That can't have been three years ago

My very good friend Olivia asked me to write her a letter of recommendation for the Common App for college. While I am absolutely positive that she can't be a day older than five, she seems to think she is 17. Worse, she somehow believes she's old enough to go away to college.

I struggled through my shock at this turn of events and relied on a writer's best friend -- self plagiarization. I cribbed heavily from the post below, which I wrote three years ago, from her recommendation for high scool.  I wrote a new ending, though, and I'll share it here: "Do I need to say it? I suppose I will. Any college which accepts this young woman is getting a gift. She’s not a sparkly, overwrapped gift that promises much and delivers little. She is a wonder, a delight, and a gift that will make your campus a better place – truer, deeper and wiser. Lucky you, to spend four years with this amazing young woman."

THURSDAY, JANUARY 31, 2013

To the Admissions Office at De LeSalle High School

One of my favorite people in the world, Olivia Louise, asked me to write her a recommendation for high school admission. Once I got done, I realized that I wanted to share it, because she really is a person worth knowing, and should probably enjoy a wider fan base than she currently does. So here goes:

I still can’t remember the first time I met Olivia. It’s as if she materialized in our house, went off to play Barbies with my daughter, and, in many ways, never left, thank goodness. Over the years, I’ve served her thousands of dishes of mac and cheese, gone to see her performances in school plays (always stellar), noticed when her teeth fell out, sympathized when she got braces and celebrated when they came off. I’ve ferried her all over town, to day camps and drama classes and in between one sporting event and another (she is seriously sporty). Olivia has spent a lot of time being a passenger in my car, and that alone is a testament to her strength of character.

The hands-down best times she and I ever spent together were when my daughter, who is six months older than she is, was already in half-day kindergarten, and Olivia, still a preschooler, would walk up to the grade school with me to pick up my daughter for lunch and playtime. Olivia would get to hold the dog’s leash, all by herself, and she would walk by my side, telling me what was on her mind. I loved, really loved, hearing what was on her mind.

A part of me, the big, dumb part, or maybe the hopeful part, believes that these walks happened just a week or two ago, and that Olivia is still waiting across the alley for me. All I need to do is walk up the cowpath she and Mary created between our two yards, help her on with boots and mittens, and we’re set for our walk up to school.

But of course this isn’t true. She is taller than me, and smarter than me (always was, I have to admit) and ready, now, for high school. Despite all those changes, she is still someone whose company I enjoy just as much as I did on what I now must admit were long-ago walks.

Last year, our family went to Beijing to visit my oldest daughter, who was studying there. It was an arduous journey that none of us particularly wanted to make, and one of the few things that made it bearable was that Olivia came along with us. The truth is, we are a high-strung, excitable bunch, even worse when we’re all together, or when we’re traveling, and Olivia calms us down. She is the still, strong center to which we cling, whether we realize we’re doing it or not.

It was a better trip, because of her – her clarity, her observations, her willingness to do crazy things like fling herself in a metal sled down the side of the Great Wall of China. It was an outrageous thing to do, and Olivia and I, both Olympic-class worriers, were probably equally afraid of such a stunt. We’ve both spent our lifetimes thinking about all the things that can ever go wrong, and then working very hard to prevent them from happening. The difference between Olivia and me is that I rode back down on the babyish gondola, and she picked up the sled and went down the side of the Great Wall. That’s how brave she is, and that’s one of the many reasons I admire her so much.

Three other reasons I admire her (and these are just the top-of-the-head ones, I could come up with dozens upon further reflection): 1) She sees everything, I mean everything, but she doesn’t feel a need to comment. She just knows, and that’s enough. And I know when she knows, and sometimes that's kind of fun and sometimes it's a little bit scary. 2) She has been through a lot, more than the fair share for an average eighth grader, and, perhaps because of that, or just because she’s wonderful anyway, she is one of the most resilient people I know. 3) She does not toss away her smiles and laughs for free; they must be earned. This makes me try even harder to please Olivia, and when I do – whether it’s by pulling the banana bread out of the oven at the exact moment she wants it, or by getting all the logistics right and getting her to the place she needs to be at the precise instant she needs to be there – I feel as if I’ve earned a medal, and it’s not in Worrying, but in something really worthwhile, Olivia-Pleasing.

In some ways, she’s been a grown-up ever since I’ve met her, and it’s been interesting to watch her get older and become more of a fit with her actual outside self. She was one heck of a wise five-year-old, and she’s a wicked-wise fourteen-year-old. She’s the sort of person who won’t necessarily get any smarter or wiser as the years go by, because that would probably be impossible. Instead, she’ll just become herself,more and more, and that will be an amazing thing to behold.

Making them up as I go along

If you think the people you associate with don’t have very specific rules for holidays, try switching things up one year and observe what happens. “Let’s have lasagna for dinner on Thanksgiving, and let’s eat at noon instead of six.” “Let’s spend Christmas at my family’s house instead of yours.” “What if we don’t put up a tree this year?” Did you hear that shrieking? Yeah, they’ve got rules, all right.

