ever-fixed mark

My brother-in-law, recently an embedded correspondent for Time magazine in Iraq, currently employed at a conservative Washington think-tank, was just diagnosed with Guillain-Barré syndrome. This disorder of the peripheral nervous system causes neuropathy and sometimes paralysis. It sounds horrific, but luckily most sufferers recover fully or almost fully.

Brother-in-law is a military history buff, and his disdain for all things French is well-known. Husband called his brother to check on his condition and, after ascertaining that he was on the mend, twitted him for contracting a disease named after two Frenchmen.

Brother-in-law, without missing a beat, shot back, “Figures it’s something that would make you weak.”

This weekend, the Week in Review section of the New York Times ran down the major catchphrases of 2005. One emerging trend is the fusion of the first names of two people who are coupled, creating a new name for the joint venture. Apparently the tabloiscenti have been referring to the Tom Cruise/Katie Holmes alliance as “TomKat.” Who knew?

I am familiar with the concept from hours spent poring over my occasional tour through Television without Pity , where couples on TV shows are referred to by such monikers as “Luby” and “Carby” (Luka/Abby and Carter/Abby on “ER”). A poster who advocates one particular pairing over another is called a “’shipper,” from the word “relationship.” Sample usage: “I’m a Carby ’shipper but I thought Luka and Abby had really good chemistry last night.”

But the couple name mash-up extends further back in history than Television without Pity or Bennifers I and II — further back, even, than “Billary.” In Tender is the Night, Dick and Nicole Diver sign letters as “Dicole,” a curiously phallic coinage, but perhaps appropriate considering that he was a psychoanalyst and she, a former patient. (Note to “TomKat”: That marriage was not exactly a raging success.)

Well, what’s good enough for TomKat is good enough for us. So I have decided that, henceforth, Husband and I will be jointly known as “Penise.” Also curiously phallic!

That should look good on next year’s holiday cards. “Season’s GreetingsMerry Christmas from Penise.”

There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
-Oscar Wilde

My sister-in-law called yesterday morning to wish us a Merry Christmas. “Did Aitch get any presents?” she asked. I think she was afraid that, after our public refusal to affirm the divinity of Santa Claus, we would boycott the whole holiday.

Husband and I are actually big Christmas fans, in our non-denominational way. We do the tree, the presents, the caroling, the fancy dinner. (Husband made a beef tenderloin this year and I almost cried, it was that good.) I am usually filled with the Christmas spirit. But something has felt different the past two years, since we’ve had Aitch home, and it’s made me reflect on the true meaning of a secular Christmas.

For me, the non-religious trappings of the holiday — the gifts, decorations, and general good cheer — have always symbolized unconditional good fortune. A wrapped present reminds you that life can surprise you, and that sometimes good things can happen for no reason at all. In the past, the sight of all the gifts under the tree has given me hope. If Christmas can happen, then maybe I could fall in love….find inspiration for my thesis…become a mother.

Last year was the first year I haven’t needed that hope. All of my heart’s desires have been fulfilled. Sure, there are things that I want to achieve, but nothing for which I desperately need the universe’s benign intervention. According to Oscar, I should be left bitter and empty by this turn of events, but I’m not. I’m content, and I don’t miss that yearning feeling. I’m all too aware that bad things can happen for no reason, too, but for the moment I’m content.

Sometimes, it’s good to get what you want.

All of this free-floating Christmas spirit and invoking of the Nativity story reminds me of my own Very Special Christmas Gift.

It was the year that my grandfather died. I was in college at the time. We were opening family presents at my aunt’s house on Thanksgiving, as was our tradition for years, because with the distance we had to travel to be together we could usually not spend both Thanksgiving and Christmas together. My aunt always had her Christmas tree up, though, so it was plenty festive. (Then again, I’ve seen it still up in July; I think some years she never took it down.) The last bit of wrapping paper had been destroyed, and we were all sitting back admiring our gifts when my aunt said, “Oh, I forgot—we have a special gift for Denise.”

