BLOG: For some weird reason, my blog has suddenly become a destination for people from all over the world, I have no idea what that’s about:

visitors in the last 24 hours

The searches that bring people to my blog are varied; ~50% are about knitting, and the rest are about such a mish-mash I wonder what the searchers think when they get to my blog and see that perhaps I used one word in their search somewhere in my whole site.  Anyway, it’s new, this global deal. I have a reliable cluster of visitors from the UK and from Paris, and then usually just a random one here and there. Late last week I had a flurry from Africa, which was particularly startling because I never have African visitors and I’ve wondered why.

KNITTING: I finally finished the body of Marnie’s sweater and have started a sleeve, which is going pretty quickly:

whee! starting sleeve #1

I think today I’m going to go ahead and soak and block the body of the sweater, so I can seam the shoulders and do the turtleneck. I worry about hitting a slump with the second sleeve, so I want to have something else to do, and I also want to see it so close to finished that it pulls me forward. It’s been such a mild winter I really hope she gets to wear it.

READING: If you’re the same kind of nerd as me, you might like the book I read yesterday (Stylized: A Slightly Obsessive History of Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style, by Mark Garvey). It’s a loving look at The Elements of Style, at E. B. White and Harold Ross and The New Yorker, and the world of people who are passionate about this little book including a host of famous writers who talk about their relationship with the little book. It’s a quick read (about as quick as The Elements of Style, for that matter), and you may — like me — read it with a silly grin on your face. Since I didn’t go online yesterday, I read that book, I read this week’s issue of The New York Review of Books, I pulled everything off my bookshelves and reorganized (and found of bunch of surprises, wowie), I cleaned the bathroom top to bottom, I did some shopping, and I spent a lot of time keeping my husband company. We watched Thirteen Days, that 2000 movie about the Cuban missile crisis — much more his kind of movie than mine, and I was only 3 when it happened. But when the spy planes flew low over the Cuban stockpiles, my heart raced and that surprised me.

HELP: A friend here in Manhattan is heading up a project called Legal Aid Society Trafficking Victims Legal Defense & Advocacy Project (she’s a lawyer for Legal Aid). Victims of sex trafficking are removed from their circumstances and hidden away in safety; she has organized a number of small knitting groups for them and is seeking donations of yarn and needles. Many of these women are from other countries, but some are US citizens. Their larger needs are more urgent, of course, but the knitting efforts are designed to help their spirits, and we know how well this works. The women have nothing and the woman at Legal Aid who is organizing this for them has no specific wish list. Just think about what any new knitter might need/want — yarn, needles/hooks, a nice project bag maybe, notions, anything at all. Others are organizing clothing and coat drives for the women, so we’re the lucky ones who get to give them this kind of joy. If you have any interest in helping, just let me know and I’ll give you the mailing address for the woman at Legal Aid. I posted a note in a couple of Ravelry forums and several knitters are sending boxes, but [unfortunately] there’s a steady stream of women so the need doesn’t stop.

Have a wonderful Sunday, whatever you’re up to! I’m looking forward to spending a few hours with a certain humpbacked wicked king.

“Mommy, does Daddy feel our kisses the way you do? How does he get them?” they’d ask, in a hundred different ways. Grace was the oldest and knew this was just a game, but she went along for the sake of her little sister and brother, the same way she gave me a sideways smile when they’d talk about how clever the Easter bunny was to think of hiding their baskets underneath their beds – the last place they’d have looked. She knew what her dad was up to with this story, but the way she threw her kisses, the way she looked so hard at the moon as they flew away, I knew she was hoping that somehow they’d get there, somehow he’d feel her yearning for him and know that this one, this special kiss, was just hers, for him. Beth and Pete always gave a little jump when they kissed their hands and threw their kisses into the air. Beth was just the right age, really, believing in the magic her dad wove into the story. She’d turn to me with light all over her face, letting the kiss go on its way as she gave one to me, too. Pete was usually unsatisfied with just one toss and jump, so he’d push the kiss on its way with both hands a few times, each push getting its own jump. “Daddy is gone,” he’d say, and then he would run into the house, upstairs to his bedroom to play. “Yes, Daddy is gone,” I’d say softly to myself. “Daddy is gone.”

