ever-fixed mark

Or maybe just squirrels in ghost costumes?

Happy Halloween!

Spoilers for the book and movie ahead.

I first read Brideshead Revisited in college. I was attracted to the cover photo of Anthony Andrews standing in front of a big English manor house with a teddy bear, a tie-in with the BBC miniseries. It wasn’t quite the romance I had anticipated. I enjoyed it, but it would be years before I gained the facility to read that kind of early 20th-century British novel. I’m not sure if it’s the style, the unfamiliar cultural references, or both, but I’ve found the language of novels of that era more “foreign” than Shakespearean English or eighteenth or nineteenth century prose. The only novels I’ve abandoned unfinished in recent memory are Parade’s End, A Dance to the Music of Time, and Of Human Bondage.

I fell in love with Brideshead this time around, although I had a much stronger reaction to Charles (how could he leave his kids?) and, surprisingly, more indulgence for the Marchmains’ religious feelings (back then, I was freshly lapsed, which may have colored my views; now the Catholic church seems as toothless as a monster that once lived under my bed). Between then and now, I’ve also read Jude the Obscure, and so Julia’s renunciation of Charles took gravitas from my memory of Sue Bridehead’s heartbreaking repudiation of Jude. (I wondered if Waugh took the name Brideshead from Sue. I came up with this on my own, although a few clicks reveals that I was not the first.) I found a lot of humor in the book this time: Charles’s conversations with his father were priceless, and Bridey, Samgrass, and Anthony Blanche were all terrific comic characters. I had not remembered that Sebastian ended up in Tunisia (although now that I think about it he’s the spitting image of one of my Peace Corps friends). And the gay angle, which was so shocking to me all those years ago, seemed very mild; at least, any sexual relationship between Charles and Sebastian seemed rather behind the point, while the other dynamics of their friendship seemed much more important.

I never saw the BBC series, but I was eager to see the new remake. It was entertaining enough, but the writers had to take some liberties with the story to crunch it into two hours that didn’t do it justice. On the ship, for example, Julia and Charles set eyes on each other and are in bed within five minutes. This doesn’t trouble my morals, but it does eliminate one of my favorite parts of the book, the long storm during which Charles and Julia huddle on deck, watching the swinging doors break free of their restraints. (This bit of imagery made a brief appearance in the film, but was not developed.) This was also evident after Julia and Charles fall in love and return to Brideshead; they confront Rex, argue with Bridey (who appears to be saying he won’t bring his new wife to Brideshead because they have been living in sin there…for the past twenty minutes), and encounter her dying father within the span of a few hours.

The worst change was not a truncation, but an addition. In the movie, Julia accompanies Sebastian and Charles to Venice, and she and Charles share a kiss, witnessed by Sebastian. His resulting epic sulk makes it seem like his downward spiral was due to jealousy. In the book, Sebastian and Charles’s relationship was compromised by the former’s drinking and the latter’s collusion with Lady Marchmain, not by Charles’s sudden heterosexuality. Other than a brief spark over a lit cigarette, he doesn’t really have eyes for Julia until he meets her again on board the ship.

The acting was mostly well done. Matthew Goode— so cute! — was just right as Charles. Emma Thompson was wonderful, as was Michael Gambon. (My friend J. and I have remarked recently that his characters have an alarming tendency to die, to the point where just spotting him on the screen is tantamount to a plot spoiler. He has a doozy of a death scene here.) I thought that Sebastian and Julia were badly cast, though. They just weren’t that charming; I was rooting for Charles to get rid of them.

Now I can’t wait to see the BBC version. I have a long plane flight coming up in a few weeks, and I’m saving it for then.

This weekend, Husband and I took the kids downtown for lunch, and afterwards we ordered them ice cream. As usual, I begged the girl behind the counter to measure out only a fraction of a kiddie cup for each of them, but they still got portions with enough calories to sustain a small village for a week.

The boys ate their fill and gave Husband the remains to hold while they cavorted on the playground. Presently, Minor had to use the bathroom, so I took him to a nearby restaurant. While we were gone, Husband got bored holding two near-empty cups of melting ice cream and threw them in the trash.

