The Sheila Variations

First slide: Burt Hummel (Mike O'Malley)

Friend Matt Zoller Seitz has a great slideshow up in Salon right now called "Great Dads in Pop Culture Not Named Atticus Finch". First slide of the bunch? Cousin Mike. Naturally. The man is everywhere right now.

Matt writes:

Burt Hummel, the father of the effeminate, flamboyant musical prodigy Kurt on Fox's "Glee," is the most psychologically credible father of a gay son ever seen on network television. You believe him because of longtime sitcom star Mike O'Malley's subtle yet emotionally direct performance, and because series creator Ryan Murphy and his writers have taken the trouble to make Burt a real person. He's not a symbol of intolerance or enlightenment or anything else; he's just a working-class straight man who loves his boy and wants him to be happy, even though a lifetime of conditioning makes him uncomfortable with everything Kurt is about.

To me, that captures what is going on perfectly in that character which has become a sort of phenomenon, and I agree with Matt: It's never been seen before in quite this particular light. My favorite moment so far is from the episode when Burt (Mike) starts to bond with Finn (his gay son's crush) about football and other things, and his son freaks out, feeling left out. They have a conversation about it, and BOTH sides come to the table with good points. Burt says to his son, "I liked having someone I could talk about guy stuff with ..." and Kurt replies, devastated, "I'm a guy", a revolutionary moment if ever there was one. It shames anyone who thinks they know what they are talking about when they declare "that's a REAL man" about, oh, John Wayne, or a WWII vet or something, not realizing that yes, they are men, and great men, but they are just one example of manliness in a tapestry of many variables, and by pointing at ONE quality and saying "That is a REAL man", these people are purposefully excluding vast millions of people who do not "qualify" in their narrow definition. The same is done by people who say stuff like, "REAL women have curves", thinking that they're celebrating something, but what they are doing is narrowing the definition. Oh, so Shelley Duvall isn't a REAL woman? How dare you make that statement? How dare you? How dare you declare women who don't have the body type that you think most attractive aren't REAL women? This is insidious stuff, make no mistake. If you don't think little girls (or little boys, such as Kurt on Glee), absorb these messages, and come to horrible conclusions about themselves that can have a lifelong effect, then you're wrong.

And here, in that episode in Glee, with Kurt's ferocious, and yet very hurt statement, "I'm a guy.", he put the nail in the coffin of that argument, as far as I'm concerned. I was amazed by it. You don't need to do too much to get your point across. And instead of having the show be a constant refrain of Kurt's unenlightened dad having to learn gay lessons, it's more about creating a relationship, in fits and starts, two men alone in the house, without a mother, trying to find their way. My favorite moment of Burt's comes in that episode when he says to his son, "Hey, listen. We had a deal. I don't try to change you ... and you don't try to change me."

We've had enough of shaming people for "incorrect" attitudes. How about cutting each other a little slack. How about trying to realize that everyone, good or bad, is just doing their best? How about trying to form a relationship with someone that is different from you, rather than just labeling that person as "other". All of this is muddied naturally when it is your own child, and the script handles this like no other.

Obviously, I'm proud of my cousin Mike; he's been instrumental in pushing forward the project I've been working on this year. He deserves all the good things that come to him.

And because I never like to pass up an opportunity to link to this: Mike wrote a piece last year for the Sports, Leadership & Life series in New England, that I think is terrific. It's called Things You Already Know.

Please, go read Matt's piece.

There are many surprises on the list. Two I found very gratifying (besides my own cousin, I mean): the struggling lower-class father in the Iranian film Children of Heaven, and the great Paul Wingfield as the father in Sounder, certainly one of the most moving portrayals of a father in American cinema.

Lydia Marks: Creating the look of Sex and the City 2:

Lydia Marks, married to my cousin Liam, mother to adorable Cormac, and awesome person, is quoted and featured in this article about creating the sets for the next Sex and the City movie. Lydia's career as a set decorator and production designer is diverse - ranging from Jim Jarmusch's Broken Flowers to Devil Wears Prada. She worked on the first Sex and the City movie as well. Her war-stories about her career are awesome - how these teams put all of this together, and how insane it can be - so it's really nice to see her get some recognition.

Congrats, Lydia!

The Top of the Strand: "manage[s] to capture simultaneously an intimacy and an openness that is unusual in Manhattan"

A rooftop bar in midtown Manhattan designed by Lydia Marks, my cousin Liam's wife, and long-time O'Malley family member, mother of the amazing Cormac, is profiled in the Sunday Style's section of the NY Times. She's a brilliant set decorator and production designer (her stats here), and she has also been known, on occasion, to work magic with her cousin's New York apartments. Congrats, Lydia!

The O'Malley boys

Something about their outfits here just kill me. From left to right: Uncle Tony, Dad, Uncle Jimmy. Again: they all look pretty much the same here as they did when they were adults. It's amazing. Love these O'Malley men.

1947: The O'Malleys

Uncle Tom sent this photo on and I haven't been able to stop looking at it for two days. We all are emailing each other about it. "Terry's wearing glasses! What dog is that? Look at Pop! How old is Mummy Gina here?" And so on. Mummy Gina and Pop were my grandparents (my father's parents). Here there are in 1947 with their five boys. Two more children were to come in the future, a girl and a boy (now my uncle Tom and my aunt Regina).

My dapper grandfather is holding my uncle Joe on his lap. Joe was a glamorous-looking baby and an even more glamorous good-looking young man. He died of leukemia when he was 29 years old. I have very few memories of my grandfather (Pop), he was very sick by the time I could remember him. But I do remember reciting poetry for him when I was a wee thing, and him sitting there and enjoying it. I love how he looks here. What a gentleman.

My uncle Tony (the oldest) is sitting far over to the left. Singular, set apart - as so many oldest kids are. Tony is the one who sent me a care package of Dunkin Donuts coffee to Block Island. There's something so Seamus-esque about him (one of his grandkids).

Next to Tony sits Ginger, the dog. When we were little kids, my dad would regale us all with funny dog stories from his childhood, and all of the dogs live on, to this day, because of those stories: their personalities, their time with the family, their breed - Skipper, Peanuts ... This particular dog is Ginger. Of course she is!!

On the other side of Ginger sits my uncle Jimmy - my godfather - star of many many many crazy stories in my family (this being one of them.) A one of a kind type of guy, always in trouble, but always forgiven - I love how here, he's looking off, contemplating his upcoming plan of worldwide domination or destruction. I love this picture - of Jimmy and my Dad.

My dad sits on the ground, and holds onto his brother Joe's foot, which is just so sweet to me. To my eye, my dad looks pretty much exactly the same as he always did. Handsome. And look at that brotherly touch there. Uncle Joe, pudgy and curious, is glancing down to see "who the heck is touching me right now? What is happening??"

Mummy Gina holds my uncle Terry. You can see why I think that Tallulah Bankhead has a Mummy Gina-ish quality. Cousin Mike says that Patricia Neal reminds him of Mummy Gina. Similar types. Slender slim-ankled sloop-shouldered women, raspy voices, and very pretty. You can tell she's wearing heels. This is a woman who baked a couple of cakes a day. A woman with a giant laugh, a great sense of humor, lover of the theatre and arts (both my grandparents were). I love to see pictures of her as a young woman.

Uncle Terry is also noticeably recognizable to me here, he looks very similar to the man he is now,the way his cheeks and mouth are - and if you look closely, you can see him wearing glasses. The other boys would blame Terry for everything any time they got in trouble ("Terry did it"....) - even if Terry wasn't anywhere near the scene of the crime. Terry has a bemused patient and very very funny air about pretty much everything to this day.

These are people I love. My uncles. My father. In the side yard in Natick, posing for a photograph. And only Tony, my dad and Terry are really looking at the camera. Everyone else is a bit preoccupied, which gives the photo its candid beautiful air.

A time gone by, but with us still.

Thanks, Uncle Tom.

The monumental project

My sister Jean teaches English and writing in middle school. Every year, the class goes on a trip to Washington D.C., which is a huge ordeal, involving chaperones, and crowd-control, and dealing with little kids who basically have never been out of Rhode Island and don't know how to cross a street at a crosswalk. Jean has been doing this trip for years, so she pretty much has it down to a science now. Prepping the kids, all that stuff.

One of her assignments that she gives them is to write their first real research paper. They can use one online source, but other than that, they have to find stuff in books. They have to do proper footnotes and attribution. She walks them through it, giving suggestions ("If you find an appropriate quote, you could lead off the paper with it ..."). The research paper has to be on one of the national monuments, and she assigns them out to the kids. She has learned, through experience, that Arlington is a very difficult topic - its history being what it is - so she always gives that to a kid who she thinks is up to the challenge. Or, she'll have them do it in pairs.

She was telling me all about this project the last time I was home, and the best thing about the project is this:

These kids spend a couple of weeks researching their monument. They get to know it. In a way, through this process, they get to feel like they "own" it - as indeed they do. So then, when they all go to D.C., the kids have this incredibly excited and personal response to their specific monument. They get to see in person what they had described in writing.

The papers had all just come in that week when I was home, so she was telling me about some of the best ones, and telling me about the kids who really "got" the project. Some don't - there are lots of levels of ability in her class.

She told me about how she coached the kids. This is, after all, their first research paper. Up until now, they have only had to write one or two paragraphs on something they have read, giving their opinion. This is different. I remember when things started getting serious in middle school (we called it junior high), when you could feel high school looming ahead of you, and you really had to get your study preparation techniques together.

She broke the paper down for them, to give them an idea of structure for the research paper. Start with a quote that sums up the whole thing. Give an overview of the monument, what it is, where it is.

Next paragraph: Talk about the man (or event) that the monument stands for. Who was George Washington? What is the Library of Congress? What is the history of the Supreme Court?

Next paragraph: Talk about the creation of the monument. When was it decided upon? How long did it take to build?

Last paragraph: Jean calls this the "national significance" paragraph. What does it stand for, what does it mean, why is it (the monument and the man) important? Now these are pre-teens. They perhaps are only used to gushing about the boy they have a crush on, or gushing about Miley Cyrus. Jean says to them, "Make this last paragraph a Hallmark Card to America. Go really really gushy - I want to feel like singing the National Anthem when I finish reading the last paragraph."

With kids of this age, if you tell them to go "too far", most of the time they will then approximate the tone you want. They aren't used to going over-the-top. You want to cover your ass. You can't wear your heart on your sleeve. Middle school is brutal! So Jean gives them permission to go "really really gushy".

When I was last home, some of the papers had already come in, and Jean was raving about them, how well the kids had done, how great they had worked. I wanted to hear everything. Who were the kids who knocked it out of the park? What were they like? She gave me two of them to read: the kid who had been assigned Arlington National Cemetery and the kid who had been assigned the Library of Congress. Like I mentioned, the Arlington kid is one of the smartest kids in her class, so she knew he could handle the complicated beginnings of Arlington, and the girl who had been assigned Library of Congress is a huge reader, and a real smarty-pants.

I know this sounds so goofy but I read their papers (all typewritten, of course), and found myself literally choking back tears. Their little footnotes: they all went to Wikipedia first, but then you could see their credit to encyclopedias and other books in the library. They ALL started with a quote - great tip, Jean - I still think it's powerful and interesting to start a paper with a quote, a good launching-point. And the kids had somehow figured out the perfect quote to choose. The quotes were relevant. Good job.

I seriously was so moved reading these papers. The girl who wrote the Library of Congress paper went all out. Her description of the creation of the Library of Congress is well-known to me, and she got all the particulars right. She also went hog-wild with numerical descriptions. "There are 2,567,901 volumes in the Library of Congress and every 5 minutes 287 more titles are added." (I made those numbers up, but that gives you an idea). I also loved (as in: I was a weepy mess) her explanation about the Gutenberg Bibles included in the Library of Congress (a tween who even knows what that is? Bestill my heart) - and she helpfully explains: "They are made of vellum (calf-skin)." The parenthetical kills me. I don't mean to sound condescending. I am saying that it truly kills me.

Her "Hallmark Card" paragraph was a masterpiece, an emotional prose-poem to the beauty of reading, and having all books available to all, for the present generations, and forever more.

Kudos.

The Arlington kid didn't get quite as gushy (he's a boy, so he kept a lid on it - as Jean knew he would) - but he handled all of the steps of the creation of that land perfectly, and his Hallmark Card paragraph spoke movingly about "remembering the men and women who have fought for our country...."

I have tears in my eyes. This is the best project I have ever heard of.

Just imagine this young girl and this young boy - now getting to SEE the Library of Congress and the Cemetery - and how amazing that will be for them.

Jean told me over the phone that another paper had come in, this one about the Jefferson Memorial. As Alexander Hamilton is my "dead boyfriend", Jefferson is Jean's "dead boyfriend" - which she informed the class - she calls him her "Revolutionary boyfriend", and they all just thought it was the funniest thing they had ever heard. "Mrs. W has a Revolutionary boyfriend - tee hee!" So she tried to impress on the girl assigned Thomas Jefferson: "He's a tough one. A tough one to write about and to nail down." She assured her that she could handle it.

Jean sent me the paper a couple of days ago and said to me, "Check out the final paragraph!"

The "Hallmark Card" paragraph.

Obviously I cannot post it here on the Internet, since this is a child's school assignment, but Jean and I were both just CRYING reading it - with laughter and also emotion. This kid WENT for it. "Okay, you want a Hallmark Card to Thomas Jefferson? Fine. Here it is." The final paragraph just reiterated over and over what a great man Jefferson was - but here's the best part: the girl explained why she thought that way. She wasn't being blindly obedient to her teacher - she knew: Okay. So let me think about this a bit, and try to figure out WHY there is a monument for him.

She just poured on the syrup, and gushed about him - he was seriously, according to this sweet young tween, the greatest man who had ever lived because of this, this and this. This girl took the coaching and ran with it.

A nice antidote to the whole Texas Textbook nonsense, I might add. Jean and I were just crying with laughter and emotion.

The language of the papers is naturally 12-year-old language, but they did really excellent jobs, all of them, and they are all now heading down to Washington D.C., as we speak, to spend a week there, seeing all of these monuments, and I'm just excited for all of them. I can't wait to get an update from Jean this weekend when I go home for Good Friday.

Siobhan O'Malley at the Cape May Singer/Songwriter Festival

This weekend (Friday to Sunday) is the enormous Cape May Singer/Songwriter Festival and my sister Siobhan will be performing on Saturday night (click here to see the times and venues). A giant festival, featuring 150 artists, it's a great way to get to hear new music and encounter new artists. If you live in the area, go check it out!

Siobhan has two albums out, and is working on a third. You can get more information about her (and buy her music) on her Myspage page. She's amazing!

Uncle Tony knows.

