summer lovin', had me a blast

Today, I nearly suffocated in my daughter’s room, buried alive under a mountain of clothing, a lot of it gorgeous, most of it too small. Half still had tags; the other half was barely worn because my daughter prefers to wear the same pair of shorts and the same Beatles t-shirt every day. After she’s worn something else, she drops it on the floor of her closet, where it soon becomes buried under the next thing that’s not her favorite shorts. For two hours this morning, she tried on everything, every single piece of clothing, including costumes appropriated for School of Rock shows. As the hills of shirts, pants, dresses, and school clothes eroded, new mountains formed—these marked for uniform exchange night or a friend's daughter or her cousins. I filled paper shopping bags until they tore. The air in Serena's room was suddenly oppressive, mixed with fabric chemical smell and anxious lizard smell and stress armpit smell—mine and hers. We had to take a break before tackling the drawers.

This is part of our back-to-school ritual. So are wondering whether we skipped this back-to-school ritual last year and lamenting the brisk disappearance of summer vacation. What too-moist beast ate the days? Yet when I look back on the friendships I forged in three short months, the places I visited¹, the pictures I took, the nose I pierced, the concerts² and meals and leisurely drinks I enjoyed, I feel fulfilled and lucky.

While my husband was on his annual retreat in Zion Canyon, Utah, his personal mecca, from where he sent us amazing letters, we were each supposed to write a song to be played upon his return. Serena started some complicated piece about Freddie Kruger. Marty played some chords he didn’t commit to memory. But I did my assignment with gusto, writing what I call “The Country-ass Song.” The lyrics start like this:

You keep moonshine whiskey on the kitchen sink
So when you’re doin’ the dishes you can take a drink
And wash it all away
Like you try to do every day

Spy your girl through the window on the tire swing
You always told your baby she could do anything
But so could you
And this is what you choose to do

So no regrets, no tears
Throw in the towel
Toss back a few more beers.

It’s not autobiographical. Well, the beers part, maybe. But I do like my days. Even today. Especially today. This kind of purge and reorganization is spiritually cleansing and enlightening (note to relatives and friends: don’t buy the girl anything pink or with any kind of heart or flower or bow). Sure, summer’s a tough act to follow—this weekend alone is jam packed with concerts and dinners and lunches and company. But autumn always kicks ass!

Now, post-ritualistic closet upheaval, I feel more ready to let go of the summer of 2010, one of the hottest summers on record; the summer of Resurrection in a can; the summer of a bouffant ‘do and Hairspray at the pool; of running five miles again; of dinner and drinks with my homegirl, Sheri Booker, and our agent, Betsy Lerner; sushi with Bahhhhhhhb’s drummer; crabcakes with Monica Mansfield. So long, summer of poetry and music and friends and one delightful, glittery gem twinkling beside my nostril.




Shameless Plugs

¹I spent the perfect amount of time at the beach—with my sister’s family and my daughter, as well as with a new friend, Betsy Merrill. I overcame my fear of flying to attend the Madison, Wisconsin wedding celebration of a dear friend, Gabi Helfert, overcoming severe stage fright to play her and her new partner (and my new dear friend), Joey Johannsen, a song. I stayed with a beautiful woman, Lee Davenport, whom I met online, and visited with the talented printmaker, Tracy Ducasse, my funniest friend , Teena, and the beautiful writer, Carrie Kilman. People visited me, too—like Janer and Joy, two pals from back when the Internet was only just invented! My house has been full of love this summer. One good pal, Monica Mansfield, examined my old dog, Cleo, and brought her medicine; instant love right there. And Gail Dragon was my buddy for an overnighter, seeing Jason Ager at a tea house before driving home to North Carolina. I relished my time with BFFs, too—Kim Webster, Kim Stanbro.


²Peter Frampton, Yes, Bahhhhhhhb (Bob Schneider, for the uninitiated), Taylor and Evan, Justin Trawick (this Friday, 8x10, CD release!), Jason Ager, The Dead [Fucking] Weather(!). And the best: I watched my daughter nail sax, guitar, and vocals on The Beatles and Pink Floyd, and I watched her band, the Oxi-Morons, play a block party. Oh, and she plays again Saturday and Sunday at Angel's Rock bar, the hits of 1970, followed Sunday by Marah!

pierced

When she discovered that the glittery gem on my nose went all the way through it, my mother cried. “You’re forty- [inaudible mumbling],” she stuttered through the tears, as if there were a deadline on body mutilation.

The good news is that since it’s not a pre-existing condition (like tattoos and, now, tongue piercing), I’m not out of the will. And after the initial shock, it was business as usual—telling jokes at brunch, planning my daughter’s bat mitzvah. I sat to the right of my mother, the glittery booger visible only to my husband and daughter.