When we got back from the bathroom, Minor suddenly remembered his ice cream and demanded it. Upon hearing it was no longer available, Minor whined: “Ah want mah ah-cream!” He escalated to crying — not, mind you, a full-on tantrum, just his normal unhappy-with-the-world fuss. So Husband (I can barely type the words) walked over to the trash can, retrieved the cup, and gave it to him to finish.

The TRASH CAN. In front of about TWENTY WITNESSES. I freaked.

Husband maintains it was no big deal, the cup had landed business-end up, the trash can was almost empty, and it was only in there for a little while anyway. He claims the Internets will back him up.

My take on the situation is a bit more nuanced:

1. BLEAAAAAAGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!

2. Would it have killed Minor to have a goddamn LIMIT set for him? “You can’t eat from the trash” seems like a reasonable boundary that would probably not cripple his self-esteem.

3. BLEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

What do you think?

Yesterday afternoon, Husband and I were working from our home office when I received a broadcast e-mail from the school district. It said that, due to an emergency, the area schools had been put on lockdown, meaning that no students would be allowed to leave, either on bus or by foot, until further notice. Since each school is a half-mile to a mile away from any other school, we figured the threat had to be a pretty general one, but we still hurried down to the kindergarten building to be close by.

There were no emergency vehicles outside the school, which was reassuring. At least we were reasonably sure there was no imminent hostage situation. There was no one at all, in fact. I imagine the stay-at-home parents don’t monitor their e-mail that closely in the middle of the day, and working parents had farther to travel. After a few minutes other parents started showing up, their phones ringing with the automated calls from the school district. There was no more real information in the recordings, though.

Then the parents began to get calls from their kids in the middle and high schools and from friends elsewhere in town. One father told us, authoritatively, there had been a robbery at the bank by the middle school. Another mother contradicted this report and said her friend, a city cop, had told her there was an armed man inside the elementary school. Someone told us that an armed man in camouflage, likely a hunter, had been spotted at the dump. Someone else said that the parents arriving at the middle school had been ushered into the building and “locked down” along with the kids.

I wondered aloud what the children were being told. One woman said that the elementary school kids had been instructed to hide under their desks because there was a skunk loose in the building. I hoped their critical thinking skills were advanced enough to debunk that nonsense. Any six-year-old could tell you that hiding under a desk is no defense against a skunk. You hide under your desk to ward off a nuclear attack. Duh!

(Interesting magazine article proposal: “Threats Forcing Schoolchildren to Hide Under Their Desks, Through the Ages.” 19th to early twentieth century: Natural disasters! 1941 - 1945: German air raids! 1945 - 1970s: Nuclear holocaust! 1980s: Intruders with guns! 1990s: Students with guns! 2001: Anthrax! and so on.)

Most of the parents were calm, but the swirling rumors and the complaints lent an edge of hysteria to the whole event. The complaints came in two flavors: The school district was overreacting! or The school district was not doing enough to protect our children! One mother questioned whether the school doors were even locked during the day. Husband volunteered, “I walked right in the other day to use the rest room,” and that upset her further.

Eventually, they let us in to get the kids, and later that evening a more detailed account was posted on-line by the local paper. A masked man, dressed in camouflage and carrying a handgun, had threatened a worker at the city dump. The police went searching for him and decided to lock down the schools so children walking home wouldn’t be at risk of encountering him. An elementary school student called his mother on his cell phone to tell her about the situation, but she misunderstood his explanation and called 911 to report that an armed man had been spotted in the elementary school. This forced the police to set up a cordon around the school perimeter, and all the students had to hide in their locked classrooms until the police realized it had been a mistake.

So, the police and the school district made a judgment call that might have caused a minor inconvenience to students, but who was responsible for dozens of armed, Kevlar-clad police officers surrounding the elementary school? A hysterical parent, that’s who.

If I’m ever in that situation again, I will be very, very careful not to repeat any rumors I happen to hear, and I’ll try not to listen to any, either.

So, last night I woke up in the middle of the night, and something was bothering me. Something besides the prospect of a masked gunman invading my child’s school. By morning, I realized what was wrong.