I got a message from the realtor that a package for me had arrived at their offices and could I stop by to pick it up. Who could it be from? I went to get it and found it was from my uncle Tony. There is a backstory here. When I was staying with Mike out in LA, his cupboards were full of bags of Dunkin Donuts coffee, since LA is challenged in that department. Our New England roots have ruined us for any other kind of coffee. Starbucks hasn't made a dent in my taste. So Mike's dad, my uncle Tony, sends Mike packages of bags of coffee periodically, so that Mike basically has a lifetime supply - and when his guests from that area (uhm, his 500 cousins) come to visit, we can have the kind of coffee we adore. I thought that was so funny and sweet at the time. "I love uncle Tony," I said to Mike, as he opened up yet another box with Dunkin Donuts logos all over it.

I walked into the real estate office this morning, and the nice lady there said, "Your package is right there" - I looked, and saw the tell-tale orange and pink lettering and logos all over the box. You are kidding me. I am on Block Island for a MONTH (and no, there are no Dunkin Donuts out here), and so my uncle Tony who knows about my trip (the entire free world which basically equals both sides of my family knows about my trip) took it upon himself to send me a couple bags of Dunkin Donuts coffee, because he knew I'd be aching for it.

I was so touched. I started laughing. All the women in the office started laughing too. One said, "You're just like my husband. He goes away for only a weekend and he has to bring a bag of Dunkin Donuts coffee."

Nothing like it on earth.

Thank you, Uncle Tony. You're the best.

O'Malley faces

My beautiful family.

All cousins great and small

Yesterday, the entire O'Malley clan converged to our house in Rhode Island for a second Thanksgiving. This is a family tradition. Thanksgiving Day is for the respective families, the Saturday after it's the O'Malley extravaganza. This year, a difficult year to say the least, everyone came to our house. There were a couple of cousins missing - Kerry, Marianne (one of the many Mariannes), Timothy, Bridget, Matt and oh God am I missing anyone else? And Cashel wasn't there. But present were:
Uncle Tony and Aunt Marianne
Cousin Liam and Lydia and their son Cormac
Cousin Mike and Lisa and their kids, Fiona, Seamus and Declan
Cousin Marianne and Jimmy and their kids, Jimmy and Michael
Uncle Terry and Aunt Diane
Cousin Rachel
Aunt Regina
Cousin Emma
Cousin Ian
Uncle Tom and Betsy
Cousin Grace
Cousin Henry
Cousins Ben and Sue
Then there was me, Siobhan, her boyfriend Ben, Jean, Pat, and Lucy and Brendan.
And my dear mother.
More people came throughout the day.
Siobhan's dear friend Colleen, her parents, and Colleen's sons Elhadji and Mustapha
Brendan's dear friend Justin, his wife Amber and their three kids
There was so much food it was nearly inhuman.

It was very emotional at times. I am so glad they all came.

Before dinner, cousin Mike organized a game of touch football out in the backyard with all cousins great and small. The age range of the football game was late 40s to three years old. It ended up being the longest football game known to man, and Mike eventually shouted up to the house, after realizing what he had gotten himself into, "SAVE SOME LASAGNA!!"

Keeping everyone in line was a full-time job, since children were racing around holding footballs, and everyone had to be continuously reminded of the rules. But everyone eventually got the hang of it, and it was beautiful to watch. There were times when, listening to the adults coaching the kids on how to play, it sounded like a dress rehearsal of Riverdance.

"Seamus, run - run - run!"
"Declan's got the ball!"
"Grace, when I say 'hike', RUN over there!"
"Fiona! Fiona! This way!"

The light was low in the sky. After a day of rain, the grass was muddy and wet, but the air was beautifully mild, with a sharp nip of autumn in it. The "adults" sat inside, chatting and eating, as a massive group of people, some 6 feet tall, others 3 feet tall, cavorted outside for hours, eventually tromping inside, muddy and happy, to eat the rest of the lasagna.

We are protected. By the love of our clan.

"SAVE SOME LASAGNA!!!"

"White Christmas" in Cincinnati (and other pitstops)

Cousin Kerry is touring, at this moment, with White Christmas, and they are now in Cincinnati - having a great time. Audiences have been loving the show, as have critics (here's just one review), no surprise there, it's just beautiful, so keep your eye out for it. They're touring all through the Midwest for the next month and a half.

And, very exciting, they took a field trip on their day off to Rosemary Clooney's house - which is a museum.

"all the single ladies ..."

Love it. For many reasons, obviously.

Family promotion: Cousin Kerry's apartment featured

This is really cool: A couple years ago, my cousin Kerry did a major overhaul of her New York apartment. The transformation was startling (I got to see the Before and After). You just can't believe what was done with a one-bedroom. Kerry rivals me in her book collection. The situation has reached critical mass. Getting rid of one damn book is NOT AN OPTION - not for someone like Kerry, not for someone like me. She had them literally stacked to the ceiling, everywhere. So. She called in the big guns to "make it work" - and take a look at the awesome process, (as well as Before and After pics) in this profile piece by designer Tom Zemon.

Family promotion: Brendan sings "goodbye to New York"

My brother Brendan has launched an ambitious new project: his band, The Congress of American Musicologists (reference, anyone? "I hate it when you count ...") is launching their first single, "Goodbye New York" (a kickass song - goosebump-time) on September 11th, in conjunction with a show at the Bootleg Theatre on Beverly Boulevard in Los Angeles. You'll be able to buy "Goodbye New York" on iTunes on September 11th, at 6 a.m., and the show that night is in celebration of the release. "Goodbye New York" is, hands down, one of my favorite songs that Brendan has written, and you can hear a preview of it on the Myspace page for the Congress of American Musicologists.

Family promotion: Siobhan sings the top songs of 1990

My sister Siobhan writes:

I am now going to do covers of all 20 top songs in any given year. Starting with 1990. Because in 1990, I listened to the Top 40 every weekend, so I know all of these songs (or am at least familiary with them).

She has set up a website for this ongoing project and it has become highly addictive. I love her commentary too!

(Don't miss the Heart duet - done by a love-mad Grover puppet and Siobhan's boyfriend Ben.)

Tune in daily - Siobhan's going strong!

Cousin Kerry = Dead Mum

My cousin Kerry O'Malley last night joined the Broadway cast of Billy Elliot, playing Billy's Dead Mum, a heartwrenching part. She'll be playing the role through September 6.

Congratulations to Kerry!

One of the stranger coincidences right now is that my friend Caitlin is cousins with Trent Kowalik, who plays one of the Billys. We have been laughing about how our cousins (random) are in the same damn Broadway show right now. What are the odds.

Cheers to my gorgeous Dead Mum cousin - can't wait to see the show!

Two big-necked guys.

Big Papi and cousin Mike (otherwise known as Sheila's effing guardian angel right now). I love how Ortiz is obviously on the verge of hysterics. He's like a little kid right there.

From the Boston Globe article "From Fenway to the fairway". Oh, and humorously - Jeff Donovan is mentioned in the article as well. You know, the ubiquitous Jeff.

Things You Already Know, by Mike O'Malley

A beautiful and profound essay by my cousin Mike O'Malley.

Great work. I'm proud to call you a friend.

"Alibi Bye", Siobhan O'Malley

Alibi Bye is the second album from Siobhan O'Malley (my beautiful younger sister). Permanent Markers was her first (self-produced) album - and a marvel it was, honest, emotional, and this new one, a couple years in the making, has a bigger sound - with intricate orchestration, and high production values - involving studio musicians, multiple tracks, banjos, accordions, and I am not even sure what else..

One of the things I love about the sound of this album in particular is how diverse it is. Each song is its own complete world, you don't feel a sense of same-ness, like you're just hearing the same song tricked up over and over again. And it all feels completely right, when heard together. It works as a whole.

Here are some of my thoughts on the songs on this album:

"Give me the Creeps" is so infectious that I dare you to listen to it only once. There is such a happiness to the music itself, but the lyrics belie the joy. This is one of Siobhan's gifts. She doesn't make the mistake that so many artists do - what I call "blue on blue". Meaning: on the nose. Like a film where there's a shot of rain falling on a window and the song playing at that moment is about rain falling on a window. So that's why I listen to a song like "Give Me the Creeps", and find my foot tapping - and yet my heart is aching. That's a good songwriter.

Video below the jump. I can't even describe how much I love it. An increasingly insane and neurotic Siobhan, an abashed and bumbling Nate, hovering creepy waitresses, and a zombie dance in Riverside Park.

"Science Can't Be Coy". Ouch. Again, one of Siobhan's real strengths is in her lyrics, which are biting, intelligent, and heartfelt. I mean, the song starts with this line: " 'She's like the Doppler effect,' he said", mkay? And in Siobhan's lyric-universe, this is not a random "quirky" detail. This is a thematic element, this is how she will structure her song. Characters emerge through the course of the song, funny details, glimpses ... but again and again, that first line keeps resonating, reappearing, on different frequencies maybe ... but that's the context of the whole song.

"I Might Deal Drugs In Order to Afford to Live in This City". Here she goes all funky, and urban - a funny (and yet sincere) song about the ridiculous amount of money it costs to just live in New York City, and how insane it can make, well, everyone.

"Heartland, Heartburn". This song seems to be for anyone who has ever yearned to "get away", move on, get a change of scenery. Not just because you want to switch it up, but because you start to wonder: what else is out there for me? Is this all there is? This is a very common thing with New Yorkers, obviously, bound as we are by pavement, etc. But one of the things I love about this song from Siobhan is that she does not lose herself in romantic notions about what it would be like to live "out there". Or maybe she does, but then she has to make fun of herself in the next moment and dream of a place "where she can shuck fuckin' corn for nourishment". That line always makes me laugh out loud. Yes, she wants to escape. But she also makes fun of herself in the middle of it. (Side note: she uses the word "dyspeptic" in the song. I find this thrilling.)

"It's Not Yesterday". I cannot write anything rational about this song. I have tears in my eyes as I type this out.

"Brilliant Petty Crime". Siobhan's voice on this melancholy song is hauntingly beautiful. There's almost a whisper at the back of it. It's soulful. But then I love how the bridge of "Brilliant Petty Crime" goes to a completely different place, where she sings over and over again, "I ain't gonna lie - I'm more than willing to lie lie lie lie lie." Great line, man. I ain't gonna lie, I'm more than willing to lie.

"A Future Me". Siobhan sings here of her childhood love for Jean, her older sister, her partner in crime as a youngster. It's really a love song. "And I got me an angel / She's me from an angle." Killer. This song is killer. (Great vocals here, too. Really rich and happy and sweet.)

"The Reminder". This is one of my favorites on the album (and I love it when she plays it live too.) Something about the "reminder" aspect of the song cuts deep to my core - and how I try to live my life. How I feel the need to hang onto things, save them up for a cold tomorrow, because everything is ephemeral and nothing lasts.

A rubber band's a reminder wrapped around my wrist
Keep on snapping it to make sure I don't miss
The things I know I'll cherish at a later date

"Squinting Optometrist". To quote my brother in his review: "I mean, just look at the title. Do I even need to say anything else?" What's so wonderful about Siobhan's images (like a squinting optometrist, and an eye-chart) is that she digs deep into what those images could actually mean, or say - what message we can impart from them. So here we are with a "squinting optometrist" in our head, and we can't help but follow that path, with Siobhan leading the way: What does it mean to see? What does it mean to have things "in the way"? Can we ever really see each other? And she manages to do all of this without being top-heavy or self-conscious. What happens is: her intelligence and intellect lead her time and again to a deeply emotional place. So satisfying as a listener.

"Fundy Bay Forecast". One of her best songs, I think. It's heart-crushing.

"In With the Old". ROCKIN'!!!! Pissed off, but funny, too - with its Dr. Seuss theme of that damn cat coming back and back. Rockin' song. Seriously. It's been one of her songs I've had on eternal repeat.

"There, There". This is one of Siobhan's best tunes in terms of the melody, the arrangement, the chord progression ... It's perfect. It's one of those songs that gets under your skin, just by what it sounds like. I am not sure if I can express this well. The lyrics add to the journey, of course, the lyrics tell the tale. But the music already catapults you, immediately, into an emotional place. This is the best example of hers that I can think of. From the opening chords, I'm THERE. Before I've even heard one word. Love this song.

"Avenue C'd". Siobhan's voice is gentle and sweet here, and giving. It's a song about one of those relationships where you pour your heart out for someone who is too lost, too far gone, to really accept your gifts, to really understand how blessed he really is. But you can't help but keep giving, because you love him. Sometimes that happens. The fact that this song takes place in a certain block of Manhattan (on Avenue C, trying to get to Avenue B, wishing to God you were 4th Avenue) just anchors it in such a gritty reality that runs counter to Siobhan's sweet wistful voice. I live here. I know the neighborhood she's describing. I know what it's like there at 3 a.m. There is no way to escape it, if you are in a certain mindset, or life stage ... and Siobhan sings about that with love, forgiveness, and deep sadness. The ultimate gift we can give to someone else. It's a kickass song. Heartbreaking.

Alibi Bye is available for purchase on iTunes.

You can also buy it here.

My brother's beautiful review (that made me cry) can be found here.

L.A. snapshots. No context.

"It's a quasi-dystopian universe."

"The leader of the group then tried to hug him into submission and he shrank into a fat Mexican."

"Say goodbye to cousin Sheila, Seamus!"
"BREAK A LEG!"

"My needs as a woman are simple and biological. I would like to have a penis on a regular basis and perhaps a child."

"Big Papi's losin' it."

"There's a hegemony."
"A what, Cash?"
"Everything is one."
"Oh, Okay."

"Nobody holds hands anymore. And everyone has Brazilians. I just don't fit in."

"You drove the Volvo yesterday, right?"
"The black one?"
Long pause full of scorn.

"I'm at the point where I don't want to know what anyone does. Like, don't tell me you use anal beads on your wife, okay? I don't want to hear it."

"You have to know it has taken an act of superhuman strength for me not to write about all of this."
"Really?"
"Dude, are you kidding me? Do you have any idea who you are dealing with?"
"Really?"

"Please tell me you're not a tax accountant."

"Meanwhile you're just pissed off that you don't have a hickey."

"I really like Star Trek, but I don't want to be a Trekkie. I am going to try really hard to not go down that path."
"It's okay, Cash. You have a family who loves you. We won't let you."

"You literally cannot stump Seamus with Simon Says. It's amazing." (it really was.)

"Julio Lugo is spending way too much time at his tango academy. We warned him that this could be a problem."

"No. We do not put stickers on each other's private parts." (this is akin to Jean Kerr's dictum "please don't eat the daisies")

"Can you just drop me off at Pavilions?"
"What? No, we'll wait and drive you home."
"Oh, please, I know I'm so weird, but no, please just drop me off."
"Uhm ... okay ..."
"I just want to stroll the aisles and get Chex Mix and Ginger Ale in peace."
"Wow. Okay."
"Please?"

