It could have happened

I was standing in the backyard of my brick Georgian home on Kentucky Street in Chicago. It was wide and green, dotted with maple saplings. It looked exactly like the backyard of my parents' home in Pennsylvania, where I grew up. I looked over at my neighbor’s equally spacious backyard. I could see my neighbor Steve gathering equipment for a camping trip. People kept coming into his yard and stacking up their camping equipment near his—apparently a large group was headed out together.

As I was standing in my yard, near the house, I noticed a man going into my garage at the back of the property.

I walked across the yard and followed him into the garage. I saw the man and several other people, looking through boxes, sweeping, moving chairs and other garage materiel. The floor was clean and swept. A girl about eleven was asleep, wrapped in a blanket, near one wall.

Another little girl, about age seven, skinny and lithe, was climbing up on shelves built into the side of the garage. The shelves were as wide as the garage, and went up to the roof, which seemed to be two stories high. She was about halfway up, rummaging through plastic tubs and baskets, looking for something. The man on the floor was directing her. The tubs and baskets took up most of the room on the narrow shelves. There was barely room for the little girl’s feet on the edge of the shelf, but she seemed as surefooted as a mountain goat.

“What’s going on?” I asked the man. “She can’t be up there! it’s dangerous. I’m liable if she falls and gets hurt.”

He told her to get down. She climbed nimbly down and stood next to him.  

He was sincere and rugged, about forty years old, with dark hair and black eyes. I wasn’t afraid of him, but I was mystified. A woman opened the side door of the garage and walked in. I couldn’t tell how old she was. Maybe she was his wife? His mother? She had some gray in her hair. She looked nervous.

“Are you part of the group that’s going camping with Steve?” I asked.

The man looked at me, his expression blank, and I realized I had it all wrong.

“Are you planning to live here?” I said. “In the garage?” I looked around. We never locked the service door of the garage, and rarely used it for the car. We mainly used it to store the lawnmower and lots of stuff we never used. Old paint cans and flower pots lined the lower shelves.

The man nodded. We watched as the rest of the family—there must have been six or seven kids and a couple of adults—continued to sweep and organize. They went in and out of the service door. The little one who had been asleep near the wall woke up, unwrapped herself from the blanket, and stood next to the nervous woman.

I was sad and confused. How could I kick them out? Clearly they were homeless, and trying to make the best of a terrible situation. I introduced myself, and shook his hand. I reached over to shake the woman's hand, too, and noticed that her eyes still looked anxious.

I left the garage and went back into the house. It was Easter, and the family had already sat down around the table and starting eating. My parents were both there, and my former brother in law, and my aunt and uncle. Others too, but I don’t remember their faces.

“There are twelve people living in our garage,” I announced.

The table was filled with food—ham, potatoes, salad, green beans, dinner rolls—and everyone was helping themselves and talking. The talking stopped as soon as I made my weird announcement. 

Then people started giving suggestions about what I should do about this unexpected development. Nobody seemed to be too surprised, and no one got up from the table. They just talked about it as if we were discussing something in the news.

I went outside and stood in front of my house. The sun shone brightly. Two white SUVs sped down the street and screeched to a stop in front of my neighbor’s house. The SUVs had INS logos on the side. Men piled out wearing body armor and carrying rifles. They huddled for a moment outside the vehicles. Somehow I knew they were planning their assault on the family in my garage.

I made an instant decision. I ran down the alley on the side of my house. I wanted to reach the family in the garage, to warn them. As I reached the edge of my house, I saw the man and a couple of the girls outside of the garage, in the alley.

I waved my arms frantically, telling them by incoherent semaphore to run! Run! The man saw me, and knew instantly what I was saying. He motioned to the girls to run, and then he raced inside the garage to warn the others. They started coming out of the garage and scattering down the alley.

Meanwhile, as I ran past the edge of my house, I could see an agent closing in, running down the gangway next to my neighbor’s house, holding his rifle. Other INS agents closed in from other angles. 

