And weep. And then scream.

And then there's this postcard:



Wow. Seriously?

I remember so well what it felt like to be me back then and it wasn't often comfortable. I was kind of awesome but I also sucked. I would never, for any price, go back to that time. I was mature in some ways and stunted in others. I meant well and had a big heart but oh, I was a shithead. I wanted to be a bad kid, much worse than I ever was, I wanted to get in trouble, but I was too shy to make much happen.

And I wrote about it all A LOT. In the letters, my long drawn-out explanations and insecurities are punctuated with unintentional hilarity but there is only so much I can take at once. Ever since the first night the box came home and I shuffled through the overflowing envelopes, howling and shrieking, I have glanced at it sideways and then quickly made myself busy.

Example: my cuticles look GREAT today. Perhaps, in giving myself a frantic manicure, I can file down all memories of high school.

Much easier on my self-image are the letters from others, my favorites so far being from my cousins Mary Beth and Lauren. Holy. Crap. From when I was 12-17 years old and they were three and five years younger than me, we wrote letters that have ART PROJECT written all over them. I don't know what I'm going to make out of these but something must be done.

back before I knew what agay meant

I feel kinda dirty after transcribing that Omegle conversation below, so I'm posting this to remind myself of simpler times.

Not exactly smiling: Part 1988

After writing about that smirky face I make, I saw an old photo on Facebook, a junior high photo.

I keep thinking about quitting Facebook because I hate the vortex I go into when checking for updates. I'd liken it to how Silk Spectre seems after Doctor Manhattan teleports her ass around in The Watchmen: out of it, exhausted, somewhat confused. I do not always think the Facebook portal is on my side and it can, in certain moods, inspire similar questions broached by The Watchmen.

Is humanity inherently good or evil?

Are good and evil objective or relative?

Is it ever okay to break the law and/or kill a bunch of people?

And right when I'm on the brink of answering evil, relative, yes, an old friend I lost fifteen years ago writes and makes my day and I see a photo from junior high. The photo which proves that I've had this smirky attitude for awhile:

Getting older and going to Confession

Today I got this birthday card from Cathy.

My birthday is coming up in a few days and while I don't think I'm all that afraid of getting older, I did take some time out today to dye my roots and ask my mother if 34 counts as middle-aged. So yes, apparently I have concerns.

But whatever, we are all on our way to the inevitable, what is important here is whether you have spent quality time sending someecards before you check out.

Why? Because you care enough to hit send. And because they rule. If you doubt, let me remind you of one of my favorites - You never pee on me anymore - or the one I sent Lindsay today - I believe I'm getting closer to God by spending a few weeks not eating M&M's.

Actually, the last time I remember observing Lenten sacrifice was around my first confession, when I stood outside our parish priest's office trying desperately to think of something I could talk about.

I believe I said I was impatient with my brother. Or didn't want to help do dishes. Both of which were surely true, I just don't if they were awful enough to warrant an official church confession.

What I remember most was my sense of this is bullshit but might impress them, the same sense I had when I raised my hand in third grade during a class discussion on the theme of Determination and told my teacher Ms. Jansen that I was DETERMINED to be the first female president.

Ms. Jansen exclaimed something along the lines of, "There we go, children! THAT is determination!" and I relaxed my hand and looked smug.

Yeah, that was a big lie.

A lie that I could have, in good faith, confessed to Father Nastold instead of making up some crap about dishes.

Dancing it out like Kevin Bacon

If you're like me, you feel secretly resistant when someone wants you to watch a video on YouTube. It doesn't matter that sometimes you want people to watch your funny videos and that many of the videos pressed upon you are totally watch-worthy.

Maybe I'm too used to not getting the joke and part of me lives in fear of my non-reaction. Also those four minutes might be a worthless use of my precious and hilarious time.

I think this fear was born of internet jokes forwarded to me over the years: Of the 3,972 jokes received in my inbox, maybe six of them made me giggle.

Regardless, I'm about to put up another YouTube video. I want you to know, however, that this video is very, very special. Unique and amazing things happen in this video. Especially at :59, 1:32, 1:59, and 2:40.



I woke up this morning demoralized by the light dusting of snow on the ground and thought of this video. There isn't technically enough snow on the ground to restrict me and my movements - that's what winter coats are for and I own several - but just enough to remind me that it's not LA and 72 degrees, where I recently walked to work in a short sleeve shirt.