"Hi, Uncle Sheila!"

Don't blink!

If I focus in on what he is saying, everything will be all right.

Forever.

If you are easily offended ...

Oh well. Hope you can work that stuff out for yourself. Good luck!

During one of our family vacations, my brother randomly became Helen Keller one night, sitting at the kitchen table. I don't remember how it happened. At first he was Helen Keller on a camping trip. Helen Keller setting up her tent. Helen Keller unrolling her sleeping bag. Helen Keller building a campfire. Helen Keller toasting marshmallows. Siobhan and I were absolutely out of control. We honestly thought we were going to die, we were laughing so hard. There were times when SILENCE reigned in that kitchen - because, well, because of two things:

1. My brother was being Helen Keller, so naturally he was silent.
2. My sister Siobhan and I were silently laughing so hard we thought we would die because we couldn't catch our breath

At one point, we sort of took a break, to regroup - Bren got up and left the room, we thought to go to the bathroom, or go get a drink, whatever ... but then suddenly, he appeared at the huge kitchen window - he was outside - AS Helen Keller, thrashing around in the darkness on her camping trip, staggering by the window, trying to cut down branches for her campfire.

Hilarity exploded once again.

One of the funniest things about this memory is that for whatever reason my sister Jean was NOT amused. It's not that she was offended - she just didn't LOSE IT the way Siobhan and I did. We now laugh just as much at Jean's crankiness as the memory of Brendan staggering around in the yard in the darkness, as Siobhan and I erupted into gales of laughter. Jean says now, "What was my problem? Why was I in such a bad mood?"

Later, Brendan became Helen Keller giving a piano recital.

Once again, Siobhan and I were falling around the kitchen, hunched over our stomachs, howling silently with laughter, begging for mercy. I was grasping for my camera, to try to capture the event, but I couldn't even manage to pick up my camera I was so out of control.

Jean who, for some reason, sat there the whole time ... watching the shenanigans take place ... never once breaking a smile, as her siblings basically LOST IT for 45 minutes, said, in a flat voice, "Do you want me to take the picture? Because I'm not laughing?"

Jean's comment is almost as funny to us in looking back on it as Brendan's performance-art tone-poem of Helen Keller playing a Mozart sonata. We still say it from time to time.

"Do you want me to take the picture? Because I'm not laughing?"

So Jean took the picture. Because Siobhan and I were totally out of commission by that point.

You know I love major league baseball

... but there's nothing like watching a Cape Cod League baseball game.

I wish I lived closer. I'd go all the time.

Here is Jean and me, watching a game.

"How many real adult times have you been in love?"

From Diverting Devotion, a wonderful play by Mike O'Malley

NANCY. My turn. How many times have you been in love?

HENRY. Real times?

NANCY. You've faked being in love?

HENRY. No, but "real" can be a very murky thing for people when it comes to love. There's high school love, which, when people are going through it, they think it's real, but then you look back and all it is, is just ... puberty juice. Then you got your basic college-love illusion, where feelings are blown way out of proportion by the fact that you can have sex somewhere other than a car.

NANCY. Some people experience real love at that age.

HENRY. At that age people are in love with the idea that they're in love. They like how it makes them feel grown up. Then they're crumbled when it ends because they realize it wasn't a real adult love. (Beat) I'm gonna say that real adult love happens when two people who have been completely devastated by either of these delusions try to make a go of something new. When two formerly heartbroken folks make a choice to pursue new feelings for new people armed with the knowledge of how much it could waste them. That's love. Knowing the risk. Knowing it could blow up and wreck you. But still diving in.

NANCY. Henry, you're avoiding the answer.

HENRY. What?

NANCY. How many real adult times have you been in love?

HENRY. Oh. Zero.

NANCY. That's depressing. Drink.

The elements of comedy

You only need a couple of things.

1. Cousins. Me (with camera), my brother, and my cousin Timothy

2. A cap

3. A scarf

4. A pair of orange sunglasses.

5. Way too much time on our hands.

Slam-dunk combo.

Go.

The bulkhead: Part 3

I prefer to be up HERE, rather than up on the bulkhead.

I would like to stay always right here.

The bulkhead: Part 2

Oh my gosh, now I get why I'm up here!

Isn't it the funniest thing in the world?

The bulkhead: Part 1

Hey, man, how did I get up here?

And why am I dressed like Herb Brooks?

A famous photo in the O'Malley family photo album

This is a photo of (from left to right) my cousin Liam, me, and my cousin Mike. Liam and Mike are brothers. I am the small cousin interloper. I have obviously been propped up on the couch, and I have no idea what is happening in my life, in general, because, you know, I'm just a baby. Liam and Mike have been placed on either side, and the funniest thing about this photo - well, there are many funny things.

1. We are all in COMPLETELY DIFFERENT WORLDS. Someone is obviously telling us to smile, but only one of us is obeying.

2. Our basic personalities HAVE NOT CHANGED. If you took a picture of the three of us today, you very well may get the same exact photo.

I adore this picture.

Candid

I loved having my picture taken while reading a book. My actress-self began early. So did my reading.

"Oh, look at me ... I'm just sittin' here ... reading a book ... oh, what?? There's a camera pointed at me? Really?? I hadn't noticed!"

Uh-oh

I can tell how bossy I am being.

Sorry, Bren. Thanks for loving me anyway.

I still dress like that. So does Brendan. No, just kidding.

Jean is one month old at the time this photo was taken - and she's going to have a baby any day now. Amazing!!

Uhm, Sheila?

Relax.

Take a deep breath.

Everything is going to be okay.

O'Malley Siblings

We look like an ad for a Catholic charity during the 70s-era "Troubles".

Dear cousin Mike:

Thank you so much for the nervous breakdown you gave me last night. Which then led to illumination.

I really needed it.

Love,
cousin Sheila

It all began a month ago when I mentioned casually that I haven't been able to read in a couple of months. I was going okay there for a while, and was halfway through the Nureyev book, when suddenly I put it down in February and have been unable to pick up anything since. I'm kind of upset about it, but I can't force myself to read. There's also so much else going on. I am able to read my own work (thank God), and there's been lots of activity in THAT area, so at least I've had some intellectual stimulation, even though it's only from myself.

One of the things about my cousin Mike is that you can't say anything to him without him immediately providing a possible solution. Even if that's not what you're looking for. Seriously, don't share anything if you don't want a solution.

"I've lost 20 pounds, but I need to kick up my weight loss program."
"Here's a colon cleanse. Do it now."

"I'm bored. I have nothing to do."
"Write me something. Here are the parameters. GO."

"I'm so in love, I can't concentrate!"
"Go carve 'Sheila Hearts So-and-So' on a tree in Central Park and then get back to work."

"Gosh, my hands are cold."
"Let me Fed-Ex you some mittens."

You have to be careful what you tell him!

So when I mentioned that I haven't been able to read, Mike's noggin went click-click-click, and three days later I come home to an Amazon package at my door. I was confused. Had I ordered something? I opened it. It looked like a catalog for a museum show. There was a note from Mike included: "This'll get you reading again. Love, Mike." He is off the charts, isn't he?

I sat down and flipped through the book. It is called Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry. It's written (although to just say it is "written" is not correct - it's really stage-managed, art-directed, conceived) by Leanne Shapton. I got the jist of it as I flipped through it, and at first I thought it was real - but then Mike told me that no, it's all a performance art piece.

I didn't read it right away. I put it down. But last night, feeling a bit of that old melancholy approaching like the shadow from a cloud, I picked it up.

An hour later I put it down, and lay in bed, with tears rolling down my face. Hope tiptoed around me, concerned, purring.

Basically, what Shapton has done - is create a relationship between two people (and we see their photographs throughout the book, they are real people - only this is all a trompe l'oeil, they've been hired to embody these main characters) - which has crashed and burned after a couple of years, and the conceit of the book is that all of their shared possessions and photographs (and the memories therein) are now being held for auction, and the book is the auction catalog. "Lot 1001, Lot 1036" - and we see the photographs of the items, and we get a brief description.

There isn't any editorializing in this format, because of course why would there be? It's a catalog. But you don't need editorializing ("he loved her so much, she loved him so much") because it's all there, in the items. An entire relationship. How it started, how it blossomed, the turns it took ...

And since you know, from the beginning, that these are "artifacts" of a relationship that is now dead, each item is suffused with nostalgia, pain ... because sadness bleeds backwards. You wish it wouldn't but it just seems to work that way. It colors everything, even the joy. You look back on a happy beginning, and your heart aches because you know it won't last, and all you can see are the tough times that are ahead of you. But, we had so much hope back then! But, we loved each other so much! What happened? How could it just ... end??

And sometimes it is not just the relationship ending that you mourn. It is all the STUFF, all the THINGS you have accumulated as a couple ... each one with a memory, something important attached to it... your relationship is IN the "things".

I have a piece of beach glass, no bigger than a baby tooth ... a relic from a great love I had, so far the greatest love (see how I say "so far"? I live in hope) ... and there have been times when I have been so paranoid about losing that stupid piece of beach glass that I have actually carried it on my person. I have moved past that, thank God, and now it sits in a little china bowl I have on my dresser - with the rest of my beach glass collection - buried in other glass, just part of a larger whole ... not called out or highlighted in any way. He knew I collected beach glass, so he gave it to me. All of my beach glass is OCEAN beach glass, but this was from Lake Michigan, so he thought it would be good to add some variety to the collection. Everything else is salt water, which is me - the girl from the Ocean State. But there's one piece in there that is freshwater beach glass, from the man who grew up in the Midwest. It is the smallest piece of beach glass I have, barely a chip, and now I know I would be fine if I "lost" it, but still. It's there. A relic. An artifact. Of the swoon I had for this man, this great love in my past.

If I were to put together a catalog of my love affair with that man, there wouldn't be much to sell. A Swatch. Some letters. A cartoon he drew of him and me. A refrigerator magnet. And a tiny chip of freshwater beach glass. But again: the SIZE of the love is not reflected in the amount of STUFF accumulated.

Leanne Shapton's beautiful book calls to mind all of those memories, all of those thoughts. It's hypnotic. You stop thinking, "Wow, this is such a clever idea" on around page 3, and you just enter the story. You watch these two people meet, pursue each other, fall in love, meet each other's families ... all through their objects, mind you ... and then, slowly, again like the shadow from a cloud, you start to watch it break down. It is impossible to read this little volume and not think about your own life and loves and losses. And what each relationship would "leave behind" in terms of artifacts ... what you would put on the auction block for each one, and what you would declare as its value. The chip of beach glass is priceless. I'm just saying.

It's actually a very confronting book.

Damn her.

And damn you, Mike.

Back in the dark ages of my life, I had a first boyfriend. I had had a couple of trial runs in high school and college, but then - at age 20, 21, "he" came along. I had actually known him for about 4 or 5 years at that point, we were good friends, and suddenly, one summer, hmmm, we were hanging out all the time, and hmmmm, we spent our days off together, and hmmm, is he pursuing me??

Yes, he was! We fell in love and that was that for the next four years. My first boyfriend. When that thing crashed and burned, man, it crashed and burned. Unbelievably, we are still good friends. But that took some doing. It took years. We were unable to have any contact for YEARS.

In my recent scanning frenzy, which was what I did in lieu of reading, and it was also my way to let in memories without having them kill me - I came across a lot of old photos of us. It was good to look at them. I posted some of them here, and beautifully - he was looking at them, too - and even commenting. So the sorrow doesn't bleed backward forever. It may take years, but what I am eventually left with - is the joy. And that, to me, is a miracle. It hasn't happened with all of the old loves, but it's happened with a couple of them, and I am strangely grateful. Also proud. I don't think it's an accident that these men who loved me once still want to be connected to me. I know that I have something to do with it. Not everything, of course, but something. I am aware that it speaks well of me, and I try to feel good about that. You know, small miracles.

Some of the scanned photos I hadn't looked at in years. And I was in a place in January where I could really look, where I could really let my mind go back, in a way that wouldn't shatter my present-day moment. It was incredible for me. The best possible way to handle the maelstrom I was in.

For example, he was there to share triumphs with me. Proud and beaming and at my side.

In the photo below, we are at the beach, the summer we started dating. This photo was taken the day after I lost my ...... something. Hmmm ... where did it go, I wonder?

The following photo is one that would have caused me psychic agony way back when, in the aftermath. Because it so captures our love, and who we really were to each other. It still touches me now, to look at it. Not that I carry a torch, oh my God, no, but ... to acknowledge that it happened, it was good that it happened, it wasn't a mistake, the relationship wasn't a mistake ... we loved each other to death. Out of all of the photos I have of us as a couple, this is the one that captures US.

And now I can look at it with no pain. As a matter of fact, it makes me smile. That was real. It happened. The sorrow that came later has washed back with the tide. The psychotic break involving the broken-down van in Los Angeles is now a funny story, something to revel in, share. It's a good story. It has turned into narrative.

Leanne Shapton's book made me think about all of this.

The other thing it made me think about is all of the artifacts I no longer have. When we broke up, I had a hatbox overflowing with our artifacts. We spent the first year of our relationship in a long-distance situation, because he was in law school in Philadelphia. There was no email. Or, Al Gore was probably using email, and busy inventing the Internet, but WE didn't have email. So we wrote letters in long-hand. Long long love letters. Pages long sometimes. Filling each other in on our week, but also just talking about how much we missed each other, and how great it would be to see each other on spring break, or whatever. There were other things in that hatbox. Fortunes from fortune cookies that seemed prophetic. Photos. Pressed flowers. Playbills and theatre tickets. Movie stubs. Our entire relationship was in that hatbox. When we broke up, it became far too painful to look through that stuff (where did it go?? How could THAT have ended?), but I couldn't get rid of any of it.

I moved to Chicago with zero possessions. All I brought with me was a suitcase of clothes and that hatbox. I am not exaggerating. I lived in my first apartment, with my cat Sammy, and my life began in Chicago, and I was dating people, and having the best time of my life, careening through the midnight streets of the Windy City. I had bad moments when I missed that old boyfriend. We had stayed in contact at first - and it became a strange issue with timing.

My friend Brooke had said to me, as a warning, "You're gonna be sad first - and he's gonna seem fine. That's going to hurt. But then, look out, as you start to recover, he's gonna start to get sad." She was right. It's not that me doing better made him feel sad and he wanted me to keep being sad - no, I will not assign a petty motive to someone else's emotional experience. It was that we were on different timelines, perhaps men and women in general are ... that's just the way it goes ... and it happened just like she said. It was like rolling waves coming in. I was sad, I started to get better, then he got sad, and it went that way, undulating, for a while.