The family had not gotten far. The agents chased them and pointed guns at them. When they saw they were caught, they stopped and put their hands up. They looked scared.

...

And then I woke up, dammit.

I told my dream to Mr. Peevie and M. Peevie on the way home from Easter lunch. 

"Noooo!" M. Peevie yelled, when I got to the end. "What happened next?"

I wish I knew. I hate it when I'm having an interesting, adventurous dream, and I wake up before I find out the end.

We were headed home through our old neighborhood, where we lived in the brick Georgian. We drove slowly past the house, and turned down the alley. 

"I can see the family trying to get away!" M. Peevie said, looking at the garage and peering down the alley.

Why are some dreams so vivid? Where do these details come from--INS? people living in my garage? My former BIL?

It's all so very mysterious.

Urban Anthropology

The Internet has not reached everyone in the United States yet. And when a citizen encounters The Web for the first time, it's like a toddler in a toy store.

Yesterday we visited with my dad's old buddy from WWII days, Sahib. (He and dad were in India together.) He's 95. He's a bit frail, but he makes good time zooming around the halls of the retirement village on his walker. He is mentally as sharp as a hangnail, remembering the distant past and yesterday with clarity and humor.

Sahib is a bit of a Luddite: he eschews cell phones and computers, and relies on his cradle phone from the 1980s and good old-fashioned snail mail to communicate with his 11 god-children and countless cousins, nieces, nephews, and friends.

He had kept in touch with most of his band of brothers from the war; but he'd lost track of one or two. He remembered my dad fondly, and told us stories spanning their 70-year friendship. 

"Al was in charge of scheduling shifts to man the radio 24 hours a day, seven days a week," Sahib told me. "He'd make sure the shifts were covered, every leave accommodated, and each man given an equal assignment--and he made it seem easy."

Sahib named the seven or eight men who served in the same [unit] with him (or some other army word), including my dad, who died this past June. "I might be the last one left," he said. "I know most of them have passed--but I'm not sure about Frank."

"Well, then," I said, whipping out my trusty I-Phone. "Maybe we can find out. What's his last name? Do you know where he lived?" I googled Frank with his last name and nickname, in Louisville, Kentucky, and up popped his phone number and address. I showed it to Sahib, who practically fell off his leather easy chair.

"Oh!" he said. "Oh my. Oh. My. God. Omigod."

Then he continued, eloquently: "How...who...what...? How do they get that in there? Who puts it in there?" I think he wasn't even sure what question to ask, or what exactly he meant by "in there." 

"They must have so many people getting that information and putting it in there," he observed, probably imagining thousands of re-purposed Lollipop Guild munchkins poring over phone books and madly typing in names and numbers. 

Then he got even more excited. "Am I in there? What happens if you put my name in?"--like it was a magic trick, and if I waved my hands I could make a king of hearts appear with his name on it.I googled Sahib's full name, and his White Pages information came up, along with 2.7 million additional hits. (Sahib was a smidge miffed at this affront; he said, "I thought I was an original!")

"Oh my God!" he said, over and over. "I can't believe this. Can you put in my brother's name? He was a cop who investigated an infamous triple homicide." Sure enough, the obituary for Sahib's brother popped up, mentioning the case and quoting the Sahib himself.

"What's this...this thing called?" he asked. "How much information is out there? Who puts it there?"

"It's called the Internet, Sahib," I said. "It's like an information library, but it's all electronic."

He asked more questions, as animated as a kid getting to know his brand new puppy; and when I told him about I-Pads, he hopped right on board. 

"I'm gonna get one of those things," he said. "And I'm gonna learn how to use it, too!" His slightly younger cousin has a laptop which sits, unused, in her apartment. Just like Sahib's cell phone, which, he said, he "never could figure out how to use."

