365 Memories

We made the best of an unexpected stay in Brussels. Eight years ago, my fiancé (now husband) and I were on our way back to New York following a visit to his family in southwest France. We were flying Sabena , the national airline of Belgium that was in service from 1923 to 2001 (they declared bankruptcy not long after our trip). September 3, 2001. We were of course ignorant of what lurked just around the corner of history. If I'd known it would be the last time I'd fly with my safety taken for granted (as silly as perhaps that always was), I would have enjoyed the flight experience more, despite the hassles we encountered. The hassles themselves, in fact, would have seemed like nothing compared to the immigration nightmares to follow. The way our "layover" started was this: Despite having boarded our originating flight in Toulouse without a raised eyebrow, once in transit (in a different country, where we knew no one and could not call for someone to return to the ai...

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...

Every year, we've got to pay The Man. The Tax Man, I mean. The government. April 15, time to pay for all that stuff they do that we don't even know about until it's too late. Not that there aren't good uses for tax dollars. But this is not a political blog. It's a memory. I am in Chicago at the age of twenty-five. I had just left a job with a PR agency to test my hand at something more editorial, and while waiting to land a salaried job I started doing a little freelance work. I had not done it before, so this was a first lesson in entrepreneurship. It was scary, but exhilarating. I did a couple of projects that were passed along to me by a writing teacher who developed a lot of texts for a healthcare -related organization. He landed the jobs, then subcontracted to have me help with certain chapters, usually to do with management tools or patient education in hospital settings. The work was interesting enough, and the pay was okay, though nothing to live on. I kept ...

I went back to Ireland in April 1998. Eleven years ago now being my most recent trip to the Emerald Isle. It had been ten years between the time of this last visit and my first one in March of 1988. This time, in '98, traveling alone again meant having time to reflect on differences, and over a decade there were many in the physical, political, and psychological landscapes around me. The eyes of the world were on Ireland at this time, as well: the Easter Accord was being negotiated, with Bertie Ahern , Tony Blair, and U.S. Senator George Mitchell called to Belfast to broker a deal between the Ulster Unionists and the Nationalist side. The calendar that year mirrored the days of the current 2009 Holy Week exactly: as it is today, Maundy Thursday was on April 9 th in 1998. On that day marking communion and humility in the Christian faith, political ideology took center stage in the news—it was the official deadline day for the settlement talks. I made my way up the northwest coast ...

Today I remember Mr. McCatty, my middle school English teacher. His first name, I believe, was Ed. On a daily basis, he made himself memorable to us kids with his tweedy, uptight, grammarian ways; with his perfect enunciation; with his personal crusade against the interjection "like," which in Southern California in the 1980s was a quixotic endeavor (this was, after all, the time and place of the song "Valley Girl," by Moon Unit Zappa . . . like, gag me with a spoon, fer shure). Mr. McCatty had many other bêtes noirs. When someone raised a hand and asked, "Can I go to the bathroom?" his response was always, "I don't know. Can you?" If you didn't rephrase your question with "May I . . . ?" you may as well have peed in your seat. Mr. McCatty further disapproved of using the pronoun "I" in any kind of an essay. One could not write "I think that . . . ," under any circumstances. It was an egregious redundancy, as...

January 16, 1991. Eighteen years ago to the day, and I was just a few years beyond eighteen myself. I had spent the fall term of 1990 securing placement in a study-abroad program that combined a semester's coursework with professional work experience in Paris, France. I was excited to be studying in another country, and yet . . . although I was no "innocent abroad," when the new year arrived it became clear that world events were much bigger, more complex and sophisticated, than a college student's adventure in language and culture; what else could I seem in comparison, if not innocent? At this point, Operation Desert Shield was in full swing, following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. With support from the U.N. (at least there was support), U.S. Armed Forces had been deployed to Saudi Arabia by George H. W. Bush (who would eventually be called "Bush père " by the French) in a "wholly defensive" tactic that was impossible to maintain. There were disc...