No one who has seen me has asked why I did it. Maybe it’s because it doesn’t seem out of character. Maybe it looks as though it’s always been there. When I tell people on the phone or online, about half of them ask why.

I did it because I could. Because it would only hurt for a minute. I did it because I met a woman twenty-five years ago, a waitress at Bertha’s, who had a stud in her nose, and she was exquisite—certainly not in spite of it and maybe not even because of it, but it gave her a pinch of exotica. Since that day I longed for one of my own. I did it because it had just enough risk—a little bit of pain but not too much, a little bit of permanence but not too dramatic should I decide to just rock the empty large pore for the rest of my life. And it’s pretty. I like it. I can’t think of a better reason than the last one.

For awhile, I got the stick-on kind, just to see how it would look. When I’d remember, which was rarely, I’d carefully remove one diamond chip from the adhesive and drop it down the bathroom sink drain. Then, with the drain stopper in place, I’d remove a second one and affix it with Liquid Bandage, which would sting and smell bad for a few seconds. I’d go out somewhere, and, within an hour or two, I would scratch my eye, accidentally brushing against the chip, which would disappear into the ether.

Those who’d caught its glint would ask me if I finally went and did it. When I’d say it was a stick-on, I could see both their relief and their disappointment. Perhaps the relief was more because they didn’t have to imagine the pain of the needle. But the disappointment was, to me, more palpable.

I am not a faker. I have never pretended to be something I’m not, never lied about my skills, not even on a job application or my résumé. I had fake nails for my wedding only; I bit them off on my honeymoon. I color my hair, but it’s real color on real hair. I don’t pretend to like bands just because they’re cool.¹ And I don’t lie.²

I’d given up the idea a month ago when a friend told me I’d have to take it out for surgery or x-rays, that the hole would never close. And then I thought: who lives that way? Who makes a decision based on what would happen should she ever need surgery? So when my sister told me on the boardwalk that she’d asked about the nose piercing at Dimensions and that she’d pay for half, I started to consider it seriously. Serena came in with us and whined the whole time, having just been turned upside-down (by choice) and around and around (also by choice) and become so sick that only a snowball would make her feel better. So we left, and I vowed to give it serious thought. That night, I talked to my husband for a half hour. He’d already hated the idea, even though he didn’t think it looked bad at all. And when he finally said what I wished all people would say—“It’s your body; I have no right to tell you what to do with it”—fate was sealed.³

I prepared my daughter, who also hated the idea, and sent her to the pool with her cousins and uncle. I chased a beer with a big shot of vodka from the freezer (thanks, Tom), and gave Beth the keys to my car. She drove me to Dimensions, where I handed over my ID, signed the Health Department’s forms, and picked my nose ring. I waited upstairs. When it was my turn, I sat in a big scary chair and watched the tattooed dude open the big scary autoclaved tools. My sister squeezed my hand. At some point, while the big scary needle was dangling from my nose, she stopped looking.

“That wasn’t so bad,” I said.

“That was the easy part,” the dude said. And then he put the jewel in.

“Ow,” I said. But I was completely still, unlike my sister, whose face was buried in my back. When it was over, it stung a little, but it wasn’t awful. We went back to the condo, and I took a swim, after which it bled a bit. And, with the exception of the occasionally pawing in the night, it’s only given me a moment of trouble.

With my mom. And only for a moment.




* * * * *


¹I’m sorry, Vampire Weekend and Decemberists. [yawn]

²In fact, there’s only one lie I’ve told with regularity, and it had to do with whether I was smoking. I have not smoked since I was pregnant—not even once—but I used to keep my smoking habits secret from my family.*

*Then again, it’s totally within my power to shave a few inches off my thighs in a self-portrait, to lighten the dark circles under my eyes, to smooth out the kinks and dings in my skin. But that’s art. And, with the exception of nonfiction, art can’t lie.

³I ask because we are a team. And though he can’t prevent me from poking a hole in my nose or writing on my skin, I respect his opinion, and his unhappiness with my decision would make this a mistake.

my baby, he wrote me a letter!

