Just the two of us

Nate, Thanks

Nate’s teachers write a daily note about the various activities they have in class. One day, under “Math & Science,” it said, “Making a family chart and comparing how many family members live in our house.”

I looked on the wall. Sure enough, there it was. Seven of Nate’s classmates have four people in their household. Three of Nate’s classmates have three people in their household. And Nate himself is the only one with just two people in his household.

Later that month, the class made a Family Tree on one of the walls. Each child was given a round leaf, and they drew a picture of each of their family members. I found Nate’s leaf; there we were. I was green and he was blue.

But I missed an important detail.

You remember my good friends Beth and Paul? Parents of Nate’s friend Jennifer… and the lovely Caroline Sarah, named after my Sarah? The ones who take Nate overnight once a week, so I can visit the pshrink and recapture a few of my marbles? Yes.

Beth quietly pointed out to me that Jennifer’s leaf had five people on it, not four. She told me that when she asked Jennifer who they were, she said, “That’s you, and daddy, Caroline, me, and Nate.”

Nate sees it just as clearly, in his own way. When the class started working on their Mother’s Day books, he told me that he wanted to give his book to Jennifer’s mom. He said it in the same four-year-old, matter-of-fact tone that I imagine Jennifer used: what could be more obvious?

Indeed. Well done, my son.

Spinning into glory

Can we build it?

Q: What do you call it when you decide to wash your son’s snow boots in the washing machine, which not only completely destroys said washing machine, but also shrinks the boot liners, necessitating the purchase of new boots and a new washing machine?

A: A total wash.

Honorable mention goes to Nancy, who responded, “Taking yourself to the cleaners.”

There’s no answer

Sarah, Thanks

Today is not exactly a special day.

We still celebrate Sarah’s birthday, and I make time to grieve on our wedding anniversary, but those are happy memories. I don’t really want to commemorate the day Sarah died, two years ago today. It’s not as if I’ll ever forget it. But I’d rather remember her the way she was, full of life and always smiling.

I’ve written before, briefly, about my friend Mike. Mike has lost several very close friends to cancer, and he has basically dedicated his life to raising money for the Jimmy Fund. He runs an annual golf tournament fundraiser called Par Fore The Cure. I don’t golf, but I sure as hell eat cheeseburgers, and baked beans, and the clambake that comes with the golf tournament is something I look forward to all year. Sarah loved the clambake too. She was crazy about lobster, and usually ate considerably more than was sensible, or even sane.

In 2006, Mike added another fundraising event: the Golf Ball, a black tie dinner in March. Sarah died a week before the event, and Mike dedicated the evening to her memory. I attended the Golf Ball in 2007, and I’ll be there this year as well.

You may also recall that Jess, Nate, Kirsten and I participated in the Boston Marathon Jimmy Fund Walk last year. I fully intend to walk again this year. Thanks to all who sponsored us.

Cancer is many things. It’s senseless, it’s tragic. But right now, today, I feel as if it’s just… it’s so unnecessary. If you love lobster, or like to walk, or enjoy dressing up and eating filet mignon… you can make a difference.

Join us, won’t you?

Rejoice

Behind the scenes, Nate, Sarah

My childhood bedroom, circa 1977. Late evening—definitely past my bedtime. My father’s woodwind quintet was playing downstairs. I could hear his bassoon calling me, through the gap under my door. I slid quietly out of bed and tiptoed across the room. Very, very slowly I turned the cut-glass knob, opened the door, and crept silently down the hall. I lay down on the floor at the top of the stairs, hung my sleepy head down onto the first step, and let the music wash over me.

Performing Arts School of Worcester, circa 1986. My trumpet lesson was over, and I was waiting for my sister’s clarinet lesson to end. I had already finished my homework, and I had about an hour to kill. My friend Amy invited me to keep her company while she practiced. I was never a great trumpet player, but Amy was the star of the school. We went upstairs to an empty recital room, and I lay on the floor under the piano, and it was glorious. I felt the sound in my bones, in my stomach. I felt as if I were part of the instrument, and the music flowed through me.

