Non-fiction

Two traffic court appearances in two weeks: two totally different experiences.

Harrison Town Court with Judge Lust was bedlam – the water pipes had burst in the basement, the courtroom was packed with a line out one of its double doors to the entrance.  Those scheduled to contest tickets sat through a hearing between a landlord and tenant who did not pay her rent on time – the landlord also wanted her out for petty annoyances.  The next trial was between a woman who illegally sublet her home for the third time and who finally agreed to a guilty plea because it would cost her over $80,000 less to do so.  She had to go through the drama of not accepting a guilty plea, movie tables from their snug spots against the high judge bench, and trying, stubborn, Italian woman to wiggle her way out of guilt by pleading not-guilty.  She reminded me of my grandmother but was not a very good actress, claiming she knew nothing about her prior offenses or the law that prohibited subletting. 

Ultimately, because of the chaotic situation with the broken basement bathrooms, a woman took all of us with no prior traffic offenses into the lobby still filled with people blankly waiting, told us that we could agree to pay the $175 fee (mine was less because the offense occurred before sometime in September when the DMV add-on fee increased) without accruing the 2-3 points against our records.  We lined up to pay and that was done.

My second experience, just Tuesday, was in the Eastchester Town Court.  I reported to a woman on the other side of a counter window, was asked if my name was listed on the sheet hung by a tack on a cork board to my left, and was told to take a seat in one of the floor-mounted chairs inside the courtroom of thirty or so seated people.  Proceedings began on time at ten am sharp, the prosecutor explained to us in detail, a system that he has used for years for reducing the points penalty for violations, how to respond per already organized (by violation) piles of paper which his male assistant wearing a golg shirt too small for him, dutifully handed him.  He wasted no time and we were out of there by 11:30, after paying the fines.  I was lucky enough to live in the stack of no previous violations.  The prosecutor was so organized and clear when he called my name to query as to whether or not I would accept his plea that I said, “Thank you, yes.”

Thank you for allowing me to both witness and participate in the business of running a town.  It’s people like me who don’t to the efficacy or not, of the inner legal workings of the justice system as commerce.  It felt a bit more like bartering over goods.

Going forward, there will be no response to screaming children in the back seat of the van I drive for them (not me but perhaps us) or the honking at me and my California stickers affixed on either side of the back window by the driver behind me insisting, loudly, that I need to make a right turn on red even if I failed to get a clear view of the sign, always posted in my blind spot, and perhaps yours too.  I will also not fail to see a stop sign at a t-intersection during a crisis, even though there are far more legitimate places for posting proper traffic signage that would facilitate the safety and cohesion of driving patterns among New Yorkers everywhere.

A friend of mine asked me what my best day at work was.

I told her, well, I have a lot of best days.  Mostly because I work a lot because I love to work.  Compared to life, it’s the easy stuff.  Measured goals and that kind of thing.  Having children taught me that everything else is the easy stuff.  People told me just that at one point.  I didn’t believe them, but I do now.

Enough whining.  I never liked parental whining, but I also don’t like the parenting alone thing either. Where it used to take a village, now it takes money.

That’s a little morose, so forget that, and let’s get back to laughing at something that pokes fun and my neatly contained late twenties self where I rewind to my most embarrassing work moment, that moment where you realize, “Gee, you’re not as pretty and desperate as all of these Hollywood girls.  And, really.  Who cares?”

Embarrassment, I have found, is that thing that makes me human when I don’t want to be.  That thing that needs you to be flawed, when you don’t want to be.  But, when you need to be.  Because your head needs a real Linda Blair 180, or needs to be birthed out of your stupidity or your ego that sent it down the wrong-ass path.

Whoooops!

This is what happens when the only rudder you’ve got is what your parents gave you in he spare time of no spare time (see no village, above).

That is not whining.  That is the truth.