“Exactly WHEN did you go into the school to use the bathroom?” I asked my husband.

“After school one day. All the kids were playing at the playground, and Aitch had to go, so we went back in the school.”

“But that’s NOT what you told that mother. You made it sound like you were hanging out in the boys’ bathroom in the middle of the school day, by yourself.”

Later that day, I saw versions of the story on the comments attached to the updated on-line news story, and on the mothers’ club forum. The next manhunt in town is going to be for Husband. And if he has to register as a sex offender, we’re going to have to move out of the vicinity of any of the schools. We might have to set up camp at the dump.

By the way, they’re going to be testing the sirens at the nuclear power plant this weekend. I’m expecting the town’s reaction to be something along the lines of “War of the Worlds.”

Husband and I went to see Richard Thompson again this weekend. Once again, he was amazing, although unfortunately we missed half of his patter because he is such a fast talker. It was like trying to parse a foreign language; I found myself repeating the sounds in my head to see if they matched up with any known words, but by the time I figured out, “Oh, he’s talking about KNITTING,” he would be on to something else. (Why is he talking about knitting?)

After the concert, Husband bought some CDs, and Thompson came out to sign autographs, so we stood in line to meet him. Now, Husband is something of a low talker himself, so the conversation went something like this:

Husband: Mumblemumblemumble Ian Anderson mumumumumble?

Richard Thompson: Pardon?

Husband: Mumblemumblemumble Ian Anderson mumumumumble?

Richard Thompson: LalalalalalalalJethroTulllalalalalalalala.

Husband: I’m sorry?

Richard Thompson: LalalalalalalalJethroTulllalalalalalalala.

Husband: Uh, thanks.

At least each of them knew what he himself was saying. I didn’t get any of it.

Minor is continuing to have his own problems with articulation. Unlike the two gentlemen in the previous vignette, he really tries hard to be understood, but he’s still unintelligible to us about 30% of the time. The last time I posted about this, we had just started speech therapy for him, but after six months services were terminated because he didn’t technically qualify any more. I asked the therapist if we should get him private speech therapy; she arranged to have a speech pathologist evaluate him, and the pathologist said he was within normal limits and we should wait until he turns three and have him evaluated again. But other adults can barely understand him, and even we have quite a bit of trouble.

Minor cannot say blended consonants, like “sm” or “sk,” which is pretty common for two- to three-year-olds. He also can’t say initial /k/ or /g/. Everything else is kind of run together and poorly articulated. This wasn’t as much of a problem when he was saying two-word sentences, but his utterances are becoming more novel and thus harder to guess from context. Earlier this week, I was trying to figure out, “Dis hingin ah ma tum! Ak bu fee-er!” (”This is hanging from my thumb, like a bird feeder!”)

When we can’t understand him, we ask him to repeat himself. He’ll oblige two or three times, then he gives this sad little laugh and goes quiet. The laugh is the only sign he gives that he is frustrated.

Husband went to pick him up at preschool the other day and found that the teachers had asked the kids what they were going to be for Hallowe’en and then put all the responses up on a poster. Next to Minor’s name was the word “Chalk?”

He wants to be a shark.

Poor guy.

As the election draws nearer, Husband and I are trying our damnedest to avoid political clashes with friends and family, but sometimes a simple question like “For whom are you voting?” leads to an explosion. Husband was told at a wedding last week that he personally will be responsible for “ruining the country” by voting for “the first black president.” And today he got this e-mail from a friend:

Hot on the heels of his explanation for why he no longer wears a flag pin, presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama was forced to explain why he doesn’t follow protocol when the National Anthem is played.

According to the United States Code, Title 36, Chapter 10, Sec. 171, during rendition of the national anthem when the flag is displayed, all present except those in uniform are expected to stand at attention facing the flag with the right hand over the heart.

‘As I’ve said about the flag pin, I don’t want to be perceived as taking sides,’ Obama said. ‘There are a lot of people in the world to whom the American flag is a symbol of oppression. And the anthem itself conveys a war-like message. You know, the bombs bursting in air and all. It should be swapped for something less parochial and less bellicose. I like the song ‘I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing.’ If that were our anthem, then I might salute it.’