The thing about me is that I’ve never much cared about following any rules, let alone holiday ones. My life would probably be easier if I were always sure of the One Way that things had to be, but I’m usually more interested in seeing what would happen if I tried something different and stood back for a longer look. 

It’s a lifeview I took with me into motherhood, so my children have suffered through the year when we didn’t get a Christmas tree until we smuggled one out of a closed lot on Christmas Eve, or the Thanksgiving “Democracy Rules” dinner, when everyone got to vote on what they wanted to eat, and we ended up with dumplings and brownies. So far, they’re surviving.

It’s not that I don’t like holidays. I just prefer to make up new ones, which are usually a lot more fun. Like the tradition of taking a couple carfuls of kids every December to the community center gingerbread house-making event, and pretending not to notice when the years slid by, and the kids got so big and tall that they’re now consistently mistaken for parents. The constant whoops of joy coming from our table, where the boys try to craft elf heads on pikes, or re-create vampire-reindeer wars with nothing more than red licorice and pretzel sticks, are well worth any confused looks from the other participants, who tend toward the one-nice-granny-with-a-four-year-old demographic.

Sometimes I get so deep in the throes of a newly minted tradition that I don’t realize how entrenched it has become. I hadn’t realized that our pickup-game-style Easter Egg hunts, normally conducted with whomever happened to be standing around at the time and was wearing a warm-enough jacket, had become “a thing.” But when I went back and starting printing out group photos from years past, I realized there were a lot of years that had passed. That invented holiday, I realize in retrospect, has been a keeper.

We celebrated one of our self-created days yesterday, and ended up talking about one I’d already forgotten, so it was a nice break from the current action of my life, which has been trending not-so-hot of late. This holiday is called “Going to the Lands,” and it involves Mary Katherine and Olivia, plus (and you might be noticing a theme emerging here) whoever else happens to be hanging around that day. Celebration requires, at minimum, a visit to the annual spring flower show at the store-formerly-known-as-Dayton’s and an afterwards (never before!) visit to Candyland, where one-quarter pound of candy must be purchased for each child. Also, every single time, Mary Katherine will get Sour Patch kids as her candy selection, which is the dumbest candy choice ever, but I don’t think that’s a rule so much as a phenomenon.

Yesterday was the only day that Olivia, a very busy eighth grader (president of her class, not that I'm bragging), was going to be free. As luck (my kind of luck, lately) would have it, it was a day in which I’d already crammed a number of grownuppy and workish activities. But I promised her that I’d get my nose to the grindstone and still manage to be in her driveway at 2 p.m., and, more or less, I was. It wouldn’t be a Kendrick holiday without extra guests and several automobile trips to gather up participants, and this one was no different. Olivia’s younger sister wanted to come along (sure, if you don’t mind double buckling, sweetie), and I had to drive back across town to get Mary Katherine and Maren, our favorite seven-year-old. It’s called “Going to the Lands” because, on a previous visit, a younger Olivia had happily observed that the nooks and crannies of the various settings at the show “were like little lands.” The Holiday Name was born; some things you just don’t change.

It was a lovely respite of an afternoon, and I was happy just to be together with the people I love for no particular reason, which I guess is why holidays were invented in the first place. I paid no attention to the fact that Olivia is now taller than me, or that Maren can read the names of all the flowers by herself and doesn’t really need a whole lot of help for anything, not even for shoelace-tying. In my perfect holiday world, everyone is four years old, including me, and yesterday felt like a perfect world.

Things were a little less perfect when we pulled out of the parking garage and saw that, on April 5, it had started to snow. All the green lands we’d been looking at for the past hour had tricked us into thinking that spring might be coming, so we were a bit desolate as we tottered home in the bulging Beetle (me, two teens, a tween, and a luckily very slender seven-year-old). That’s when Olivia decided to cheer us up by talking about another made-up holiday.

“Remember the Breakfast Picnic?” she asked. I did, and they did, although they remembered details like cinnamon rolls, which they either made up or which I had long ago forgotten. The basics of the holiday were that, as soon as they woke up on a beautiful Sunday morning (which was mighty early in those days), I gathered up blankets and food and camera and took them to the Walker Sculpture Garden for a Breakfast Picnic, an event of my own invention. We were alone in the park (because every other normal person was still asleep), which gave everything the magical feeling that the whole beautiful space existed just for us. We fed ducks (I guess they liked those cinnamon rolls, if I can trust what the children tell me), and the kids stood on all the sculptures that had big “no standing” signs by them while I took pictues.

As I fell asleep last night, I thought about that day, and I was thinking about it when I woke up this morning. I rooted around and found those pictures I'd taken. No one had taken any pictures of me, but that was okay. I can tell you how I looked – I looked tired. I had a carful of kids, it was early in the morning, and somehow I had talked myself into baking cinnamon rolls and talked them into how much fun it would be if we tried eating them outdoors. 

But even though I was tired, I did it anyway, and I am so proud of myself now for making the effort. I want to reach out to that Julie of May 2008 and tell her, good girl. You made something happen that these young women still remember – a green space and a perfect morning and a little bit of fun. It doesn’t matter that you were tired then, or that you’re even more tired now. You made up a holiday five years ago, a good one. And that, Julie Kendrick, was something worthwhile.