First Congregational Church, circa 1988. My friend Suzanne had somehow obtained the key to the church, and permission to play the newly-refurbished pipe organ. Maybe she was going to be standing in for the regular organist for some reason, and she needed to rehearse? I can’t remember. But I remember the organ. The first thing we did was climb the narrow wooden ladder into the organ loft and admire all the neat rows upon rows of pipes, metal and wood, all perfectly lined up from tiny to huge. Suzanne went back down the ladder to the console and started to play, and I stood inside the music and wept for joy.

Then a big wooden plank clouted me in the head, and I laughed and called down to her: “Could you please turn off the tremolo?”

Memorial Chapel, Northfield Mount Hermon School, December, 2004. Nathaniel was sixteen months, and old enough to attend Christmas Vespers at Sarah’s beloved prep school. We stood in the foyer at the back of the hall, because we knew he would eventually start to squawk, and one of us would have to take him outside for a walk.

The house lights went down, and the chapel was completely dark. The door in the back of the foyer opened, and the choir rustled up from the basement, jostling each other to get lined up just so. We were surrounded by robed angels, each holding a candle. Nate’s eyes shone as he stared at them.

A single note was struck on the bells, and the soloist began to sing from the chancel:

Veni, veni Emmanuel;
Captivum solve Israel,
Qui gemit in exilio,
Privatus Dei Filio.

And the whole choir, all around us, burst into song:

Gaude! Gaude! Emmanuel,
Nascetur pro te, Israel!

And as the music filled us up, Nathaniel’s eyes opened wide, and he gasped in awe and wonder, as if to say: You never told me—I never dreamed—that anything could be so beautiful.

Listen:

The motion of the ocean

Nate

Twice a week, Jen comes to our house in the wee dark hours just before dawn. She takes Nate to day care, so that I can catch the early train.

We just started this a couple of weeks ago. When I picked Nate up from day care after the first day, he was very excited. “Daddy! Jen bought me a doughnut this morning! And she says if I behave and don’t dawdle, she’ll buy me a doughnut every day!”

Now, this sounded a little fishy to me. I asked, “Is that really what she said? Two doughnuts a week is a lot, even for a big guy like me.”

“Well, Jen can decide.”

“No, actually. I will decide what you eat, because I am your father.”

He didn’t like that very much, but he promised to talk to her and get more details about the plan.

Last night, when I picked him up from day care, he pulled me down so we were face to face. “Daddy. I talked to Jen about the doughnuts. She said she would get me a doughnut on the first or the second day of the first.”

I was baffled. “I don’t know what that means, Nate. I think I’m going to have to talk to Jen myself.”

“Dad,” he said, very seriously. “You can’t stop the doughnuts.”

Hung one more year on the line

Sarah

Yesterday would have been Sarah’s birthday. In her honor, we had dinner at the Hous of Grous. I picked up a chocolate cake (with chocolate frosting) at Stop & Shop. I asked the baker to pipe Sarah’s name on top, in purple frosting. “No happy birthday? Just Sarah?” Just Sarah, thanks.

Nate and Jennifer helped blow out the single candle.

And just like last year, I got to snuggle Jennifer’s little sister (and Sarah’s namesake), Caroline Sarah. She is just over a year old, and walking like a pro. I kissed her on her sticky cheeks, and nibbled on the nape of her neck. She is the most beautiful little girl in the world, and I told her so. I think she believed me.

It was a pretty good day. Happy birthday, Sarah.

Laughing all the way

Nate

Scene: Nate’s bedroom, around 7:30 in the evening. The lights are out, and Nate is tucked in bed. Dad has just finished singing a lullabye.

Nate: Daddy, I want to sing a song for you. I want to sing Rudolph.

Dad: I would like that.

Nate (singing): You know Dasher, and Dancer, and… Kermit… and… Piglet… and Gretchen. But do you recall… the most famous reindeer of all?

You’ll know what to do

Nate, Sarah

I decided to take it very easy this Christmas. Somehow, I always get overwhelmed. So this year, I am allowing some of the more time-consuming traditions to fall by the wayside. For instance, we always used to drive up to Freeport, Maine, to do some Christmas shopping. Well, I’d love to, but I don’t think a four-hour car trip would be much fun for Nathaniel. We’ll pick that up again someday, when he’s older.