This warm, pleasant memory made me want to find an empty warehouse where I could smoke, slam a cassette into my tapedeck, repeatedly abuse the steering wheel and hood of my car, and then, in frustration over a repressive John Lithgow and his sexy hard-shelled daughter Lori Singer, break my beer bottle into a hundred shards before DANCING IT OUT like Kevin Bacon.

Footloose was on sale at Blockbuster for $3.99 and there was no talking myself out of it.

It was only my favorite movie in 1984, a fact I made clear at the time by owning the soundtrack, nursing a raging crush on KB, buying the sheet music to the Kenny Loggins hit title song, and learning to play said hit title song on the piano. THEN I bought a bottle of pink puffy paint and imprinted the first few bars of the song onto a t-shirt that I wore proudly to school. In case my message was somehow unclear, I scrawled across the top in pink letters F O O T L O O S E. Third grade cursive style.

I hadn't seen the movie since then. Until two nights ago.

And there's just a few things I want to say:

1. Yes, Matthew, that IS what I hoped and believed high school would be like. Yes, I was disappointed.

2. The words to "Let's Hear It for the Boy" and "Holding Out for a Hero" have been hibernating in my brain for a very long time. I had no idea I could - and would! - still belt it out like that.

3. Kevin Bacon had legitimate moments of badassery in that movie. I understand why he was my first celebrity crush.

4. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut is now my current bedtime book in honor of the scene where Kevin Bacon is on the porch after church with the townspeople and they look at him in hushed horror when he says it's a classic.

5. You're welcome.

The wheels on the bus

This morning I woke up on the fifth floor in San Jose. I looked out the window to a plaza below which was hosting a kids' concert. The grass was pocked with strollers and a band was rocking out.

To The Wheels On the Bus. Yeah. Go Round and Round. Exactly.

As if I don't already spend approximately 100% of every day trying not to get songs stuck in my head.

An hour later, after showering and chugging down a cup of bad hotel room coffee, I walked across the plaza for the real shit: Starbucks.

(ps If I knew a good local independently-owned organic fair trade cooperative that brewed coffee strong enough to melt my stomach lining, I'd go there. In lieu of that, helloooo evil megalithic corporation).

I passed the stage where the musicians were breaking down their equipment. A CD was blasting through the PA and I caught the line:

"I like to eat, eat, eat, eeples eend beneenees..."

And I fucking started SINGING ALONG.

Which begs two questions. Why? And perhaps more importantly, How?

Obviously, it's catchy. The song is all about learning vowels and it sings on the subject of eating apples and bananas while teaching the different vowel sounds. I wandered through during E.

If I'd passed by a few minutes earlier I might have been schooled in U (uuples and bunuunuuus) or in I (iiples and biniiniis).

Annoying. Or so I thought, until I starting singing AKA betraying myself.

See, back in December and then again in March and May, I drove around London with Joanna Hudson and her two-year-old, Alfie. In order to keep Alfie busy in the car seat, Joanna would play a music CD.

The CD was American and Joanna would say to Alfie, "Jessica sounds like the lady on the radio, doesn't she?"

And we'd play the songs, supposedly to keep Alfie from screaming his head off, though I had my doubts after Joanna got ALL EXCITED before one of the tracks came on and said, "Ooh, this is my favorite one!"

"Would you listen to yourself?" I said.

Joanna knew exactly what I meant. The girl who'd stomped into my house in the early 90s in her Doc Martens, all authoritative on raving and the Stone Roses and Oasis and the Charlatans UK, was getting off on track 3 of the toddler mix.

I continued making fun of her and she said something like, "Don't you dare write about this!" She may have mentioned something about ruining her reputation. I sadly promised not to but that was months ago. Our contract expired yesterday.

In Starbucks, I navigated past a double stroller and a child with a muffin crumbling out of his fingers. I ordered my large coffee and was pouring half and half and stirring when I thought, "None of us are immune. We are all in danger."

I'd made relentless fun of Joanna back then but today I eepled and beneeneed my ass off. Furthermore, after ten days in the Hudson home, I'd started talking like Alfie.

"Are you ready for dinner?" Joanna would ask.

"Yeah, I'm hongee," I'd say.