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this could possibly be our next president!!

I, for once, am speechless. He has absolutely NO pride in this country!!!!!

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I give you Lacey’s Law: The veracity of a rumor-monging e-mail is in inverse proportion to the number of exclamation points that adorn its ultimate sentence.

So Husband sent back this, and the originator of the e-mail responded testily. A mutual friend, also copied on the messages, wrote back,

Gentlemen …. I urge you to watch this very special video message I made for you both … turn up the sound, and break out the Kleenex ( no, not for that). See what you made me do?

I’m forced to agree with Obama— it does make a better national anthem.

I just finished re-reading Rabbit, Run for my book club, and I’m so thoroughly depressed I want to gouge my eyes out. The last time I read it I was in high school; I remembered the plot outlines, and the dismal portrait of Reading, PA, but I had forgotten what a kick in the gut the ending was. I had taken a vacation day today and there I was, floating in my kayak, the air soft, the trees a riot of color all around….and me with my book in my hand feeling like the world was coming to an end. At least Rabbit, Run is GOOD, though. I stil haven’t forgiven Updike for The Witches of Eastwick.

*

I can’t bear those Cymbalta commercials with the depressed people staring into space, but I especially hate the vignettes where a dog is moping next to his oblivious owner. People, stay on your meds and PET YOUR DOG, would you? It’ll make you both feel better.

*

Aitch got hold of an Epipen tonight and stabbed himself through the palm with its half-inch-long needle. I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. This resulted in our second call to the doctor’s office today. (The pre-school informed us that Minor was missing his required MMR vaccine, so we had to investigate; it turns out he did have the vaccine, but the computer that generated his immunization record “randomly omitted” the MMR record; “it does that sometimes.”) Anyway, the nurse practitioner who answered the phone advised me to call Poison Control. “The number is…” she began. “No need,” I said; I have had them on speed dial since the day Aitch ate a thermometer, I couldn’t find the number, and I called 911 to get it from them, only to met by the aural equivalent of a blank stare, which caused me to swear and hang up the phone, which led to a police officer’s visit to our house. Do you know if you hang up on 911, someone has to come out to check if you’re okay?

Poison Control advised us that the dose of epinephrine was probably harmless, and as long as the circulation in his hand isn’t damaged, he’ll be fine. No word on what kind of superpower might result when the adrenaline rush activates the mercury residue in his bloodstream. I hope it’s something practical, like the ability to foresee consequences of reckless acts as far as thirty seconds into the future.

The Route 51 bus circulates between our town and two others. In Port City, the end of the line, it loops a figure eight before starting the return route, which makes it seem like you encounter the bus everywhere you turn. For this reason, Husband calls it the “Ghost Bus.” When we see it around town, we shriek, “Yikes! It’s the Ghost Bus,” in true Scooby-Doo fashion.

Recently I was casting about for something to do with the boys and thought it would be fun to take a ride on the Ghost Bus. When I told Minor of my plan, the first thing he said was, “It’s not too scary for me?” My heart sank a bit, because he is sensitive to things that are potentially frightening, and I didn’t want him to panic aboard the Ghost Bus. We jollied him over it and, after missing the bus once and having to run a quarter-mile for it on the second try (they had changed the route), he enjoyed the ride immensely.

In general I try to avoid talk of monsters and ghosts. I figure, they already have a hundred and one reasons why they don’t sleep; there’s no need to add “fear of things that go bump in the night” to that list. Aitch is not afraid of ghosts and monsters, but he likes to play ghosts and consequently Minor is terrified. Minor frequently claims to see ghosts in our living room, and then we have to help him battle them with magic swords (sound effects: “Ching, ching, BLEAAAAAH”–that’s the ghost dying).

If this were a movie, Minor’s ghost sightings would be followed by strange disturbances that would eventually become too blatant to be denied by even the adults, but we are non-believers so in this house the dead remain at rest. Since the house is over a hundred years old and used to be a nursing home, there have probably been a few deaths on the premises, but until I have evidence to the contrary I’m going to assume that it’s the living-room wallpaper giving Minor the heebie-jeebies, and not specters of the walking dead.