The special gift! I was very excited. A special gift that came out only after the other gifts had been opened was always held back for a reason. Sometimes it was because the shape would have given it away too soon, or because the recipient’s expectation was so charged that the giver thought more fun could be had by withholding the gift until it was seemingly too late. I wasn’t expecting anything in particular, though, and this present was housed in a plain cardboard box, like the kind a ream of paper might come in. It wasn’t even wrapped.

I opened the box, unfolded the tissue paper, and saw this:

I shrieked.

For years, my maternal grandparents had displayed the Sacred Heart O’ Jesus on the second-floor landing of their house. You would round the staircase into the hall and there he would be, staring at you. During the day it was scary enough, but at night he was illuminated by an orange nightlight plugged into the socket directly below him, so that he looked something like this:

As I child I was terrified of Jesus. I have a vivid memory when I was about Aitch’s age of having fallen asleep in the car during some late outing and waking up just as my mother was carrying me upstairs to bed. I screamed bloody murder, not wanting to meet Jesus in the dark. When I was a teenager I told my mother the story, and she remembered the screaming incident but had never realized the reason.

Never realized the reason! How could she forget these eyes staring at her for her entire childhood?

(This explains a lot about me psychologically, including that whole “lapsed Catholic thing” and, perversely, my penchant for men with red hair.)

When Husband and I bought our first house, the second-floor landing had a strong, thick nail embedded in it, perfect for hanging a thirty-pound religious icon. Husband protested, but I prevailed, and for three years we took delight in scaring ourselves with little bloody-heart Jesus-thrills on our way to bed at night. We would play pranks with Jesus — I’d come home and find his head on my pillow, with the covers pulled up over his Sacred Heart, or I would suspend a sweatshirt and jeans from Jesus and Husband would have a heart attack coming up the stairs. Jesus was a bit embarrassing, as he was certain to offend all of our guests. The non-religious ones were uncomfortable that their hosts were Jesus-freaks, and the devout were uneasy with Jesus as an ironical statement. But he meant something to me, and I liked having him there.

When we moved into our “new” house (new to us, over a hundred years old), there was a dramatic staircase that had a perfect spot for Jesus. Alas, the plaster-and-lathe construction did not have any studs strong enough to hold Jesus up.

We’re renovating our third floor, though, and I think this would be the perfect opportunity to prepare a place for Jesus. We’ll get the carpenter to fortify the wall at the top of the staircase. I envision a tasteful little niche set back from the wall, arched, like a little grotto, with tiny white and orange spot lights illuminating Jesus.

When I tried to incorporate this into the plans, Husband said something like, “I’m not entirely comfortable with having that thing in a box in the basement, let alone on a hook on the wall. No Jesus!”

No room at the inn this Christmas, but by next year I may have talked him around.

I love ballet. I really do. That’s why, three years ago, I made a solemn vow never to subject myself to another Nutcracker. It’s not just a case of familiarity breeding contempt. I’ve given it a lot of thought (mostly through repetitions of that over-long party scene), and I believe the ballet is seriously flawed. It boils down to this: The first act is too literal, and the second act is too abstract.

By “too literal,” I mean that the first act is mostly mime. Since there’s little dancing to interfere with the story-telling, you feel it must be important, and you’re compelled to expend energy interpreting it. Who’s giving the party — the blue couple or the red couple? Look at the partygoers shunning the street urchins — is this meant to be a critique of bourgeois values? Obviously, the mice represent the corruption and rot that underlie the beautiful facade, and the toy soldiers are the military-industrial complex that the bourgeoisie has at its disposal. But wait, I’m detecting some sexual elements. Is that the girl’s brother teasing her, or a little boyfriend? Is the choreographer trying to comment on the traditional role of women in society by having the little girls dance with their dolls? In that case, what does it mean that Clara prefers her Nutcracker to a baby doll? Is this an expression of her budding sexuality? And what about her relationship with Drosselmeyer — is there an element of sexual menace there?