I was in Woodland Hills, California, in the immediate aftermath of our breakup, losing my mind, in an utter and complete panic about what had happened. And he was fine. He was dating lots of people, and he actually seemed relieved to be out of our relationship - which absolutely crushed me, yet because Brooke (my more worldly experienced friend) had warned me ahead of time that that would probably be the case, I wasn't surprised. Then, when I landed on my feet in Chicago, and promptly began making out with every man in a 5-mile radius, my old boyfriend started breaking down. It started hitting him what had happened, that this was really OVER, and I would get these terrible voice mail messages from him, where he didn't even sound like himself. And I was in a whole new world, with hickeys on my neck, and showing up at my temp job in the same clothes from the day before, and now it was me who didn't relate.

It was all going according to plan.

Maybe a year later, I was starting to fall in love with someone else (beach glass man) and suddenly that hatbox full of relics started haunting me. But not in the way it used to haunt me. I started to look at it like, "Why am I keeping all of that crap? Is it holding me back?"

And then one day, I will never forget it, I sat down on my floor and went through the whole thing. Piece by piece. I read all the letters. I looked at all the Playbills. I picked up all the movie stubs. I sobbed from beginning to end, tears streaming off my face in an Alice in Wonderland manner. Then something snapped, and I picked up the whole hat box, walked down the back stairwell into the alley below, over to the dumpster, threw the entire thing in - not saving ONE PIECE - and walked back upstairs, still sobbing. I cried and cried and part of me kept thinking, "It's still down there ... I can still go retrieve it if I want ..." The call to go get that hatbox was so strong that I left the house and went to a movie. I had to white-knuckle the rest of the day (and night, I might add) ... until the next morning, when I knew ... the trash had been picked up. It was gone. It was gone. I felt panic, on some level. Like: what have I done??? I so wanted to have that hatbox back.

I actually wish I had it now. Not because I am holding on, but because I am older now, and I have come to love my artifacts (beach glass) and it's okay to have them around. I can incorporate them into my life now. My past is a PART of me, and whatever man comes into my life now will obviously have to deal with that, we're not kids anymore, we're not struggling to define ourselves ... we're adults. A piece of beach glass given to me 15 years ago won't threaten anything now. But back then I didn't know that. That hatbox was holding me back. If I was going to fall in love again, I needed to have it be GONE.

As a writer, these artifacts and relics have become precious to me. Much of writing is like acting, or a sense-memory exercise, where you can re-enter your own past with precision. Stuff like old journals and letters can really help jumpstart the process if you need it.

But I will not scorn my younger self who needed to throw away those artifacts. She knew what she was doing, in that moment, and if I regret the loss now, that's just part of life. Again, loss is to be incorporated with the present-day. There is no other way. If you buck against loss, if you resent it, if you wish that it didn't happen or that if it didn't have to be ... then you are in some way an undeveloped personality. I have that in me, I know that. I have that tantrum-toddler inside of me that screams, "WHY DOES IT HAVE TO BE THIS WAY?" But as an adult, if you LIVE in that place, if that is primarily where you operate from, then you are still a child. Not only that, but you are closed to possibility, to future ... and you also steel yourself for the next disappointment. You are only aware of the possibility that all things will end ... even at the hopeful beginning.

That way danger lies.

I am nothing if I cannot hope for things. I am nothing if I cannot succumb, yet again, to the pull of love. I will be truly lost if I give that up. If I let my toddler tantrum shove her way to the forefront.

An interesting coda to all of this:

About 4 years ago, I came home to a package at my door.

No, it was not Mike sending me mittens.

The package was addressed to me in handwriting I know so well that if I came across it in freakin' Kazakhstan, I would know that my old boyfriend was in the vicinity. We don't send each other things, so it was all very curious. I opened it, and a small leather-bound book fell out. It was a small journal that we (my first boyfriend and myself) must have bought at a flea market - it had a lock on it, and it was embossed with the words "Lest We Forget" - and we filled it with all of our private jokes as a couple. I have no memory of buying that book. I have no memory of the book itself. Some of the jokes in the book are completely forgotten by me - but some just blazed off the page, as funny as they were the day we decided to write it down. I read the book from cover to cover - with entries in his handwriting, entries in mine - and laughed so hard and so loud that I am shocked the police were not called. I was DYING.

I am usually the one with the good memory. My friends know this about me so they come to me with questions about their own lives. "Who was I dating again in the spring of 1993?" "Uhm, let me think ... my hair was short at that time, I was a receptionist, so that means you were dating the Xerox repair salesman from the South side." "Thank you." So it's always shocking to me when someone remembers something I don't. (A recent example). I love it when that happens. It's like fragments of my own life are handed back to me on a platter, and I wonder what else I have forgotten. What else is out there?

My first boyfriend sending me the "Lest We Forget" book was handing me back huge fragments from my life that I had forgotten - and perhaps would NOT have forgotten if I hadn't thrown out that hatbox. (But again, no regrets. We do what we need to do in the moment we need to do it. Let's move on.) Enormous landscapes of humor and activities and vacations we had and things we loved came back to me - fully formed. It was one of the best surprise gifts ever.

Now of course, we have email, so we spent the next couple of days HOWLING with laughter over email over all of these old jokes, now 20 something years in the past. Truly extraordinary.

An artifact.

On the auction block.

Lest we forget.

Last night, feeling the familiar melancholy approach, the neediness, the anticipation of disappointment that always comes for me at such times ... I picked up Mike's gift.

I lay in bed, with Hope curled around my head, and started reading.

How could Mike know? How could he know, from across the country, what I needed? And unlike someone who sends a gift of, say, a self-help book, something with a title like: Women Who Love Beach Glass and The Men Who Let Them or Hitachi Withdrawal in 12 Steps: A Daybook or Learn To Pretend There's More Than Love That Matters (and Get a Cat, too) ... he sends me a book that is an auction catalog, something completely contrived and created by Leanne Shapton - an amazingly innovative person - detailing the beginning middle and end of a relationship through the objects accumulated.

How to fall in love again knowing that everything you accumulate, with excitement and joy in the present moment, could one day be on the auction block? How do we do that?

It is the human condition.

I don't know HOW to do that, but I know I MUST do that.

The morning is grey, but I no longer feel melancholy. Leanne Shapton's riveting book has infiltrated itself into my life already, re-arranging the set pieces, and making me see that no, I have no choice. Not only will I move forward, but I will also - come hell or high water - make art out of it. Whichever way it goes.

Thanks, Mike.

And damn you.

"Yours, yours, yours" - Kerry O'Malley as Abigail Adams

Yes, yet another O'Malley cousin rockin' the planet.

My dear cousin (and friend) Kerry will be playing Abigail Adams in the Paper Mill Playhouse's upcoming production of 1776.

A wonderful interview with Kerry here about the project.

Good job, Kerry. You do us New Englanders proud.

Can't wait to see it.

Saltpeter. Pins.

In preparation for the upcoming blessed event ...

my mother made the following items.

You also know you're at an O'Malley event (and you know that you are me) when ...

... things get so emotionally intense in the middle of it, and you get so over-stimulated, that you have to step out of the action for a minute, go upstairs, and lie down for ten minutes.

You also know you're at an O'Malley event when your cousin Kathleen notices what is going on with you, and, without saying a word, subtly takes care of you for the rest of the afternoon.

You also know you're at an O'Malley event when ...

... right before the throngs all showed up - at exactly the same moment - and room is being made in the oven for yet another quiche, and you all wonder how it is going fit, and will it be ready on time, your Aunt Katy turns to you and says flatly, "Everything is about to swing out of control now."

You also know you're at an O'Malley event when ...

... a couple of people at the baby shower (myself included) bought baby products emblazoned with the Red Sox logo.

You know you're at an O'Malley event when ...

... one of the coffee urns at the house is somehow lacking a cord, and after discussing sending someone to Radio Shack or Benny's to pick up another one, someone says, "Why don't we call church? You know they have one."

You know. "The Catholic Church". It's in the yellow pages.

And naturally, one of us "calls church", talks to the priest - a well-known family friend, who of course says, "Yes, we have a cord you can borrow ... come on up ..."

So one of us drives up to the rectory, knocks on the door, and there is the priest holding a coffee urn cord for us to borrow for the massive baby shower about to unfold at the house. "We'll bring it back at the 8 o'clock mass. Okay?" "Okay."

You can leave your small village in County Mayo, and live elsewhere, and yes, my ancestors did so, but on some level, you bring it with you.

Just call church. You know they've got a ton of coffee urns up there.

Who my cousin Kerry is

Last night, at 12:30 in the morning, I emailed her asking her for help. Not emotional help, although I probably could have used that too. No, I was looking for a specific object ... that I need to get ASAP ... and I didn't know where to start, and maybe she could help? It was in her, shall we say, zone of interests ... I thought she might have some tips.

I figured I'd hear back from her this morning.

I sat at my desk last night (having trouble sleeping these days), doing some writing, listening to music - and 5 minutes after I sent the email, my blackberry buzzed. (I have so many gadgets now to charge that my apartment looks like Mission Control at times.) Anyway, I heard the buzz of my blackberry off in my bag somewhere, so I checked my email online - and there was Kerry. Emailing me back.

One line:

"I'm on it. Will get you details in the morning."

I laughed out loud. I love her.

But obviously Kerry, just across the Hudson, couldn't wait until morning (of course she couldn't!), and had begun her search at that moment. Because my blackberry started going INSANE, buzzing repeatedly with Kerry's incoming emails for the next 45 seconds. It was like all hell broke loose. My mailbox slowly filled with Kerry's emails - links from ebay and Amazon and other sellers - "how bout this?" "or this?" "or maybe try this" "hey this is really cute". I literally could not keep up with the emails. It was almost scary. I felt like Jesus in Jesus Christ Superstar crying out in fear, "There are too many of you!!"

The funniest thing though was that my blackberry was buzzing like a maniac in my bag. Bzz. Bzz. Bzz. Bzz. Bzz. Bzz. It was as though a certain Hitachi product in my drawer had spontaneously switched itself to On mode, and was calling to me, insistently, from the darkness. Hey! Look at me! I'm over here! Wanna come out and play? Bzz. Bzz. Bzz. Bzz. Bzz.

"How bout this?" "This is cute - try this!" "Maybe you need this?" "Look at THIS that I found!"

By email 3, I was giggling. By email 20 I was howling.

And mission accomplished, found what I was looking for.

I love you, Kerry.

Meeting up at the Strand

I got there about 20 minutes before my mother. I haven't been to the Strand in a while, and I always have to deal with about 5 or 10 minutes of jittery anxiety upon arrival, kind of like Hope being faced with a bowl of Fancy Feast and a bowl of dry food. What do I do first?? My brain will explode! It is the most satisfying of bookstores - a combination of good prices, helpful staff, amazing selection, and general atmosphere (no music blaring like at Barnes & Noble, a pet peeve of mine.) It's always an absolute madhouse so that's the only thing that might be negative about it, but that's part of the experience, too. My mother and I were walking around at one point and she said, "Isn't it so nice ... to see hundreds of people browsing through books?" It certainly is. And it just feels different than a big chain. It feels more serious. As well as MANIC. The prices can be so low that it catapults people, myself included, into a kind of mania. There is danger of going into a fugue state. Or something akin to Steve Martin in "The Jerk", grabbing every single thing that comes in his path. "I need THIS ... oh, and I need THIS ..." Need?? Hundreds of dollars later you stagger out with 30 books in 5 bags, and you have no idea what you have bought. I speak from personal experience!

Mum and Siobhan were coming in from Brooklyn, where they were visiting Cormac, Liam and Lydia's new glorious baby ... and Mum called me at about 5 pm, just as I was approaching The Strand, to say they would be there in about 20 minutes.

"Okay. I'll be back in the Entertainment Biography section."
"Of course you will."

I began to get heart palpitations as I made my way through the THRONGS around all the sales tables. And I kept getting diverted. "Oh, I need THIS ..." "Oh, look, I need THIS."

Mum and Siobhan arrived 20 minutes later, and I had my arms full of books, many of them over-sized. My arms were falling off. What was I thinking? Did I imagine that I would be air-lifted out of there? But I was in a fugue state, and the most expensive of the books in my arms was 12.95 - and it was an enormous book called "Forties Gals" - with profiles and pictures of all the big actresses of the 1940s, you know - all the dames I love. In a regular bookstore, that book might be 40 bucks. So, you know, I went a little crazy.

Siobhan had to work that night, so she left us - and Mum and I had a wonderful time, browsing and talking and sharing. I was pretty much done by the time they arrived. I had chosen:

1. Together Again - by the wonderful gossipy Garson Kanin - a book where he analyzes great movie couples - Tracy and Hepburn, Bogart and Bacall, et al

2. The aforementioned Forties Gals books which probably weighed 10 pounds by itself

3. Movie Poster - a huge coffee table book analyzing the development of the art of the movie poster. I am drooling.

4. My Mother's Keeper - the bitchy tell-all book about Bette Davis by her grumpy daughter. And yeah, this is the book that has the immortal words "My SNEAKERS were sticking to the TAR, shit!"

5. Harlow - by Irving Shulman. Salacious and terribly written, it is a great book. I read it in high school, and was so afraid of the story of Paul Bern and what happened to him that this book emitted a dark glow from the shelves, drawing me back to it again and again. Now I own it.

6. Baby, I Don't Care. Take a wild guess who this book is about.

7. A marvelous book called Antique Packaging. It has no text. It is an art book. Image after image of old sardine cans and match books and things like that - from days gone by. Gorgeous.

8. This last one I am particularly excited about. It is enormous (again) - I have hard little biceps just from carrying my books around yesterday - and it is called The Poster in History. Another huge art book, detailing the history of the poster - not just for movies but for propaganda purposes - various war efforts, or the ideological battle for Communism - I love that crap, as I have written before ... and some of these posters, even some with causes I not only don't agree with but vehemently oppose - are works of art. I can't wait to look through it. Maybe I'll do some scanning. What a shock.

Other books I had that I put back - not because I judged them as unworthy - but because basically I feared my arms would fall off:

-- a giant book of Richard Avedon photos
-- a giant book of photos of Steve McQueen
-- a massive compilation of all of the writings of Kenneth Tynan

I just couldn't carry them all.