I started calling the remote the "ganny telly" (don't ask) and I was psyched when Alfie decided to watch Nemo instead of Bob the Builder because I was kind of into Nemo, too.

So? Yeah. Maybe you haven't heard but the wheels on the bus go round and round and it's awesome.

THE UNSTOPPABLE LEGEND: Neill Roncker

Last Sunday my brother had on a shirt that said THE UNSTOPPABLE LEGEND. Which I thought was perfect.

People have always asked me what it was like to grow up with a retarded brother. Did I feel left out? And did I get enough attention? And did I feel different from other kids? And was it hard?

And I get where those questions are coming from but, "Huh?"

Neill is severely mentally disabled from a sweet combo package of bad inoculations, epilepsy, and meningitis – thanks, universe! – but as a brother, he's all I know.

You mean everyone’s brother doesn’t have seizures? Really? Weird.

There are kids born addicted to alcohol and crack, kids born into families with chauffeurs and nannies and yachts, kids who get shot on the way to school, kids who think everyone has a two-car garage and white picket fence.

They all think their world is THE world. The whole social fabric comparison happens later. Perspective is acquired.

By the way, dad, nice vest. I don't know if I've told you that lately. How do you keep those gold chains so nice and shiny?

Here my mom is squeezing Neill's cheek which is all puffed up on steroids. When I see super fat baby Neill photos, I laugh and think it's cute. But my mom moans, "Awww," sadly, because she remembers what it was like to have a sick baby.

My parents - not me - went through the shock and heartache of their baby's developing problems. They moved back to Ohio from California and got busy with support groups and learning as much as they could so that they were dealing by the time I showed up two years later like, "Okay, let's DO this!"

I've only seen one photo of me that betrays any sadness or confusion about our family. It's Halloween, I'm one-and-a-half years old, and I'm wearing a bunny suit.

I do NOT look happy. My parents had just realized that Neill was running a 108 degree fever and was blind. He regained his sight, so again, thanks universe, and this time I'm not being sarcastic. That was nice of you to let him see again.

They dumped me at Mema and Papa's house and rushed to the hospital. Clearly I know something is up. Something, somewhere, is SUCKING. My bunny ears are drooping.

But most photos of us are like this, fat and happy.

It wasn't that big of a deal. We fought and I hit him and he bit me and I cried. We went to nursery school and watched TV and took swimming lessons and went to family fun night at Stepping Stones. We were friends with other families who had disabled kids and sometimes went on vacations together.

Not that I didn't get embarrassed. My cheeks burned when he got tired of mass and stood up in the pew and shouted, "No!" Or decided to make animal noises. That was always fun. But it had always been like that so in some ways, it was normal. We both got plenty of attention.

I should point out something, though. It could have been very different.

My parents were fiercely determined to keep Neill actively in the world. He went to camp and took horseback riding lessons. He played on a t-ball team for disabled kids which was a FUNNY game to watch. We both went to the pool and to church youth group.

If Neill had been born in an earlier decade, there would've been more pressure from doctors to put him in an institution. He could have been hidden away like a family taboo. But in the 70s and 80s there were a lot of resources for Neill and when there weren't?

Let's just say I WISH I'd been around when the school board tried to tell my mom that Neill had to go to the horrible county school. Because I know her neck started swiveling and her finger went up and she said something to the effect of, "BITCH, PLEASE." And just in case the board didn't hear her the first time, she sued their asses. An excellent example of why you do not mess with mama bear. Because she will take you to court for eight years until she wins. Haza!

Sometimes I was nice and did things for Neill that he couldn't, like write his Christmas list.

Some of this list, the trucks and books, makes sense. That part of the list is still relevant; This past April Neill got a book for his 35th birthday that was read to him back in elementary school.

As for some of the other items? The "minicher" Strawberry Shortcake was an obvious scam to get a little present for myself out of the whole deal, the big fake Butterfinger candy bar would have just been stupid, and a cow + a horse + a pig, while right up Neill's alley, weren't practical for the suburbs.

In some ways, Neill hasn't changed that much since I wrote this list. He has new interests - country music, flashlights - and a WICKED toy snake collection but he still loves horses and pigs. He still has seizures and a temper and a tendency to hit me when he's not hugging me and crowing my name, "Kah! Kah!"