So, what we have is a grueling several months under the discretion of, essentially, Kevin Spacey as a bald woman with a disease that rendered her hairless, who represented the top talent in the United States of America in the myopia of Hollywood.  Not the highest-grossing talent, but the top.  For sure.  She shall remain nameless.  I signed a contract that bound me to secrecy.  And, even though I was beaten to a pulp using borderline torture methods via entertainment industry bootcamp, I am loyal.  And, I have a soft spot in my heart for her.  That place was a pressure cooker.  More pressure cooker than a cooker that could induce real humidity with a well-placed lid, and the promised… pressurization that makes good rice but not so good people.

I survived just under a full year before the agent found a real agent recruit – essentially a JD working in the mailroom that had thick enough skin and connections that could somehow show promise or connections to dear Agent who would abuse her outright while she endured and kept her eye on the prize.

Even Dear Agent, who addressed those training-to-be artist-representatives, told her minions, “You have to love it.”  Her way of saying, “Get out if you don’t.”

I didn’t.  Mostly, because I wasn’t much of a party girl.  I just was not there yet.  I wanted a family.  Kids.  A life that extended beyond living in the bubble of THE ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY. If you live in it, in LA, you know what I’m talking about.  Because there is nothing else.  People even forget about the beach and the ocean is pretty huge.

Myopia about as interesting to a writer as a being an author reading a book about a writer.  That’s like watching paint dry.  Or, like watching in real time, a real, mosquito-catching, target practice, spider web get made with eight tiny arms and legs.

Riveting?  Definitely not.  Reading a bout the entertainment industry except in reference and history is just dull.  No way around that.  Non-fiction about fiction.  Kill me.

So, my embarrassment occurred around a bit of a turning point.  I met Scott Lobdell, the writer for many, many of the X-Men comics published by Marvel.  When we met, I was finally off of high-powered talent agent’s desk and onto packaging – working with producers on ICM talent-centric packages for television.  Tom was new, and when Tom (my gay, Irish, actor boss) was new, he found many new clients.  When word gets out, that’s what happens.

So, in the time of Bryan Singer and the dawn of Marvel motion picture franchising, I made a friend in Scott Lobdell, mostly because he knew I was mostly a writer and he was a writer, and we were both starting out in a world that we knew nothing about and too much about.  He wanted to be a producer and ultimately got a deal that did not pan out.

As for me, my exit from ICM came one night, dressed in my favorite BCBG, fitted, short-sleeved sweater with the neutral stripes and pencil cut skirt and heals. 

When the doors of an elevator opened up to let me and Scott out – me, his stand-in date for his wife, Laura, who was ensconced in her art masters degree in New York and could not attend.  Me, going to a premiere that I was invited to because Scott had producer friends who had access to such things.  Me, who would have rather go to sleep early.

And, quite honestly, Scott was a little strange.  And, because I can be a little strange too with my broad range of tastes and peculiar fascination with super heroes and two brothers who made me a no bullshit girl, we got along quite well.  I found a friend in sea of the smoke screen.  Me, the girl from La Canada, dressed professionally, stood waiting for an elevator.

Scott asked me, “What’s that on the floor?”

I looked down to the garage, beige carpeted floor, and said, matter-of-fact, “That’s my bra pad.”

A white little teardrop of a pad on the floor defied any legitimate lie.  And, why bother?

It was funny.  And, it was mine.

And, that’s when I knew I’d never make it.  I could not lie to a client about my bra pad lying on the floor.  I supposed it could have been worse.  But, that was pretty bad for a twenty-something young woman, boarding a lift with an imbalanced lift.

It was the first step in a series of coming-into-oneself lessons.

And, learning what bra to buy and not.

Snow.  A lot of it.  So much so, that the schools closed at noon today, truncating my office time and sending us all home to highly-saturated togetherness.  The library isn’t even open.  It’s that kind of snow.  It’s total shutdown.

And, in this kind of snow, I don’t do so well.  Cold-tolerance has always been a challenge for me.  I can blame my California upbringing all I want – and so can you – but the truth of the matter is that I’ve always been this way.  The kind of girl who is always cold.