To the Admissions Office at De LeSalle High School

One of my favorite people in the world, Olivia Louise, asked me to write her a recommendation for high school admission. Once I got done, I realized that I wanted to share it, because she really is a person worth knowing, and should probably enjoy a wider fan base than she currently does. So here goes:

I still can’t remember the first time I met Olivia. It’s as if she materialized in our house, went off to play Barbies with my daughter, and, in many ways, never left, thank goodness. Over the years, I’ve served her thousands of dishes of mac and cheese, gone to see her performances in school plays (always stellar), noticed when her teeth fell out, sympathized when she got braces and celebrated when they came off. I’ve ferried her all over town, to day camps and drama classes and in between one sporting event and another (she is seriously sporty). Olivia has spent a lot of time being a passenger in my car, and that alone is a testament to her strength of character.

The hands-down best times she and I ever spent together were when my daughter, who is six months older than she is, was already in half-day kindergarten, and Olivia, still a preschooler, would walk up to the grade school with me to pick up my daughter for lunch and playtime. Olivia would get to hold the dog’s leash, all by herself, and she would walk by my side, telling me what was on her mind. I loved, really loved, hearing what was on her mind.

A part of me, the big, dumb part, or maybe the hopeful part, believes that these walks happened just a week or two ago, and that Olivia is still waiting across the alley for me. All I need to do is walk up the cowpath she and Mary created between our two yards, help her on with boots and mittens, and we’re set for our walk up to school.

But of course this isn’t true. She is taller than me, and smarter than me (always was, I have to admit) and ready, now, for high school. Despite all those changes, she is still someone whose company I enjoy just as much as I did on what I now must admit were long-ago walks.

Last year, our family went to Beijing to visit my oldest daughter, who was studying there. It was an arduous journey that none of us particularly wanted to make, and one of the few things that made it bearable was that Olivia came along with us. The truth is, we are a high-strung, excitable bunch, even worse when we’re all together, or when we’re traveling, and Olivia calms us down. She is the still, strong center to which we cling, whether we realize we’re doing it or not.

It was a better trip, because of her – her clarity, her observations, her willingness to do crazy things like fling herself in a metal sled down the side of the Great Wall of China. It was an outrageous thing to do, and Olivia and I, both Olympic-class worriers, were probably equally afraid of such a stunt. We’ve both spent our lifetimes thinking about all the things that can ever go wrong, and then working very hard to prevent them from happening. The difference between Olivia and me is that I rode back down on the babyish gondola, and she picked up the sled and went down the side of the Great Wall. That’s how brave she is, and that’s one of the many reasons I admire her so much.

Three other reasons I admire her (and these are just the top-of-the-head ones, I could come up with dozens upon further reflection): 1) She sees everything, I mean everything, but she doesn’t feel a need to comment. She just knows, and that’s enough. And I know when she knows, and sometimes that's kind of fun and sometimes it's a little bit scary. 2) She has been through a lot, more than the fair share for an average eighth grader, and, perhaps because of that, or just because she’s wonderful anyway, she is one of the most resilient people I know. 3) She does not toss away her smiles and laughs for free; they must be earned. This makes me try even harder to please Olivia, and when I do – whether it’s by pulling the banana bread out of the oven at the exact moment she wants it, or by getting all the logistics right and getting her to the place she needs to be at the precise instant she needs to be there – I feel as if I’ve earned a medal, and it’s not in Worrying, but in something really worthwhile, Olivia-Pleasing.

In some ways, she’s been a grown-up ever since I’ve met her, and it’s been interesting to watch her get older and become more of a fit with her actual outside self. She was one heck of a wise five-year-old, and she’s a wicked-wise fourteen-year-old. She’s the sort of person who won’t necessarily get any smarter or wiser as the years go by, because that would probably be impossible. Instead, she’ll just become herself, more and more, and that will be an amazing thing to behold.

Bargains by the Pound

I don’t like shopping, I like scrounging, and there’s a big difference.  Shopping happens at a store, or worse yet, a mall. It features nice lighting, helpful attendants, piped-in music and shopping bags. Feh. 

Scrounging, a much more adventurous experience, involves heaps and bins and random assortments of what might be crud or might be kinda sorta useful. It takes place in furtive curbside stops, at garage sales and, blessedly, at my new spiritual home, the Goodwill Outlet on University Avenue in St. Paul.  

I don’t know how I managed to survive so many years before uncovering this Shangri-La right in my own city, but from the moment I walked in the door, I knew I had found the Real Deal. The harsh, overhead lighting. The bored security guard leaning against the cement block wall. The diverse customer base that left me, the white lady, in the minority. The heaps of bizarrely unrelated merchandise, with conveyer belts pushing buckets of randomness along. And, the best part -- the fabulous By the Pound pricing system, a truly genius plan. Who could resist an experience in which everything you buy will cost $1.49 a pound? Clearly, not me.

The first time I happened upon this wonderland, I was with Mary Katherine, a vintage-friendly gal, and her overly hygienic friend Olivia. Mary Katherine dove in quickly, searching for treasure in her trademark “pony in here somewhere” style. Olivia stood back, aghast, once again. This was not the first time I’d horrified the poor thing, and would not, I fear, be the last.