Then the second act starts, and it all breaks down. You might start by assuming that the Sugar Plum Fairy represents Clara all grown up, but then there’s the Snow Queen too. What’s she doing there? By the time you get to the dancers representing Coffee, Tea, Candy Canes, and Spain (?) you’ve given up. They all dance, for a long, long time. The end.

I broke my vow this weekend because my friend’s daughter got a part in a version of the Nutcracker in a pre-professional ballet company in my hometown. I thought it would be fun to support her, see the old stomping grounds, and let Aitch run wild with my friend’s four children for the weekend. So we said goodbye to Husband and Dog, hopped on a plane, and went.

My friend and I met in elementary school in the “gifted program,” where once a week children from all over the county were pulled out of our regular schools and bused to a central school for enrichment classes. We were known as the “BEEP kids,” after the acronym for the gifted program. (Yes, I was a Krelboyne.) Although we were vilified by the other “non-gifted” (by implication) students, and sometimes given a hard time by our regular teachers, it was overall a good experience. We got to meet kids from other schools and be exposed to different subjects, like theater and botany. The teaching style was rather loosey-goosey, typical of the ’70s — lots of self-directed learning, which translated to a lot of unsupervised goofing-off time. Our teachers incorporated whole language techniques that are used in the mainstream today, but which we would not have gotten in our regular drill-and-grill classes.

In junior high, the program changed. Instead of busing us out, our school created a section for advanced students and kept us together, the same 30 kids, through seventh, eighth, and ninth grades. This blatant manifestation of elitism (our class was named “7-1″ while the other sections were “7-G, 7-L,” etc.) did not endear us to the other kids, and the isolation from them pretty much ruined our social lives throughout high school. But after three years of being in the same class, we had bonded pretty tightly.

Almost every teacher seated us alphabetically, so I, with a last name starting with D, was always seated between C, a girl, and E, a boy. My friend (last name began with H) always sat in the row behind us. As it happens, the C girl grew up, moved to New England, and now lives several miles away from me, which is hundreds of miles from our hometown. My friend H married E after college, and they settled in our home town. There were at least two other marriages in that class — my friends S and K married after college, and other friends S and A married after law school.

The Es now have four children, the youngest of whom is two years older than Aitch. We tagged along on their weekend activities. In addition to the Nutcracker, with the company that is managed by my old dance teacher, the weekend featured a varsity basketball game at my old high school (my friend and I were cheerleaders back in the day, and her father was the coach; we saw two former cheerleaders from our class at the game) and a Christmas party hosted by my former junior-prom date and his wife, the aforementioned S and A from my old class. How strange is it to see all the old BEEP kids grown up and married with little BEEP children? Pretty darn strange, but also sweet, in a way. The circle of overachiever life, and all that.

I realized that in the past year, I’ve revisited most of the places I’ve lived in the US in the past 40 years (Philadelphia, Chicago, Florida, and now my hometown). Within the past five years, I’ve visited all the ex-US locations I’ve ever lived (Italy, Germany, Tunisia). In 2006, it might be good to get off of Memory Lane and go some place I’ve never been before.

Someplace new. That sounds like a good New Year’s resolution.

Some people have perfect pitch. Some have a photographic memory, or the ability to solve complex equations in their heads. My one savant-like talent is, believe it or not, proofreading. Imagine Rain Man instantly counting errors in spelling, grammar, or punctuation, instead of matchsticks: that is I. I have not yet been able to find a way to spin this talent into gold. I once thought of a career as an editor, but then I was offered an entry-level position and discovered that, adjusted for the relative cost of living in the US vs. Tunisia, I would be better off sticking with my salary as a Peace Corps volunteer than editing medical textbooks. Thus, I retain my amateur status, but my skills are still fearsome to behold.