Saturday mornings the kids gathered downstairs, watching cartoons before breakfast. At the top of the stairs, I’d ask, “What shall it be this Saturday morning,” doing my best imitation of the silly-pompous way he used to ask that question, “waffles, or pannnnncaaaakes,” dragging out the last word as he did. “Pancakes! Pancakes!” they’d say, jumping up from the floor. The girls jumped once and ran to me, but Pete just kept jumping around in circles, singing, “pannnnncakes, pannnnnnncakes, pannnnncakes!” and waving his hands like little wings. Of course pancakes didn’t mean pancakes, it meant their dad’s pancakes, shaped like Mickey Mouse, or like a silly unicorn, or sprinkled with candy if we had it, or cupcake decorations. Nothing as boring as a plain round pancake with butter and syrup, there’s nothing fun about that, Daddy always said.

“Daddy makes better pancakes than you do,” Pete said again this Saturday. “Yours are too round and the legs are too short.” Grace glanced at my face and scooted her chair a little closer to mine, and asked if she could have another pancake, please. “I wonder what Daddy’s doing this morning,” Beth said. “I wonder if he got our kisses last night? I want to draw monsters with him, I want him to come home now.” Her eyebrows pulled together and a little pout started forming around her mouth. Touching my hand, Grace turned to Beth and said, “It’s ok, Bethie, I can draw with you this morning!” I looked away, out the glass door into our large backyard, littered with leaves and fallen branches from the recent storm. I sat still, unable to move my gaze, as the girls ran upstairs to get the jar of markers and the big blank book Beth and her dad filled with funny monsters, and palm trees, and dogs that waved their paws. I heard them turning the pages, turning clumps of pages, trying to find an empty space that hadn’t already been filled on Saturday mornings, before he left.

“Mommy? Are you crying, mommy?” Pete asked. I coughed a little into my fist and turned my shining eyes to him. “It’s OK, daddy will come back!” he said. Pete put his arms up, the signal he wanted to be lifted out of his booster seat, so I got up and lifted him out of the chair and watched him run upstairs, to draw with his big sisters.

Daddy said he would come back. He said.

My posting has been a little sporadic, though not so much that it’s probably noticeable. I don’t post on the weekends because dadgummit I am loving my weekend digital breaks! I got tired of being fancy-schmancy and calling them “digital sabbaticals,” though I did love it when I started calling them that because it made me feel like it was a real thing I was doing. Now I’m fine with just taking a break from going online.  I’m amazed by how easy it was, because of the intensity of need-to-do-it that I felt before I started. Since we don’t have TV, and since the NYTimes has started charging to read their articles, I’m out of the loop about what’s going on in the world, at every level, and you know what? That’s a happier way to be, seriously. I do miss knowing the ins and outs of small news from my fellow bloggers, and I can glance at the NYTimes headlines when I need a jolt of worry (which I don’t need, honestly). I read my weekly issue of the New York Review of Books, I look at facebook and get the occasional longread from various longread-type feeds, I know how my kids are doing in a fine-textured way, and otherwise what’s coming into my head is more carefully selected. And it is good.

Also, last night I took something to help me sleep because this zombie thing is getting old, man. Like, really really old. This morning I slept until 9:40. NINE. FORTY. 9:40 a.m. Me. I slept that late. What finally woke me up was a dream that someone closed my bedroom door loudly, or I’d still be sleeping, I think. I feel like a dewy bud of happiness this morning. It’s so wonderful, I want singing birds to come perch on my windowsill and I’ll sing along. I want people to break into song on the sidewalk, and I’ll sing along. I want dancers to come down my street busting any kind of move, and I’ll dance along. Osteoporosis, be damned! I feel so great! Sleep is exclamation-point-worthy! MANY OF THEM!!!!!! If you sleep, never take it for granted. If you do not sleep, I know your pain and you know mine (and you celebrate the rare night of good sleep with me).

Much work to do today, and a busy (non-digital) weekend ahead, including Richard III on Sunday, followed by my long-delayed date with Will — a whole week late, but that’s just fine. Have a good one, y’all, whatever you’ll be doing this first week of February.

So we ate our dinner, and we laughed and cried, and we decided to have a cup of tea at her place rather than at the restaurant, since she lives just a couple of blocks from the restaurant. By the time we left the restaurant, I’d been crying a good bit, and my mood and heart were kind of heavy. (Note: that’s not a bad thing, it’s a relief to share sorrows with someone!) We got to her place with an express mission of making a caffeine-free cup of tea, so she opened her cabinet to see what variety of teas she had to offer.

[sidebar comment of note: we are both women of a certain age, though i am more certain than she is.]

ladies' tea

She said:

“Let’s see. I have FatBuster, Women’s Cycle, and Black Cohosh.”

I fell down laughing. I laugh this morning, remembering it.

She looked at me and she started laughing. I laughed seeing her laugh. I couldn’t stop. And my heart lightened so much.