He still has a good sense of humor and totally infectious laugh and an increasingly flexible vocabulary of cuss words with which to insult me (fucker, punk bitch).

"Neill, will you miss me?"

"Shut up, bitch."

"Neill, can I sleep in your bed?"

"No."

"Why not, Neill?"

"Fat."

"I CAN'T SLEEP IN YOUR BED BECAUSE I'M FAT?"

After he says this, he smiles all devious-like. He knows what he's doing. And then he tells me that he loves me. I ask you, who exactly is the punk bitch around here? Hm, Neill?

This is a photo from last weekend when I took Neill, his unstoppable legend t-shirt, and his green shamrock necklace name tag (?) to Lunken airport to watch planes.

We'd been standing near the end of the runway for awhile and there hadn't been many planes. I started up a cheer.

"What do we want?!"

"Planes!"

"When do we want them?!"

"Now!"

I'd pump my fist in the air and point at Neill for his parts and he was really good on the "planes", not so much on the "now".

"When do we want them?!"

"PLANES!"

"No Neill," I said, "Say NOW!"

"PLANES!"

Oh, whatever.







Is it just me or does Neill really know how to rock a seizure helmet?

Photographing smells

I stepped onto the sidewalk just after a downpour. The air smelled fresh and green and thick and gooey. It smelled like snails.

I associate the smell of heavy rain with snails from the day in elementary school that it poured and I stood by a stone wall next to the playground with other kids, filling our upside-down umbrellas with snails. There were hundreds of them. And they stunk.

But that's what nine-years-old is ABOUT. I couldn't keep one hermit crab or goldfish alive much less one hundred snails. I slimed my umbrella into disuse.

The smell of today's downpour hit me as I stepped outside and my immediate reaction was to reach for my camera. TO TAKE A PICTURE OF THE SMELL.

As I began to unzip my backpack, I remembered that smells don't photograph well. That I really wasn't going to be able to post this, or any, smell on a blog. And part of me thought well, why not?

You can send a song to someone six hours away. You can video chat with someone 25,000 feet above earth. Jocardo held a book over his computer's camera last week so I wouldn't see his underwear when he stood up. You really shouldn't have to worry about seeing someone's underwear in New York when you are in Europe and yet, YOU DO.

There are grounds for my instinct to photograph the air. But I'll try to keep it in check until someone comes up with some new smell-related software.

Anyone know how to sing?

The last thing I did in Berlin before catching a flight to Copenhagen was get a DRUM LESSON.

Gasp! How long have I wanted to play drums? Since high school.

After I got kicked out of piano lessons for my bad attitude (not practicing, sitting sullenly on the bench, poking keys with zero animation whatsoever), my mom gently steered me towards the guitar.

We bought a red electric guitar and amp and I proceeded to learn the most uninspiring song on the face of the universe, "Country Dance". This song that did not go well with an electric guitar.

I eventually got an acoustic guitar but for some reason that didn't make me want to play Country Dance, either. I couldn't see a light at the end of the Country Dance tunnel. I put in appearances at a few twangy recitals and was finally allowed to quit. I JUST WASN'T MUSICAL.

Except. Every time I went to a show at Bogart's, my neck and arms broke out in goosebumps at a good drum beat. I was in a constant state of shiver with the drums. Something that never happens with guitars.

I now appreciate the piano from afar and when I stay at friends' homes who play - Gail, Rem, Jon Hudson - I think a little Sunday morning piano is nice. Lovely, in fact. But when I sit on the bench, I'm instantly over it.

So I've made this joke for like 15 years now about how I'm going to be a drummer in a girl band. 80% joke, 20% sign me up.

Last week I was talking to Aidan, the drummer for Long Walk Home, and he offered to teach me some beats. I put my hands on my cheeks and opened my mouth like a caricature of someone being surprised and excited. And then covered my eyes like a little kid.

We went to his studio, a room with two kits in it. He showed me how to hold the sticks and where to put my feet and we sat across from each other.

"One ee and uh Two ee and uh Three ee and uh Four ee and uh," I counted out loud.

I tried this and I tried that and it was going pretty well. I only hit the sticks over my head or stuck them in my ears out of frustration once or twice and eventually I was working on a drum & bass beat that I managed to hold for a while while Aidan WENT CR-A-ZY playing over it.

