365 Memories

I am optimistically calling this memory—pushing it safely into the past—which is not inaccurate. I haven't had the dream in a long, long time. Used to be frequent, this recurring dream of mine. I remember that it never failed to freak me out. I would wake from one of these dreams and feel diseased, tainted, unkempt in a mud-hut, Third World kind of way. I would experience a vague dread and need to take a cold shower to wake up and shake off these feelings. Before I could get up, though, I would have to check my teeth to make sure they were all there and none of them loose. The dream was simple: I would lose or be on the verge of losing my teeth. Often, the teeth would just be loose and not fall out. Sometimes, I would find them in my dream-hand. I remember one time, in the dream suddenly my teeth were rocking violently in my mouth, the gums giving way to them, unable to hold on. I clamped my jaws tightly together, knowing that if I opened my mouth to speak—if I let up the pressure ...

I am elbows deep in dirty dishes in the kitchen sink, lost in my own thoughts while keeping time with Collective Soul, a CD played for the first time in what must be ages—loud, or loud in comparison to the usual silence. Two small hands reach around my waist from behind, squeeze in a little-boy hug with muscle to it. A hug that hangs on. I hadn't even heard my son enter the kitchen. Then his six-year-old voice tells me, a mom who feels on the edge much of the time: "You rock!" I do? I don't recall using that expression around my son, so I figure it's something he's picked up at school or at camp. This cool-kid slang invading my son's speech makes me smile. It's so unexpected. Also, I am instantly high on this praise. How did I earn it? Was it the ice cream base we just made together and put in the refrigerator to cool? Was it the music I put on? Or was it the promise of going outside once clean-up was finished so that we could squirt each other with wa...

Another entry in the annals of public embarrassment : I remember very well the first several months of the year 2000. I had just graduated from an MFA program; I was newly engaged; I had found a job that paid decently and that was not, I hoped, incompatible with my writing life. Really, I should have been on top of the world. And sometimes that is in fact how I felt. The rest of the time, though, it seemed I was trapped underneath it, and it was unbearably heavy—the sudden rushing in of worldly obligations and expectations . In March, my fiancé (now husband) and I went to France to visit his family, a trip I'd negotiated with my employer before I began work in January. By the time our vacation rolled around, I was very much in need of the break. My immediate supervisor kept telling me, in those first weeks on the job, that my early mornings, my very late nights, and the general frustrations I experienced daily were nothing more than a steep learning curve and that things would ...

A perfect Indian Summer day, nearly eleven years ago. An afternoon in early September, sunny and warm, blue sky, a day for being outdoors. I had recently gone out on a series of dates—platonic coffees, pleasant lunches—with the man who would in time become my husband. And just a week or so before, he had upped the ante significantly: he told me he'd be going home to France for a vacation in the fall, and did I want to go with him? At that point, although there was clearly a mutual attraction, we hadn't even kissed; I had no possible answer to a "meet the family" proposition. On this end-of-summer day, though, I didn't need to give an answer to that question, only accept an invitation to go skating around Central Park. At his apartment on East 92 nd Street, we strapped on our in-line skates, and too little protective gear, and headed out. It had been about three or four years since I'd skated. Maybe not since I lived in Saint Louis, when I'd burn off stres...

It happened two times. Once in St. Louis, once in Chicago. I don't know if you've ever had a bug fly into your eye, but I can tell you: it hurts. Especially if any part of the bug sticks. The first time was in June of 1993, it must have been. I was with a friend from law school (the friend who, in a star-crossed misadventure, would become more than a friend that summer; I've posted about it before), and we were doing a monumental favor for another, mutual friend. Turns out that when I took that self defense class , this other friend took it with me. And while the stand-in attacker scared the hell out of me, my friend had it much worse: the attacker, who was a pretty large and heavy man, basically landed on her knee and did something to it that ultimately required surgery (and a lawsuit to cover medical bills). So while my friend flew home to Florida with her bum knee, I agreed to move her belongings out of the apartment she needed to vacate and into a storage facility. It w...

What was it, apart from a secondary satisfaction to ride out the 1992 recession in the shelter of graduate school (not that incurring additional expense made sense), that had me moving through the Gateway to the West, settling in St. Louis, Missouri, for a doomed attempt at law school? Was it because I'd been told numerous times in my life that I'd make a good lawyer? (And why was that? For a logical mind or an eye for detail? Because I was good at arguing?) I remember that during orientation at Washington University (a.k.a. Wash U), I quickly came to dislike the getting-to-know-you chitchat at social events, because I'd be asked first where I went to college and then what my major had been. Coming from a small liberal arts college with no official pre -law program (we got taught how to think across subjects), I got used to the incredulous looks I received when I said I'd majored in French Language. It was obvious, too, from my urban, "updated Annie Hall" styl...

