PHANTOM BIRTHDAYS

Sunday, the 16^th of May would have been my friend Kate Billings’ 53^rd birthday.  For years, I was convinced it was on the 19^th.  I told her once, that as she got older, she’d appreciate having a few extra days at her previous age.  We never considered that her nagging cough in October 2008 would be diagnosed as Stage 3 non small cell lung cancer.  She would be gone 11 months later. 

Kate and I were friends for more than 20 years, and what I don’t want to do is focus on the last, and most painful one of her life.  As she was so full of it (life, that is…).  She was a successful television producer, who at 40 decided to chuck it all and pursue acupuncture.  Upon graduating from the New England School of Acupuncture and getting her license, she moved to Falmouth on Cape Cod.  In short order, she had a thriving practice and a fantastic guy who shared her deep love of sailing.

I had never been on a sailboat before, when on a rather cold, windy, rainy, nasty day, I joined Kate and some of her friends on her first boat, The Dolce Bella.  I spent a good part of that sail below deck trying my damnedest not to get sick.  While I managed to keep it together on the inside, on the outside I had turned as green as the bay.  This was not lost on my captain, who from that day forward – and in spite of my eventually earning my sea legs – trotted out that story at every opportunity.  Several years later, we were on the water with some other friends and she started to tell the tale.  About two sentences in, she looked at me, smiled, and said, “This story is a lot funnier when you’re not here.”  At her memorial service, I was reunited with the original folks from that first sail.  Nearly 20 years had passed, and it took some time for us to place each other.  Then, a bolt of recognition, “Weren’t you the one who turned green…?”  I could hear Kate laughing.

And so as we muddle through this black mark of firsts on the calendar…first Thanksgiving, first Christmas, first Easter, without her, I find myself thinking about those who’ve passed, and how their birthdays hang in limbo.  How do we mark them? 

Someone once told me that on the anniversary of a loved one’s death, they find someone who didn’t know the deceased, and tell them a story about that person, so that they live anew.

Perhaps that’s what I’m doing here, but on the day she came into the world, rather than the one on which she left us.  As the months pass and the inevitability of life washes over us, these phantom birthdays serve as personal holidays.  A chance to remember, to celebrate, or at the very least, an occasion to look up, feel the breeze and whisper into it, “I love you, Katie B.”

JUST LIKE RIDING A BICYCLE

Billy Powers learned how to ride a two wheeler before I did.  So one day, I hopped on his bike and started pedaling.  It came naturally.  The next thing I knew, I was at the other end of the block.  I didn’t know how to stop, so I just quit pedaling and fell down.  Seemed inefficient, but it was the best I could do.  I picked it up, jumped on, and headed back to his house.  It was a glorious moment.  The neighbors were impressed.  Except for Mrs. Powers, but nothing impressed her.

This was the beginning of an on-again off-again love affair with the bicycle that has lasted my entire life.

In elementary school, an undue influence of pop culture inspired me to crave a Pink Huffy faux-moto cross bike.  My parents bought me one, but the biking gods had other plans for it.  One night I left it unlocked in the driveway.  Instead of it simply getting stolen, it was replaced.  Replaced!  Was I part of some kind of karmic bike exchange?  Left in its place was a little white ten speed.  It had no brand markings.  Only 5 of the gears worked.  I don’t know where it came from.  I don’t know what kind it was.  I don’t know if its original owner wanted my pink Huffy.  When I came out the next morning and found it there, a strange mix of feelings came over me.  Regret that I had not locked up my bike, like my mother insisted, but a much larger sense of relief.  That bike was too pink for someone like me.  This ten speed had character.  The way an old MG is sexier than a new Corvette.  Like a beat up leather jacket you find in a thrift store, like something that’s always belonged to you even though it showed up in your life midway through its own.  I rode the hell out of that bike and eventually started to outgrow it.  So, when we moved to Chicago, it stayed in Miami.  To retire.

A high school job at a t-shirt store, and the desire to be mobile led me to the Cycle Scene on Devon Avenue in Chicago.  The friendly guys there fitted me to a shiny gold Motobecane Mirage, and over the course of the long winter, I paid for it.  $25 here, $10 there, and by spring I was ready to hit the road.  I spent countless weekends pedaling through my adolescent angst up Sheridan Road into the north shore - no helmet, listening to my walkman.  Thank you, guardians of the rider, for watching over me.  The Mirage moved to Boston with me when I came for college, and served as my transport all over the city. 

Delusions of bike commuting led me to Wheel Works where I bought a Bianchi Ocelot.  18 speeds, hybrid style.  The Mirage was feeling at once too clunky and too narrow for the streets of Boston.  I held the maybe 50 bucks I got for it, and felt I had just betrayed an old friend.  I never quite came through on my commitment to ride to work, and the Bianchi spent more time in the basement than on the road.  I bought a car.

When I moved to LA, I sold it to a friend.  She never rode it either.  Upon my returning to Boston, she gave it back to me.  I rode it now and then until last summer when another friend was training for a long distance ride and wanted some company.  I decided that it was time hop back on.  We covered a lot of ground, but it felt too heavy.  Not the kind of bike you cruise 40 miles on.  I set my sites on a road bike.  A real road bike.  A clicky pedal 24 speed (at least), light as air road bike.