Oh, my lord. The only reason I stopped, besides the fact that I was getting confused and had taken up a lot of Aidan's studio time, was that I broke down laughing because it was so insanely fun.

"So, uh," I asked as I was leaving, "How much does a basic kit cost?"

"About four hundred dollars," he said.

I put that into terms I understand: that's a few pairs of boots. A few pair of boots I would sacrifice to be the drummer in a middle-aged grrl band.

This weekend Joanna and I biked around and wandered into Christiania, a community within Copenhagen where people have been squatting and being communal and peaceful and not paying taxes within a cloud of pot smoke since 1971.

I'd made a few comments about how I wanted to ogle the separatists but I knew I had to be COOL about it. Christianians are down with anyone coming into their community as long as you don't take photos and act like a jackass.

We were walking along the trail when music started up behind the trees. Metal, punk, something. I would have expected more lutes or dulcimers but this was cool, too.



I took a quick video when no one was around and we made our way to the gravel garden where a stage was set up. Benches and tables and boulders surrounded a giant Buddha-head statue.

We sipped beers and I nodded towards Buddha and asked Joanna, "Do you think he likes this music?"

I wish I liked smoking pot because this would have been the perfect time to light it up.

And even though I'm pretty much never in the mood for metal, I looked down and noticed my leg was going off to the drum beat. I told Joanna that I want to play drums and said she wanted to learn the harmonica.

"Well, start now!" I said, "You can play harmonica in my band!"

Which is the second suggestion I had for Joanna this weekend, the other being that she develop a character based on herself called the Swedish Gardener. The gardener would be just as goofy as Swedish Chef but she'd also scrunch her face up all funny like Joanna does when she's thinking hard.

And of course would say lots of those Scandinavian vowels that only come out if you're using the muscles buried all the way in the bottom of your throat.

We begin rehearsal this time in 2009, Joanna. See you then.

And Aidan, THANK YOU.

The sniff terrorist

Today Joanna went back to Sweden and I checked into a cheaper hotel. Since I'm not splitting the cost with her tonight I thought I'd find a hostel and save money.

I looked online and found a lot of hostels, some of which offered 34-BED ROOMS. Um, no.

Since I'm not a) an orphan or b) working in a refugee camp, 34 people in a room is kind of a lot. I thought it was a FEW too many until I remembered the Prague hostel and I decided it's 33 people too many.

The Prague hostel, Sir Toby's, was great, actually: bar in the basement, kickass breakfast, high ceilings, wood floors and huge windows. The last time I regularly stayed in hostels was ten years ago in South America.

Since then I've shared lots of space but usually with people I know. As a COTA volunteer in Guatemala I shared rooms - in hotels, hospitals, and army barracks - but that was work. I was just grateful that I didn't have a cleft palate or an untreated medical condition. I was glad that no one was going to hardware store to buy a saw to amputate MY limb.

There were four bunk beds in my room at Prague and it was supposed to be a female room though I couldn't help but notice that a boy snuck into some girl's bunk and that there was an AWFUL LOT OF GIGGLING going on.

I didn't care; I slept like a MF. The first night.

The second night I kept waking up because someone wrapped everything she owned in plastic bags and went on a hardcore rummaging binge. I don't know what the fuck she was looking for but she might as well have wrapped all her belongings in 747 engines, it was so loud.

Fine! Whatever! That's why it's cheap.

Until someone else, a Columbian chick who seemed nice which made me feel bad for wanting to punch her so much, kept SNIFFING. She sniffed eight thousand times between 6 and 8 am. And I know a sniff doesn't sound like a big deal but in a quiet room, it is. It really is.

I laid there, having been woken up by a fucking sniff, my stomach knotting more with each snotty inhale. If I'd had a tissue box I would have thrown it at her head. I considered going to the bathroom, grabbing some paper, wrestling her to the ground, and making her blow like she was a little kid.

In the end, I opted for passive over aggressive and simply got up and took a shower. I may have flounced out of bed but I'm not sure.

Tonight, in Copenhagen, I have a walk-in-closet-sized room ALL TO MYSELF. It reminds me a tiny bit of the hotel my mom checked us out of five minutes after checking into in 1985 when we were in DC, the Harrison Hotel: rattly elevator, graffiti walls, and bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling.