It’s almost like a sixth sense, a linguistic superpower that I can’t turn off. I open a menu and see, before I’ve even read the specials, that “beurre blanc” is spelled incorrectly. Husband complains that when I sing along with the radio, I amend the case of all nominative pronouns used incorrectly in the objective case, and vice versa (“till the stars fall from the sky…for you and me”). I obtain my son’s birth certificate and am compelled to start a war with the future mayor over the lack of punctuation. And it pains me, actually physically pains me, to attend a concert (as I did last night) and hear the audience applauding two female soloists with shouts of “Bravo!”

This is not to suggest that I am, myself, infallible in these areas. Even Safire nods, after all, and thanks to the speed and inattention with which I blog, plus laziness engendered by the Autocorrect feature in Word, I nod quite a bit myself. Nor do I mean to suggest that I go around correcting anyone’s spoken grammar, a practice I abhor. But spellos, typos, grammos in formal writing — I can’t not notice them.

Given that, I’m sure you’ll appreciate the unintended irony in this gift, especially when I tell you that we spell Aitch’s name in the traditional way. There it stands in my living room, a daily reproach to my literary sensibilities (or, as Husband calls them, “pretensions”):

This lovely rocking chair was given to Aitch by two of my sisters-in-law, wonderful, generous people whose giving spirit I’ve praised before. Absolutely wonderful people; a bit weak in spelling, though.

I could call Pottery Barn, I suppose, and ship it back for repainting. Or if PB won’t exchange it, I could just purchase a new one with the correct name and hide the original. The thing is, though, I really like my sisters-in-law, and when I look at that extra “E” it is a better remembrance of them than a flawless rocker would have been. So I’m keeping it.

Maybe we could name the next kid “Henery”?

you are at first pleased to hear from your cabbie as you ask him about the rate to O’Hare, but on second thought are a little concerned as you realize he has you trapped in a moving vehicle, and you left your cell phone in the car back at Logan:

“Is $27.00, but there is 10% surcharge for gas, so is $29.70.” Pause. “But you are pretty lady so for you is $27.00.”

When did cab fare in the US become negotiable?

…you don’t want to hear from your cabbie as you give him your destination:

1. How do I get there?

2. What’s the rate?

Geez, do you want I should drive the taxi myself as well?

I wonder if he ever found his way back to O’Hare.

Yesterday Port City, in its usual half-hearted way, dug itself out from yesterday’s snowstorm. As I strolled Aitch downtown, dodging moguls, I had occasion to recall his first few weeks with us, in frigid February ‘04, and remember how awful it is to wheel a stroller on snowy streets. Most people are pretty good about shoveling, but inevitably you run into a property line, where the adjacent occupants can’t agree on who owns the last foot, or the curb cut where the plows have piled snow from the street, so you can’t get out. There’s nothing worse than having to backtrack an entire block because your stroller is trapped. I think this is sufficient excuse for having let a few “oh, shits” escape my lips, even though I have been valiantly trying to contain that sort of ejaculation in the vicinity of Little Pitcher.

Of course, Aitch picked up on it right away, but he waited until later to spring it. “Oh, shit,” he said as I was putting him into his snowsuit later that day. “Oh, shit. Oh, shit.” He looked at me expectantly. He wasn’t giggling with glee, which meant that he didn’t realize it was something “bad,” but he was anticipating some praise for picking up on my expression.

I tried to be cool. “‘Outside’?” I asked, nonchalantly. “Yes, Aitch, we’re going outside.”

“Outside?” he tried on. “No, Mommy. ‘Oh, shit.’”

Oh. Shit.

Anyway, I was boiling with anger at having to walk the stroller on the street because our neighbors, a soon-to-be-defunct chapter of the Knights of Columbus (motto: “Keep Christ in Christmas and strollers in traffic, where the Baby Jesus would have traveled!”), left a portion of their sidewalk impassable and the curb cut to the street obstructed. Then I had a brain wave. “I could come out here with a shovel,” I thought, “and clear the path downtown I use every day. I should do it now, before the snow gets too packed.” So I took Aitch home, grabbed the shovel, wheeled him back along my usual route, and shoveled myself out of every place between here and the business district that the stroller could not fit.