And so another kind of friendship magic happened, another of those moments that are just a bit of crystalline joy — surprise! You can’t make them happen, they come in the midst of time together. This reminds me of the old “quality/quantity time” argument people will make about time with their kids…..usually as a justification for not spending much time with them, “it’s the quality, you know.” Yes, but quantity is critical too, because connection and life happens in a surprise moment like this, and you need a luxury of time, a spread of it, to give space for moments like this.

Lucky me.

edit: this is post #666. of all things.

But that’s not what I meant to write about, that’s not the meaning of “dates” that brought me here; I get so distracted by words I dare not dip into the dictionary to look up a word, because one leads to the next and then a good hour is gone. Ditto encyclopedias, or what passes for them now.

Good grief, digressions! DATES, Lori, what were you going to say about dates? Oh, right. So I didn’t get to go on my date with Will a couple of days ago because I was felled by a mighty migraine. I get them irregularly, and they’re usually handled quite easily with a sumatriptan inhaler (god bless you, GlaxoSmithKline, makers of Imitrex). Back in the 1980s, when the only delivery method was an Imitrex injection, I took those but they inevitably left me with a different kind of crushing headache. The inhalers were an improvement in many ways — no need to inject yourself (a biggie), no crushing chest pain as the medication moved up the body, and no injection headache. The worst thing about the inhalers is the extremely nasty taste as the remnants of the spray drip down the back of your throat. Still, now and then I get a migraine that requires two inhalers and that does leave me with a very bad rebound headache, and that’s what happened this go-round. I completely lost yesterday to the weird strangeness of the post-migraine / post-too-much-migraine-medicine fog.

I’m hoping Will and I can recreate our date this coming Thursday; that’s our plan, if he isn’t scheduled to work. But tonight I have a dinner date with my friend Temma, at a Thai restaurant she introduced me to in our neighborhood. That’ll be fun, and I know I’ll leave feeling much better. Sunday I’m going to see Richard III at BAM, and the following Friday my husband and I are going to see the Cloud Gate 2 performance. Lots of great dates coming up in my immediate future — also, youngest daughter’s 21st birthday, the anniversary of getting engaged to my husband, Valentine’s Day, and lots of other shows and performances in my calendar. It’s been a kind of hard slog the last couple of weeks, so having these wonderful dates to look forward to really helps.

Today I made an official declaration (to myself) that the pity party is now over! Enough already. It’s so easy to indulge self-pity — at least it is for me — but that just keeps it going rather than exhausting the well. So I open the blinds (figuratively), let in the sun, make a big cup of tea, and turn my eyes outward. The view is much sunnier, even in winter.

But one thing that has hit me about the show is the importance of grace and dignity, and carrying on. Of course that’s a stereotype about the British as a people, but the points are made explicit and implicit in Downton Abbey in such a moving way. It’s something I’ve thought about for decades; I wish I’d been able to be more graceful as a mother, with less thrashing-around. And now, as there are events going on in my life that require carrying on, and helping, and enduring through hardship, I think about it quite pointedly.

In one episode in Season 2, Robert Crawley, Earl of Grantham, said that we must help each other carry on, it’s what we must do. And he said something about doing it with grace. I realized this is a value, not just a cultural tradition, or one person’s or family’s attitude. It’s a value. And it reflects a particular belief and orientation to life, that it is worth the carrying on. It reflects an ethical understanding of connection, that we are here to help each other carry on through difficult times, to celebrate with each other, to mourn with each other. That we’re intimately interconnected, because we cannot always carry on all by ourselves.

It’s hard for me to have a good understanding of myself in this regard, as it may be for everyone. We know our innermost snotty thoughts, and whiny thoughts, and the ways in which we wallow and feel sorry for ourselves. We know those things better than anyone else, because we don’t share all the unpleasant things that we feel ashamed of. But we may act differently, and we may be there for others in the way we aspire to be! So our own recognition of our secret thoughts may lead us to misinterpret ourselves overly harshly. I am currently engaged in trying to help someone carry on, and it’s hard. It’s lonely, it’s difficult, it’s taxing, it’s draining. I want to do this with as much grace as I can, and I want to help this person endure it with as much grace as possible. Am I successful? I don’t know. I am feeling sorry for myself, and feeling annoyed, and aggravated, and I bite my tongue, and I sometimes want to shake the poor person I am trying to help, I want to say “come ON.” I feel petty as I desperately long for someone to take care of me for a while, for someone to surprise me with a thoughtful moment designed solely to lift my spirits, to help me.