I remember that light bulb being the last straw for my mom. I'm sure the graffiti wasn't a nice touch, either, although I love it now, it makes me feel like we were in Breakin, but the bulb reminded my mom of the shitty places she stayed in as a student in Paris.

And showing up to a seedy hotel with her kid, who happened to be wearing a sailor suit, just wasn't going to cut it.

Too short too wide Cure shirt

I just spent the weekend with Joanna Friberg. I haven't seen Joanna since I was 25. Before that, we hadn't seen each since we were teenagers.

And it was funny, hanging out with a friend with whom most of my memories are rooted in the 14-15 aged years. I realized how much bullshit my brain must regularly retain without my awareness.

Joanna and I were walking down the street and all of a sudden I remembered the Swedish word for beard.

"Skägg!" I told her. "That's how you say beard in Swedish."

She started laughing, "Yes, it is."

I remembered that skägg was the first Swedish word I learned when Joanna arrived in Cincinnati in 1989 and that I wrote it in a red and gold diary. I didn't remember WHY I needed to know the word for beard but Joanna did. She reminded me that both of our fathers shaved their beards that year. Which doesn't sound like a big deal but trust me, it was.

I'd never seen Bob Roncker without a bushy beard in my whole life so the morning I went in my parents' room and this stranger pulled the covers from his head and smiled at me like a circus clown was shocking. Dad, all those wild heaves and gasps I made while backing away from you? That's what trauma sounds like.

He shaved it on my birthday in March, which was a great present. For your 14th birthday, I'm gonna make you think your mom got you a new dad! The freaky guy with all the skin on his face! The fact that I was still talking about it when Joanna showed up that summer is an indication of how sensitive I was.

I remembered how I couldn't go into the Friberg's house in Göteborg without picking at least three handfuls of the cloudberries growing in the side yard and stuffing them in my mouth.

I remembered that Joanna was a New Kids On The Block fan and I asked her if she had a NKOTB shirt. I thought she did but was probably making that up because I really just wanted to imagine her in one and make fun of her. She said that, no, she didn't, but she DID have a Cure shirt that was way too short and way too wide and looked ridiculous and that was a good enough image for me.

I ALSO remembered that sometimes we meet people and they have an unintended and huge effect on us. For the two years before Joanna and the Swedish interchange group showed up in Cincinnati, I'd been spending a lot of time with the "cool" girls. I told Emily, another one of the girls who spent all summer at Clinton Hills Swim Club and all school year clawing her way up the social ladder, that I was doing an interchange.

"Oh," she said. "I wouldn't want to ruin my summer like that."

What? Because Sweden has a reputation for being so RUINOUS.

But before I even got the chance to be personally destroyed by the 20 hours of sunlight a day, beautiful natural environment, reindeer pizza, and blond people stripping everywhere, the Swedes came to Ohio. I took Joanna to the swim club and saw my "friends" through outsider eyes. And I made a decision, an important, simple decision. I wanted friends to be nice and if they weren't nice, I wasn't friends with them.

That summer after eighth grade, I didn't see much of those friends because I was with the Swedes and I didn't go back. If it hadn't been for Joanna, I might have later been a bulimic backstabbing soccer player. Instead I was a chubby 2-miler. A well-adjusted chubby 2-miler. The track team might not have been as cool but goddamn, it was funny. And nice. Thanks Joanna.

Toilet paper thief

The only thing I steal is toilet paper.

I got most of my stealing - things besides toilet paper- out of my system between 5-7 years old. My thefts back then included a pack of gum from Kroger and a Hello Kitty diary from a gift shop in Hyde Park Square. I remember coming home with the diary and my mom asking me where I got it.

"At the square," I said.

She looked at me for a long minute. My allowance was a few quarters a week so she wondered how I pulled it off but gave me the benefit of the doubt. I was a GOOD KID who spent most of my free time writing essays on world peace and she let it go.

In college, when I worked at a halfway house in Minnesota, I started stealing toilet paper. Part of my job was doing rounds of the building, checking on the residents in their bedrooms and activity rooms and changing the toilet paper rolls in the bathrooms. And whenever I was getting low on supplies at my apartment, I'd grab a few rolls and stuff them in my backpack. Because it's just irritating to buy toilet paper.

I hate how they're sold in packs of twelve, that giant rectangle, so awkward to carry. And buying individual rolls? Even more annoying. Especially if you're me and you compulsively wrap so much around your hand for a simple wipe that it looks like a baseball mitt. Buying one roll is useless. I barely even knew it was there before I need to buy another.