Then I started pricing them.  Discouraged, I continued on the Bianchi, cursing it with every hill, angry that I wasn’t pedaling efficiently. 

Then, a chance encounter at EMS, led me to a discounted “last year’s model” sale.  Finally, an affordable bike, a knowledgeable bike tech, and no more excuses.  While Scott bicycles are not a well known brand (hell, neither is Motobecane), they are a pretty cool company based in Idaho, whose bikes are well made, and their “Speedster” fit me perfectly.

On our maiden voyage, I recalled that moment on Billy’s bike, at the corner, in front of the Caspers’ house wanting to stop, not knowing how, and feeling myself fall.  Here I was, nearly 40 years later, on the Minute Man Bikeway, somewhere between Lexington and Bedford, nervously anticipating the cross street.  I got my right foot out of the pedal, but shifted my weight wrong.  I fell to my left.  Hard.  I picked myself up, and assured the people stopped at the red light, talking on their cell phones, who didn’t notice, that I was okay.  Part of me longed for the safety of my hybrid.  I know how to ride that bike.  I know how to finagle around the middle gear shifting problems, I can take my feet off the pedals without thinking about it – whenever I damn well please.  But where’s the pleasure?  That bike was about pragmatism, not joy.  Our relationship was stale, it felt more like a business arrangement.  “I’ll take you where you want to go,” as opposed to, “Let’s go and see where we end up.”  I don’t know how long this love affair is going to last, but it’s bound to be one hell of a ride.


*huffy image courtesy Mt. Ranier Bicycle Co-op, Motobecane off a Vintage bike website, and the Scott comes from the EMS website.  Please don't sue me.

THE SEIJI SCALE

In 1989, I was earning $6.50 an hour at a local suburban Cable Access station.  In addition to driving the van to city hall to cover live school committee and city council meetings, my job was to help produce TV by and for the good people of Newton, MA.  I had finished college six months earlier, and landed this position right after graduation.  It was my first “real” job in the field in which I majored, and yet job satisfaction was low.  My roommate Molly was in her last year and was working at a bookstore.  Her job satisfaction wasn’t much higher, and could be measured by the dozens of books that lined her bedroom floor.  We often sat on the floor in the hallway, just outside of my bedroom.  Our apartment didn’t  fit us.  We were on the 2^nd floor of an 1890s three decker in the heart of Brookline Village, across from Town Hall and the Police Station.  We had a working fireplace, and all the wood trim was either cherry or mahogany.  To this day, it’s one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever lived.  Yet, for two kids barely old enough to buy beer, our apartment was too grown up.  Plus, there was the third roommate.  She was in her 40s, and it was more her place than ours.  She rarely came out of her room.  When she did, it was to refill her plate of food and sigh.  So we’d sit there.  Leaning up against the wall, butts numb from the hardwood floor, giggling.  Like children.

As we tried to picture adulthood, we wondered who is completely satisfied in their work.  Could there really be people who got up every day excited to face it?  We concluded that Seiji Ozawa (the then Music Director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra) had the world’s coolest job.  He travels the world,  and spends his days with artists at the top of their craft.  He has creative freedom, respect, wealth and fame.  Music was his life, and now his life was music.  It seemed like a pretty good deal.  And so, from this casual observation, we developed “Seiji Ozawa Scale of Job Satisfaction.”

I don’t think either Molly or I truly understood the magnitude of genius to which we dared to compare ourselves.  For the rest of us who aren’t Seiji Ozawa, things usually fall somewhere in the middle.  We have our Seiji moments, rather than our Seiji jobs.  Perhaps the hubris of youth led us to believe we could find a way to make a living loving what we do every day.  The cynicism of mid-career taunts us by holding up Seiji Ozawa’s impossible standard, and inventories the number of times we’ve fallen short.  Still, every time I take on a new project, I do a little mental Seiji check.  The wisdom of experience reminds me that turning my back on Seiji would mean losing faith in myself.  

SUMMER CLOTHES

Having faith we are done with snow and below freezing temperatures, I decided to spend Easter Sunday swapping out the winter clothes for the summer ones.  This twice yearly ritual is always more work, and takes longer than I expect it to, but there is a certain satisfaction in fully accepting the change of seasons.

When I was a kid in Miami, Woolworth’s used to sell cans of “Florida Sunshine.”  I always wanted to get one and open it.  I wondered if they painted the inside yellow.  I thought of those souvenirs when I opened a box filled with linen pants, flip flops and t-shirts.  Without fail, there is an article of clothing that I had forgotten.  Coming across it makes it seem like Christmas.  This year it was a groovy pair of canvas shoes I bought towards the end of last summer.  I barely had a chance to wear them before stowing them away.  Uncovering them, I immediately saw myself  al fresco, laughing over margaritas, and looking dangerously hip in my canvas shoes.  The summer wardrobe is full of potential.  Romance, beaches, road trips in my beloved Miata (which is still in stasis in the garage – I reconstitute her in May).  The movie trailer plays in my head as I unfold and rehang  that adorable cotton top.  Warm nights, cold beer, burgers on the grill.  The air of possibility enters my apartment as I take down the last of the cellophane window covers. 