We left him with the promise that we'd be back soon to play on the Internet some more with him; and I felt glee at having had the rare experience of introducing my friend to this brand new world of the Information Superhighway. I felt like an anthropologist visiting an undiscovered people group and introducing them to Doritos for the very first time.

Eulogy: Alfred Charles Meyer

I’m not an expert on my dad, but I can tell you a few stories that will give you a pretty clear picture of what we have lost and what heaven has gained with his passing.

First of all, we know that dad and mom had the most perfect of marriages, and never had an argument in 64 years, one month, and one week of wedded bliss—or at least, not one that they would admit to. Their marriage was a union of best friends, and they always presented a united front in parenting us five kids. This meant that sometimes they were both wrong.

Dad had some fun dating an identical twin. You’d have to look pretty close at mom and her twin, my Aunt Jean, to tell the difference. Somebody once asked dad, “When you go to pick Joyce up for a date, how do you know you’ve got the right twin?” and dad said, “Who cares? They’re both cute.” Mom hated that story. Probably still does.

Dad was not a believer when he first started dating his cute girlfriend, Joyce. After they had dated awhile, mom told him she could not go out with him any more unless he came to church with her. So he did, and he fell under the spell of the great preacher Donald Grey Barnhouse at Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia. He heard the gospel, and believed it, and turned his life over to Jesus.

Dad loved to tell the story of how Pop-Pop, mom’s father, gave his permission for dad to marry her. Pop-Pop said he would not give his permission until dad went to Bible college for one year, so mom and dad both enrolled in classes at Philadelphia College of Bible. Dad ended up continuing there not for one year, or two, or three—but for nine years. That nine years laid the foundation for 40 more years of Bible study, and an unshakable faith.

Not only did mom’s influence bring dad to the gospel, but she took good care of him in every other way as well—and even at the very end of his life, as he held her hand in the Intensive Care Unit at Grandview hospital, he wanted to make sure she knew how much he loved her. “I love you, Daddy,” she said to him, and even though his voice was weak and blocked by a tube down his throat, we could all hear him say, “I love you, sweetheart.”

Dad was not a perfect parent, and each of his five children is messed up in his or her own way. But we don’t need him to be perfect to remember him with deep love and admiration, and miss him. He was ahead of his time as a hands-on dad who changed diapers and did housework. He would load all of us into the car on a summer Saturday morning, pack the cooler with sandwiches, fill the thermos with sweet iced tea, and drive us to Ocean City for a day on the beach. Every time he’d bring his garden spade and dig a giant sea turtle in the wet sand, and kids would come from up and down the beach to admire it and climb on it. The day on the beach would be followed by an evening on the boardwalk with bumper cars, skee-ball, Taylor’s pork roll, and salt water taffy.

I’m grateful for these kinds of growing-up memories of my dad. There are other images of dad emblazoned in my mind as well: Dad pulling weeds out of the yard, muttering about “bodacious dandelions” the whole time. Dad playing ping-pong with us in the basement. And then, in December, setting up what we called The Platform—that’s Platform with a capital P—a flat plywood table, with trains and winter scenery and battery-powered racecars with hand-held controllers. Dad setting up the artificial white Christmas tree year after year until it was actually sort of yellow, controlled by the kind of frugality comes from living through the Great Depression.

If you knew dad for very long, you learned that his faith was his top priority. I often found him, in his bedroom, on his knees, praying. Or he was sitting in his chair, reading his Bible, and perhaps referring to a devotional guide. He made some notes about his preferences for how we would remember him after he was gone, and these notes included a reference to I Corinthians 15. This chapter contains an eloquent summary of the gospel: Christ died for our sins. He was buried, and he was raised on the third day. And then this: “By the grace of God I am what I am,” Paul wrote, “and his grace toward me was not in vain.”

Maybe dad was thinking of this chapter in his last hours. He was resting peacefully; his eyes were closed. Mark said, “I wonder what he’s thinking about.” I leaned over Dad and asked him, “Hey Dad, Markie wants to know what you’re thinking about.”