I flippin’ hate snow…  I can’t swear enough to drive this point home.  The cold.  Chilly water.  Luke warm is cold to me.  Tepid…  Far, far worse.  And, I can dislike this aversion all I want.  But, it’s still there.

Three children later, I find I struggle with this even more.  The flakes barely start to  fall and I start pacing like a trapped animal.  Rain, I can do.  Rain is good mood lighting for a little deep writing riff.  It’s a little slide guitar to what can be a ukulele some days.

Quite honestly, I don’t know what to do with it.  My biological functions of sleep/awake cycles are screaming, “Sleep through it.  The bears do!”  But, my kids are screaming at the Wii – arguing and yelling at the computerized inhuman humans.  I want to get some work done but my internet connection is down.  I want to read, but the screaming won’t let me focus on the otherwise engaging text in front of me.  I can’t even pay attention to Malala’s story.  A great story rom what I can glean from chapter one.

It’s a back-and-forth – a dull one that drives me bat-wit crazy.

This confession comes with the realization that there’s a part of me that wishes to the moon and back that I was a snowbird, snowgirl, snowcat, snowperson.  The worst part of that is wishing to be something else.  It’s a bit like wishing away sadness.  The act of wishing it away causes depression and anger. I’m annoyed at myself because I just do better in the sun.  You will never hear me complain that it’s too hot. 

But, then again… I just saw my neighbor push one of her dogs out the door and into the snow and the little Min Pin stumbled right back inside.  The other one, the albino Jack Russel Terrior, peed and was instantly shepherded back inside with excessive and congratulatory patting.

Glorious vindication!  Even the dogs don’t want to go out.  The cat’s asleep.  And, me…  I’m doing this.  Being honest.  Mostly, because it’s the only thing that saves me from feeling like I’m the only one who misses the sand and sea and the left coast masquerade of freedom, neatly concealed until you get on the 405.

You and I can still be good parents even if we hate the barricade of this particular day.

And, look.  I’m dealing.  And so are you.  Reinforcements being called in for the balance of the week.  Perhaps forever.

It takes a village.

Veggie Heave Placement – Mission Statement

http://www.veggieheavennewcity.com/welcome.html

The yoga teacher today at Bikram distracts me.  The characature of him, that is:  Martin Short impersonating a gay, Latin man, with Duran Duran hair sans Aquanet and with rosey cheeks. 

But, here’s the deal.  I laid my mat on that Flotex floor, grasped my hands together under my chin to start the first round of two sets of breathing.  Three quarters of the interior walls are covered floor to ceiling with mirrors and I opted for the front row where anyone whose attended a few classes can, um, perch (I later executed a Bird of Paradise that the last person in the room, said, “Wow.”  His name was Julio.  I told him that my anatomy and practice allows for that, and that is a function of focus more than anything, which is why I life the sweaty mess of this yoga).

I digress…  Well, there’s something new.

(sigh)

So, I’m thinking about the mirror in front of me.  How I have to look myself in the eye for every posture of the entire class.  My mind is scattered so I try to skip over the second set of breathing into a side bend, hands together to form an arrow, index fingers pointed and arms precisely straight.  My eyes are red.  Mostly, because I’ve been sad and discouraged of late, despite the goodness of one door closing and others swinging open as if by magic.

On that particular day, I didn’t want this particular yoga instructor.  I wanted to hear what Jean had to say.  I wanted to get what I needed.  Assurance in her words that come with a fresh class every day despite what could be monotony after something like ten years of ownership.  The same class but different every day.  Do you know how difficult that is?

Very.

So, that’s what I wanted.  But, I got Latin Martin Short.

But, by the time we arrived well into the floor series, the second half of the class, our instructor began talking about Kung Foo Panda and the postures of the class – the way he says it, it sounds like “posters” and it took me a while to understand what he was saying…  Now I consider that my problem, not his.