But I had bins to sort through, so I got right to work. From the first heap, I pulled out a man’s XXL sweatshirt (I had thought it was a bedspread), followed by a newborn onesie, complete with formula stains. Next, a couple of bedraggled prom dresses that, could they talk, might have some juicy tales to tell. Then a quick succession of regrettable '80s fashion choices – blouses with button covers, holiday-themed vests and a “power suit” (remember those?  I wore them constantly and never attained a smidgen of power), complete with football-worthy shoulder pads.  Finally, one lone espadrille. Now we were getting somewhere, I thought happily, anticipating that the next bin over would surely be the one that yielded a treasure – and yes, I’m aware that this pattern of cogitation is not unlike that of chronic slot machine players, but without the free drinks.

I sensed a shadow crossing my newest heap. Mary Katherine and Olivia were standing across from me, faces tight with that “about to die of boredom” look that teens manage so well. Mary’s pony-somewhere spirit seemed to have soured. Olivia looked like she wanted to go home and take a bath, possibly a Full Silkwood. I begged for five more minutes and then gave in, taking my small pile to the scale … a red cardigan for Mary Katherine, a couple summer tops for Emma (it’s getting hot in Beijing, she tells me) and a pillowcase with cherries on it because, well, I like things with cherries on them. Total sale: $5.25. No bag. Go home.

I’ve been back once already, this time without the teens, wearing comfortable shoes, and with an MP3 player to drown out the execrable music.  I was in heaven, just rooting around and thinking of all the stories that went with all this junk. I suppose I could have spent a nice day at the mall, sipping a smoothie and strolling through the cologne-scented aisles, but really, why would I want to?  There aren’t any stories associated with anything there, and here, I had nothing but questions. What happened to that other pink rain boot? Did the sleeves on that plaid jacket get cut off by a chainsaw, or eaten by a bear? Did someone actually wear this, and how long ago, and how sorry were they afterwards?

Give me stories, and give me bins, and most of all, give me by-the-pound pricing for my scrounging adventures. I'm sure I'll find just what I'm looking for, the next heap over.

The Clump of Hair in the Bible Book, and other Confessions from a Reading Addict

My eccentricities mount with each passing year, and I’ve just realized I can add another one to my list. It seems that I’ve started feeling sorry for books. Of course they're on the way out, especially the long-past-popular ones that never get checked out of the library. When was the last time you read a library book that still had a date stamp card inside it?  My point exactly.  These books have feelings too, you know. They can't help it that they aren't Kindles. Heck, they aren't even paperbacks, poor things.  

This new little pet cause of mine started a few years ago, and I blame Verlyn Klinkenborg. If you don’t know who that is, really you should look him up, because he’s a writer for the New York Times who produces occasional essays that are as perfect as a miniature cupcake with sprinkles, just enough and just right, every time. It all began with his essay Life, Love and the Pleasures of Literature in Barsetshire.

In it, he discusses the novels of Angela Thirkell, who wrote 29 books between 1933 and 1961, all set in the fictional English county of Barsetshire. It’s the same location where Trollope set his books, but, like my bud Verlyn, I like Thirkell better then Trollope, and quite a lot. Here is the line from his essay that really got me going,  “If you cut only the scenes that take place during tea, half of Thirkell would be missing."

Nuff said, Verlyn; you had me at “tea,” I thought, and hastily requested the first book in the series, High Rising, published in 1933. I dug in as soon as it arrived. Is there anything better for a book addict than stumbling upon a series? It doesn’t matter how fast you gobble up a story, because the characters are waiting patiently for you in the very next book, just as soon as you can get to them. 

I loved these books.  Here's one reason why:  Klinkenborg said in his essay that half the scenes take place during tea, but I’d tack on another 25% for scenes describing who is taking which guest to the train station, and who is picking up the guests who are arriving from the city for the weekend. The main railroad line at Winter Overcotes serves Shearing Junction, Winter Underclose, and Worsted. Nearby are Lambton, Fleece, Skeynes, and Eiderdown, naturally. As much as I love the train station conversations, I’m also awfully partial to the sherry party scenes as well, and when the gin-soaked lesbians, Hampton and Bent, throw a cocktail party, then I’m really in heaven. By now I suppose it’s clear that just about nothing happens in these novels. It’s also clear, I imagine, that I very much prefer it that way.  

There were some challenges in getting through the series, though. It took the library forever to dig up the books and get them to my branch, and sometimes I’d get so impatient for one to arrive that I’d skip ahead and then double back. Sometimes my online request would be met with this message: "The only copy available is located in off-site storage. The wait time is approximately six weeks.” Fine, I’d think, find it. I need to see what Hampton and Bent are up to in 1939, and I’m happy to have my tax dollars used for a such a noble purpose.

And while I was very happy --  an expanse of books I loved stretched out before me, just waiting to be read – there were some drawbacks. On the plus side, the books smelled great when I opened them – like Pepsodent and Lucky Strikes and unvarnished, irony-free optimism.  But as much as I enjoyed opening their crackly spines and letting them get their first breaths of fresh air in 50 years, I had to admit that these books looked awful. I wondered what had happened to them in that so-called “off-site storage,” poor things.