He opened his eyes and looked in mine and said, “The cross.” Maybe he was thinking of these verses in I Corinthians 15:

For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:

 “Death is swallowed up in victory.”

 “O death, where is your victory?

  O death, where is your sting?”

Later that same day I asked him, “Dad, are you looking forward to seeing Jesus?” and he answered without hesitating: “Amen.”

Suffrage

An unexpected Facebook friend request showed up in my inbox today--from my Dad.

"Peevie Daddy wants to be friends on Facebook," the subject line read.  My jaw dropped, but I immediately hit "Confirm Friend."  Then I logged into my FB account and posted as my status, "I wonder how many nonagenarians have Facebook accounts?"  Just curious.

I wanted to know what prompted dad to join FB, so I called him.  My dad answered, but quickly handed the phone over to mom before I could get to the crux of the matter.  (He was busy watching the Phillies lose to the Cubs for the second time in a row.)

"Mom," I said.  "Guess what?  Dad just friended me on Facebook!"

"That was me," she said.

"But it said 'Peevie Daddy wants to be friends,' not 'Peevie Momma,'" I said.

"It wouldn't let me put two names down," she said.

"Riiiiight," I said, "But why did you put dad's name and not your name?"

"Oh," she said, "I thought I should put dad's name down."

"Hmm," I said, "and why did you think that?"

"Because he's the daddy," she said with a simple, anachronistic non-sequitur.

An Anti-Drivel Mothers' Day Post

I can't repost my recent rant about why you should stop saying "Happy Mothers' Day" without appearing to be a lazy blogger who has run out of ideas, so instead, I'll add these helpful quotes about mothers and their body parts:

Most mothers are instinctive philosophers.  --Harriet Beecher Stowe

Women who miscalculate are called mothers.  --Abigail Van Buren

It is quite surprising how many children survive in spite of their mothers. --Norman Douglas

My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch.  --Jack Nicholson

My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.  --Mark Twain

It would seem that something which means poverty, disorder and violence every day should be avoided entirely, but the desire to beget children is a natural urge. --Phyllis Diller

Yes, mother.  I can see you are flawed.  You have not hidden it.  That is your greatest gift to me. --Alice Walker

Everybody needs a bosom for a pillow.  --Cornershop

I scrolled through about seven zillion quotes about mothers to come up with this list of quotes which have some relationship to my own reality, and which counteract the whole "mothers are perfect angels" drivel that fills the Internets this time of year.  Most of the quotes were gushy and overstated, like a Helen Steiner Rice poem multiplied by six Jewish proverbs.  I think we should appreciate and honor our mothers in ways that acknowledge their imperfect humanity as well as the parts of motherhood that they got right.  If Jeannette Walls can do this, so can I.

My mother was and is far from perfect.  But now that I'm a far-from-perfect mother myself, I have a lot more appreciation for her, and I see her sacrifices more clearly.  In my mind I can see her sitting on the sidelines of my field hockey games, wearing cotton pedal-pushers and white Keds, her blue hair glinting in the sun.  I know now that she probably had other things she'd rather be doing on a weekday afternoon other than getting her butt damp and grass-stained while I cleated around a muddy field in a kilt chasing a white ball with a stick. 

But she showed up, and when my friends said, "Hey, look at that lady over there with blue hair!", I was happy to say, "Yeah.  That's my mom.  She comes to all my games."

Going Home Again

Last week I visited my parents (and sister) for the first time in over a year. (Bad daughter!) My trip was a medley of hilarity, sweetness, deliciousness, shopping, and napping. Here are the highlights:

• Shopping with my mama for a snow-white purse with two outside pockets with snaps, not too big, not too small, that doesn't requires the use of a paper clip to close the zipper.
  