He talked about how the evil tiger finally snatched away the sacred scroll.  When he finally got it, he unrolled the scroll to find no words – just a mirrored, empty but for the reflection of his face, scroll.

The message was that the power of the dragon warrior is to be found inside. 

It’s where transformation begins.  I stayed another thirty minutes after class in that room with its near silence, using the heat to ply my body to do what my mind needed to do, if anything, to know I tried, and that I could do something.  Right now, any self care – yoga, running, swimming… – is the easiest thing I do all day, even when it feels like the most difficult, it shows me that I can show up and do something.

– Anonymous

Ah, the start of fall.  Leaves falling in droves from trees, squirrels scurrying to store nuts for the winter, darkness coming much earlier in the day…and cooler temperatures adding a layer or so to what we wear before venturing out for our runs.  Or…are we?  I’ve already been asked several times if I was running OUTSIDE now or next week or this winter. Really? Do the thirties – I’m talking temperatures here, people – really mean a move to (yuk) indoor running?

They certainly need not mean that. Moreover, winter should be a fabulous time to build some running base and strength, to relax a bit and build some of that VO2 max we hear about all the time.  So…what should you be considering in terms of winter “off season” running?

If you are an endurance athlete or someone intending to run a half-marathon, marathon, or complete a half-ironman or ironman next year, it’s never too early to start building run strength.  Long, easy runs help build endurance and the ability for your body to use oxygen efficiently. They’re also of tremendous mental help for those times that you know you’ll have to be out on a race course for a while. Cold and even snow are easy hurdles to overcome – for the cold, the simple rule of thumb is to dress for 20° warmer than it actually is – you warm up considerably on the run, so you can prepare for that.  On REALLY cold days, which for me are mid-20s and under, beyond the obvious hat/gloves/tights/layers, slather some Vaseline on your nose and cheeks.  Even snow is easily overcome; I actually love to go for an easy run in fresh snow.  While some people will even turn to snowshoes, I have a pair of YakTrax (the running shoe equivalent of chains for your auto tires), though in 30 years of running, I’ve worn them maybe twice.  Basically, you CAN run outdoors all year round.

(OK, if it’s below 10 degrees, then MAYBE it’s worth staying in, but I’ve run in 3 and 4 degree temps, and dressed appropriately, it’s doable.)

You may have guessed by now that I am no fan of the dreadmill (or tready or treadmill), which will be an anathema to some people.  And I can understand the advantages of a tready sometimes: it’s softer than pavement if you’re injured; and most treadmills are kept inside and thus you are protected from some of the severe temps noted above.  But I’ve always felt that treadmills force you to run a bit differently than you do outside unrestricted and without being subtly pulled by the tread.  If you’ve been injured, say with an Achilles, calf, or hamstring issue, I’d be careful about turning to the treadmill given that it will slightly pull your legs along and change your stride a bit (despite providing a softer surface). 

So now that you are all geared up to run outside, let’s see what fun we can have! I like to play the “catch the leaf game” in the fall.  That’s when, while running along, you try to catch leaves falling ahead of you, sort of like a neurotic fartlek workout (for the uninitiated, “fartlek” is Swedish for “speed play;” it’s basically a term that refers to doing interval work during a run).  There’s “leap the puddles” and “avoid the mud” as well, along with “warm the hands,” the game in which you find the appropriate hand gear and positions to keep your hands warm from start to finish – do you keep the thumb wrapped in your fist or do you let it free float, waiting for that first 10 cold minutes to go by?  Now don’t get too nervous here…even in the direst cold, my hands warm up after about 10-15 minutes of running. Lastly, there’s the “don’t slip on the ice like a clown” game in which you basically attempt to continue to remain on both feet while running despite the patches of black ice you often can’t see on the road (or brown ice on the trails).  Fortunately, that is also something I’ve done quite rarely, perhaps twice in the years I’ve been running.

