365 Memories

I am not a makeup maven. I've never worn foundation, except the professional "pancake" kind for those handful of times I have performed on stage (a lifetime ago!). For everyday, it just feels like a slow toxic suffocation of crud in my pores. Ditto the blush. No fuss, no muss. Definitely no mascara; the wand is a serious hazard. The most I could cope with: eyeliner, some shimmery nude color on lids, and lipstick. The lipstick used to be bright red. At some point, I realized that my olive skin tone is hard to match to the right shade, though—all the reds I like when I see them in stick form end up making my skin or my teeth look yellow. Now, I opt for more tawny and brown shades, when I bother. I remember, though, a time when I loved to browse the cosmetics aisles and look at lipsticks and read the exotic, trumped up names of the colors. I would laugh at the outrageousness . Of all the hundreds of names I've read, and the dozens of tubes I've owned, I remember the ...

I was driving back into downtown Chicago from Midway Airport: Cicero Avenue to the Stevenson, which is I-55, connecting to 90/94 West. Friends from Saint Louis had come up for the weekend—my girlfriend, T., and the man she was dating at the time, whom we called Mr. Zima (though not to his face). Remember that drink of the 1990s? Alcohol that wasn't beer, wine, or hard liquor; a clear, citrusy , malt-based drink with an identity crisis. It became known in most circles as the ultimate wussy drink, so really I salute my friend's boyfriend, for being able to ask for it with a straight face and no shame. People can say what they like. But this is beside the point . . . unless we want to contemplate the potential value of Zima as a wet blanket to a fireball. On the expressway back from the airport, before the exchange with I-90, traffic slowed nearly to a standstill. Up ahead, the right lane was blocked, so cars were merging to the left. We saw black smoke and, when we got close en...

Lifting, bending, touching, twisting. The sensuality of dance with a connected partner, with a man who knows how to move. The shifting energy of give and take, fluid in the open air around us. The expanding and contracting distances, the invisible cord tethering our bodies, so that no matter the steps taken in opposite directions, still we could only describe a set circumference, an orbit we could not break. I remember only once in my life dancing with a man in a perfect rhythm. It may be significant that this was not someone I was involved with at any time, romantically I mean, and this was long after I had abandoned as lost my almost-career of professional dance. That world—professional dance and ballet specifically—was one I left before achieving any training in partnering, in pas de deux . That was a milestone for us adolescent ballerinas in training—a symbolic awakening to the adult world of coupledom —and I often wondered what it meant that my dance pursuit ended before I could ...

A memory from early teen years. I was in Los Angeles, and it was the summer between freshman and sophomore year of high school. During the academic months, I was attending North Carolina School of the Arts, boarding there, chasing the passion—the obsession—of professional dance; of ballet. It was a profession with strong skin-color barriers, preaching an aesthetic, for women more than men, that did not embrace dark skin. Who could imagine a bronzed Odette? At that time, no one it seemed. In Tchaikovsky's masterpiece, even the Black Swan with her thirty-two fouettés was always white. Insulting (and I suspect largely unchanged, with mostly segregated dance companies)—and yet I didn't overthink it at the time. Now, remembering all the things it seemed permissible for the ballet teachers to say to us students, I am surprised that no one mentioned explicitly that we should stay out of the sun. That particular summer, though, it wouldn't have mattered. I remember going to the...

The hiss and boom of fireworks are tapering off. Another Independence Day in the United States. Today, I think about all the reasons why I feel lucky to belong to this messy community of free thinkers and loudmouthed discontents. News in recent weeks is enough to remind us: we do have basic freedoms of thought, speech, and action that people (especially women) in other parts of the world can only hold in their hearts as hope. I don't have the strongest record as a patriot, but there are not many other places I'd rather be at the moment, barring the need for serious health care (knock wood). Well, on vacation, yes, but that's different. So this day of anthems and outdoor grilling is coming to a close, and what do I remember in this moment? Really, because of the fact that this afternoon our family did nothing to mark the holiday (traditional plans fell through), I am remembering the picnic we would have had—the one that we've had whenever possible, in the years since I ...