Perhaps this is just human, this is just me being human, and the important thing is the degree to which I manage these things myself, manage these needs myself and ask for help from others, and just be there and support and help the person I’m longing to help, with grace and dignity and focus on the importance of carrying on. I think of the great AA line: “Don’t compare your insides to other people’s outsides.” I try to imagine that the people I admire who do carry on with grace are also troubled by these kinds of inner thoughts, that they also whine and indulge in self-pity in their minds, but that I just don’t know it……as I hope the person I’m helping doesn’t know of my own troubled thoughts.

Remember how I had to frog Marnie’s Moby sweater? I frogged it completely and just started over, and I’m finally back at the point I was in the first edition (I’ve decided to refer to them as editions, like books). So here I am:

Ambergris, by Ann Weaver (2nd edition)

I do note with satisfaction that the cable ropes are all done correctly in this edition; there was one error in the first version that would’ve bugged me forever, so you know, you take what comfort you can from a situation like this. I’ve already divided at the sleeves, so now I’m doing the front up to the neck, and then I’ll do the back. Then two sleeves, each with cable ropes up the center, assembly, and a turtleneck. I hope I can finish this while Marnie still has time to wear it this winter; since she lives in Chicago, the odds are pretty good.

Tonight I’m having a date with Will, which I’m really looking forward to. We’re going to a cool little independent bookstore on Prince St. (McNally Jackson) and then over to an Indian food restaurant he loves, for dosas. It’s been such a warm and dry winter, it doesn’t feel like January at all — but I’m not complaining, especially for this evening, as we tramp around that great little neighborhood. One truly wonderful thing about all three of my kids is that we share a love of words and books. It manifests itself differently in the three of them, but I do share something special with each one of them around books, and that makes me happier than you can imagine. I like to think it’s my gift to them.

* * *

Here’s the next writing prompt — a 600-word story (a narrative describing a shared experience) told from the “we” perspective. No first person pronouns allowed! My first thought was to put the couple in therapy and have them telling competing narratives about something, but I got this idea and ran with it instead. It’s a piece of fiction, again, but again it uses bits of real experience for texture. My husband and I did go to Luang Prabang, which means the details of place are true, but the rest is entirely made up:

We woke up very early that morning because we wanted to witness the monks’ morning alms ritual; since we were staying at a hotel on the other side of the Mekong River, we had to get up early enough to walk across that long scary bridge – remember, honey? – and it made us nervous because of the traffic, especially in the dark. We felt so exhausted when the alarm went off, but we both knew how much you wanted to see it so off we went.

Right – it really wasn’t the kind of thing you like to do sugar plum, you’d rather visit the markets and the food stalls, but you were such a good sport about it. We just had no idea how it was going to turn out, did we? We thought we’d go to the main street, kneel at the curb, and watch the Lao women putting little clumps of rice in each of the monks’ baskets, and then get some breakfast on the way back to our hotel – remember how much we loved the breakfast at that one place? But it didn’t turn out like that at all. And you’re usually such a quiet guy, avoiding trouble. Sure, you’ll speak up if you feel you’re getting ripped off, but you never get involved in violence. You just never do that.

So there we were, walking across that bridge, in the dark. Remember how there weren’t any lights of any kind? Not even headlights, since cars weren’t allowed on the bridge? And remember how tiny the walkway was for pedestrians, with broken boards and loose nails? And how quiet the morning was – we heard the river, the cyclists passing on the bridge, the early morning fishermen, and the birds? You were commenting on the birds just as we left the bridge and crossed onto the sidewalk. We had to stop because your long skirt got caught in the clasp of your sandal, and you were kneeling down to untangle it. We were both a little bit on edge – do you remember why, now? It’s hard to imagine why we felt so unsettled, in Luang Prabang. We’d had such a great time, and felt safer there than anywhere else we’d been in Southeast Asia. Maybe it was just the very early hour, combined with the darkness that we’re not used to, since we’re from Manhattan where it’s never dark. Maybe we were just kind of punchy from exhaustion.

Well sugar, you say “we” were punchy, but “we” weren’t really punchy – you were. Remember?

You’re right – you were singing and laughing and commenting on how beautiful the river was in the dark, and how many stars you saw. OK, “we” weren’t punchy, point taken. But we were both a little anxious in the utter darkness, that’s definitely true. And neither of us expected someone to grab you – you have to agree with that!

No, we certainly never expected something like that to happen, that’s true.  Did you see him coming?

No, remember how we were both bending over – you were squatting – trying to get your skirt free? The guy just came out of nowhere, it seemed, and leaned over you, saying something we couldn’t understand.