They’d been recovered in that bumpy laminate peculiar to libraries, often repeatedly. I imagine that the bestsellers got all the nice, peppy colors. Thirkell’s recoverings tended toward what might have been beige many years ago, and was now just … ugly. 

People noticed. During the course of Project Thirkell, I was visiting a friend overnight, and she peered intently at my nighttime reading.  “What is that?” she said, squinting suspiciously. And then, with a little more skepticism than I hope was warranted, she asked, “Is that the Bible?” I examined the small, liver-colored volume in my hands and summoned up as much indignation as I could manage at ten p.m. “It happens to be Pomfret Towers, and they’re just about to have a sherry party, so Good. Night.”

But of course the slur stuck, and even I began to refer to the ratty old tomes as Bible Books. Mary Katherine and Olivia were especially horrified when I opened one volume and accidentally released a big clump of hair, circa 1960, I’d guess, which was the last time the book had been checked out, according to the antique pocket and stamped card glued in its front. Olivia still asks me if I’ve found hair in any books lately. I refuse to answer, naturally.

As must happen for all addicts, the sad day finally arrived when I’d reached the bottom of my stash. I started reading bestsellers, and things my book club recommended, books that seemed to feature a lot of colorful, slender women photographed from the neck down, I assume in the attempt to make them more Universal. Also, there were a lot of photographs of the backs of heads. I missed my liver-spotted reading material, even if it drew stares in the nicer sort of coffee shops.

And then, ta da, a new source.  I read Second Read: Writers Look Back at Classic Works of Reportage, from the Columbia Journalism Review. I was enthralled by Justin Peters' essay on Brazilian Adventure, written by Ian Fleming’s older brother, Peter. In April 1932, he replied to an advertisement in the personal columns of The Times: “Exploring and sporting expedition, under experienced guidance, leaving England June to explore rivers central Brazil, if possible ascertain fate Colonel Percy Fawcett; abundant game, big and small; exceptional fishing; ROOM TWO MORE GUNS; highest references expected and given.” The expedition, organized by Richard Churchyard, traveled to São Paulo, then overland to the rivers Araguaia and Tapirapé, heading towards the likely last-known position of the Fawcett expedition. Fleming’s book was published by Scribner’s in 1934.

I couldn’t get to the computer fast enough and, hurrah, the library had one copy, and it was even in the land of the living, not the dreaded off-site storage. When it arrived, it was everything I’d hoped for – funny and witty and full of great self-deprecatory British touches. There were no sherry parties, but I imagined Peter Fleming visiting Barsetshire and being very well received. Lord and Lady Pomfret might have him to tea, or perhaps Mrs. Brandon, and he would make quite an impression. Perhaps, deliciously, there could be a discussion of which train would be best for his return to London, and who should drive him to the station.

There’s no Brazilian Adventure series, but Fleming did write other books, and I’ve requested them.  I’m hoping they’ll smell of cigars and brandy, but I’ll be satisfied if they just carry the faint aroma of tea.

Finally, may I make a plea for the continued circulation of Mrs. Thirkell's series? Request one today, any one, and I promise you won’t be disappointed. The clump of hair is long gone.  And imagine how happy that book will be to have been checked out twice in one decade.

By the Way, Merry Christmas

I'm always suspicious of people who rattle on about how much they hate celebrating Christmas. It's like sitting in the Barcalounger and grumbling about how you stubbed your toe the last time you walked across the living room floor.  Move the ottoman, for God's sake. Rerrange the area rug.  It's your house.

I've had more than the average share of truly miserable Christmases, but I've found, as I advance in age, that it's possible to wrest the holiday away from the past and turn it into something else entirely, without tradition or expectations. Sometimes, it can even be fun. Last year, for example, we lolled around Leah's apartment in Chicago all Christmas Day, went to the movies and then ordered in Chinese. It was a nearly perfect holiday, in my estimation. And this year, while it was nip and tuck there for a while, all turned out well, with a genuine Sam Goldwyn touch.

The Christmas surprise this year was not that we celebrated the holiday in a faux-European cafe in a Beijing hutong, watching Guys and Dolls being projected on a blank wall to a crowd of appreciative expats.  The absolute miracle was that all of us had arrived, together and in one piece, and had managed to find the place.

One stray listing in a Beijing City Weekend magazine had led us to this Christmas Day Folly. It had all seemed like a good idea until we were forced to take two cabs, agreeing to meet Emma and Olivia on a designated street corner in a neighborhood called Gulou Dong Dajie, in the Dongcheng district,which is roughly about the size and population of Iowa.
 
If I had somehow thought the street corner would look like the corner of Lyndale and Diamond Lake, I was soon disabused of the notion. As Dick, Mary and I skittered out of the taxi and began to look around, it was clear that the scene was more like the opening of a James Bond movie than a starting point for a family outing.  All that was missing was a motorcycle making its getaway and upending a few vegetable stands, and we were ready for Central Casting.