Then Mum and I went upstairs to the art books section and had a great time browsing. They have whole sections called "Art Papers" - which are almost like huge bins of sheet music that you just have to flip through, hoping to find the nugget of gold in the bottom of the sieve. Mum spent a lot of time there, as I looked at the photography books, getting sucked in to all the great Life books of photos. Mum found some good things there ... one was a small monograph of the work of Gabriele Münter - someone I had never heard of, but we both oohed and ahed over her work. The monograph was falling apart, it had obviously been donated to the Strand (much of what you find in the Art Papers bins are things of that nature - programs to art shows at a gallery in Prague, stuff like that - very cool, but you need to have the patience to weed through). When we got back to my apartment, we looked Münter up on the Internet, and found out some fascinating details about her life. My God. She obviously is mainly known for saving the works of Kandinsky, hiding them in her basement from the Nazis (and a couple of the works only exist through photographs she took of them - astonishing) ... but she was quite an artist in her own right. Mum really enjoyed looking through them all. So that was one thing she bought.

She also bought another art book - with impressionists from England - only, of course, the main ones were from Ireland. England can claim them all they want, these folks are Irish. Irish art is a passion of the O'Malley clan - mainly because you just have to go along with my father's obsessions or you will be left out of the conversation at the dinner table ... but Mum, of course, as a painter, has a lot of interest in these people as well. She could glance at a page and say, "Oh, that's by ..." and list the name.

So we both were very happy with our purchases. Then we walked down the block (and yesterday was the first real spring day, so New Yorkers were basically going MAD wearing shorts and mini skirts and looping about the sidewalks in glee) to go have dinner at Siobhan's restaurant. We didn't really (of course) get to talk to Siobhan ... only briefly ... but it was an environment of care and nurturing, because the entire staff knows us, the owner knows us ... and it was like going to have dinner at the house of a family friend. Only we were at a bar/restaurant in the East Village. It was the right choice. Mum and I had a great meal, and lots of good talk ... and I am, of course, always excited to be able to host her, when she comes down.

It was a relief to get to the car (we took a cab) because, man, our books were dragging us down.

When we got back to my place, we promptly got into our pajamas, and sat around, looking through our books, sharing this or that image, talking about things like Kandinsky and Nureyev and Saul Bass ... until finally we started fading, and fell asleep.

A good spring day in New York.

Siobhan O'Malley: "Alibi Bye"

My beautiful and talented sister Siobhan has just had her second album released (after a good two years of almost non-stop work on it) and it is now available for purchase! It is called Alibi Bye. The sound on this one is really big, robust - and she had the great pleasure of working with seasoned and unbelievable studio musicians who would be like, "You want a jazzy harpischord solo here? No problem." "You need one tuba blast as an accent before the chorus? Let me call in my world-class tuba-playing friend." Etc. The album is rockin'!

Go, Siobhan!

And go purchase your copy now!

O'Malley women

Jean and Pat are now sitting poolside on a Caribbean island, Jean glorious and ridiculous in a "pregnancy tankini" (I am waiting for the pics to come in), reading her fantasy baseball book, and planning for "her" upcoming season. "I can't wait for baseball!" said Jean.

It makes me happy to think of Jean and Pat, relaxed and baking in the sun, on their delayed honeymoon. We all deserve a break.

Just two days ago, I took a walk with my mother and sister, along the sea wall in Narragansett.

February 18, 1967

On December 28, he offered her a ride home from the record hop even though he had no car.

When she got home that night, she told her older sister Anne that she had met a boy at the record hop. The boy had been telling her jokes all night, making her laugh. The girl told her older sister, "He's so funny, he reminds me of Jerry Lewis." The girl loved Jerry Lewis. It was a huge compliment. She also mentioned how when the boy talked to you, sometimes he looked at your forehead as opposed to right in your eyes.

Eight years later, on a cold February 18, 1967, they were wed.

Watch Hill, sunset

A beautiful evening walk wtih my mother in the quaintest little town imaginable. If you've seen Dan in Real Life, you'll recognize a lot of the locations - much of it was filmed in Watch Hill. It's nice to be there off-season when you're the only ones around. And the nice thing about the beach, unlike a lot of Rhode Island beaches, is that it is kind of isolated and hard to get to. There's a really interesting history here - Napa Tree Point was wiped off the face of the planet in the hurricane of 1938 - and you can see why ... it's a long thin strip of sand, completely unprotected. One little girl on Napa Tree Point was hanging on to the joist of her house when the whole thing washed away, and poor little thing floated all the way to Stonington, Connecticut. Stories abound. But boy, is it beautiful. There's an old carousel in town, and cute little houses and stores lining the main drag. And a lighthouse out on a point.

We were on the beach right at "magic hour" (or "magic 20 minutes") when the sunset hits the houses at just the right angle and all of the windows flame out into blazing red and orange.

THE HARBOR

THE HARBOR, THE INN

SIDEWALK, MAIN DRAG

SIGN IN BOOKSTORE WINDOW

THE MAIN DRAG, WATCH HILL

FENCE ON THE WATER

ANOTHER FENCE ON THE WATER

CAROUSEL ROOF, WEATHERVANE

HARBOR

HARBOR SHORELINE, GOLDEN DUNES

DUNES

GOLDEN DUNES

MUM

ENTRANCE TO THE BEACH

DUNES

HOUSES ON THE POINT

LIGHTHOUSE

WATCH HILL BEACH, SUNSET

On September 20th, 2008:

My sister Jean and Pat got married at the pagoda by Narragansett Beach. My father walked Jean down the aisle. It was an incredible day.

Yesterday, I took a walk with my mother and my sister Jean, and we ended up going by the pagoda by Narragansett Beach.

I said to Jean, "Go stand in the aisle!" The aisle where she walked on September 20th with my father.

She stood there and I said, "Let me see the profile!"

She obliged.

From September 20th, a miracle day if ever I saw one, to February 15, another miracle day. It's hard, sometimes, to feel the joy of what is happening. There will always be pain mixed in with it. But then ... to see that profile ...

there is a blaze of joy ...

I already love that little baby so so much! I can't wait to meet it!!!!

Cashel, who is at this point cousin-less, said to me on Christmas morning, when we were both up before everyone else and having some cereal in the kitchen, "You know what is the best Christmas present ever?"

I was already beside myself, for various reasons. "What, Cash?"

He said, "Auntie Jean being pregnant."

I agree, Cash. I agree. Good boy. Good good boy.

Walking Watch Hill Beach at sunset with my mom.

A couple pictures.

Some quotes from my siblings that have made me laugh over the last week

From an email from Brendan:

reading 'being and nothingness' by sartre. what a load of horse doadies. hey, jean-paul, pick up a shovel. do something.

From an email from Siobhan:

ben and i go to BAM tongiht to see sam mendes' direction of "a winter's tale". i've never seen a production of a winter's tale so i'm excited. it has the funniest stage direction ever ("exuent, persued by bear"), which i can't wait to see.

From a conversation with Jean last night:

Me: So what books are you bringing on your vacation?
Jean: A fantasy baseball book and Sound and the Fury.
Silence. Then huge laughter.

It's kind of a family epidemic.

These photos were taken on the same day. It was not planned. It's just how things are when you are an O'Malley.

MY SHIRT

MY BROTHER'S SHIRT

O'Malley men, O'Malley women

September 20, 2008

Today in history: February 2nd

Two things happened on today in history:

February 2, 1882: James Joyce was born in Rathgar.

February 2, 1922: Joyce's Ulysses was published by Shakespeare & Co.

James Joyce had already written a collection of short stories (Dubliners - excerpt here) and a novel (A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - excerpt here) - as well as many poems and a play (Exiles). Joyce said at one point that he had realized that he "could not write without offending people". Dubliners was controversial in its time, with its honest portrayal of the wandering aimlessness of Dublin men and the domination of the Catholic Church in his country (which he saw as a terrible thing). Portrait of the Artist was also controversial. It covers such topics as religion, politics, the Irish question, nationalism, masturbation, Parnell, and other light subjects such as those. It was the launching-off point for Ulysses.

It took James Joyce seven years to write Ulysses. Later, he would joke, when faced with criticism that the book was just too damn big - "I spent seven years writing it. People could at least spend seven years reading it."

His next book was Finnegans Wake (excerpt here) and that took him seventeen years to write.

Boy marched to the beat of his own drummer.

The history of the publication of Ulysses is a book in and of itself.

James Joyce had fled Ireland, leaving a wake of debt and scandal behind him, back in 1904. Joyce got a job teaching English at a Berlitz school in first Zurich (that didn't work out), and then Trieste. He convinced his new-found love, Nora Barnacle, a wild girl from Galway, to run away with him. He had known her for only a couple of months. They had met on June 16, 1904 - the day that he would choose to set the entirety of Ulysses on, the ultimate tribute to what she gave him. James and Nora lived in Trieste for 10 years, having children (two of them), not getting married just to spite tradition - although they referred to one another as "husband" and "wife" (the two would eventually marry in the 1930s) ... and living below the poverty line. Meanwhile, Joyce was working on Dubliners, which was quite a struggle. He could not find anyone willing to publish it. Dubliners was eventually published in 1914. He had already been working on it for years. Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man was published (in serial form) in 1914 and finally brought out as a book in 1916. It had been serialized in the highly influential The Egoist. Around this time, James Joyce was taken under the wing of Ezra Pound (what a shock. Pound was everywhere).

James Joyce had been interested in the plight of the Jews for a long time. Especially as a man living in perpetual exile, country-less, yet always looking "homeward". He felt that there was an affinity between the Jews and the Irish, and he thought it was something to explore. He had considered writing a story along these lines for Dubliners but it didn't end up happening. However, the idea percolated. It ended up being one of the main ideas in the book Ulysses, based, of course, on Homer's epic, but Joyce, with his obsessive tendencies, was the kind of man who saw connections everywhere. Exile, journey, what does "home" mean, where is it? These were questions of great relevance to the Jews, but also to himself, who felt he could never live in Ireland again (and he never did). Leopold Bloom, the protagonist of Ulysses is a Jew, living in Ireland. Stephen Dedalus (Joyce's alter ego, the "star" of Portrait of the Artist as well) is one of the aimless men Ireland is so fond of creating, a man looking for a father figure, a guide. Through their mutual wanderings through the city of Dublin, on June 16, 1904, they eventually cross paths. It is not that a kindred spirit is revealed, not really. They do not connect, or heal, or grow, or become empowered. None of those pat concepts are at work in Ulysses. It is more that it is a meeting of the minds. A realization of the connection between them, but also that such connection is transitory. At the end of the book they go their separate ways.

Joyce wrote:

Ulysses is the epic of two races (Israel - Ireland) and at the same time the cycle of the human body as well as a little story of a day (life). The character of Ulysses always fascinated me ever since boyhood. I started writing it as a short story for Dubliners fifteen years ago but gave it up. For seven years I have been working at this book-- blast it!

What was such a big deal about Ulysses? A book where nothing, let's be honest, really happens?

Much of the brou-haha (at least in the literary set) was about the writing itself, a deepening and broadening of the landscape he had explored in Portrait: what is existence really like? What is it like to live, moment to moment?

James Joyce wrote once:

"Why all this fuss and bother about the mystery of the unconscious? What about the mystery of the conscious? What do they know about that?"

Joyce did not delve into the psychologies of his characters so much, although we get to know Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus better than we even know our best friends through reading Ulysses. Joyce goes behind closed doors. He goes inside the body. Circulation, digestion, sex drive, the splitting of cells ... all of that is going on in his writing, because the book - as well as being an homage to Homer's Odyssey - as well as being set up in a complicated structure, mirroring Homer's work - as well as having colors associated with each episode, and a different writing style for each episode ... it is also, chapter by chapter, a dissection of the human body. One chapter (the Cyclops chapter, naturally) is the "eye" chapter. One chapter is the stomach chapter. One chapter is the sex organs chapter. And etc. None of this is explicit. There is no guide. You have to know what you're looking for. You have to get into HIS mode when reading the book, and let your OWN mode go. This is why many people were (and are) annoyed by Joyce. But geniuses have always annoyed people. As William Blake famously wrote:

The eagle never lost so much time as when he submitted to learn of the crow.

Ouch. Crows don't like that when you point it out. But eagles, in general, shouldn't worry about the response of crows to their superiority. They need to just keep being eagles.

But James Joyce wouldn't have thought of it like that. His defenders (like myself) say stuff like that all the time, but Joyce (perhaps disingenuously) really didn't see what the big deal was. He wrote what he wrote because it amused and fascinated him. He wrote only what he could write. He wasn't going for an effect, he wasn't trying to be clever. He loved puns and language and hidden connections. He wrote from that stance. He realized that he was ahead of his time, he really did, but he wasn't precocious, he wasn't self-conscious about it. (Actually, he was - but I'll touch on that in a bit.) The thing to get about Joyce (and this is where he is truly an eagle) is that he wrote Ulysses not to make a big splash, not to stick it to the censors, not to show lesser writers how it's REALLY done (although all of these things were results) ... he wrote it because he liked it. He found it funny. Engaging.

He said (and this may be perhaps my favorite Joyce quote, and it is something to keep in mind should you pick up Ulysses for the first time - it's a clue in HOW to read it):

The pity is that the public will demand and find a moral in my book, or worse they may take it in some serious way, and on the honour of a gentleman, there is not one single serious word in it.

I believe him. Certainly there were serious ideas in the book, it's a revolution, really ... but looked at in another light, in Joyce's light, there is "not one single serious word in it". It's a joke, a maze, a puzzle, an examination of ridiculous coincidences and connections. What does it "mean"? That's the stupidest question of all to concern yourself with. It means nothing.

Samuel Beckett's wonderful quote in regards to Finnegans Wake is also applicable to Ulysses:

You cannot complain that this stuff is not written in English. It is not written at all. It is not to be read. It is to be looked at and listened to. His writing is not about something. It is that something itself.

And THAT is why Joyce is such a big deal. THAT is why the book went off like a bomb throughout the literary world. THAT is why people like T.S. freakin' Eliot, no slouch himself, said, "I wish, for my own sake, that I had not read it." James Joyce lived in a world of giants. Hemingway, Proust, Virginia Woolf, Pound, Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, T.S. Eliot ... the modernists. He was part of his time, but he went so much further than any of his contemporaries that many of them never quite recovered from the Ulysses juggernaut. The comments of other writers about Ulysses are absolutely marvelous, because they all recognized what has come. They all realized what had happened. The 20th century had arrived. They had all been working towards it, trying to wrestle the 19th century out of existence, bringing new forms to light. And it's not that any of these people failed. But Ulysses was the "star". Ulysses was the real death-knell.

T.S. Eliot said that Ulysses "killed the 19th century".

James Joyce hadn't set out to "kill the 19th century", but his sensibility - contrarian, sensitive, angry, loving - led him to a form that couldn't help but do so.

Now let me talk about the actual publication of the book.