During the summer of 1991, I was living in Dutchess County, New York, soaking up sun in the Hudson Valley. It would be my last summer there, as I was heading into my senior year in college and already knew that I would be moving on to do other things after graduation. At this time, I was involved with a local man who was nine years my senior (I've posted about him here and here ). He was self-employed and didn't work traditional hours so we got to spend a lot of time together. Things were still good between us that summer, easygoing; we took care of each other, which also meant taking care of each other's friends. One friend of his in particular (I'll call him "Adman") worked and lived in the city during the week; each Friday he would take the train from Manhattan to Rhinecliff , New York, and my boyfriend and I would go pick him up. The three of us fell into a routine that suited us all quite well. With summer hours in play, Adman would come up a little ear...

During the 1989-1990 academic year, I was in college and at the end of another mismatched relationship: this guy being the jealous, possessive type, which did not suit me in the least. At this point, we'd broken up—his fault and my own; neither of us was blameless—and things were still a bit raw and messy. As is the case for so many of us in these moments, music was the cure. Songs were the balm used to soothe, the bubbly champagne-like celebration of freedom, and the arrows we conveniently slung at each other when we'd used up all of our own words. I remember the progression of our relationship in music, starting with "Escape (The Piña Colada Song)" by Rupert Holmes and ending with "Train in Vain" by the Clash. These songs were much older than our short-lived romance, but they fit. As for contemporary albums, in 1989, Tom Petty's Full Moon Fever hit the charts. I remember that a girlfriend from high school was staying with me at the time of the al...

Thinking about high school friends. Friends from my second high school, that is. A place I entered under cover of deep Michigan snow, in the middle of my sophomore year. Spring semester, summer vacation, then back for one more term before having to take a medical leave. These events are all detailed in other posts. But what I remember today is this: an unexpected gesture from a friend I didn't even know I had. A handcrafted gift I have kept and cherished since the age of sixteen. With all the moves I've made, it's perhaps a miracle that this gift has not been broken—it is fragile, fired clay—and yet it makes sense: I have taken more than the usual care with it. The object in question is a plate, glazed in dove gray with an abstract crosshatch of lavender, peat, and twilight sky. It was made expertly by a boy in my school, in the ceramics studio, and given to my mother to pass along to me once she'd made the trip up north, alone, to clean out my room toward the end of th...

Three . . . Two . . . One . . . Ready or not, here I come! My friend's voice traveled down the hallway of her family's large, Los Angeles house. We were playing Hide and Seek: my friend, her older sister, and I. The girls went to my elementary school (we were in our last years), and they lived just down the canyon road from where I did. I remember being at their house fairly often, and also some kind of occasional car pool our moms had worked out. I remember that breakfast for them was often of the powdered sugar donut variety. Did I wish for the same, instead of my hard boiled egg and toast? Maybe, but not with conviction. Overall, I accepted (and now am very thankful for) my mother's firm belief in breakfast being the most important meal of the day and therefore her insistence that it be nutritious. I am now debating how to relate the next bit of info in a way that will not sound uncharitable. My intention is just to describe a fact, not a judgment, but, well, there aren...

In the summer of 1993, my ties to St. Louis were growing thin, though they were also at their strongest then, too. I had left law school during the spring semester, had trained as a volunteer with the Sexual Assault Response Team, and had also landed a public relations internship in a boutique-style marketing firm. I was fortunate to work for and with incredibly generous people, and together we did amazing things in the city. During the day, I learned how to write press releases and good industry newsletters; I helped plan special events to boost awareness for local businesses, and to raise money for charity. (The year I was there, I got my first taste of NASCAR culture, when the racing association teamed up with Northwest Plaza for a flood relief fundraiser.) At night, I stayed on call at home in the event I was needed in one of the area emergency rooms to comfort survivors of assault. It was a busy, intense time. My former law school colleagues were, many of them, away for the summe...

