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my hair - the "flip" - was the height of fashion! my dress was red velvet.
I adore Mad Men – love it love it love it. I love the stories, the secrets, the every little detail. The most recent episode, the one with the office Christmas party, was so incredibly familiar it made my teeth ache. The very specific reds and greens, the music, the decorations, every. tiny. little. detail. So familiar. I breathed the air around those decorations, even if my father wasn’t working on Madison Ave.
The other day I was reading a review of this past episode and realized that I would’ve been the same age as Bobby, in the series. It took place December 1964, and I would’ve just turned 6. I can feel the construction paper between my fingers, making chains of rings for the Christmas tree. I can smell the paste, sticking a little red puff onto Rudolph’s nose, I can feel the bits of glitter stuck to my fingertips.
Childhood is such an evocative time; the saying is ‘youth is wasted on the young’ but I think it’s true that nothing is wasted on the young. The tiniest details become so firmly woven into our psychological fabric that they revisit us – with happiness, and with haunting – as long as we live. The photo above was taken in 1969, so I was 10 or 11, depending on when it was taken. Just over 40 years ago, and I can feel the table I was sitting on when the picture was taken; I can feel the wrong side of the polyester velvet of my dress, made by my mother; I can smell the Aqua-Net, sprayed from a tall blue aerosol can, that covered my hair in a misguided effort to make it hold that shape. I can quite literally feel the day in my muscles, and written into my bones.
Memory is really an incredible gift of human-ness, even if they’re not always pleasant. The way a passing smell can bring back other people, other times. The way an old song can fill you with an entirely different feeling than you felt moments before. I just love this part of being alive, don’t you?
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I had a long conversation with Katie, my older daughter, this morning, which was essentially a conversation about what gives a life meaning and value. Like me, her desire is for close-to-home things – meaningful work, a family, being a mom. Like her, I am often intimidated by people whose lives are more dramatic, or whose work is more “exciting,” or whose lives are more something than ours.
And then, while I was uploading my new sock photo to ravelry, my iTunes randomly played a song from Annie Lennox‘s album Songs of Mass Destruction. (If you click the album cover to the left, it’ll take you to the Amazon page where you can buy the music; I very highly recommend it!) I became fixated on the first song released from the album, Dark Road. Sony took down the video, so I can’t show it here. Bastards. It’s a beautiful video, and the song is heartbreakingly beautiful, as many of her songs are.
55? isn't she gorgeous?!
I’ve been in fan love with Annie since I first heard Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This) back in 1983, I think. As a matter of fact, that song always makes me think of Katie; she was a tiny toddler at the time and she was crazy for the song. It could be playing at the other end of the house and she’d squeal, come running, and then stand there, bopping and grinning to the beat. Adorable. Annie’s music has been the soundtrack for much of my adult life; the Diva and Medusa albums truly are the soundtrack to the end of my first marriage, and my devastating divorce. The Peace album is the soundtrack of a year of my life in graduate school, when everything — everything — came together and I was absolutely happy in myself. The Bare album is the soundtrack to one of the biggest changes of my adult life.
So anyway, I’m sitting at my desk, doing my little small life thing, documenting a little sock I knit, for heaven’s sake, and the next song from the album came on – Sing. Sing my sister sing, let your voice be heard, what won’t kill you will make you strong, sing my sister sing. It could be trite, but it isn’t. Annie sings it with urgency – sing, my sisters. Sing. The song is the focus of her Sing campaign to prevent HIV transmission from mother to child.
So there she is (just a couple of years older than me, by the way) making beautiful music and trying desperately to help save lives in Africa, and to help women, and here I am taking too many pictures of a sock.
Of course in light of this morning’s conversation with Katie it struck me. I could say the cliched thing, something trite about “all lives have meaning” blah blah blah (note, it’s not trite because it’s not true! it is true that all lives have meaning. But it’s trite because it’s a too-simple answer to a deeper concern). I don’t know how to resolve it. I feel it, I understand it.
Maybe it’s something like understanding that age 51 I’m probably not going to be an astronaut and should cross that one off my list. 
Anyway – here’s Sing, if you haven’t heard it:
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There are moments in life when the soundtrack syncs perfectly. Do you know what I mean? One very hot summer night a couple of years ago, my husband and I went out for a walk around 10pm. We were headed toward the Columbia University campus, which is just a couple of blocks up Broadway from our apartment. We walked to the corner of Broadway, and just as we turned left to head toward campus, someone somewhere started playing Summertime on a trumpet. It was haunting, and perfect, and such an incredible New York moment. The living did feel easy; it was a sultry night, the music was perfectly suited and played by someone who had much more emotion than skill, which made it even better, and I was walking in my beloved city, with my beloved husband. I got goose bumps then, and I always get them when I recall that moment, like I’m doing now. Perfect, and magical.
blue skies and puffy clouds
And today, just now, another moment like that. It’s the first day of summer, the light is dazzling, the sky is blue, the air smells sweet (so far….check back with me later when the air reeks of trash and urine), shopkeepers are spraying their sidewalks so there is a cool mist in the air all along the sidewalk, and I was walking to the UPS shop with my beloved daughter’s wedding dress in my arms, ready to send her.