• My BIL sitting on the couch eating frosting from a can, while we watched a Jeff Beck concert on cable and speculated about the age and origins of the bass player, Tal Wilkenfeld. (Photo credit: www.gibson.com)
  
• Raising eyebrows with the story of my stalker former boyfriend.
• Eating a Franconi's authentic Philadelphia cheesesteak. If you haven't sunk your dentures into one of these, you haven't lived. Culinarily, that is. (Photo credit: www.nymag.com)
  
• Shopping unsuccessfully for a rectangular pre-planted window planter to hang from mom and dad's patio railing. We went to four stores, with no luck. Finally, we went to Lowe's, bought the ingredients, and planted red and white petunias right there in the store's garden center.

"How are you going to plant flowers without a trowel?" asked my in-the-box daddy.

"I'll use my hands, Dad," I said.

"But you'll get all dirty!" mom worried.

"Yes," I replied. "And?" Have they ever met me? Dirt and I go way back.

• Shopping (again!) for button fly/button waistband PJ shorts for dad. Guess what? They don't exist. Every single pair of men's PJ shorts in captivity has an elastic waistband. But my dad remembers the PJs that mom bought him for their honeymoon 61 YEARS AGO and wants exactly the same thing. Which is sweet, but deluded.
• Visiting with my beautiful niece, her crazy husband, and my handsome nephew. Sadly, it appears that my sister's kids both chose spouses with personality disorders similar to their father: controlling, manipulative, and narcissistic. My nephew was visiting for less than two hours, and his wife called him four times to find out where he was and when he'd be home. Four times.
• Avoiding conflict with my opinionated parents. This was my personal favorite of all the highlights.

I asked my therapist for a script that I could use when my parents said something provocative, because in 48 years I have not yet learned how NOT to take the bait. He said, "Why don't you try saying, 'Uh-huh' or 'Hmmm.'"

So I tried it. My dad said something politically charged--I can't even remember what it was, but it was probably something about Barack Obama being personally responsible for millions of babies being killed--and I said, "Hmmm." He said something else along the same lines, and I said, "Uh-huh," and then I changed the subject to books.

It worked! I experienced a minor miracle first-hand. Essentially, I paid $150 for two words--and they weren't even words, just sounds! But as my friend Q said, that was the best $150 I ever spent. Hooray for therapy. (But seriously, why could I not come up with those responses on my own? That is messed up.)

The moral of the story: You can't go home again, but I guess you can shop there.

(Bonus points if you identify the source of the quote without googling it.)

Why Can't We All Just Get Along?

The night before the inauguration, I mentioned to my mom that I'd be keeping my kids home to watch the swearing in, and to do inauguration-related learning activities. I was excited about the historical significance of the event, and thrilled that my kids were involved and aware and enthusiastic about learning more.

"It's so great, Mom," I said. "I don't want them to miss a minute of it. They even seem to get that it's a historical moment!"

"Because he's our first Arab-American president?" she said.

Oh, yes she did. Of course, being me, I took the bait.

Yes, he has Arabic family connections, I said--but so what? Why is that the important thing to emphasize? Because it's the TRUTH, she said. I care about the TRUTH. Don't YOU?

But why is that important? I asked her. Because no one ever mentions it, and it's the TRUTH, she said. I pointed out that Obama has written two memoirs, in which he has very openly and clearly talked about his family heritage, and in fact, one is called Dreams From my Father--but apparently she still thinks he's trying to hide something.

It just sounds like you're being disrespectful of him, and not really appreciating what an enormously important thing this is for our country. What, she said, that we now have an ARAB-American president? He's not black, why do they always say he's black? Arabs are not black!

He has dark skin, mom, I said. It's got to be so encouraging and hopeful for people who have darker skin to actually see someone become president who looks a little more like them--maybe it makes them feel a little more included, or a little more optimistic. He's not black, she repeated. Arabs are not black. He's not African-American; he's Arab-American. Why are they trying to hide the TRUTH?