Into our story now steps Sylvia Beach. Born in Maryland, as an adult she became a major force in the literary ex-pat community in Paris. She served in World War I with the Red Cross in Serbia, and after the war settled in Paris, where she opened up a bookshop - the enormously influential Shakespeare & Co.. Shakespeare & Co. became the hub-bub, the vortex of them all. Oh, for a time machine, to go hang out at that place in the 1920s, where Hemingway would stop by, Fitzgerald would browse, Joyce would sneak in and out, Gertrude Stein would bitch and moan (haha) ... and Pound would negotiate with all of them, trying to help them all out and promote his favorites ... they ALL were there.

I love this - here is a cartoon of Joyce sitting at a table with all of his friends (try to find Joyce - isn't that hysterical?? He doesn't even have a body! That was how he was seen - just a big floating brain with enormous glasses!).

Who was the cartoonist?

F. Scott Fitzgerald.

In this vibrant world of literary rivals and giants struggling for the stage, Sylvia Beach played an important role. She had good taste, first of all, she liked the "good" ones, and didn't waste her time with the crows. She also had courage (as we shall see).

When Beach met James Joyce, he had already written Ulysses, and it was a finished manuscript by that point (or as finished as any Joycean manuscript ever would be) - but essentially unpublishable, due to its being deemed "obscene". You have to get into the mindset of the censors, as unpleasant an experience as that is. What on earth is "obscene" about Ulysses? Ultimately, the book expresses love. You cannot deny it, you cannot escape from it. It is love. Leopold Bloom, throughout his long long day, is only thinking about his wife Molly, and how much he loves her, and how afraid he is that she is being unfaithful. There is only one woman for him. In the same way that there was only one woman for Joyce. Love, it is love that drags us home after our long journey. Only love. But Joyce did not shy away from the more unsavory aspects of life (and let's remember his comment about the "mystery of the conscious" - that's so so important: he did not, as Proust did, or Woolf did, or some of the other modern writers - delve into psychology and the workings of the subconscious. He did not look at motivations and childhood repression. Let's not forget the huge influence of Freud at this time. A revolution in the understanding of the workings of humanity. Whether or not you agree with Freud, and whether or not you think Freud is over-rated is irrelevant. I am talking about the time and place from which Joyce wrote. Freud - and Jung - were hugely influential to writers like Joyce and Proust.) But Joyce, unlike Proust, did not explore how memory works, and how the senses trigger thoughts and feelings and entire narratives from our lives ... He was much more prosaic. Blunt. He presented man in the most honest manner possible. Leopold Bloom takes a dump, for example. He sits on the toilet after breakfast, and thinks about things, worrying about things, as he goes to the bathroom. Now, this is one of the most human of experiences. Anyone who says they haven't sat on the toilet, pondering their day, and what they are worried about, is lying. But to put that in a book?? What are you, cracked?

There are those who feel that while such things may be 'real', they have no place in literature. Now we're getting into the realm of the censors, who wanted to control what could be shown. It's the same as people nowadays who seem to feel that saying "TMI" is the be-all and end-all of human interaction. You complain that you stubbed your toe that morning, and certain people will say, "TMI!" Someday I'll write a post on how much I despise the "TMI" trend, and how I think it is actually indicative of so much that is effed up ... "TMI" is nothing new. There have always been those who really DON'T want to know you, who really DON'T want the truth when they ask "How are you?" It's just that now that we have "TMI" to say, it's way over-used. If I never hear the phrase "TMI" again, I will fall asleep a happy woman. Sure, there's such a thing as "over-sharing", but I'm not really talking about that. I am talking about something far more insidious. Something that is not in any way, shape or form new - it's been going on forever, as long as human beings have been in contact with one another. There is a shying away from real experience of one another. Of course. Because if you allow yourself to experience what it is like for another person, then that might mean you might have compassion for them, or empathy, or you might have a sense of recognition, an awareness of the universal: "Yes, I do that, too!" Many people do not want to be shaken out of their selves like that. I include myself, by the way, although you will never ever catch me saying "TMI"! I am all ABOUT "TMI"! But the first response for many, to some demand for connection, or understanding, is to batton down the hatches, draw the line in the sand, and say, "Nope. Nope. That's YOU, that's not ME."

Joyce cuts right to the core of that very human experience. He will not let the reader off the hook. If you insist on insisting, "That's YOU, not ME", then Ulysses will be a terribly confronting book. Joyce, above all else, was a humanist, although his cynicism and rage were titanic. That's what The Dead, with its final revelation of connection to all in the last four paragraphs, is all about. Gabriel realizes, as he watches his wife sleep, that he loves her, and yet that he has never really known her. And in that realization, his consciousness rises up and up, until he is looking down on the snowy landscape, on all of Ireland ... and he, for the first time, feels connected to life, because of his experience of heartbreak. He feels connected not just to all mankind, but also to all of the "shades", all of those people who have gone before.

To walk around saying "TMI, TMI" whenever anyone reveals anything about themselves is to exclude yourself from the human family.

The irony of all of this is that Joyce was one of the most isolated of beings, although not melancholy or a downer or any of that. It's just that he was rather old-fashioned, believe it or not, a family man, who had dinner every night with Nora and his kids and that was that. There is no scandal about Joyce. He didn't sleep with every woman in Paris. He didn't experiment with free love. Yes, he lived in sin for 30 years before tying the knot, but he was faithful to Nora. He wasn't a big socializer. He was a big drinker, but everyone was then. He wasn't dancing in fountains like F. Scott Fitzgerald was, and cheering as his wife did a jig on the table. He was rather conventional, rather bourgeois.

Additionally, there is a tremendous self-consciousness in his books (which I mentioned earlier). He can ONLY write from his own life. He was not an "inventor". He did not make up characters, and devise complicated plots. He did not write one standard novel. It was all self self self self self. I truly believe that you MUST be a genius in order to only focus on self. The memoir-trend in publishing today proves that, in my mind. There are very few good ones out there, very few stories worth telling ... the thing that elevates one memoir over another is, of course, the writing style ... If you're not a good writer then nobody cares that your mama locked you in a closet and your papa couldn't put down the whiskey. Angela's Ashes was such a phenomenal success because of McCourt's writing. You write that same story without McCourt's voice and you'd want to vomit. I know that there are folks in Limerick, especially, who already want to vomit when reading McCourt's book - but that just goes to show you that you can never please everybody.

Ulysses picked up where Portrait left off. As Portrait comes to a close, the traditional narrative voice breaks down, leaving us only with Stephen Dedalus' journal entries. There is no more voice outside the "I". Joyce has abandoned the traditional narrator. Dedalus will now take over. We are inside experience, as opposed to looking on. In the third episode in Ulysses Stephen Dedalus takes a walk on the beach. We learned in the first chapter that he had broken his glasses. This fact is mentioned only once in the entire 800 page book, but we are meant to remember it. In the third chapter, during his walk on the beach, sans glasses ... the experiences come at him through a vague impression of colors and sounds. If you somehow missed that he has no glasses, and this episode is told from the perspective of someone who can't see, then you might not know what the hell is going on. At one point:

The dog's bark ran towards him, stopped, ran back again.

As someone who needs her glasses, I can say that that is just just right. When I have been stranded without glasses, it is as though sounds "run towards" me ... It is not the DOG running at Dedalus, it is its BARK.

Perhaps now it seems obvious, or perhaps now it seems like everyone tries to write in this subjective manner. But that's only because Joyce did it first.

All of this made Ulysses a tough sell to publishers, not even counting the bowel movements, and penises, and the evening in "Nighttown" (Dublin's red-light district) and Molly Bloom's long 40 page run-on sentence that closes the book, full of farts and menstruation and masturbation. But also, please, let us not forget, that it is some of the most beautiful writing in the English language ... and her image of embracing her husband as they lie among the rhododendrons is some of the most romantic language of all time:

the sun shines for you he said the day we were lying among the rhododendrons on Howth head in the grey tweed suit and his straw hat the day I got him to propose to me yes first I gave him the bit of seedcake out of my mouth and it was leapyear like now yes 16 years ago my God after that long kiss I near lost my breath yes he said I was a flower of the mountain yes so we are flowers all a womans body yes that was one true thing he said in his life and the sun shines for you today yes that was why I liked him because I saw he understood or felt what a woman is and I knew I could always get round him and I gave him all the pleasure I could leading him on till he asked me to say yes and I wouldnt answer first only looked out over the sea and the sky I was thinking of so many things he didnt know of Mulvey and Mr Stanhope and Hester and father and old captain Groves and the sailors playing all birds fly and I say stoop and washing up dishes they called it on the pier and the sentry in front of the governors house with the thing round his white helmet poor devil half roasted and the Spanish girls laughing in their shawls and their tall combs and the auctions in the morning the Greeks and the jews and the Arabs and the devil knows who else from all the ends of Europe and Duke street and the fowl market all clucking outside Larby Sharons and the poor donkeys slipping half asleep and the vague fellows in the cloaks asleep in the shade on the steps and the big wheels of the carts of the bulls and the old castle thousands of years old yes and those handsome Moors all in white and turbans like kings asking you to sit down in their little bit of a shop and Ronda with the old windows of the posadas glancing eyes a lattice hid for her lover to kiss the iron and the wineshops half open at night and the castanets and the night we missed the boat at Algeciras the watchman going about serene with his lamp and O that awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

Brings me to tears every time.

The book was a bomb waiting to go off. No one would touch it. Pound had arranged for some excerpts to be published and that was the start of it. Writers, in general, were itching to get their paws on the book ... what the hell is that crazy Joyce working on now?? ... people felt competitive, nervous ... he helped them up their own game ... but in terms of the business side of things, the controversy had started before the book had even been published.

But Sylvia Beach - who had never published a book before - took a risk and said that Shakespeare & Co. would put out the book. She would publish it herself. She knew what she was doing, and she knew what the repercussions could be. It was an act of courage. Perhaps she went into it recklessly, thinking that giving a space for genius would be its own reward - perhaps she went into it knowing the eventual fallout that would crash down upon her head - But whatever her interior process, she published it. On February 2, 1922.

I was on the platform, my heart going like the locomotive, as the train from Dijon came slowly to a standstill and I saw the conductor getting off, holding a parcel and looking around for someone -- me. In a few minutes, I was ringing the doorbell at the Joyces' and handing them Copy No. 1 of Ulysses. It was February 2, 1922. -- Sylvia Beach

And the shit hit the fan.

Nora Tully describes it thus:

The response to Ulysses was immediate and extreme. Writer and literary critic Malcolm Cowley described it using the metaphor of a stone dropped into water: there was a moment of silence, the stone was dropped, "then all the frogs who inhabited the pool began to talk at once".

Once it was published, the obscenity controversies heated up, the book was banned everywhere - Ireland, America - everybody was talking about it, but who had actually read it? The first edition was only 1000 copies! You couldn't get the book anywhere. Additionally, you could be arrested for trying to smuggle it into certain countries - so there were a couple of years where the only place on the planet that you could get a copy of Ulysses was at Beach's bookshop in Paris. And so the orders flew in from folks around the world. People who were book readers, other writers, people who were collectors, people who sensed the historic moment and just wanted a copy.

Here is a copy of Peggy Guggenheim's urgent order-form, sent to Sylvia Beach:

Imagine you are dying to read the book. Imagine you can't get it anywhere. Imagine that it is illegal to smuggle it back into the United States. Imagine the frenzy. You can see it in Guggeinheim's writing, can't you?

Harriet Shaw Weaver, who had supported Joyce financially for years (at Pound's insistence) also arranged for another edition to be published by The Egoist press. She also arranged for them to be shipped to the United States, but they were seized by the customs officials. In 1923, John Rodker, through The Egoist again, arranged for a small printing of the book, but these were burned by English customs officials. In 1924, Shakespeare & Co., a small outfit really, and not set up to handle the demand, brought out another small printing.

Extraordinary.

Eventually, as the controversy died down, Joyce ended up going with another publisher, which really left Beach bereft financially. She already had suffered as a consequence of taking the risk to publish Ulysses. She was hounded by the police, by the censors ... so although Joyce really did need to move on, to a publisher who could handle his stardom, Beach was the first. Beach was the pioneer. Amazing woman.

Meanwhile, the comments from people who had actually read it were pouring in. This went on for years. You could read it in Europe, but America had declared it obscene, and would not allow it to arrive on its shores.

Finally, on August 7, 1934, over 10 years after its first publication by little Sylvia Beach and her little Shakespeare & Co. - a far-seeing and open-minded US Court of appeals judge, Judge Woolsey, declared that Ulysses was NOT obscene and could be admitted into the United States. It was a ground-breaking moment, a true historical watershed - and his decision reads almost like an insightful and intuitive literary review. Not to be missed. Go, Judge Woolsey!

The comments of other great writers on this book are of great interest to me. I can't get enough. I have compiled them all in a notebook. I love to read through them. The responses run the gamut from disgust, elation, despair, awe, humility ... He made other writers feel like putting down their pens. He enraged those who felt that THEY deserved HIS accolades (phone call for Gertrude Stein, Gertrude Stein, phone call) ... but whatever the response, the only emotion you will NOT find is indifference.

Joyce had made his mark.

Yeats (an early champion of Joyce) had this as his first response on reading Ulysses: "A mad book!"

Then later, as he let the book percolate, Yeats corrected himself: "I have made a terrible mistake. It is a work perhaps of genius. I now perceive its coherence ... It is an entirely new thing -- neither what the eye sees nor the ear hears, but what the rambling mind thinks and imagines from moment to moment. He has certainly surpassed in intensity any novelist of our time."

Hart Crane said: "I feel like shouting EUREKA! Easily the epic of the age."

George Bernard Shaw was disturbed by Ulysses, he took it personally, he did not like what it revealed - about man, about Irish men, about the life of Ireland, but he grappled with the implications in an honest way: "If a man holds up a mirror to your nature and shows you that it needs washing -- not whitewashing -- it is no use breaking the mirror. Go for soap and water."

T.S. Eliot was especially devastated by the book, and his comments on it are numerous. Examples: "How could anyone write again after achieving the immense prodigy of the last chapter?"

T.S. Eliot again: "I hold Ulysses to be the most important expression which the present age has found; it is a book to which we are all indebted, and from which none of us can escape."

Edmund Wilson wrote of it:

The more we read Ulysses, the more we are convinced of its psychological truth, and the more we are amazed at Joyce's genius in mastering and in presenting, not through analysis or generalization, but by the complete recreation of life in the process of being lived, the relations of human beings to their environment and to each other; the nature of their perception of what goes on about them and of what goes on within themselves; and the interdependence of their intellectual, their physical, their professional and their emotional lives. To have traced all these interdependences, to have given each of these elements its value, yet never to have lost sight of the moral through preoccuptation with the physical, nor to have forgotten the general in the particular; to have exhibited ordinary humanity without either satirizing it or sentimentalizing it - this would already have been sufficiently remarkable; but to have subdued all this material to the uses of a supremely finished and disciplined work of art is a feat which has hardly been equalled in the literature of our time.