Then there are the ornaments. Sarah was a collector, God bless her, so there are approximately four times as many ornaments as we could possibly fit on an eight-foot tree. We do have a cathedral ceiling in the living room, though, so maybe someday we’ll find a fifteen-foot tree that isn’t too wide at the base, and put up all the ornaments. Sarah always used to talk about getting multiple trees, and having themes for them: this one would be fish, shellfish, and other undersea creatures; this one would be nautical; this one would be Peanuts (she loved Snoopy); and then the main tree for all the rest (travel souvenirs, hippos, manatees, etc.).

In the past, for some reason, we would have to unpack all the ornaments in a blizzard of tissue paper, and lay them out on every available flat surface, and only then could we hang them on the tree. This was more than a bit stressful to me; I’ve never been diagnosed with obsessive/compulsive disorder, but there’s definitely a part of me that wanted to whimper and hide when Sarah would get going with the ornaments. I also never understood why it all had to happen in one night.

This year, I took it at my own pace. I left all the glass ornaments in their acid-free storage boxes, because I didn’t want Nate to feel left out. Perhaps tonight after he goes to bed I will hang a few of them; the tree is half naked, but the important thing is that we took it slow and easy and everyone had fun. We’d unpack one, decide whether to hang it and where, and then move on to the next one. I gave him metal ornaments, wooden ornaments, and plastic ornaments, and he hung them all on the same branch, whereupon the branch buckled and dropped them all on the floor. And several ornaments went directly into the trash. I never liked this one; even Sarah never liked these, but they held some precious memory or other for her, now lost forever; and here is an entire bucket of oh my God those are ugly.

This should streamline the process even more for next year. The house can only hold so much clutter, and I am getting to the point where if something doesn’t bring me or Nathaniel joy, then I don’t see any reason to keep it around. We go to Goodwill every week on our way to the grocery store, and Nate has been very helpful in identifying baby toys that he doesn’t love any more.

On Tuesday, I took the day off from work to bake Christmas cookies. This was always Sarah’s department, and I skipped the tradition last year, just because we ran out of time. But this year, I bravely got out the mixing bowl and set Nate up on a stool by the kitchen counter. We mixed and mashed, and eventually got to the point where I realized that someone was going to have to roll the dough into balls. Uh, wait a minute now. You want me to touch it, like with my fingers? The answer was clear: ain’t nobody else gonna do it. Even Nate was horrified at the idea. But I am father and mother to him, I realized, and Sarah would have done it without a second thought. So I dived in, and you know, it wasn’t so bad. She would have been proud. At least until the point where I burned 24 of the 36 cookies into little peanut butter cinders.

We’ll try again today. Top rack only, this time.

(mumble mumble jumble) what he say?

Behind the scenes

On Thursday, my friend Sandy and I took Nate to the Official Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony on Boston Common. We had a truly excellent time. We saw all the celebrities: Santa, Frosty, Rudolph, Wally, and… what the heck is that green thing? Well, it was Fred the Frog: the new mascot for Frog Pond? No? Well, whatever. We had tons of fun. Carols, clog dancers, bagpipers, and fireworks. An excellent start to the holiday season. And kudos to Boston for not calling it a Holiday Tree or a Euphemism Bush or some such foolishness. It is a Christmas tree. Deal with it.

Nate was very excited to see Santa. He also got a kick out of Frosty. He said that Rudolph looked like a person in an owl costume, and I was forced to agree. He was curious about the World Series trophy; I am afraid I did not do a very good job explaining the significance of the “golden hat.” Jose Feliciano performing “Feliz Navidad” elicited a shrug. But he could not have cared less about Mayor Menino.

I always enjoy seeing Mayor Menino. If you haven’t heard Mayor Menino speak, you need to. His nickname is Mumbles, because it’s even money he’ll mangle whatever he’s trying to say. He may sound like a moron with a mouthful of marbles, but he’s really pretty smart (at least, he manages to keep getting elected, and the city seems to be doing well enough under him), and in my limited experience, he seems like a very nice guy.

Yup, I actually got to meet Mayor Menino. This was back in the day, probably the year before I did the Nutcracker. I was doing pickup work setting up sound, lighting, and staging for various corporate events around Boston. One of these events was the famous Breakfast With Santa at Jordan Marsh in Downtown Crossing. I ended up running the sound board for Celebrity Storytelling, and so I got to pin lapel microphones on various newscasters and such. Then it was Mayor Menino’s turn. I clipped the mike to his collar and tucked the broadcast unit into the inside pocket of his sport jacket. I don’t remember whether he grabbed a book from the box at random, or whether one of his aides picked it out for him. But I remember what book it was: How The Grinch Stole Christmas!