Another lunch, another memory. Today I was with my mom in a fantastic new tea house in Manhattan (though really it's much more than that; the name is accurate but misleading). Great tea (and other drinks), wonderful food, relaxing atmosphere. One drawback: a bathroom with a sticky lock. After a minute, increasingly loud banging from within got my mom the attention she deserved; I (plus an employee) went to her aid. Because we knew it wasn't an ordeal that could have lasted long, it was more humorous than harrowing. We laughed about it once back at the table. But the incident brought to mind a powerful memory of another bathroom, another lock—with potentially dire consequences. To this day I don't fully understand the stupidity and dumb luck that conspired to make the entrapment possible. The location was our former apartment, on West 59 th Street. We (my husband and I, with our one-year-old son) moved into the apartment in April 2004, and this was quite a few months after ...

During my senior year of college, I was dating someone (who has been referenced before in this blog; the person who came to visit me while I was living in Paris; a person who may someday end up in another post labeled "Jerks I've Known") who was nearly ten years older than I, and who was fairly serious within our relationship back then. I, knowing that my life path was about to take a giant, swerving turn after graduation, was floundering. It was a messy time, emotionally. And into the mess was brought . . . diamonds. I don't remember now if the gift was for my birthday or for Christmas or some other occasion. Birthday, I think. We were going out to dinner (probably to our favorite, cozy French bistro), and my guy drove his secondhand powder blue Beemer over to pick me up. I remember that when I opened the door to my apartment, he was standing in the carpeted hallway in his black-suited best with a cat-and-canary grin. I let him in. This is when he gave me the box—a ...

I remember never understanding why people complained about allergies. I assumed it was some kind of psychosomatic thing, something possibly without merit. I didn't know anyone who had allergy problems, and I myself had never had even the slightest symptom. I also thought this somehow meant I was of heartier stock—maybe it was my Greek immigrant family history that had something to do with it. I couldn't imagine anyone on my mom's side of the family ever complaining of allergies; it seemed such an American condition. My father had allergies, asthma, hay fever, too, I think, when he was growing up. I remember him telling me that he was allergic to goldenrod and many other things. But long before I was born, he outgrew all of it, and I never saw him with itchy eyes, runny nose, and so forth, despite outings in nature. There were seasonal allergies, which I'd heard about for a long time, and then suddenly people had peanut allergies and wheat allergies . . . I rolled my eye...

I was in my late teens, I remember. And I believe this was during my freshman year of college, as I moved off campus into my own apartment, where I lived alone for the rest of my undergraduate years. It could have been earlier, but it doesn't really matter. What matters is that this was a moment when I was taking a step toward independent, solitary living, and my father wanted to make sure that I was prepared. In terms of practical responsibility and emotional maturity, yes—but on this day also in terms of a toolbox. We went, the two of us, to a little mom-and-pop kind of hardware store in Fairfield , Connecticut, and talked about the basics. I didn't need much, Dad said, but I needed to be able to fix some things, to be self-reliant and not have to call a superintendent or handyman (emphasis on man ) for matters that required only the right tool and a little bit of elbow grease. The first thing we did was pick out a box. It was small, rectangular, and fairly flat, made of meta...

At night, tired from a long work day, strange things surface. What would make me remember a story I hadn't thought about in decades—a story that isn't even mine, although it belongs to my childhood? When I was young, I loved to tell jokes. Knock-knock jokes in particular, as my son tells now, and when I was older, jokes from the "Truly Tasteless Jokes" series of books (I think there were many volumes; I had at least one of them, with a black cover). Then for some reason I stopped being able to remember jokes at all. I've rarely told any in my adult life, though I like to think I've managed to keep a sense of humor anyway. The jokes were often quite long, with complicated stories leading up to a punch line. This is probably why, in time, I became unable to tell them. I'd remember the punch line but not the setup. I do know that some of my old jokes were rather inappropriate, especially for a child telling them. One involved a rip-off artist in a house of il...

I am not sure how it's come to be April already, the first quarter of the year gone. The day is just stunning to me for that reason, unremarkable otherwise. It wasn't always this way, though. I used to be an elaborate schemer every April first; I relished the chance to snare an "April Fool" in my prankster's net, and I'd plan well in advance whatever mischief was brewing that year. The impulse started in boarding school and continued well into college. After that, I guess I just got too busy for practical jokes. Or too serious. Or else it wasn't me, I just woke up one year and there were no longer any plausible targets—no friends or colleagues I could be sure would take it all in stride, enjoy the joke, even if it was on them—everyone suddenly seemed so humorless. Of course making others the butt of a joke, however harmless, might be considered properly juvenile and bad form, so perhaps I just grew out of it appropriately enough. Part of me still misses th...

Webster's Collegiate defines serendipity as "the faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for," but I tend to think of it as the force that brings you little gifts from the universe—whether you have been actively wishing for them or not. It's what I believe in instead of "coincidence," a word that does not admit a purposeful design in our lives. Linked to my idea of serendipity is the Law of Attraction, which has been a "hidden in plain sight" premise of spiritual and metaphysical teachings for centuries, but that has more recently been mass marketed in the short film and best-selling book by Rhonda Byrne , The Secret . I have numerous "serendipity stories," from the simply odd to the astonishingly powerful. I had forgotten about the very first instance I noticed (there were probably others before this), but was reminded again this past weekend when I saw a good friend from college, whom I had not seen in m...