How much should you be running and how fast should you be running those miles?  As I noted at the beginning, winter, which in theory is an off season for triathletes (I distinctly remember mine last year – it was a Tuesday in December), is a time to relax, rebuild, and remember that there are other things to do besides train. But OK, since we are all type A+++ folks, we’re going to do SOMETHING out there (accent on the “out”). So my advice is to major in strength, getting base miles in with a combination of long and frequent runs and some tempo running.  Speed can be done over the winter (and winter track meets can be fun if you have incredible patience), but I’d orient it toward tempo and fartlek – and hill work (yes, the hills can build similar speed/strength as speed work) – with a very good dose of easy running mixed in.  The right combination depends upon your near term (winter/spring) and longer term (tri season) goals as well as the amount of recovery your body needs from last season.

       We shared a bedroom throughout a good deal of our childhood and for the most part it was a harmonious situation, though of course we did have our occasional squabbles.  He had what was probably some sort of vocal tic that would manifest just as he was settling into bed.  As I read on the adjoining bed, short little grunts and sighs would emanate from his side.  I learned to merely grit my teeth since complaining to him, just made it worse and my parents, I was sure, would take his side.  Later he decided that the light of my lamp bothered him and I would retreat to another room.  He would emerge after some minutes claiming that a faint light under the door was preventing him from sleeping and I would withdraw to a far end of the house.  For a scrawny little thing, he wielded a lot of power.

     As I grew older, I developed protective mien toward my brother.  In college, we talked often on the phone.  Usually, I could gauge his mood in the first millisecond or so.  Frequently, he would start with sort a brief vocalization, sort of a throat clearing then a long pause and then slowly at first he would pour out the various things that were on his mind.  I would listen, make an occasional encouraging comment and finally I would hang up the phone feeling totally spent.

     In one of those conversations, he confided to me his growing conviction that he was gay.  I immediately assured him that I was fine with it, but at the same time, I was yet again gritting my teeth, wondering how my poor scrawny younger brother, covered with pox, could deal with the world as a gay man.  For some time, I carried this revelation in solitude.  Gradually, the circle of those in the know grew and some years later we were able to enjoy a friendly if not entirely relaxed Christmas at Dad’s (my mother had had since passed away) with David and his black male lover.

      In 1982, I began my internship in pediatrics at Bellevue Hospital.   The work was grueling, but fascinating.   My brother, in the meantime, had gone to the Studio School not too far away laying the foundation for a painting career.  Will he ever choose something easy, I wondered at the time.   He supported himself by working as a typesetter at the Nation magazine and painted tirelessly in a loft that he had bought in a pregentrified of area of Brooklyn and which he shared with his boyfriend.   I remember being amused that my artist brother owned property before I did, the doctor.   His work habits were fueled by an intense nervous energy.  He carried a sketch pad with him everywhere.  We would on occasion travel out to the country together to visit our father and I would laze around while he would spend virtually the whole weekend tramping around with his easel. 

     David sometimes invited my wife and me to elaborate dinner parties in his loft.  He would hover over the stove carrying on multiple conversations with his guests, usually artists and writers, while frenetically tasting, adding ingredients.  His salads, in particular, were the product of endless additions of minute amount of spices and herbs.  I marveled at all the talents that were emerging and began to feel a tad envious as I compared my conventional life style to my brother’s bohemian bonhomie. 

     In 1981, the CDC reported a cluster of 5 homosexual men with pneumocystis carini pneumonia.  Initially the disease was known as GRID or Gay Related Immune Deficiency.  As it became increasingly recognized that more than 50% of cases were not gay related, it was changed to Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.  At Bellevue, we began in the fall of 1982, to see young children with unusual infections.  I remember one infant in particular who was my patient.  Despite all our efforts, she got sicker and sicker.  Drawing blood or replacing an IV in her became a dreaded task for all involved and I remember struggling sometimes up to an hour, ungloved in what was typical during that halcyon era and afterwards scrubbing off all the blood from my bare hands.  Only in retrospect, did we recognize that she represented one of the first cases of pediatric AIDS, usually contracted at birth.  Two years later, a pediatric AIDS clinics was set up at Bellevue. 