At one point, a young man who was gassing up his car at the station across the street saw me, ran across the street, grabbed the shovel and widened the path down the sidewalk for me. How lovely — someone being nice for no reason at all.

I was a bit disgruntled with myself, because an act like shoveling a neighbor’s walk should proceed from an impulse of generosity like his, and not from irritation, like mine. But maybe the dozens of stroller-piloting parents who pass this way each day will benefit from my random act of selfishness.

This Friday was Port City’s shopping night, when all the local merchants serve hors d’oeuvres and drinks to entice people out for Christmas shopping. We took Aitch for a stroll downtown, since he’s now capable of being awake past seven o’clock without having a total meltdown. He enjoyed the Christmas tree, the horse-drawn carriages, and the crowds in the shops.

One of the downtown churches was having a Christmas carol sing-along, so we made a little detour so that Aitch could hear it. In the past he has been absolutely enthralled by live music. We fear that his musical taste is being warped by my out-of-tune voice and Husband’s inability to keep time, so we try to expose him to the real thing whenever possible.

I love New England Protestant churches. After a lifetime of Roman Catholic excess, a whitewashed church with clear glass windows seems very exotic. These churches make nineteenth-century American history come alive for me. I recently read an excellent biography of The Peabody Sisters that made it clear that religious philosophy was one of the few intellectual debates that a woman could legitimately engage in. Being anti-religious, I’m too quick to dismiss any kind of religious discussion as being of no interest, but the Unitarian/Congregationalist arm of the Transcendentalists contributed a lot to the national conversation on equality.

Also, I’ve always harbored an intense desire to live in a converted church. I would have seem to have been born in a lucky time period for this ambition, since the Catholic church is selling properties left and right; they even sold a nice brick church right down the street a few years ago. Alas, neither Husband nor I am rich or handy; any aspirations in that direction will have to involve a lottery win or a second marriage.

The church hosting the sing-along had wonderful old-fashioned pews with doors that latched. If you have a toddler and are church-shopping, I would highly recommend a house of worship with this type of pew. They effectively contained Aitch and prevented him from escaping or from bothering the people on the other side of the retaining wall, which was useful because he wasn’t as interested in the music as we had hoped. He was attentive during the solo performances, but lost focus during the sing-along portions. I guess he gets enough tuneless warbling from me at home.

I was relieved when a trio took the stage and Aitch quieted down again. Relieved, that is, until the song ended. In keeping with the church setting, there had been no applause after any of the featured performances, but Aitch shouted, “Yay!” And then, after a beat, “More!” Everyone laughed, and we were appropriately humiliated.

After Aitch’s second outburst, we packed it in. We were in the vestibule putting on our coats when the pastor came out and urged us to stay, Aitch’s behavior nonwithstanding. He was very friendly, and although we declined his offer we spent some time talking with him about the history of the church and the fund drive for renovations to the steeple. He had been pastor for two years, and told us that it was difficult to attract members to a Presbyterian church because there were not a lot of Presbyters in New England. Apparently, the Congregationalists and Presbyterians entered into some kind of treaty years ago, which left New England to the former and sent the latter to the mid-Atlantic and midwest. All of this was news to me, since when you grow up Catholic all Protestants look alike.

Since the demographic make-up of New England has changed since the Congregationalists took over, I said that I thought the Presbyterians might be able to attract some new members, particularly Catholics who might be disillusioned by the pedophile scandals and also by the Church’s treatment of gays. I asked the pastor whether his church was gay-friendly, and he answered,”If that’s the kind of thing you’re looking for, there is….” and he named a local church with a lesbian minister.

If that’s the kind of thing you’re looking for? You mean, tolerance, openness, acceptance? There are special churches just for those kinds of people?

I have to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he misspoke, because he could not have meant it to come out that way. Could he?