As always, I was listening to music. As I turned the corner onto Broadway, a string of absolutely PERFECT songs came on my ipod: Beautiful Day, by U2; Feels So Good, by Chuck Mangione; and Boogie Shoes, by who else – K.C. and the Sunshine Band. I felt my feet leave the ground. And, of course, I cried. That’s so me. You can’t give someone else your synchronicity, but in case you also like these songs, and they fit your day, here they are:
Also: yodeling, banjo music, and laughter in a lot of different languages. Things that add to my feeling that it is fine to be a human being in this world.
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So I really liked the madelinetosh eyre light that I received – the reddish orangish skein called jodhpur. But I wasn’t loving it. It didn’t go with anything in my life (except for my memories of Texas dirt). I couldn’t see it on me. I tried it here I tried it there. I tried it in a box. I tried it with a fox. I tried it in my hair. I tried it in my chair.
Nope.
Luckily, there are madelinetosh forums on ravelry, which include destash/trade threads. Within a couple of minutes of posting, I found someone who wanted to trade her skein for mine, in the colorway I wanted – cousteau. Here it is:
cousteau - madelinetosh eyre light
GORGEOUS. And it relates to other yarns in my stash, and to things I wear. Once I’m out of this very intense crunch I can’t wait to get back to madelinetosh knitting. In addition to my more-than-fulltime job, I am trying to finish the wedding dress and shawl, doing the Creativity Boot Camp daily exercises, and taking an online course in preparation for teaching online courses in psychology. And racing to finish my bookclub book (which is amazing). And trying to finish reading 3 manuscripts. And trying desperately to spend time with my beloved husband. And trying to sleep and eat.
So yeah, madelinetosh is waiting for me, and I can’t wait to get back to her.
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TRANSLATION
If you live outside the greater NYC area, the words probably have a different meaning – they did for me, anyway, before I moved here. People live in apartments because they can’t afford to buy a house. There’s a kind of implied social class aspect to it. A co-op is some collection of resources: an electric co-op, for rural electricity; a financial co-op; a grocery cooperative, etc.
But here, people live in apartments that they rent, or that they buy. A co-op is a legal structure in which residents of a building own shares in the building – it’s kind of like owning your apartment. But it does involve ownership, even if it’s not exactly like buying a house. I live in an apartment in a co-op building that’s pre-war (i.e. built before WWII, but ours was built in 1900). Our building was built before there was a subway. My husband bought our apartment outright, in 1986. We live on the Upper West Side, which has a particular flavor like all the neighborhoods in NY do – the UWS is the literary, arty neighborhood. Upper East – richie riches, ladies who lunch.
So it sounds pretty fancy! But this is NY, where real estate and space are at a premium, even in these difficult financial times. Except for the upper-est echelons, apartments are small. Space is minimal. Older buildings – the cool ones, like mine – are old! (obvious, but true) This morning, I looked out our bathroom window and thought there had been a dusting of snow, for a minute, until I realized it’s just the general layer of soot and grime that coats everything here. That’s the view from my bathroom, just below. It’s hard to see, but the railing and the steps have a layer of white-ish crap on them, and it’s not paint, and it’s not snow.
The image on the bottom is the view from my kitchen. I’m always struck by how it looks like a prison yard. Our building is shaped like a U, with the bottom facing the street and a kind of courtyard between the two ‘arms.’ It’s not a fancy courtyard that people use, it’s just a space for getting between the buildings. But that door, at the bottom left; the barbed wire; the general gloominess; it always screams prison yard to me.
But our building is absolutely wonderful, and so is our neighborhood, and I wouldn’t want to live anywhere other than Manhattan (though I might consider Hanoi, Paris, or Cusco…). We’re very lucky.
100 posts + a giveaway
This morning I happened upon Anne’s 100th post (congrats, Anne!). In celebration, she is offering a giveaway — so hop over and leave a comment. Reading her post caused me to look at my dashboard and what do you know: I was at 99, so my next post would be my 100th post! Coincidence. So in the same spirit, I thought I’d do a little giveaway. I’ll give two skeins of Berroco Jasper, in a beautiful brown color that variegates to an orange-brown:
Berroco Jasper - 2 skeins just for you!
To enter the giveaway, just leave me a comment. On Wednesday, June 9, I’ll do a random drawing at 7am, and send the skeins to the winner. When you leave a comment, the form asks for your email address, which does not show. Be sure to enter it, so I can contact you.
Of course I’d love it if you looked around the blog and subscribed, but that’s not required. Feel free to forward the post to friends, for the giveaway. If you tweet it or repost on your blog, let me know and you’ll get an extra entry.
It’s a good place to pause for a minute and say that I am glad you read, and leave comments. Have a wonderful Sunday!
other friendly voices