I scanned the crowd in vain, frustrated by Emma's refusal to answer her cell phone, and hearing my mother's voice in my head, muttering something about "white slavery." It would certainly be a challenge to explain Olivia's disappearance to her parents, I realized. I began to form a bit of a spin for them:  "The trip was going really well, right up until then..."

Thank God for O's height, and her hat, because she stood out of the crowd much more than Emma, who has a way of blending in here a lot more than she ever did in Minneapolis. In the fifteen minutes our poky cab driver had lagged behind them, they'd already been accosted by beggars and saved by an English-speaking resident. Olivia had had her picture taken "by someone with a huge Nikkon," she reported, smugly.  I felt as if I could cry with relief.

The trek through the narrow alleyway in search of 44 Baochao Hutong (宝钞胡同44号) seemed minor after that scare. We found it in no time, and while the rest of the gang went off in search of dumplings, I chatted with the owner, a Kurkistani who had partnered in the business with friends from Hong Kong, Spain and Italy. The Italian's grandma, here on a visit, was in the kitchen making gnocchi. Hot wine in hand (thank God; it was about fifty degrees in the place), I chatted with a girl from Ukraine and waited for the movie to start.

There was Nathan Detroit, setting up the oldest established permanent floating crap game in New York. There was Miss Adelaide and her chronic cold. Nicely Nicely was told to sit down, he was rocking the boat. And, as I glanced out the uninsulated window at the curved tile roofs, the red lanterns and the occasional passing scooter, there was old Beijing, still looking like a James Bond movie, but a little less overwhelming now that we were all together.

A few hours earlier, as we'd been making our way to the cafe, a young man had approached Emma and asked if he could have a picture taken with us. He needed it for his English class, he explained. I suspected that he just wanted a record of these incredibly pasty and puffy humanish specimens who had wandered into his ancient alleyway. After the photo was snapped and we started to walk away, he hurried behind us, remembering something.  "By the way," he said, "Merry Christmas."

You're not kidding, pal.

Here's a link to the cafe, the next time you're in town. Wear a sweater, order the hot wine and tell them that the puffy white family sent you.

One Day

One day in September 1989, I was at the New Center in Detroit, getting ready for a presentation. There was a new guy there, and I laughed at his jokes. In fact, he made me laugh so hard that we started to attract a bit of negative attention. I still recall Steve Maritz' raised eyebrow.

 

One day in November 1992, the two of us eloped to Las Vegas, and got married at the Little Church of the West.

 

One day in June, 1995, I stood at the top of a stone stairway at the Wuhan Foundling Hospital in China. Someone placed a bundle in my arms, and I was holding my daughter. She had red painted fingernails, a circle of red polish in the middle of her forehead, and a very annoyed expression, that, more or less, she has perpetually retained.

 

One day in July 1997, I refused to believe the results of the home pregancy test, so I tried again. Seven months later, Mary Katherine was born -- almost six pounds, utterly hairless and radiating love from the get-go.

 

One summer day in 2001, the boys who lived across the alley showed up, as they had been doing since the weather got warm, to see if Emma wanted to play outside.  Behind them was their sister, a solemn-faced little girl who asked me if Mary was available to play. I summoned Mary, and they faced off in the kitchen, deciding to play Barbies in the basement. They haven't, in many senses, ever stopped.

 

One day in September 2011, Emma left home in the middle of the night to fly to Beijing as a student in School Year Abroad, determined to conquer the language she'd heard only as an infant.

 

One day in December 2011, the five of us met up at the Marriott Beijing City Wall, ready to make our own crazy quilt version of a Family Christmas.

 

From where we've come, to where we are now, God Bless Us, Every One.  

Indirect Objects

Olivia nipped another warm Tollhouse cookie from the sheet and made a pronouncement that had the ring of  undisputed fact, not mere opinion:  “The thing is,” she said, still chewing reflectively, “that they taste okay now, right from the oven, but these cookies taste the very best when I eat them out of the Green Tin.” 

Oh honey. I smiled to myself and kept my mouth shut, but I felt like I had just knocked back a straight shot of pure joy. I was happy because I had helped to conjure a sacred object for someone I love, right in my own sticky-countered, fingerprint-ridden kitchen. That sacred object had been produced from the ever-potent mix of food and love and tradition. The Green Tin, bought for fifty cents at a garage sale a few years ago, has been invested with the power to summon up safe and happy memories for my good pal Olivia Louise, every time she thinks about it. That’s what you get for fifty cents and a few billion homemade cookies.

We all swim in deep, unseen currents of feeling for the objects of our youth, and even deeper ones about the food we remember from those times. So it stands to reason that everyone can recall one or two kitchen objects that summon up memories of unending sweetness and eternal comfort. And if those pasts weren't necessarily so rosy, one treasured object can become a featured player in a Mental Movie of good moments, repeated on an endless loop that deletes any scenes of shouting, worry or pain.

 When my mother died, and we cleaned out her house, I remember that what I really wanted to take away with me was her set of metal measuring spoons. They were the same cheap set that everyone’s mom had back then, at least moms of a certain age who hadn’t gone all modern and opted for the avocado green plastic set, earned as a hostess gift from a Tupperware party. Even though the spoons were not at all unique, they were a sacred object for me. They reminded me of cooking with my mother, which I did not do often, but which seemed, in retrospect, to be some of the most important time we spent together.