When I was fourteen or so, I put a free pen pal ad in the back of Rock Scene Magazine—something about Cheap Trick girl seeks fans of same. Perhaps I made mention of some other band, like Foreigner.¹ Perhaps I signed my name Rainbow Leigh or Crystal Leigh.²

Those were the days when a teenage girl could publish her real address with a fake stripper name in a national magazine without alerting any pedophiles³ (unless you count the rock stars, who had groupies my age). I got lots of replies, including a string of post cards from Rick Nielsen, who was flattered at first but then annoyed by all my questions. I wrote to (we called it “writing to” back then and would often say, “Do you write to so-and-so?”) Becky Olenchak, June Feinstein, Cathy Pearce, Dan Bonham, and a handful of other really cool teenagers and twenty-somethings, who helped me get through the hell of high school. We met in real life, too, at various locales like New York's Bleecker Street and St. Marks Place and the Rock and Roll Convention in Philly (the Ramones played!). Within weeks of getting my first car—a two-tone Mustang hatchback—at 16 or 17, with no such thing as a cell phone, I drove to Cathy’s house in Lynchburg.

Music was my passion. I did little else then but write death poetry and play Patti Smith’s Radio Ethiopia over and over again and check the mailbox. The mailman brought me stuffed-full letters every day and would often leave big packages for me by the door of my apartment—bootlegs and imports of the Ramones or the Runaways in Japan, groovy singles like the neon yellow "Nasty, Nice" by Jane Eyre and the Belvederes. The best days were when I got home from school and found a letter from Becky, who’d tell me about her exploits with some famous-to-us rock star of extraordinary hotness, with photographic evidence tucked in the stationery; I looked at it first, foreplay.

Although the thrill of getting the mail dies with your first credit card statement, every once in awhile, I’ll get something cool from my Internet friends—beautiful photos and paintings and post cards, care packages from all over the world. But I don’t get any Slam books anymore. I rarely get a letter in longhand.

Last week’s letter from my husband might have been the first one in years. Marty’s been away for nearly two weeks. He doesn’t have a cell phone, and I can’t blame him; my own preoccupation with connectivity needs to be checked. But when he’s out there in the wilderness of Utah, I worry for him—the flash floods, the heights, the heat. And it’s sometimes annoying that I can’t catch him up on life back home. But I know he deserves the solitude and isolation. This is how he recharges his own cells: hiking the Watchman trail, wading through the Narrows, swimming in the frigid Kolab Reservoir of Zion Canyon. He wakes up before dawn and makes coffee, takes his book and his guitar out to a spectacular overlook, and reads, strums, thinks. He writes poetry in his head and music in his heart. He's there for every sunset, too. And I envy the person who could do this alone.

It had been several days since we’d put him on the plane, and the only contact we had was a ten-second call from a stranger’s cellphone. He said, “Serena, I’m on top of Angel’s Landing,” and the signal was lost.

The next day, though, a two-page (fronts and backs) letter came.⁴ Marty wrote it after he checked into the hotel in Mesquite before heading out to Zion in the morning. He began:

Yo Ho Chick-E-LA-Las… No phone? No E-Mail? No Internet? No…No…Ahhh!!

But wait! What about the MAIL? Remember—“my baby, she wrote me a letter”? Yeah…I’ll talk to you the ol’ fashioned way.

The rest of it was details of the flight, the weather forecast (it’s always 115 when he lands in Vegas), his hopes for the trip, a request for us to “play music!” and a peace sign. A day or two later, a three-page letter arrived. It was on the same lined paper, ripped out of a bound journal, and it ended with the usual peace sign and a reminder to play music. On Monday, we got another letter, ripped more sloppily so that we had to fill in the words on the edge, Serena and I sharing the pages and reading like it were an adventure, like we were some sort of pioneers who received the note by pony. This one was written at the site of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, Marty recounting the story of slaughtered women and children. It started on a bummer but ended with his having held an impromptu concert at the top of [secret camping location] for a troop of teenage bicyclists and their chaperones on their summer adventure program. “Make music!” he said again at the end, the peace sign torn at the edge.

Since the first letter, I’ve been singing the song Alex Chilton wrote and performed with the Box Tops when he was just sixteen. And yesterday, one of the School of Rock show directors asked my daughter to play the sax solo in Joe Cocker’s version of “The Letter.”

And now, ten days after he flew off, I’m sitting here in the kitchen, waiting for the mailman. I have checked the box three times today, even though I’ve heard no squeak of metal on metal, no rusty door opening, no sound of papers becoming suffocated, no rusty door closing.

Our mailbox is sixteen years old, a wedding gift from a friend. It used to have a wooden frog head and four wooden frog feet, but they rotted long ago—perhaps when the mail itself rotted. It used to be so much more than bills, credit card offers, and circulars for places with mediocre pizza and Chinese food. I’ve wanted to replace the box, maybe build some mosaic masterpiece, but the junk that comes never seems worthy.

And now I regret not having something more beautiful and protective for these rare treasures, words from someone I love, though I know a fancy box is more likely to attract thieves and vandals and less likely to summon something so precious. We should remedy the latter.