You did overreact just a little bit honey, you have to admit. If it hadn’t been so dark we might’ve noticed that he was wearing orange robes, and had shaved his head. You didn’t have to punch the poor guy, he was just offering to help us! Granted, it was dark and you were trying to protect me, but come on. You punched a monk.

After weeks of not sleeping, I took a pill last night that made me sleep deeply, all night long. It’s not something I can do regularly — the drug is not addictive, but it has dreadful side-effects like weight gain and the potential for tardive dyskinesia — but getting one good night of sleep is enough, for now. Happy Friday, y’all. I hope it’s as peaceful and lovely where you are as it is at my desk.

Here’s a different piece by Arvo Pärt, also perfect for a rainy day:

* * *

Glancing in the mirror I see my messy hair but there is no time to worry about it – we are meeting at 1pm and there are just a few minutes to spare. He was often snappy over email and seems like an irritable guy, so being on time feels important today. Luckily there is a parking spot by the door, and he’s waiting at the bar with a slight smile; I’m 5 minutes early, and hope we’ll get off to a good start after all.

“You’re late – I’ve been waiting 10 minutes,” he says as we stand face-to-face. We both lean in and give each other a slight hug of uncertain familiarity; we’ve been chatting on email for the last three weeks, since we first connected on the dating website, but this is our first meeting so it’s odd. Familiarity with a stranger, with the instant recognition of differences between our conjured images and the real person — the flesh and bone contrast to the smoke and mirrors of virtual connection. As we take our table and the waitress hands us menus, he leans forward and says, “Can I make fun of you for living here?” He stares for a minute and then turns his attention to the menu. Long minutes pass in silence, and the waitress finally takes our orders – we share the appetizers and each order a light salad and a glass of Pinot Gris.

“My daughter lives in Riverdale with her mother,” he says, “and that at least makes sense – it’s a suburb of the city. But here, why would anyone live here?” His expression is intense and focused, and he doesn’t seem to realize how rude his comments are, because his eyes hold mine with curiosity and interest, but he doesn’t smile. “Well, when the job in Taylor fell apart, this opportunity to make a change to the field of marketing seemed too good to pass up, and the company is based here in Mahwah. It didn’t make sense to live in New York City and commute up here every day. Anyway, it’s not a bad place to live, and the city is nearby.” After a pause, he responds, “Still, it seems like a stupid place to live.”

The appetizers arrive, and our conversation slows as we pick at the food, trying to find our way into a comfortable conversation. He is a writer and asks good questions, and the conversation soon shifts into darker places, older stories, wounds and scars. He listens to my stories with tears in his eyes, and his voice cracks with emotion when he responds. He lingers and is hesitant to shift too quickly into his own stories, but eventually he does. Our salads arrive and we don’t even pick up our forks; the waitress interrupts to ask if we need anything, and we don’t answer her, or even pause the conversation. The restaurant empties; waiters are placing small candles on the tables. We talk, clutching hands across the table, and our untouched salad plates are removed. He tells a wrenching story of addiction, of the absolute loss of himself, of throwing his syringe kit into a sewer because he’d never go back for it, and then going back for it. His eyes are haunted, his voice shifts to a whisper – not from shame and privacy, but from the remembered horror. We know each other in a very particular way, now, and fall in love.

He pays the bill and we walk to our cars, reluctant to leave each other. He touches my skin and we kiss, for a long time.

In the subway yesterday, a woman was standing on the train with a dog in a little carrier, between her feet. Everyone around her was grinning at the dog, and chatting with the woman. Another woman caught my eye, and she wasn’t exactly grinning, though she was looking at the dog. There was something else in her expression, something kind of razor-like. I don’t know how else to describe it, that’ll have to do. She was Vietnamese, so I wondered if she was having different thoughts about that dog.

And sitting next to me was this hulky scowling man. Huge muscles, the kind I don’t like, angry looking expression on his craggy face, menace radiating off him. He stared at people, first him, then her, then me, then that one. Long squid stares, unblinking mean expressions. Creepy. And then a man got on the train with a small boy and a toddler in a stroller. The angry man next to me completely lit up — he started grinning and talking goo-goo talk to the little toddler. He leaned forward and was yakking away, tapping the toddler’s little forearm as he goo-gooed. He asked the dad how old the baby was, and he just couldn’t stop grinning. It was the most incredible transformation I’d ever seen. He was just silly about that baby. People so often, as Whitman told us, contain multitudes.

Dinner with a friend tonight, hallelujah!