Last week I went to a cafe that I'd read was "a friendly atmosphere that attracts the cream of Kreuzberg's 20- and 30-somethings. Join them!" Oh, that's so me. See and be seen.

It was alright, a little too cool.

The BATHROOM, however, pleased me very much. The loose rolls that you see on top are the ones that I'd already marked for my backpack.

Shortly after my happy swiping, my housemate gave me a rundown on house rules. I was starting to feel indignant because she told me I need to help in taking out the trash and compost - which I'd already done - and she said she bought the last pack of toilet paper so I need to get the next one.

I wanted to interrupt her, "I just stole a few rolls for the house the other day," but thought maybe we didn't know each other well enough for that to help the conversation. She also said I need to clean either the bathroom or kitchen so two days ago, I got to work on the bathroom.

"I'm going to clean the HELL out of this bathroom," I thought.

"This toilet is going to be so awesome I'd eat my lunch off it."

I hate cleaning toilets. Shitspecks.

But I threw myself into the task and found it strangely fun. Even though I noticed midway through that I'd been singing IT'S A HARD KNOCK LIFE in my head for awhile. You know, identifying with little orphan Annie.

And when I got down to dusting and polishing the cabinet under the sink, I found something: a big twelve-pack of toilet paper. "Oh good," I thought, "I don't need to go back to that cafe for awhile."

U2 3D

U2 3D is playing at the Berlin IMAX theater and it is totally rubbing in one of the sad truths of my life, that I've never seen U2 live.

I saw the Rattle and Hum film in eighth grade and left the theater changed. I bought the movie on VHS the next day and proceeded to torture my family for the next several years. "Dad," I'd yell from the basement, "You have to come down and watch the funniest part!"

The funniest part would be Larry Mullen, Jr. mumbling and then shrugging and looking off into the distance. I'd swoon and grab the couch pillow and my dad would drop hints, "If that was the FUNNIEST part..."

I taught my disabled brother to recognize Bono's voice and to this day, when he hears it on the radio he yells, "Bono! Bono! Two! Two!"

I'M SO PROUD.

I don't even want to admit the number of weekend nights I spent at Andrea Harrison's house suffering through a 2-hour video tape of songs she'd recorded from MTV of her bands - Tesla, Warrant, Skid Row. My payoff, the one teeny tiny little bone she threw me was U2's Pride (In the Name of Love) video AT THE VERY END OF THE TAPE.

My heart would start pounding and I'd leap around the room, copying Bono's moves. The splayed legs, one knee rocking furiously. The dramatic crouch at the end of stage. Now picture me doing that wearing rolled up cutoffs, a deeply v-necked sweater and big blue glasses.

The day I read in the Cincinnati Enquirer that Adam Clayton had been busted for marajuana possession, I was shocked. Crushed, even. My mom comforted me, "Sometimes the people we look up to do things we don't like." I stared at his photo in the paper, "How could he DO that?"

I now know a better question. How much do I love that little eighth grade version of me?

Yesterday I stumbled through the German IMAX website and reserved a ticket to U2 3D. I wasn't going to chance showing up at the theater with it sold out. That would destroy me as much as finding out that sometimes bass players like to get high and I couldn't go through that again.

For a minute, in my seat, I felt silly in the 3D glasses. I looked around a couple of times to make sure everyone else had theirs on, too, and weren't pointing and laughing at me. As soon as the show started, though, I forgot about the glasses.

Holy f**k, was it good.

After getting used to 3D and the initial surprise that there were screaming fans jumping up in the row in front of me - oh, wait, that's how 3D works, it only looks like they're doing that, I GET IT - and after Bono turned to me and reached his hand out five centimeters in front of my face - a dream come true - I got nostalgic.

I haven't been foaming at the mouth over U2 for a long time but they are the band that's had the biggest effect on me. A lot of people think that Bono is an annoying egomaniac and that may actually be true but watching him on stage last night, I decided that I just don't care. He's my favorite egomaniac.

Even when he's rolling around blindfolded and stalking around like a caged tiger, I still just want him to hold me and whisper the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in my ear. This is the only pop star who inspired me to draw hearts around his head in photos.