One thing you do not do when you live in New York City is buy bulk; well, some people might, but generally not those of us who are renting cramped apartments. I have lived in big cities almost all my life, and mostly in small spaces. This suits me fine. Yes, occasionally I would really like to have more room to eat, sleep, breathe in. There are problems with clothes not fitting in the closets and where to store things like in-line skates. Only recently have my husband and I managed to upgrade to a place that has, while not really a dining room , at least something resembling an alcove that's reserved for meals; it's more than just a table in the corner of the living room. Living and eating are, in terms of spatial relation, finally separate in our home (psychically they still often seem the same, though). This is luxury. Anyway, the point is that there's just no room to store extras, and even the one box of . . . let's say cereal . . . had better be the small and not th...

May 1992. Might have been during Memorial Day weekend. I was closing in on the last weeks of my undergraduate education, and I had a bad case of " senioritis ." Not that I had classes to blow off, even if it had been a weekday; spring of my senior year, I had only my thesis to work on, and it (translation of a novel from French into English) had already been submitted to my advisor. I was pretty much home free. On the May day in question, the sun shone over the Hudson Valley. It was a perfect day to be out on the wide river, part of a flotilla of small rowboats rustled up from who knows where, catfish hunting. I don't know who was responsible for this annual tradition—in fact, there are more things I don't remember about this event than things I do, but it comes to mind from time to time, like tonight, so I guess there's a reason. I was invited by a local guy, some years older but not many, who had connections to people at my college. The connections involved alu...

It's mid-May and gray today. Unseasonably cool temperatures. Hard to recall days of sunshine and nothing doing, but that's really all I'm fit for in my wishful-thinking mode. So what I remember is this: Warm sand between my toes, finally. Fifteen years old, the thaw of my first real Michigan winter; snow and icicles gone, rain and mud gone, and the sun working its late-spring magic on my sour, pale-skin self. My school at the time was situated between two lakes, adjacent to State Park property. In the spring, shanties for ice fishing gave way to calm blue water, gentle waves carrying sparks of light. Between or after classes, I would head with friends to a two-story, yellow-painted structure by a small patch of beach—the boat launch location for summer camp students. Throughout the year, we'd head there to talk or not talk, to smoke or not smoke, to sulk or to smile as our mercurial moods demanded, and very often to listen to music. We listened to a lot of classic rock ...

Sometimes you never know where things will lead, if anywhere. And yet . . . there is an inexplicable impulse, a vibe, a premonition perhaps, that drives you on. I was browsing in the then-new (now closed) Waterstone's book shop off Michigan Avenue in Chicago. Spring 1995, standing before the sleek black shelves and colorful book jackets. I had recently come to the end of a creative writing class that I'd been taking in the evenings through Northwestern's University College (their continuing education department). The class had me thinking for the first time about the possibility of writing fiction, attempting to get published in the genre. And of course my instructor encouraged me to get my hands on a bunch of literary magazines and start reading, researching the market, requesting submission guidelines. It's the same thing anyone will hear who takes even a half-step in the direction of fiction, at least where short stories are concerned. So, there I was, on the outsi...

It's raining again. I love the sounds of the city in the rain: the slip slap of wipers, the swoosh of tires on wet pavement, the tapping of drops blown by the wind against my high-rise windows. I relish the sounds—plus the sight of taillights and neon dragging their long, rippling reflections through the blacktop of the avenues—but I confess I've become a curmudgeon about getting wet. I love the rain most when I'm warm and dry inside. When did that happen? I hadn't realized. I'm sure it was my son in his big rubber boots and his slick jacket; my son who, despite loving the thing, never wants to take his umbrella out when it's raining—I'm sure it was his enthusiasm for puddles and his wanting to stick his tongue out to catch the drops that made me see how old I've become, if not in years necessarily then sometimes in attitude. Who is this person, cursing the feel of cold water seeping through an ill-sealed sole? Who is this person carrying an umbrella? I ...