As he opened the book and started to read, I could see an expression of horror creep across his face. He was clearly thinking, “What the hell is this? These aren’t even real words!” Indeed, Seuss is famous for his made-up words and his tongue-twisters. But His Honor’s tongue was twisted to begin with. Nevertheless, he bravely stumbled through the rhymes, and the kids roared with laughter whenever he got tangled and had to start a sentence over.

After a few pages, I noticed that the Channel Four cameraman had his camera pointed at the floor. I leaned over and asked him what was wrong. “Nothin’,” he said. “It’s just, I think he’d rather not look this dumb on the news tonight. The kids are lovin’ it; that’s enough. It’s Christmas, ya know?”

I did. I do. Merry Christmas, Mister Mayor.

Just can’t wait to get on the road again

Behind the scenes

Jeremy reminded me yesterday of this gloriously awful production of the Nutcracker that we worked on together, back in the day. His post brought back a flood of memories. My friend Ray ran the theatre at my college, and he knew a guy who needed a stage manager. I didn’t have much going on that month, so I signed on board. This was a touring show, mind you, so we spent a lot of time in a rented fifteen-foot box truck from Budget, either stuck in traffic or trying not to flip over on the interchange from 290 to 495 North.

The organizers had a good thing going. They ran a dance school in Cambridge, and they taught dance classes to little kids all over Massachusetts. The high-school kids got the lead roles, and the director played Drosselmeyer. But the little kids from the various regional classes did not tour. There was a different crop of between fifty and eighty kids (representing party children, mice, toy soldiers, snowflakes, sheep, angels, and Polichinelles) appearing in the show at every destination, which meant that there was a fresh group of parents shelling out buckets of cash every weekend: $15 audition fee, $35 “production fee,” and then of course the entire family was expected to buy tickets to the performance itself.

The kids were great. They were incredibly enthusiastic. When I went down to their dressing room to call, “ten minutes, please,” they would roar back, “THANK YOU, TEN MINUTES!” The lead dancers, in contrast, routinely failed to acknowledge my presence at all. Suit yourselves; show starts with or without you.

My favorite moment was when we were loading in to the auditorium at Wachusett Regional High School. We opened the loading dock door and discovered that the wings were filled with folded-up choral risers, plus an acoustical shell. The wing space was pretty limited to begin with, and these risers took up the entire space. We couldn’t even unload the truck with them there.

We were on a tight schedule; we had to put the marley down before we could even start on the lights. So I had my crew start wheeling these risers out into the hallway by the cafeteria.

Immediately, a little man fussed out of the orchestra rehearsal room, demanding to know what we thought we were doing. I explained that we had rented the auditorium, and needed to, you know, actually use it. We would be very careful with his precious risers and put them back where we found them at the end of load-out.

He said, “No! You don’t understand. It’s almost lunch time—the kids will throw food at the risers!”

I just gaped. Jeremy stepped in, and said, “I think what Dave is trying to say is, what the hell kind of place are you running here? Who’s in charge, the students or the teachers?” I honestly couldn’t believe my ears. If we had tried throwing food when I was in high school, there would have been hell to pay.

In spite of the apparent buckets of money coming into the box office, the show was pretty low-budget. This included the company manager’s tendency to take his time about paying me and my crew. I provided detailed time cards, and he grudgingly wrote checks. But when we finished the last show, they still owed us close to eight hundred dollars, and as the weeks turned into months, it became fairly obvious that they had no intention of paying us at all.

After the holiday season was over, they put on a spring production; I forget what it was. They found some other sucker to stage-manage. And they booked the theatre at my college, which, you may recall, was run by my friend Ray.

So they showed up bright and early with their beat-up Budget truck, and loaded everything onto the dock. The truck was blocking the alley, so Ray asked them to move it before they started to unpack and lay out the marley. They were on a tight schedule, as usual, but they agreed.

When they returned from the parking lot, they discovered that the theatre was locked up tight, with all of their gear inside. Ray was sitting on the front steps, looking pensive. When the director asked him to let them in, Ray drew on his cigarette, puffed out the smoke, and drawled, “I understand you owe my friend Dave some money.”