Holding those spoons, standing in her kitchen, just weeks after her funeral, I could feel myself back in that same room a child. I was so small that I was standing on a stool so I could see over the counter. I could hear the whir of the motor of the Sunbeam MixMaster, and I could see those beaters spinning and clanking against the white mixing bowl.

In my memory, she has found the bottle of vanilla on the narrow rack of shelves that hang over the back of one kitchen door. And now she’s standing over me, measuring vanilla into the bowl and letting a little extra spill over the edge of the spoon. “Always be generous with the vanilla,” she tells me, “because a little extra won’t hurt anything. But measure the salt in the sink, because too much of that is awful.” Then she tells me, as she does every time we bake together, that women used to put vanilla behind their ears as perfume.

Forty years from now, I will repeat all this to my daughters, and the words will spill from my lips as if I just thought of them. But that isn’t what happens. In fact, they are magic words that have been living in a place where thought doesn’t go. They have been conjured by the sacred object – the cheap metal spoons I use when I bake, the ones that bring me back to my mother. 

The day I saw the Green Tin at a garage sale, I knew that it had potential. I’d had a similar as an object in my childhood, one with a lid that was blue on the outside and deep red on the inside; it was covered with thin line drawings of men singing in barbershop quartets. The tin only appeared at Christmas, when cookies were baked. Every year, my mother told me that my grandfather, whom I’d never met, had been a singer in a barbershop quartet, the Missouri Belles. She told me this until I stopped listening, and I’ve only just now remembered it.

But back to the garage sale. When I say that I knew the tin had potential, what I mean to say is that it possessed a sort of uselessness that  I immediately admired. It was clearly too big, especially for any one-batch, God-fearing, “not too much” Minnesotan cook. To fill this tin with cookies would mean a triple batch, maybe a quadruple one, and people don’t act like that here, a place in which “over the top” means “just an inch shy of the rim, and lukewarm, please.”

When I saw the tin, I knew it would take work, too much work, to fill it with the chocolate chip cookies that Olivia and her siblings love. But I could picture that tin being stacked on top of all the other luggage, ready for trips to their cabin. I could see it being carried into the house by members of my family, all of them grateful for the invitation to be in a lovely place with the people they cared for most. The tin, filled with cookies, would be a thank-you, an offering and a talisman.

I thought all of this as I handed over two quarters and strolled down the sidewalk, holding the tin wth two hands in front of me, as if I were in some Holy Ceremony for Baked Goods, and had somehow broken loose from the rest of the procession.  I went home and I started to bake. It was exactly as much trouble to fill that tin as I had expected, but that was okay. There was power in the effort, not just that first time, but all the other summer weekdays when I slid sheet after sheet into and out of the oven, preparing for a Friday night trip to the cabin that would include a seemingly endless supply of cookies.

My mother's birthday was this week, and if she were alive, she’d be 91 years old. She would have hated being 91. She would have hated to slow down and feel old and watch her friends die. It’s better, I know, that she just fell down in my garden 13 years ago, better that she said “I don’t feel good,” and died in my arms before either of us had a chance to think about what was happening.

I have some memories, and I have the measuring spoons, although I’ve lost a couple in the garbage disposal over the years (we were too poor for such a luxury, which is why she was able to hold onto hers until I inherited them).

And thinking of all that makes me think this:  Olivia is right. They are better from the tin. Right now, she doesn’t know why. But someday she will.

And I hope, when she does know, that she’ll think of me, maybe on my birthday, and wonder what I did to make those cookies taste so good.

The Girl Who Lived

In case the Minneapolis Star-Tribune goon squad shows up at my door sometime soon, I just want to make my confession now – I ghostwrote Emma’s entry in the “How Harry Potter Changed my Life” essay contest. She has already claimed her prize – two tickets to a special preview of HP Part II last night, so I’ll take my lumps without a whimper.

To be fair, I tried the aboveboard route first. When I saw the announcement of the contest in Sunday’s newspaper, I suggested to Emma that she should try writing her own thoughts for an entry. “It’s only 150 words,” I cajoled. She was unmoved, having an important announcement to post on Facebook. “Just Inhaled.” (Next post: “Just exhaled.”)

“Is it okay, then,” I asked, “If I enter FOR you, and if you win, you can keep the tickets?” Generous girl that she was, she agreed. When I asked later if she wanted to take a look at my entry, she was feeling too languid for editing. 

With the unerring luck that seems to surround every aspect of her life, she won. She went to the preview with Olivia, and she did tell me “thanks” when she got home last night.

It wasn’t hard to write the entry. Even if she doesn’t recall it now, Harry Potter did change her life when she was younger. Harry, like Emma, was an orphan. That his parents had been murdered by Lord Voldemort and hers had placed her at the local orphanage in Wuhan did not matter to her. She and Harry, they had things in common.

It’s hard to remember a time before the books were turned into a multi-media empire, but the year she was in kindergarten, it was just a story that I read to her at bedtime, unattended by actors and directors and computer games. That year, Dayton’s Department Store announced that Harry Potter would be the theme of the annual Christmas display. We made our trek downtown for Santa, dinner at the Oak Room, and the display. As we wound through the show, we were entranced with the invisibility cape and Platform 9 ¾. 