Mom, I said. Seriously? He's very clearly not an old white guy, and that's one thing that's different. Of course my mother found that remark to be disrespectful, and I apologized.

"I'm not trying to be disrespectful," I said. "I'm pointing out the obvious--that he LOOKS different, and his background is different, and to me and many other people, he also SOUNDS different." Either way, it's historic and important--why would she want to be hostile and angry about it?

And she's not the only one. Another family member sent me an email the other day saying this:

Now that your man is in, I have to rib you a bit. An AP wire reported that US military planes attacked a group of Afghans and killed 15-16. The president of Afghanistan says they were all civilians. If the republicans were as vicious, stupid and arrogant as their democrat rivals they would be printing bumper stickers reading, "Obama Lied, People Died".

I don't get it. I understand that he didn't vote for Obama, and that he would probably never vote for a Democrat. That's fine. But to smear all democrats as "vicious, stupid and arrogant" is so over-the-top that it's not even possible to return to a civil disagreement. Or am I wrong? But I cannot not take the bait--even though I did not ask for this fight, and never initiate political conversations with my family because I always end up feeling beat up.

I suggested that if the 15-16 who died were civilians, then it is not a time for ribbing, but for mourning. And I also submitted that it's ridiculous to suggest that Democrats are more vicious, stupid and arrogant than Republicans, just because of their party affiliation. Both groups are comprised of sinners, and neither side can claim moral superiority.

I'd like him to be more supportive of our new president and not, like the mascot of the Right, Rush Limbaugh, hope that he fails. But barring that, couldn't we just agree to disagree, with civility, and not make everything a black and white moral issue? Apparently not. He firmly stands by his assertion that the Dems are hateful and vicious, and he said, "You'd really have to reach to find anything close" on the Republican side. How can you even have a civil, constructive conversation with someone who makes party affiliation a moral issue?

Don't get me wrong. I do believe in black and white moral issues. I do believe there are absolutes. But even in absolutes, there can be civility and courtesy. There can be benefit of the doubt, and peacemaking. Maybe we all need a primer on what civility looks like in operational terms:

• avoid broad-brush, inflammatory statements
• use clear, specific and representative examples
• don't assume that you know what your opponent believes or agrees with. Instead, ask, and listen.
• be aware of how you are coming across. If you become aware that you have offended, take responsibility, and rephrase. Why? Because the relationship, or the person, is more valuable than the point you are making.
  
• Show restraint, respect, and consideration in your words and actions.
  

I want to be a peacemaker. I want more people to strive to be peacemakers in the little things as well as in the big things. We can do this, friends. Try it today: when you encounter a situation in which someone is doing or saying something that offends you, or that you think is wrong, inaccurate, or inappropriate, try to respond in a civil, peace-making way. Let me know how it goes.

Now I gotta go scream at my kids because they're making too much noise and tearing through the house.

Library Scofflaw

I love libraries. I remember going to the public library in Philadelphia when I was a little girl. Mom and Dad would take us every three weeks, and we'd get to check out a huge stack of books almost as tall as we were.

I remember the day I graduated from the little kids' section, with the big print books and pictures, to the big kids' section, with chapter books and only an occasional pen and ink illustration. I was maybe seven or eight years old, and I was looking for a book to read, and the children's librarian was helping me. She'd pull a book off the shelf, and I'd take a look and say, "I've already read it." I had read every single book in that cul-del-sac of picture books, and I was itching for some bigger challenges.

"Well," Marian the Librarian told me, "It looks like you've pretty much worked your way through the children's section. Why don't you come over here"--she led me in among the towering stacks--"and we'll see if we can find something you'd be interested in."

I was in awe. The shelves were so high even the librarian couldn't reach the top ones without a cool, rolling ladder. "There must be a hundred books here!" I thought to my second-grade self. "Maybe even two hundred!"

I was interested in biographies, and Marian pointed me to books about Annie Oakley, Marie Curie, and Babe Didrikson. I'd already read the picture book versions of many biographies, but I was excited to read "real" books, with more than 30 pages.