     That era in some ways resembled America pre 9/11.  Though the AIDS crisis intruded upon our consciousness far more slowly than the terrorists attack upon the World Trade Center, there are, I think, some real similarities: the sense of an undetectable enemy, a similar kind of fear. AIDS changed our feeling of safety and brought an abrupt halt to the notion of sex without consequences which had blossomed on the college campuses of the 60’s and 70’s after the advent of oral contraception.   Potential lovers were scrutinized suspiciously in the same way that air travelers uneasily eye fellow passengers of Middle Eastern appearance.    Unlike chicken pox, which mounts a frontal assault upon our respiratory tree and then quickly fans out through the blood stream establishing gaudy beachheads in the skin and mucous membranes, the AIDS virus is the ultimate bioterrorist, sneaking into our bodies undetected, biding its time in patient preparation for its assault on the immune system.  In the case of chicken pox, the body’s immune system steadily fights off the infection and the pox marks which initially look like dew drops on a rose petal as they are poetically described in medical textbooks, become cloudy, and then burst leaving a crusted bump.   The patient practically always recovers fully, but yet there is one similarity to the AIDs virus: the varicella virus does not completely leave.  It nestles in the ganglion roots of the spinal nerves establishing a redoubt where it remains dormant, kept in check by a vigilant immune system.

     As it turned out, David was aware of the cluster of cases in Los Angeles before I was.  I prided myself that I kept up with the medical literature, but I missed that report.  The gay community, on the other hand was already humming about it.  He called me that fall, his voice cracking, and there was that long pause that I hadn’t heard for years.  He was frantically worried that he had contracted the gay disease. Over the next few months, it was like old times: late night calls and nervous ruminations.   Looking back on it today, I cringe as I recall my repeated reassurances.  Don’t worry, I counseled, my assured tone fueled by my confidence in the power of my medical knowledge: a confidence that, as is commonly the case among doctors, reached its apogee towards the end of my internship.  Only later, did I come to appreciate the pipeline of information from the gay community that David was privy too, which proved to be a much more reliable source about the nascent AIDS epidemic. Gradually, he calmed down, and by the Spring of 1983, he rarely brought it up and was deeply consumed for preparations for his first solo art exhibition.  On the wards at Bellevue, our conversations turned increasingly to speculation on what was causing this mysterious disease.  As David calmed down, I began, in secret, to worry.

     It was a good two years later that David called me to tell me that he was laid up.  He had an attack of shingles.  He related this to me calmly, mildly complaining that the pain was interfering with his painting schedule.  I feigned an equal casualness as I strained to keep my own voice from cracking.  After hanging up, I stood there and my wife entered the room astonished by the tears streaming down my face.  Varicella, benign varicella, had reared its ugly head after 30 years of slumber in the dorsal roots of David’s thoracic spinal nerves producing a band of blistery eruption which snaked round from one side of his back to near his navel.  Shingles, results from a reactivation of the varicella virus in the spinal nerve.  While merely a temporary, albeit painful, affliction for the elderly, for the young gay male, it is a harbinger of much worse things to come, because it is a sign that the body’s immune system is starting to wane.  Since there was no blood test for diagnosing AIDS at that time, this was the first incontrovertible sign that he had a problem with his immune system.    Once I learned he had shingles, the last vestiges of denial fell away and I knew. 

     Some months later I dropped by on one of my regular visits to his loft and found him stretched out on his bed, breathing a bit heavily and with what seemed to be a slight bluish cast to his face.  He waved me closer with a smile before going into a paroxysm of coughing.  Just a bad cold, he told me and I managed to convince myself that he was not breathing rapidly and that the lighting was a bit funny.  The next day, I came again and this time I brushed away his protestations that this was a cold and convinced him to go to his doctor.  His doctor took one look at him and dialed the hospital.  While waiting for the hospital to pick up, he turned to look at me and I thought I saw a recriminating look on his face.  Why had I not been more alert to the clear signs of respiratory distress that any intern could see?  By that evening, he was in the intensive care unit at Columbia Medical Center on a ventilator.  He showed remarkable strength and dignity while flat on his back with a hose sized tube ensconced in his trachea.  He wrote frequent notes on a little pad with the same frenetic energy that so characterized him. He wrote “I’m optimistic” among other things and was careful to equally divide his attentions among the circle of friends and relatives around his bed.   I remembered his almost disabling anxiety when he thought he might have AIDS and marveled at how well he coped with actually having it.  