A few days ago, Marty borrowed another stranger's phone. They'd just finished having dinner together, and he talked to us for what seemed like an hour, apologizing to the man at regular intervals for the length of his call. He said he'd written a letter just for me—a separate letter not signed Marty/Dad. And I couldn't wait to get it.

I nearly held my breath at the mailbox this afternoon, but the only things inside were the latest Musician's Friend and Guitar Center catalogs and a circular for some lame pizza joint.

Maybe tomorrow.

	BOX TOPS - Box Tops - The Letter .mp3
	Found at bee mp3 search engine

* * * * *


¹Shut up.

²Shut up.

³There were some pervs, though, including a guy named Phil, who used to request worn underwear in exchange for records and, sometimes, cash. My mom corresponded with him for a time, pretending to be a teenage girl. He was mad when he found out she was my mom, but he didn't come to our apartment with an axe.

⁴Also in the mail was a $40 speeding ticket, only my third in my life; my first came when I was sixteen and on my way to Cathy Pearce's house.<sup>5

5</sup>My second was on Stevenson Lane, driving really fast when I'd decided to close my health food store. I was listening to "Gravedigger" and crying. And that's what I told the cop, who gave me the ticket anyway.

turn and face the strange changes

My daughter hates my new hair color, whatever color it is—the newness an issue more than the color. Heaven forbid I move a chair or swap furniture between rooms; my husband has a fit. Some people will suffer for years with that devil-they-know of a job or spouse they despise, rather than deal with looking for a potentially less-painful—but possibly more fabulous and probably way better—career or lover.

It seems that most people hate the idea of change even more than the actual change. (Contrary to my beliefs, a candidate did run and win on the promise of change, but perhaps everyone knew nothing would really change but the president’s skin color.) Granted, divorce sucks. But what if your husband or wife sucks, too? What if he or she makes only a nasty, negative contribution to your life? Imagine someone more loving waiting in the wings. Someone surely is.

But I’m not talking about the changes brought on by tragedy; rather, it’s the tiny ones, cosmetic or functional ones, so-called improvements, that seem to get everyone’s knickers in a bunch—your wife ran out of cheese and had to pack you a different sandwich, your usual bank teller is sick, a website is redesigned (with many of your previous complaints fixed).

I thrive on change. I like the freshness of it. I like new seasons, new responsibilities and opportunities, a different routine. I can’t eat leftovers for three days, antsy for a new dish. My iPod is on perpetual shuffle, and my favorite artist of all time, David Bowie, is a musical chameleon. My photography is random: flowers, dogs, rock bands, food—sometimes in the same day. I try new beers all the time. My hair is curly one day, ironed flat the next. And my thoughts, as you can probably tell, are all over the place.

I love waking up to a completely different paint color now and again, even if I enjoyed the last color for a decade—especially if I enjoyed the last color for a decade! It’s only paint.

I used to let my hair grow for two years, then get it chopped off short. A hairdresser I know refused to cut it because he was worried it would be too drastic and I’d blame him. My best friend for twenty years never once altered the way she wore hers. It’s only hair!

Some people hate change so much they won’t even change their minds, despite their being presented with new evidence, as if stubbornness equaled righteousness, correctness, or, sometimes, cuteness.

If we take death and devastation off the table and talk about rearranging some furniture or trying a new hairstyle or replacing a bad habit with a good one or getting out of that rut you’ve been spinning your wheels in for years, what’s the worry? Even fitness experts tell you to change your exercise routine after three weeks.

What little, or great big, thing have you been dying to change, stopped only by fear? And what is it you fear? And what will you change-fearers change today?

C’mon. Change is gonna do you good.*


- - - - - -

*For a beer on me next time I see you, if you're old enough, and without searching for the answer, what 1970s song has "change is gonna do you good" as a lyric?

got change?

No. You don't.*

Right now, I choose my political candidate based on whether he or she supports a woman's right to choose.** A politician's views on the environment, education, war, space, health care, and just about everything else aren't important to me anymore, because those opinions change depending on bill sponsorship and corporate funding. I can't count on my elected official to represent me anywhere except in my reproductive freedom. (I don't really believe I can count on that one, either.)

But if you think there's any other real political difference between the candidates, well, keep taking the pills they're feeding you over at Fox and CNN.