Now that I'm a mom taking my own kids to the public library, the thing that's hardest for me to figure out is how my parents managed to not only get all of us to the library every three weeks, but how they kept track of all our books. As far as I can remember, my parents never paid a library fine and never lost a book.

The Peevies--not so much. We are constantly losing books and paying fines. I swear, we pay enough library fines to pay the salary of the children's librarian.

When the fines become too onerous on one card, we just check out books using another card. That's what's great about having three reading kids in the house--everybody has a card. It's also what has gotten us in trouble with Lenny the Shark, lending us money at usurious rates to pay down our library card fines.

Today, when I went to throw myself on the mercy of my local librarian, I donned the abject-est face I could summon, and plunked my six overdue books on the counter. "Hi there," I said nervously. "I've got to turn in some overdue books."

"All-righty," said the sweet librarian-child. (I wasn't even convinced he was old enough to hold a job.) "Let's see what you've got here." He scanned our books, and frowned. "Looks like you've got some more books that are still out on these cards."

"Um, yeah," I mumbled. "I'm hemorrhaging fines. Can I renew those books?" Turns out I couldn't, because I didn't have the right card.

"Some of these books were due in June. Of 2007," said the boy librarian. "Did you want to pay for them now, or do you think you might still locate them?" I think he might have sniggered a little bit when he said that.

"I'll just pay the fine," I said. "What are the damages?"

The BL pulled over a giant calculator, and started hitting numbers like a bookie at the racetrack. "Um, yes, that'll be $936.57," he said, and giggled. Oh, no he didn't. No such luck that I'd get a librarian with a sense of humor.

"That'll be $58 dollars and 37 cents!" the BL said, in an outside voice, so that everyone else at the counter turned to look at me, the library scofflaw, with shocked--shocked!--expressions.

I hung my head.

"Do you take a credit card?" I muttered.

Next time, I'm going straight to the bookstore.

Poem in Your Pocket

I'll bet you didn't know it was National Poetry Month, did you? Put a poem in your pocket today in honor of Poem in Your Pocket Day.

(Since I didn't give you much notice, you can do it tomorrow, too.)

Take your poem out throughout the day and share it with your colleagues, your neighbors, your family. Come on, do it. It'll be fun.

I chose the poem I'm putting in my pocket in honor of my mom and in memory of my grandmother, Libby. This might be my mom's favorite poem. She had a copy of it on paper that had turned brown with age, in a tarnished frame, hanging on the wall in her kitchen. I think it used to belong to Libby.

Joyce Kilmer. 1886–1918

119. Trees

I THINK that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the sweet earth's flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

Let me know what poem you put in your pocket, and why you chose it. We all need a little more poetry in our mundane lives, don't we?

Freshman Composition 101: Redux

Hi. My name is E. Peevie, and I'm a (recovering) prescriptivist. I come from a long line of unapologetic linguistic prescriptivists. Just a few weeks ago my mom commented on the incorrect usage by a television personality of who versus whom. I suggested that according to common usage by native speakers, the distinction was no longer valid.

"So," said my tiny, white-haired momma with a tinge of hostility and possibly even a mote of self-righteous indignation, "Just because everybody does it, that makes it right?"

"Well, um, yes," I said, "in language it does."

"Hmph," said momma.

I know what she was thinking, and what she would have said if the conversation had continued. She would have asserted that of course common usage doesn't change the rules. She might have even compared it to moral relativism: Just because everybody now thinks __________(fill in the blank) is OK doesn't make it right.

I wonder what she'd think of this post in Language Log about the use of the "singular they" to refer to the next president of the United States. Geoffrey Pullum points out that this usage has occurred for the first time because this is "the first moment in history when there is a genuinely non-trivial amount of doubt about whether the next president will be male or female."