It was a long time ago. Don't judge.

He also inspired me to join Amnesty International in high school, whereby I'd go to my French classroom after school, most likely wearing my beret, to write letters beseeching governments to free their political prisoners.

I remembered a few years ago when Jimmy knew someone on the U2 tour and went to their show in New York. Jimmy hung out on the side of stage and sent me text messages. I happened to be sitting on a bench in Newport, KY watching a U2 cover band, literally on the verge of tears.

That same year, our merchandiser on Idol knew people with U2. I confessed my historic devotion and sadness at never having seen them live. He said he might be able to get me good tickets. I must have reacted strongly because he looked at me with an evil smirk and said, "What would you do for them?"

I looked him squarely in the eye and said, "Anything. I'd do anything." We stared each other down and I said, "I'm not kidding." Which is definitely the closest I've ever come to being a hooker. Luckily it didn't happen because I just don't think Bono would have approved of that.

Dancing with a gorilla

22 years ago I was dancing with a gorilla on the Empire State Building. My mom just sent me this photo, a record of my very first visit to the city. And it appears that someone is LOVING IT.

Favorite Esprit sweatshirt? Big ole honkin' smile? Check and check.

The nerdy glasses are another sign of upcoming years and personalities. Teenager voted most ambitious in the senior class. Adult set on living in New York. My own mix of hesitation and determination. Kind of fearless, kind of shy. Being quiet about it all until suddenly a gorilla asks me to dance.

Zapatistas, mariachis, Homies

Carl needs to see what his inspiration has inspired in others.

I'm speaking about the box of XL beige t-shirts with my 8-year-old face on them that he sent me anonymously last year. I don't know if Carl wanted to make me laugh or if he just wanted to freak me the hell out, but he did both.

My favorite thing about the shirts now is that a lot of people assume they're in homage to a child who's passed away. And in a way, she has. Though she's in me somewhere. Sometimes deep within, sometimes closer to the surface.

I just found out that Dennis and Matthew Eisen took a road trip to Chicago from Cincinnati in November and that Casey Lasso whipped out the shirt for them.

What I like about this is how it combines Casey's fixation on Homies with a mariachi. Plus a Zapatista is aiming his gun at my forehead. I'm still just as pleased and smiley as ever!

And, really, given my ribbons and puffed sleeves and early braces, what could I possibly have to worry about?

Do they wear cable-knit in heaven?

I stood the aisle of St. Anthony Church with my cousins Mary Beth, Lauren, and Jeremy. Our family had said goodbye to Mema and we were waiting for the service to begin.

Mema's face was beautiful in life and death but in the casket I had to search her features for recognition. One of the church workers likened human death to a cicada molting: The shell is there but without the spirit, it's empty. It looks different.

When I saw Mema's hands, however, I knew it was her and I could hear her voice, "Well, hello, Jessica Ann."

"Meems..." I said aloud and Mary Beth and Lauren answered back softly in unison, "Meems and Peeps..."

We all started laughing. When did we start calling Mema and Papa MEEMS AND PEEPS? We didn't call them that directly, just to each other. And we laughed more because Peeps sounds so street. Papa was many things: Erudite, philosophical, spiritual, stern, playful, but he wasn't hip-hop.

Mema told her children that she didn't want to be eulogized and that if she were, she would come back to haunt them. They respected that. Praise for Mema snuck out in her obituary, though: Gentle. Inspiring. Great sense of humor.

I'm so different than Mema on the surface. Our lives bear wildly different paths. By the time Mema was my age she'd already had a hundred, I mean, five or six kids and was working her way up to eleven. I'm ambivalent. It might be wonderful to have a family but I keep finding other things to do. Mema was a lady, never coarse, maybe a little wicked in her laughter, never rude. She had a cleaner mouth than I, for sure.

But if I inherited a fraction of Mema's grace, if I can meet people with openness, if my generosity is genuine and my integrity something to be counted on, then I've learned something from my family and I'm fortunate.

I imagine Mema now in her cable-knit sweater and jean skirt, tinkling laughter intact, surrounded by love, just as in life.

LET EVENING COME

By Jane Kenyon

Let the light of late afternoon
shine through the chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.

Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.

Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.

Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.

To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.

Let it come, as it will, and don't
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.



Mary Rita Gallagher Foy, my mema
1921 - 2008