     Most people survive their first episode of pneumocystis, but David did not.  I asked his doctor about this, and he did not have a definite answer.  Years later, I learned that subtle genetic differences probably account for the variable outcomes.  We had a memorial at a gallery in Soho.  We stood, surrounded by his paintings and many of us in turn stood up to talk.  As I approached the front to take my turn, I thought how strange for me, a doctor, to be giving a talk in a Soho art gallery. There was one other doctor in the crowd, his doctor, a specialist in infectious diseases from Columbia. Several years later I read an article about the AIDS epidemic in the New York Times Magazine and saw that David’s doctor was prominently mentioned as a pioneer in the early treatment AIDS.   Towards the end of the article I learned to my astonishment that he himself had recently succumbed to the horror of the disease that he had been close witness too as a treating physician.

 ******

      In 1989, my then two year old daughter, Jessica, came down with chicken pox passed down from her older sister.  It was a fairly typical case and on Sunday morning of Memorial Day weekend, the lesions looked like they were mostly crusted over.   Late that afternoon, her fever returned, but now was much higher than it had been at the height of her illness.  Within a few hours I noticed a faint rash, appearing like mild case of sunburn.  I snuck into my study and quietly looked up toxic shock syndrome.  I closed the book, convinced that I had succumbed to that age old malady of med students of seeing in themselves whatever disease they happened to be studying and I calmed myself down.             It was my wife, using a mother’s instincts, who truly recognized the severity of what was transpiring.  I placed a midnight call to one of my partners and together we drove to the medical center.  It turned out she did have toxic shock syndrome, which is a rare complication of chicken pox.  She was in the hospital for a week or so, but completely recovered.                  

     David’s paintings are hung throughout our house interspersed with Jessica’s, who has become an accomplished painter.    I watch her move quickly, about the kitchen and I catch a glimpse of small round scar between her eyes, the only remnant of her bout with chicken box.  She leans over a salad she is preparing, making familiar minute adjustments.  She fixes me, with a look.  “Dad, what’s a matter, you’ve never seen anybody make salad before?”

http://www.yogasanctuary.net

Greeting us at the door was Chi Chi then Tony at the host podium and the walls covered in the character portraits of every star that ever entered that place or had died famous or, quite often, topless or with a hat or a cane or a distinctive jawline.  It was an education to me and to my two brothers – that one lady lounging by the palm tree, blond and barely clothed, characterized outlined in black like a comic book character is round an perfect.  Piercing eyes identified the men like heroes and swarthy, childless, unattached singletons. 

But a lobster was brought to the table and we were taught to put it to sleep by stroking the back of its neck before it was plunged into a boiling vat of water to cook while our clams casino and half and half (battered and fried onions and homemade potato chips) were served.  Dad ate the green guts but called it something else.  There was melted butter and lemon and a bib.  But, my brothers and I often ate meat instead.

It’s not a typical story.  Not just the meat part, I mean.

Neither is the story about the time my brothers told me to go into the men’s bathroom to see the odor-killing disk in the urinal they used for target practice before I got a quick look then got my fingers slammed in the door.

A screaming girl at the bathroom doors and kitchen entrance was interesting, to say the least.  We were often the only children patronizing The Palm Restaurant.

I miss that place.  Sawdust slipping under my feet, like it belonged to a bunch of adults grinding at the wood floors toward the same satisfaction children toil dig out and in a sandbox.