Actually, I know what she'd say. She'd be horrified, and insist that the correct pronoun would be the gender-neutral "he," or she'd grudgingly suggest that even the more politically correct "he or she" would be a more correct choice.

When I was an English major back in the dark ages, my grumpy department head, Dr. William Pixton, was a standard-bearer for standard English. His very own "Some Conventions of Standard Written English" was the required text for the composition classes I taught as a graduate teaching assistant. I made freshmen cry with my red pen bleeding all over their lame essays, filled with p-antes and p-agrees and s/v/a's. I drilled it into their thick Okie skulls that pronouns must have clear antecedents, and the antecedents must agree in number with the pronouns.

(I even edited my little brother's papers with the same hard-line approach, and to this day that high-achieving yet tender-hearted big-shot trembles at the mere mention of a p-ante. This post is dedicated to him.)

But I've switched teams. I believe, like GKP, that the singular "they" is here to stay. And I'm starting not to mind so much.

More importantly, isn't it brilliant how relevant and interesting grammar and linguistics are? I'll bet you had no idea.

Snapshots of Retirement Living: The Food Kind of Sucks

Mom’s cooking spoiled all of us, Dad included, for the dried out, over-cooked, over-salted, quick-cook menu items that for many people pass as normal fare. Nearly every night she’d whip up a delicious, under-appreciated, nutritionally balanced gourmet delight, including at least one green or orange vegetable, warm dinner rolls and a homemade dessert. I don’t honestly know how she did it with five kids.

I remember not sufficiently appreciating breaded veal parmesan, tender swiss steak, roast chicken, homemade potatoes au gratin, always perfect homemade gravy, pristinely fluffy white mashed potatoes, and the absolute best macaroni and cheese in the hemisphere. Mom didn’t bring home the bacon (except literally), but she made sure dad’s paychecks stretched as far as possible by dressing up the leftovers so nothing went to waste. A chicken one night would be chicken a la king the next night and chicken vegetable soup on the third night.

I don’t think she ever cheated with Kraft macaroni and cheese, or Hamburger Helper, or even—to my deepest distress—Rice-A-Roni. I had to go to my best friend Jane’s house to get me some of that San Francisco treat.

(Mom did cheat with Minute Rice, though, which to this day I do not understand. Why would a person who obviously cared about real, fresh, delicious food use that nasty not-rice, when real rice is simpler and more delicious? But that was her worst culinary faux pas, and I’m a big enough person to overlook it.)

OK, so my point about all this is, dad and I are spoiled. We know what roast pork with a spicy garlic rub should taste like—moist, tender, flavorful; but here, it tastes a little like boot leather. The BBQ chicken was dry and tough, and the baby snap peas had had their snap boiled right out of them until they laid there, limp and sad, like soggy strips of faded green construction paper.

There’s nothing like crisp, bright green asparagus, drizzled with olive oil, sprinkled with kosher salt and perfectly roasted, right? After my first dinner at Chez Telford, I vetted the asparagus before ordering it—and the server warned me that it had been steamed to soggitude. Shepherd’s pie came sans crust; it was more like shepherd’s stew on a plate. The white rice that came with my so-called pepper steak reminded me of lumpy grade-school paste—which some kids did actually eat, even though Miss Rudasill frowned upon it.

The price of mom and dad’s apartment includes one meal every day, either lunch or dinner (same menu). I’ve been trying to convince dad that just because it’s paid for doesn’t mean he has to eat it, if he’d rather go out to dinner, or eat dinner in the apartment. Since the money’s already spent, I tell him, take it out of the equation. Now the decision, in economic terms (props to my first husband) is, from which option will you derive the most utils?

It doesn’t sink in. Dad feels compelled to eat the meal that’s paid for, and they’ll be eating that meal every day, like it or not, until mom decides that she will derive more utils from making one of her own truly gourmet delights. I predict that this will happen sometime in the next two weeks.

Meanwhile, avoid the asparagus.