Wilson also wrote:

Yet for all its appalling longeurs, Ulysses is a work of high genius. Its importance seems to me to lie, not so much in its opening new doors to knowledge -- unless in setting an example to Anglo-Saxon writers of putting down everything without compunction -- or in inventing new literary forms -- Joyce's formula is really, as I have indicated, nearly seventy-five years old -- as in its once more setting the standard of the novel so high that it need not be ashamed to take its place beside poetry and drama. Ulysses has the effect at once of making everything else look brassy."

Carl Jung read the book and wrote Joyce a letter:

Dear Sir, Your Ulysses has presented the world such an upsetting psychological problem, that repeatedly I have been called in as a supposed authority on psychological matters.

Ulysses proved to be an exceedingly hard nut and it has forced my mind not only to most unusual efforts, but also to rather extravagant peregrinations (speaking from the standpoint of a scientist). Your book as a whole has given me no end of trouble and I was brooding over it for about three years until I succeeded to put myself into it. But I must tell you that I'm profoundly grateful to yourself as well as to your gigantic opus, because I learned a great deal from it. I shall probably never be quite sure whether I did enjoy it, because it meant too much grinding of nerves and of grey matter. I also don't know whether you will enjoy what I have written about Ulysses because I couldn't help telling the world how much I was bored, how I grumbled, how I cursed and how I admired. The 40 pages of non stop run at the end is a string of veritable psychological peaches. I suppose the devil's grandmother knows so much about the real psychology of a woman, I didn't.

Well I just try to recommend my little essay to you, as an amusing attempt of a perfect stranger that went astray in the labyrinth of your Ulysses and happened to get out of it again by sheer good luck. At all events you may gather from my article what Ulysses has done to a supposedly balanced psychologist.

With the expression of my deepest appreciation, I remain, dear Sir,

Yours faithfully,
C.G. Jung

Joyce was very proud of this letter and would read it out loud to guests in his house. Nora would snort at the end, "Jimmy knows nothin' about women!"

Katherine Mansfield wrote in a letter:

"Joyce was rather ... difficile. I had no idea until then of his view of Ulysses -- no idea how closely it was modelled on the Greek story, how absolutely necessary it was to know the one through and through to be able to discuss the other. I've read the Odyssey and am more or less familiar with it but Murry [Mansfield's husband] and Joyce simply sailed out of my depth. I felt almost stupefied. It's absolutely impossible that other people should understand Ulysses as Joyce understands it. It's almost revolting to hear him discuss its difficulties. It contains code words that must be picked up in each paragraph and so on. The Question and Answer part can be read astronomically or from the geologic standpoint or -- oh, I don't know!"

The most humorous part of this is that Joyce said, after meeting Katherine and her husband:

"Mrs. Murry understood the book better than her husband."

Hilarious.

George Moore, another Irish writer, wrote:

"Ulysses is hopeless; it is absurd to imagine that any good end can be served by trying to record every single thought and sensation of any human being. That's not art, it's like trying to copy the London Directory."

Hemingway wrote in a letter to Sherwood Anderson:

"Joyce has a most goddamn wonderful book. It'll probably reach you in time. Meantime the report is that he and all his family are starving but you can find the whole celtic crew of them every night in Michaud's where Binney and I can only afford to go about once a week...The damned Irish, they have to moan about something or other..."

Gertrude Stein wrote:

"Joyce is good. He is a good writer. People like him because he is incomprehensible and anybody can understand him. But who came first, Gertrude Stein or James Joyce? Do not forget that my first great book, Three Lives, was published in 1908. That was long before Ulysses. But Joyce has done something. His influence, however, is local. Like Synge, another Irish writer, he has had his day."

Joyce heard what Stein wrote, thought about it, and said, "I hate intellectual women."

George Bernard Shaw again:

"I have read several fragments of Ulysses ... It is a revolting record of a disgusting phase of civilization; but it is a truthful one; and I should like to put a cordon round Dublin; round up every male person in it between the ages of 15 and 30; force them to read it; and ask them whether on reflection they could see anything amusing in all that foul mouthed foul minded derision and obscenity...It is, however, some consolation to find that at last somebody has felt deeply enough about it to face the horror of writing it all down and using his literary genius to force people to face it. In Ireland they try to make a cat cleanly by rubbing its nose in its own filth. Mr. Joyce has tried the same treatment on the human subject."

Ezra Pound said:

"Joyce -- pleasing; after the first shell of cantankerous Irishman, I got the impression that the real man is the author of Chamber Music, the sensitive. The rest is the genius; the registration of realities on the temperament, the delicate temperament of the early poems. A concentration and absorption passing Yeats' -- Yeats has never taken on anything requiring the condensation of Ulysses."

Yeats wrote:

"It is an entirely new thing -- neither what they eye sees nor the ear hears, but what the rambling mind thinks and imagines from moment to moment. He has certainly surpassed in intensity any novelist of our time."

William Carlos Williams wrote (echoing what many of Joyce's contemporaries felt):

"Joyce is too near for me to want to do less than he did in Ulysses, in looseness of spirit, and honesty of heart -- at least."

E.M. Forster wrote:

"Perhaps the most interesting literary experiment of our day."

Dr. Joseph Collins reviewed "Ulysses" in The New York Times and wrote:

Ulysses will immortalize its author with the same certainty that Gargantua and Pantagruel immortalized Rabelais and The Brothers Karamazov Dostoevsky ... It comes nearer to being the perfect revelation of a personality than any book in existence.

Hart Crane, who had totally lost his head about the book, wrote:

"The sharp beauty and sensitivity of the thing! The matchless details! His book is steeped in the Elizabethans, his early love, and Latin Church, and some Greek ... It is my opinion that some fanatic will kill Joyce sometime soon for the wonderful things said in Ulysses."

Ford Madox Ford wrote:

"For myself then, the pleasure -- the very great pleasure -- that I get from going through the sentences of Mr. Joyce is that given me simply by the cadence of his prose, and I fancy that the greatest and highest enjoyment that can be got from any writing is simply that given by the cadence of the prose."

William Faulkner wrote:

You should approach Joyce's Ulysses as the illiterate Baptist preacher approaches the Old Testament: with faith.

Vladimir Nabokov wrote:

Ulysses, of course, is a divine work of art and will live on despite the academic nonentities who turn it into a collection of symbols or Greek myths. I once gave a student a C-minus, or perhaps a D-plus, just for applying to its chapters the titles borrowed from Homer while not even noticing the comings and goings of the man in the brown mackintosh. He didn't even know who the man in the brown mackintosh was. Oh, yes, let people compare me to Joyce by all means, but my English is pat ball to Joyce's champion game.

That's a drawing by Guy Davenport, entitled "Joyce Writing a Sentence".

Last year, at around this time - almost exactly a year now - my father gave me his treasured and rare copy of Ulysses - part of the 1924 printing of Shakespeare & Co. The book is falling apart. The pages are thin and rustly, and little bits of them drop off if you pick it up. It is enclosed in a box, to protect it - which has on the spine: ULYSSES - PARIS, 1924.

I have been unable to look at it over the past year. I brought it home with me, put it on a special shelf, and stayed the hell away from it. It seemed to mean something ominous, something final. I didn't want to pick it up, and be casual about it. Even just looking at the book gives me a chill down my spine.

This morning I took it out and spent an hour with it, treating it as carefully as a glass figurine. Every page has something of interest on it. There is a sticker on the first page - stamped with the personal imprint of the couple who had bought the book (my father, naturally, knew everything about them). The copyright page is amazing. First of all, it lists all of the controversial editions that had gone before ... 500 copies burned, etc. And to see the legendary "Shakespeare & Co.", in print, signing its name, so to speak, to the book, bravely putting it out again, knowing what will happen to their small operation ... It's just something that makes me feel humble, awed, and proud that I am aware that such people existed.

My copy of the book is not one that I will take out and read. It is too fragile.

But it is now my most prized possession. I spent some time with it this morning. 4 a.m. to 5 a.m. In honor of the man who gave it to me, and in honor of the birthday of this book that means so much to me, that connects me to something so deep, so powerful - that I can barely speak to it.

I took some photos of this gift from my father. They are below.

The last photo has a framed picture of my dad in the background, standing by Yeats' grave. That was not deliberate. I did not consciously place the framed photo in the frame. It's just that everywhere in my apartment that you look you will see evidence of my heritage, my family, my inheritance. My father taught us well.

Happy birthday to Jimmy Joyce and to his masterpiece.

Two shadows, and my crazy brother

No matter how many times I look at this photo, it still makes me howl.

It's a visual joke, but it's also a mistake ... a blessed mistake. My parents, my brother and my uncle Tom and I went out to the Statue of Liberty. It was a great day. Really cold and glittery. I hadn't been out there since a field trip when I was 9 years old. The sun was getting lower in the sky so the shadow of the Statue stretched across the little island, long and thin. My parents were standing directly in the shadow of the statue, and asked me to take a picture. My brother stood off to the side - trying to duplicate in his own shadow the look of the Statue's shadow, arm in the air, etc.

The idea was that across the ground there would be two identical shadows - only one would be the huge statue's, and one would be his. Funny, right? But I didn't really get the joke of what my brother was going for - so I included him in the picture. Which completely killed HIS joke but made another joke on another level.

The idea was to cut him out off to the side, but include his shadow.

So it looks like my parents are nice and smiling and oblivious as this insane man crouches in a frozen isolated pose off to the right.

If I ever need a good laugh - and I often do these days - I pull out this picture.

Mary's in the basement, chillin'

There is a joke connected to these pictures but I can't remember what it is. Jean probably remembers and I am sure Mum does. The jist of it goes: someone (a friend of my parents) had a statue of the Virgin Mary. We live in the southern half of Rhode Island - where religious statuary in the yard is not as prevalent as in the northern half of the state, which is mainly Italian. (Mitchell, Sandi and I used to, for fun, drive through rich estates in Cranston and Warwick, going on "statue tours". It was hysterical). So someone had a statue of Mary and it became a joke - this friend would leave Mary on our steps, ring the doorbell and then run away. Mum or Dad would open the door, look out, see nobody, then glance down and see THAT. It was then up to them to return the favor, and surreptitiously place Mary somewhere where the neighbor would see her. Mary turned up everywhere. Girl got around.

I came home one weekend, went down into the cellar to get something ... and there she was at the foot of the stairs. Waiting for her next placement.

Gargoyles in Chicago

More Chicago pics - since I know so many of you out there are from there, or have lived there.

Photographs of the fantastical library downtown with the huge green gargoyles.

My dad had a long correspondence with a book collector in Ireland (well, he had many long correspondences with many book collectors in Ireland) - and this one guy had said that he had a collection of postcards of libraries in America. You can't say something like that to my dad without him running with it. This book collector said that to my father in 1981, and there was never a town that my father went to, after that time, that he didn't try to procure a postcard of the local library to send to this guy. We would laugh about this poor man in County Kerry, being like, "Jesus Mary and Joseph, enough with the postcards!" But I'm sure he loved them.

I never did get a postcard of the Chicago library - and just personal photographs would not do for the collector - they had to be postcards ... but I did give my dad these pictures nonetheless.

An amazing building.

Scanning Thursday

I'm not sure - because I like a lot of the photos I've taken - but this might be my favorite one. My dad and my brother.

Scanning Tuesday

I love this picture of my brother and me. Childhood, summer, swimming, freedom.

Scanning Monday

My sister Jean married Pat on September 20 of this year. It was one of the most emotional days I have ever known. My uncle Tom (my dad's brother) is a photographer and took a ton of pictures of that day, all of them marvelous. He seemed to be everywhere, yet you never noticed him snapping. He took a picture of all of the O'Malleys sitting at the wedding - well, not all of them - but most of them. Uncles, aunts, cousins, spouses, children ... all waiting for the wedding to begin. It was a reunion, but more than that, it was an affirmation of family. Everyone knew it was a special day, besides the amazing fact that Jean and Pat were getting married.

I love the picture of the O'Malleys below. First of all, everyone looks like movie stars. There are two actual stars in the photo - of television, screen and stage - but everyone looks like stars to me. And I look at all of those faces and just think: My God, I love those people. I could not have gotten through it all without them. None of us could. Even now, when we are all scattered, I feel them all with me.

Photo

My dad in his office at the library. When I was in college, I would stop by in between classes, to talk with him and tell him about my day. He always wanted to hear everything.

Union poster on the wall from the time they went on strike (there was a classic picture of my dad in the paper at the time, with a bunch of other strikers, and they're walking somewhere, and my dad is talking, and it looks like they're about to storm the barricade - it's a great photo - also, my dad was quoted in the paper, and he called a group of people "bastards" - or maybe it was "sons-of-bitches" - can't remember - but I was a kid at the time, and I remember being so in awe that 1. My dad was in the paper and 2. My dad was in the paper SWEARING) and also a poster for The Rivals, a show Brendan had done. He had posters for all of our shows on the walls.

Like dolmens round my childhood, the old people

A couple years ago, my father told me to read this poem. It was one of his favorites.

Like Dolmens Round My Childhood, The Old People
by John Montague

Like dolmens round my childhood, the old people.

Jamie MacCrystal sang to himself,
A broken song without tune, without words;
He tipped me a penny every pension day,
Fed kindly crusts to winter birds.
When he died his cottage was robbed,
Mattress and money box torn and searched.
Only the corpse they didn't disturb.

Maggie Owens was surrounded by animals,
A mongrel bitch and shivering pups,
Even in her bedroom a she-goat cried.
She was a well of gossip defiled,
Fanged chronicler of a whole countryside:
Reputed a witch, all I could find
Was her lonely need to deride.

The Nialls lived along a mountain lane
Where heather bells bloomed, clumps of foxglove.
All were blind, with Blind Pension and Wireless,
Dead eyes serpent-flicked as one entered
To shelter from a downpour of mountain rain.
Crickets chirped under the rocking hearthstone
Until the muddy sun shone out again.

Mary Moore lived in a crumbling gatehouse,
Famous as Pisa for its leaning gable.
Bag-apron and boots, she tramped the fields
Driving lean cattle from a miry stable.
A by-word for fierceness, she fell asleep
Over love stories, Red Star and Red Circle,
Dreamed of gypsy love rites, by firelight sealed.

Wild Billy Eagleson married a Catholic servant girl
When all his Loyal family passed on:
We danced round him shouting "To Hell with King Billy,"
And dodged from the arc of his flailing blackthorn.
Forsaken by both creeds, he showed little concern
Until the Orange drums banged past in the summer
And bowler and sash aggressively shone.