Now that BP has soiled our seas, and our leerless feeder has not offered a single solution, nor arrested those responsible for the crime (some accidents are criminal), I think it's high time we surrendered our stars and flew a more accurate flag. We can sew the corporate logos on the new flag, like patches on a Boy Scout uniform, each year according to Fortune 500's annual profits list. The changing of the logos can be celebrated on Flag Day each year, and some lucky citizens can attend the annual celebration at the mall (a real mall, not some strip of museum-front property) and take home a plastic bag of free stuff--AIG-imprinted pencils, a Pfizer heartburn-relief sample pack, coupons for Pepsi, a plastic Bank of America keychain (maybe with the key of someone's foreclosed-upon home!), an oil-soaked pelican Beanie Baby. It sounds remarkably similar to this year's World Expo in Shanghai.

Oh, and a souvenir mini-flag.


- - - - - -

*OK, sure you do. We got rid of a few of some of the previous administrations' insane policies (torture, don't-ask-don't-tell, etc.), and are working toward restoring the civil liberties stolen under the Patriot Act. But I'm angry, so please forgive the hyperbole and hyperventilation.

**Intelligence counts, too, I suppose keep thinking want to believe.

disclaimer: logos are for satirical purposes only and do not represent corporate endorsement; all logos are (probably) registered trademarks of the corporations they represent; offer void where prohibited; drinking recommended

the spot on the wall

part two


















For breakfast Monday morning
I cook my daughter oatmeal
perfect ratio of salt to sugar to oats
served with teaspoon, splash of cream
because I am a bad mother
out of milk since Friday.

I scrub the teakettle shiny again
detail the gas stove’s nooks
hose down the sticky laminate
and bad wife guilt and shame
for this dirty house
its understocked larder.

I break down at the supermarket
cartful of milk and cheese
paused beyond the baby food
asking the floor what a good mom
would have done these twelve years
four months and seven days.

A large kitchen picture hides
the haphazard hashes of inches
random intervals from toddler to ‘tween
whenever I looked up mid-preoccupation
to notice her size and breadth and depth
the bigness of will and spirit.

Sometimes I pull the picture down
and stare at months of marks
wonder what we did that day and why
I put her back against that wall
and whether she was happy then
and whether we had milk.

the spot on the wall

part one

I told a friend I was having a bit of an identity crisis. I’m not sure what I am—an author, a photographer, a mosaic artist, just another creative Libra with undiag- nosed adult ADD. She asked how I wanted to be known. I don’t even have to think about the answer. I am a writer. It’s like skin on a body; you can’t detach yourself from it without stinging, burning, bleeding out. I stopped writing in 1997, and I didn’t sleep for five years.

It seems I could feel that way about photography, too. I’m never without my camera—sometimes because I want to capture the essence of a thing with words later, but more because I don’t feel like I see as fully without it. Photographs verify and fortify and rectify my vision—even enhance it. (Amazing how much of a bird you can see by zooming in with a 300mm lens.) But take my camera away, and, although I’ll flounder a bit, I’ll still be me to my core. I’ll still sleep.

I rarely go somewhere just for the pictures of an event, but almost every interesting thing I've done in my life is for the writing of it. If you are a writer, you do things—interesting things—things other than playing endless rounds of Bejewelled Blitz and posting status updates. In November, I drove members of Bob Schneider’s band to their hotel and back to the venue, an unglamorous thing for a fan to do, just so I could write about the experience. I went to Rock & Roll Fantasy Camp for a day two summers ago as part of a writing project. I enrolled my daughter in the School of Rock and went to Ladies Rock Camp for three days last summer for the same writing project. It’s why I meet people for coffee. It's why I ask questions. I land a photo shoot for an interesting person, and before we book the session, I’m interviewing my subject, trying to parlay our meeting into a story. I am a dog, and everything outside of myself is, potentially, a bone.

I guess the crisis is less with my own identity than it is with experiences. Photography subjects are endless—flowers in drizzle are always beautiful, my dog Chance is always handsome. But I have nothing to do right now, nowhere to go; I have nothing to say. I’ve been sitting around for the past few dreary, chilly, rainy days wallowing in the miserable sitting. I am a shapeless blob at my kitchen table wondering who I am, staring at a spot on the wall.

From the time I was six years old, I would ask my mother to give me a subject, and she’d say something like, “Write a poem about the dog." And I would. She'd point and say, "Write a poem about that spot on the wall.” And I would.

I’m all grown up, but I still feel like I need someone to tell me what to write. Agents and editors are often unwilling, and my mom isn't much help in that area anymore. Lately, I can't even write a poem on my own; my last five were composed around a bunch of random words donated by my friends on Facebook.

So here I sit, with an open call to the universe, waiting, prepared, ready with all the perfect words, all my soldiers, my children. Here I sit, staring at this spot on the wall. The spot where I’ve recorded my daughter’s height for the last eight years of her life.