The dark winter colors, the heavy woolens are packed up next to flannel shirts and corduroy pants and stuffed into the back of the closet with mittens and scarves and thermal underwear.  With the cold short days behind us, people are actually friendly again.  For a little while.  Until they start complaining about the heat.  A nice day in New England is almost never taken for granted.  It sort of fits with the whole notion of the Yankee sensibility.  “Can’t have too many nice days, ah-nope.  It’ll make you soft.  E-yup, gotta ration out that sunshine, so’s people knows what’s good for ‘em.”

When I decided to leave Los Angeles, many questioned my judgement with the statement, “But what about the winters?”  My stock reply to this question was, “There’s more to life than weather.”  I freely admit that as I get older, winters are harder to take, but my choice to leave LA had very little to do with climate.  As I fully engage in the seasons, I find a sense of forward motion, of movement through time.  A feeling you don’t get when the leaves don’t change.  I’m sure that by the time Columbus Day rolls around, I’ll be daydreaming about crisp autumn nights, hot apple cider and warm cozy sweaters. 

But for now, my favorite cargo shorts, white tank top and Red Sox hat will do me just fine.

WHAT'S LEFT TO SAY ABOUT ELLA?

Nothing.  And yet, everything.  NPR is running an occasional series called “50 Great Voices,” and today Ms. Fitzgerald was highlighted.  (link to story below)

Just yesterday I was having lunch with two dear friends, one of whom I hadn’t seen in more than 15 years (John).  The other?  Well, the other’s been a pal for over 20.  He’s my culture guy, my music bud, my movie partner (Ron).  Many years ago, the three of us worked together at what many call the country’s flagship PBS station.  We converged at a perfect time in our lives.  I was just out of school and Ron and John had a couple of years on me, but not so many that we couldn’t relate.  Ron is a music savant.  John is a musician.  I was into typical late ‘80s alt pop, but wanted to expand my horizons.  Along come these two.  John, at the time, was also the choral conductor at nearby Church, and his knowledge of classical, jazz and show tunes far exceeded anybody in my small post college world.  And Ron, Ron never stopped listening to new music.  He was a shark.  Never wanting to become a fogey who only listened to what he listened to as a teenager, he made it his mission to stay current.  These were my teachers.

Prior to graduation, my only experience of jazz and swing came from the summer I worked at Banana Republic.  Before they became the Gap for grownups, BR billed itself as “travel & safari clothing.”  Their in-store soundtracks were a lesson in WWII and post war music history.

Yesterday’s conversation inevitably turned to music, and I, still, all these years later, felt like the rookie at the table.  We started to reminisce, and it was John who pointed out that together, we saw some of the greats - Sarah Vaughn, Betty Carter and Carmen McRae - culminating in a trip to Tanglewood to see Ella.  We thought we were lucky then.  But yesterday, over dim sum, able to unearth and share these moments all these years later, we knew it.

Listen to Susan Stamberg’s excellent profile on Ella here:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125170386

DECONSTRUCTING EUNICE

Recently I was chastised on Facebook by a friend of mine.  She posted the famous “Sorry” sketch from The Carol Burnett Show, and I piped in with the thought that Eunice (of Eunice, Ed & Mama) was a tragic character, and the underlying sadness of those sketches is part of what made them so compelling.  She told me I was taking away the funny.

I’ve been mulling this exchange ever since.  As a comedian and writer, I find nothing more annoying than intellectual posers taking the fun out of a pie in the face by insisting that it is an attempt to make violence palatable.  A pie in the face is funny.  We all know that.  Eunice ringing that little bell and yelling in that marvelous cracker screech, “Sorrrryyyy!” is hilarious.  Her delivery, that dress, those shoes, Harvey Korman and Vicki Lawrence (that wig!  that ass!) determined to get each other to bust up laughing is pure joy.  It’s the comedy that has informed an entire generation of comedians, improvisers and sketch writers. 

But to deny Eunice’s personal hell is to do a disservice to a monumental piece of writing and acting. Eunice was dealt a lousy hand.  She spends every moment of those sketches trying to win a game she is destined to lose – her mother’s approval, a supportive husband.

Perhaps I have over personalized it because I had a mother who was undercut by her own mother her entire life.  I have seen first hand the reality of a woman who felt trapped between her husband, in laws, mother and children.  My mother and I watched The Carol Burnett Show together every Saturday night.  She laughed out loud at those sketches too.  She laughed not only at the way Ed said, “slide,” but at the larger truth behind Mama re-cleaning the kitchen table.  Eunice suffered all the indignities her husband and mother (and in other episodes, her "better" sister Ellen, played by Betty White) threw at her.  When she would lash out and express her rage, nobody would listen.  Her feelings never validated, her only recourse was to sit down, shut up, and play another hand, hoping maybe that this time, she’ll win. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmdfSXWVW1M

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJLVgPPF40M&feature=related