Those French. It really gets me how they cultivate that l’air superieur just because they can dress up the everyday, le quotidien, if you will, in that sing-song patois of theirs and all of a sudden, pouf! Tout le monde goes fou. It’s as if life, poured through the filter of French, suddenly becomes interesting. Un petit peu more exciting. [Read more...]
Death scenes hit me hard. Fictional or real, it doesn’t matter—I just don’t do well when the eternal footman gets around to calling. [Read more...]
Family friends Ronnie and Frances (at left and right), my mother, Rachel, and me, 1976.
We were typecast. My sister Rachel–she of sunshine and light–was always the pilgrim, newly arrived in a wild land and looking for warm food. I was the Indian, with a penchant for fringe and accessorizing, who just happened to have an outdoor repast of turkey and corn set for guests. It’s a reductive rendition of history they serve when you’re 9, but the idea is an awfully nice one: welcome others and share your bounty.
Over the years, the pilgrims have come from all over; and when they get here, they become a part of the native tribe. I know–it’s a reductive rendition of history. But it’s a nice one.
Happy Thanksgiving–whatever kind of American you are.
In elementary school, mine was not the party-pack lunch—the lunch you see in TV commercials that explodes with all sorts of crazy lunch fun. Kids in those commercials fall all over themselves in great pitches of joy over the party-in-a-lunch-box mom packed. Those little logs of cheese, that cup of O-shaped spaghetti, the bologna on white bread wonderfulness—so much lunching good times that, once unpacked, unleash storms and storms of fun. Just not for me. [Read more...]