Then we rounded a corner and came to the display of Harry at the Mirror of Desire. As the little mannequin waved, his parents appeared and disappeared in the mirror. He had never been able to see James and Lilly, but, with the magic of the Mirror of Desire, he could.

Intended to be a 30-second pass through on the way to the next display (and the gift shop, of course), the Mirror of Desire became Emma’s semi-permanent home. “Time for Santa,” we could cajole, trying to pull her along, but we’d learned some time before that she was not a girl who moved when she did not want to. She remained stock still, her little face turned up, her eyes riveted.

And then I realized what she was thinking – “If I just look hard enough, stand still enough, I will be able to look into that mirror, and I will be able to see MY parents.” 

So we stayed, passed around by a stream of grannies on walkers, mommies with strollers and kids who had seen enough and were ready for Santa.

Not Emma. She knew she could see them if she just tried hard enough. 

I can’t remember how we finally got her out of there. I can’t remember how I ever got to her sleep every night, either – with Emma, the hard parts have often become a bit blurred.

After that day, I started to tell her that I believed she would meet her parents someday. I had a couple friends in the adoption community who thought I was imprudent, leading her along. But I persisted. “You never know,” I would say. “What could happen with politics, with science, with DNA. Someday, somewhere, I bet you’ll find some family. It could be one cheek swab, one web site, away.”

She’s leaving for China in two months, ready to spend a school year studying and traveling. I don’t know where she’ll go or who she’ll meet. But I think I know her well enough to know that, in every face she encounters, she’ll be wondering, “Do I belong with you?” She carries that Mirror of Desire in her heart. And I hope that, sometime in her life, she can have a chance to find some family looking back at her, from the place that’s been empty for as long as she can remember.

With a backstory like that, I figure, at least the Star-Tribune can sport for a couple of movie tickets.

Here’s the entry:

I was an orphan in China and was adopted when I was a baby.  The first book I remember having read to me was the first one in the Harry Potter series. Harry was an orphan, just like me. When he looked in the Mirror of Desire and saw his Mom and Dad, I wished that I could do the same thing as Harry. But he found lots of other people to love him and look out for him, and so have I.  Like Harry, I’ve been able to find loving friends and family who protect me and love me. It makes me sad now to realize that I’ll never be able to look in the Mirror of Desire and see my birth parents, but I’m glad that I’ve shared my struggles along the way with Harry Potter, the Boy who Lived. By Emma, The Girl Who Lived.

Change of A Dress

One recent Friday, Mary Katherine wore Emma’s favorite dress from last summer to her out-of-uniform day at school. The next day, Angie wore Mary’s new black-and-white dress to her graduation and all-night party. Also that night, Mary Katherine’s friend Sulia wore Angie’s dress from homecoming to her prom. The next day, Emma wore Mary Katherine’s new flowered dress to a graduation party, then drove home by 6:15 so Mary Katherine could change immediately into the dress for a party she was attending that evening. Emma changed clothes, handed over the frock, and went back to her party, having dropped by home just for the garment hand-off.

This sort of activity is a fairly regular occurrence here in the People’s Republic of Womenswear, a classless and stateless society with free access to all articles of wearable consumption. Marx would be so proud, although he would probably disapprove of the amount of leg these girls display as somehow not in keeping with proletarian standards.

Perhaps Marx would observe that it’s because these girls have ready access to cheap goods (thanks to Everyday People and Savers), but it’s certainly true that they don’t engage in a capitalistic insistence upon private ownership. Clothes, accessories and shoes are freely offered up to siblings and visitors; and I often come upon a guest preparing to leave our house in an entirely different ensemble than the one in which she arrived. Olivia, who is frequently the recipient of largesse from the Mary Katherine Lending Library of Fashion Finds, will often show up for a visit with a large sack of previously borrowed items that she’s returning. Mary Katherine loves this, since she’s usually forgotten about the stuff by then, and says it feels just like Christmas.

My children's friends, I find, have a much better working knowledge of their possessions than I do. I was recently working at home when I received a phone call from Olivia, on her way to school.  “I need a bowler hat and a silver glove for a Michael Jackson skit at the talent show today,” she informed me. “They’re in Mary Katherine’s closet, top shelf, left side. Leave them in a bag on the front porch.”  (The make it snappy was implied, not actually spoken). Doubtful, I rummaged around where she’d told me to look, and sure enough, there was the stuff. I would have sworn an oath that we didn’t own any silver gloves, so it’s a good thing that the People’s Republic of Minneapolis doesn’t require inventory-related oaths from citizens, especially where matters of costuming are concerned.

Angela is departing for Rome in just a few weeks. Emma will be spending next year studying in Beijing. I wonder what next year will bring, when the pool of borrowables shrinks dramatically. When I find Mary Katherine schlepping around the house in my oft-mended and way-too-big-for-her yoga pants, I’ll know she’s truly desperate to wear something, anything, that doesn’t belong to her. Power to the people, Comrade Mary Katherine.