In my experience, it's generally true that people living in city apartment buildings don't really get to know their neighbors. Of course there are exceptions to this, but more often than not, the neighbors-turned-friends are people who, I think, must live in other areas. I think of small town blocks lined with shade trees and kids who run from house to house, "Our Gang" style. But sometimes it happens that a building's inhabitants are drawn together; they rely on each other for the occasional ingredient that's no longer in the kitchen or for childcare in a pinch or even for genuine friendship. Most places I've lived, I couldn't tell you the names of the neighbors—it's not that I don't remember them, rather that I never knew them in the first place—but in the last apartment we had as a family in Chicago, I remember there was the S. family across the hall. I remember the mother, Dolores, and the daughter, Jenny. I don't remember the father (w...

Sometimes a restaurant location is simply doomed. No matter the change in management or ownership, no matter the various menu concepts and decor overhauls, no matter how much promotion, nothing makes it in this spot. (There's also the converse: the gold-mine location that will make even the most unworthy kitchen profitable. I'm not sure which scenario is more pitiful.) There's a restaurant I remember from the early 1980s in Los Angeles, and since that time it seems to have disappeared leaving almost no trace, or anyway not in cyberland . Perhaps it was just one in a string of restaurants in just such a bad location. Wanting to verify the name, to see if I really could have remembered it correctly, I did a Google search, and I didn't come up with much: some steak houses around the country (not the right cuisine); a link that looked promising, but once clicked routed me to a very unexpected pornographic site that made me want to pour Purell over my keyboard; finally, one...

Somewhere in the later years of elementary school, say the fifth or sixth grade, divorce became an important topic of conversation on the playground during recess and lunch. I had at least one friend whose parents either were divorcing or had already completed the process. Prior to this time, I'm sure the word "divorce" had come up—I mean, I knew what the word meant and knew that some portion of my classmates' families were "broken" (which was often the word that accompanied divorce back in the 1970s and early 1980s, despite being linguistically judgmental and rather inconsiderate of the families in question)—but it had nothing whatsoever to do with my family. I remember sitting outside with my friend, in some more secluded spot on the school grounds, not far from the "bungalows" that served as our classrooms. We sat on a cement ledge, I think, facing a couple of trees, and this I remember, too: we'd eat pomegranates and sunchokes , foods that ...

March 2000. The "French Engagement Tour," I'll call it: Paris, Toulouse, Carcassonne . I had been to France with my husband-to-be about a year an a half prior, but at that time I was the "petite amie ," and this was different; this time, I was the " fiancée ," and the circle of people I needed to meet had grown considerably. On the flight across the Atlantic, and again the night before our official engagement party in my mother-in-law's home, I was briefed on the various branches of the family—the bevy of tantes , flocks of cousin(e)s, the assorted copains / copines . I have great memories of the engagement party and other festivities, introductions, moments of agitation and repose, and I may well post about some of these, but for some reason what stands out from this trip at the moment is one of the more casual evenings, a quieter one toward the end of our journey. My mother-in-law had invited some friends over (two couples of her age), and she ha...

For twenty years now, or very nearly, my father and I have shared a tradition of leather journal giving. I confess that the ratio of giving and receiving is not at all an even one. Mostly it is I who have been blessed with a package to unwrap—a hardcover, hand sewn, hand bound package smelling of rich, oiled sheepskin. The color of the hand-dyed leather has varied, as has the size of the journal (from the rather large to the quite compact) and the image carefully pressed into the cover, but one thing has always been the same: the journals all have been brought to life by the same hand, that of bookbinder Greg   Pfaff . The first journal, I remember, was discovered by my father at a small gift shop in Rhinebeck , New York, where I lived alone in an apartment on Montgomery Street while I attended Bard College. He gave one to me for Christmas, I think in 1990 (if not, I could only be off by a single year). I was immediately honored and intimidated. How could I ever hope to have thoughts, ...