Curate and doctor trudged to attend them,
Through knee-deep snow, through summer heat,
From main road to lane to broken path,
Gulping the mountain air with painful breath.
Sometimes they were found by neighbours,
Silent keepers of a smokeless hearth,
Suddenly cast in the mould of death.

Scanning Friday

I took this photo years and years ago - and it remains one of my favorites I have ever taken. It is of my cousin Olivia, who is now, dammit, in her 20s! But here she is, in all her cute seriousness at a cousin gathering at my Aunt Geddy's. She has informed me that she was VERY excited to wear those earrings - big Christmas presents dangling from her ears.

I just love this picture.

Scanning Thursday

Dad holding Cashel who is about one month old here. A proud and happy grandfather (or "Gampa" as Cashel ended up calling him).

Scanning Tuesday

The big night of my performance in After the Fall - a big night for me, in general. My parents were there, my sister Jean, my brother Brendan, Brendan's friend Justin, my dear friends Brett and Liz, my aunt Regina and uncle Tom ... the production was at Circle in the Square Downtown and it was just one of those magical nights, when you feel proud, happy, successful, and you are surrounded by people who love you and want to celebrate you. It was a night that glittered.

There's one here of my dad looking at me in a proud and tender way. I think my uncle Tom took this picture, and I am very grateful.

Scanning Tuesday

On Easter Sunday, it is extremely important to keep in mind what the day is all about.

It is extremely important that you celebrate the birth of Christ.

It is extremely important that you go to Easter Sunday mass.

It is extremely important that you turn your eyes heavenward, and focus on the real reason for the day.

Kyrie Eleison, Kyrie Eleison, Kyrie Eleison.

It is also extremely important ...

... that you put plastic Easter eggs in your eyeballs with your cousins and your brother and wander around the chilly front yard like zombies, taking pictures.

Scanning Friday

Now, Sheila, here's a question for you. And I only ask because I'm not quite clear, due to your very ambiguous body language:

... are you proud of your bathing cap??

2 things to adore about this photo:

1. Brendan flexing his muscles

2. Jean imitating Brendan

Scanning Friday

My brother and me in college - we're off to a picnic slash baseball game at Godard Park in Rhode Island with all our college buddies.

You know, I look at this picture and compare it to the pictures us of as little tater tots and I don't see much difference.

Scanning Thursday

Another picture of the serious somber O'Malley urchins.

Scanning Thursday

Siblings: Bren, Jean and myself on the side yard at Paul Ave.

The expression on Jean's face KILLS ME.

Scanning Tuesday

Speaking of goofy juvenile humor, here is a photo from a family day at the beach. Aunts, uncles, cousins, good times.

But what I would like you to take note of is my mother, sitting front and center.

She is talking to a banana as though it is a phone.

But look closer. She is really TALKING. Like, she is giving that person on the other end of the banana-phone a piece of her mind.

The best part of the entire photo is that the rest of the family is barely paying attention.

Because why would you?

Although you can tell that my dad, lying next to her, is laughing.

Scanning Tuesday

I am finding all of these cute pictures of Brendan and me.

Cast a cold eye ...

... On life, on death
Horseman pass by

-- WB Yeats's epitaph

When we were small children, our dad made us memorize the epitaph in order to get part of our allowance (which was all of 75 cents). So all of us, ages 12 to 2, would stand there and chant in unison:

Cast a cold eye
On life, on death
Horseman pass by!

You would KNOW this story, by the way, if you had read my essay in Sewanee Review, my first published piece - where I detail the entire allowance ritual set up by my father.

Not even a nuclear blast could knock Yeats's epitaph out of my brain.

This photo below is framed and on my desk.

Scanning Tuesday

Me reading to my brother in the house at Paul Ave.

My dad

Scanning Monday

Three generations.

Scanning Sunday

Some drawings I did. I like to draw. It's more like "copying", but I like it, and find it relaxing.

Jean

Me

Siobhan

Marilyn Monroe

People-watching at the Angelica

Lamp

Self-portrait

Scanning Sunday

Bren, me and Jean on the hammock at Sunapee. Look at how brave Jean is being.

Scanning Sunday

This is one of my favorite photos ever.

We were in New Hampshire (I think) and we went to a county fair. It was me, Brendan, Jean, Siobhan, and a very young Cashel. There was this maze sort of place - where you had to climb rope ladders and go across suspended bridges - and kids were having a blast with it. You crawled through tunnels and finally, at the end, you got to slide down a slide, out of the maze. So Cashel bravely begins his journey. We watched him through the gate. We were laughing so hard we were crying. He was so serious as he climbed the rope ladder. He was very concerned about everything. Then he got up to the second level (you could see it through the gate) - and it involved him having to pass through another area to get to the slide - and maybe it was that he could SEE us below - maybe it was that he didn't like heights - maybe it was all just overwhelming - but he started to have a MELTDOWN. Of MAJOR proportions. And the worst part was: we all coudl SEE him melting down, above us on the second level, but we couldn't get to him. In order to get to him, you would have to go through the whole maze. We called up encouragement to him, which just made the situation worse. He was screaming, and the look of terror on his eyes was heart-wrenching. "You're almost there, Cash!" we screamed up at him. "You just have to go thru that tunnel to get to the slide!" But he was in panic mode now. Far far far away from all comfort and care. His aunties were MILES away below him, so was his dad ... he FREAKED.

So Brendan waited no longer and charged into the maze to go rescue Cashel.

Jean, Siobhan and I watched on, laughing until we were in tears, at Brendan struggling up the rope ladder, pushing past all the little pipsqueaks, calling out, "I'M COMING CASHEL, I'M COMING!"

Cashel hadn't seen his dad charge into the maze so he was still wild-eyed with despair and panic, caught and trapped, and we screamed up at him, "DADDY'S COMING, CASH - DADDY'S COMING!"

Brendan finally got up to the platform where Cash was and there was a tearful reunion.

Then, the two of them crawled through the tunnel, to go slide down the slide together.

Jean, Siobhan and I were all crying - and as the two of them slid down together - we all FLIPPED. It was like an Olympic event or something, seeing them emerge. We were screaming and clapping ...

But the best part of this photo is that Cashel is grinning from ear to ear. He's back where he should be, protected by his father. So now he can enjoy the ride.

It's a perfect picture.

Scanning Sunday

I have found the photo of my brother and me on Halloween, very early on in our lives. He is a ghost. I am a blonde witch, apparently.

Brendan's face in this photo absolutely kills me. I can't stop looking at it.

Scanning Sunday

One night I was out with my friend Rich, and the restaurant had paper table cloths with Crayons provided, if you wanted to draw. So I started doodling, and I drew three "ladies". Anyone who reads me knows that I love to draw "ladies". I finished up my three "ladies" and then looked closer and said, "Huh. I think I just drew me and my sisters." Rich started laughing and said, "You didn't realize that until now? I recognized all of you immediately!"

Scanning Sunday

Me and Brendan.

"Please, sir. I want some .... more?"

Bill Simmons would be very happy

Dad reading Simmons' book.

February Wedding day

On December 28, he offered her a ride home from the record hop even though he had no car.

When she got home that night, she told her older sister Anne that she had met a boy at the record hop. The boy had been telling her jokes all night, making her laugh. The girl told her older sister, "He's so funny, he reminds me of Jerry Lewis."

Eight years later, on a cold February 18, 1967, they were wed.

More O'Malley men

Dad, Bren, and Cashel floating in rafts on Lake Sunapee. They had a good talk that day.

Man to man

O'Malley men.

My dad talking with my cousin Mike in our kitchen.

Mirror image

My dad and me laughing at some family party.

A snowy day

Walking in the woods on a snowy day with my father, who is holding Brendan (who, if you look closely, is talking his head off). My father is wearing a hat of my grandfather's (my mother's father). Nothing I say can prepare you for what the hat looks like. Consider yourself warned.

Graduate

When I graduated from college, my father, in resplendent red robes, handed me my diploma.

This is the moment right after that. Dad is in the foreground.

Books

My dad and me.

Boondock Saints

(.... to quote my cousin Olivia).

My dad (in a rad outfit sewn by my mother) standing with his brother (and my godfather) Jimmy.

Thanks

... to Harry, for his energy, support, and for just being there every day.

... to all of my cousins, for keeping in touch through IMs and Facebook, and letting us know we are all cared about

... to Shaka, for taking care of the crick in my neck and my overall body problems, for giving me a space where I can forget for a while

... to Brendan, for your strength, your humor, your sensitivity, your way with Cashel, your way with all of us, and for enriching my life in almost every conversation we have. Oh, and thanks for giving me Valley Girl for Christmas. I watched it last night and it is as fabulous as I remembered.

... to the Chinese man at the gift shop who sells me my rose oil and always greets me with a nice smile and friendly banter ... I look forward to going in there

... to Barry. Just because.

... to Allison, for our friendship that just gets deeper and better with every passing day. I miss you!

... to Bob O'Neill, for caring about the books

... to Mum. I can't even speak.

... to Pat, for making my sister Jean happy

... to Maria, for just being there, for reading my book in one sitting, for comparing it to the Waltons, for bringing Cashel into the world, and for her general energy over Christmas

... to Michael, for being understanding about my freakout of tween proportions over the last week. "Woah, slow down" he wrote. I need understanding. I need safety. Sometimes I freak out. I need someone who can understand, talk me out of the clock tower, tell me to chillax in a loving manner, and not abandon me just because I'm difficult. Thank you.

... to David Maslin for his applesauce

... to Dad. For everything.

... to the Quinns. I have known them my whole life. I love them.

... to Father Creedon. Words cannot express.

... to Kerry, for her humor, her Red Sox Kleenex box, and for taking care of Hope while I am away

... speaking of Hope, thank you Hope for coming into my life

... to Keith at House Next Door, for giving me a space to write giant pieces about my current obsessions - and for also editing me so well to save me from my own excesses.

... to Mitchell. For being my date at Jean and Pat's wedding, for making sure his tie matched my bridesmaid dress, for not letting that bitchy actress appropriate my cousin Kerry's career, for listening, laughing, loving, and for everything else you have given me.

... to Jackie, who for some reason is banned from commenting on my blog, and I can't figure out how to change it. I have felt you out there, dear friend.

... to all the gorgeous women in my Girl Group - I cherish each and every one of you

... to Alex, whose humor, intelligence, anger, creativity, and passion are a constant reminder of how I want to live my life

... to David, for talking, listening, caring, and making me laugh

... to Cashel, for just who you are, my dear nephew - you are such a good person and I am proud to know you.

... to Ben, for coming into Siobhan's life, and for being such a nice person, such a part of our family already. Thanks for the hot dogs!

... to Mickey Rourke, for coming back from obscurity and thrilling me to no end

... to Melody: for how you love my brother, for how you love Cashel, and for how you have been like a third sister these years ... It means so much to me to have you be a part of my life.

... to Pat McCurdy, for your caring funny text messages, and for still, after everything, being there for me

... to Beth, for letting me in on what you are going through right now, and being such a good friend

... to Siobhan, for being a continuous surprise, someone I cherish more and more each day

... to Ann Marie, for the fact that she and I, early in our friendship, realized that we wanted to have a "prom-like experience" again, so we went out and bought, basically GOWNS to drive up to Milwaukee and see a Pat McCurdy show. We showed up in this dingy bar in GOWNS. I am laughing out loud.

... to Joe Hurley, for emerging out of the damn blue in the way you did, remembering me as that girl in the eyepatch from years ago singing "Where is love" on the sidewalk in lower Manhattan, for tracking me down like a bloodhound - that took some doing and I am so impressed with your effort - and also for your amusing emails which really have lightened my days recently. Without even knowing it (and that is the best part of it), you have reminded me of who I am.

... to Ted, for all the wine, the conversation, and our years-long friendship ... I am so grateful for it

... to Betsy, for the Tangy Taffy and for being my best friend before I even knew who I was

... to Mere - first of all for crocheting those mittens last year when I asked you to ... you didn't hesitate, you just STARTED and you created the weird thing that I asked you to - bless you! ... and for being a wonderful friend. Even though you are missing a toe.

... to Beyonce, for her "Single Ladies" song and video. I can't get enough and when I've felt blue and broken, as I often feel, I'll watch it. It works.

... to Barbara, for believing in me

... to the neighbors who came over the morning of the snowstorm and - without being asked - shoveled out our driveway and shoveled out all of our cars

... to Kate, one of my dearest and most treasured friends. I'm sorry I haven't been there for you recently, as you go through all these huge changes! I miss you so much!

... to Michele, for getting so enraged about a recent article in the Pro Jo that she considered calling up the editor to give her own version of events. A sort of Rhode Island expose. Brilliant! Also, for her kind emails and support

... to Patrick Sandora, for making me LAUGH!! You're awesome!

... to Stephenie Meyer, for her Twilight books. They have been such a welcome escape from the intensity of this December, and I have been transported by them. I so needed it.

... to Jean ... for saying the word "Benny's" in almost every conversation, and for just who you are. I'm so proud of you.

... to my new niece/nephew, whoever you will be ... I love you already.

On December 28, many years ago:

Two 16-year-old kids went to a record hop. They didn't go to the same school. The dance must have been either church-sponsored or a joint dance between their two schools. He went to a co-ed parochial school, she went to a girl's parochial school -they were both Irish, and Catholic.

There's a picture of the girl around that time, 16 years old, going to another dance, her face lit up with excitement, her hair swooped up in a big early 60s bouffant.

The girl was at the dance only because her best friend was sneaking out of the house to meet her boyfriend, and since the girl had a car, she would act as getaway driver for her best friend. Nice to know that teenage-girl melodramas are never out of style. But once at the dance, the girl found herself being pursued by a nice boy who happened to be there.

The boy had black hair, and a handsome pale face. The girl was a brunette, with freckles, and light blue eyes. They met. They danced.

The boy recklessly offered to give the girl a ride home from the record-hop. After all, isn't that what a gentleman would do? You at least need to make the offer. The girl said, "No, that's okay, I drove here myself." There was a long pause, and then the boy (who had actually ridden his bike to the record-hop, had no car, and had offered her a ride having no idea how he would pull it off if she had said, "Sure") said, "Then - can I have a ride home?"

A couple of weeks later, someone was having a party. The boy was still thinking about the brunette with the freckles and the blue eyes. He, through various manipulations and teenage-boy strategies, made sure that a friend of her friend would get that girl to the party. The girl showed up. There was much flirting going on. It was all very exciting. The girl and her good friend were in one room and they were doing a dance (which, having SEEN the dance myself, looks kind of like the hustle) that they had learned for a Christmas concert at their school. It was an impromptu dance and all kinds of things were actually going on. The girl knew the boy was watching. The girl was pretending she didn't know the boy was watching. It was all very delicious. The girl likes to pretend she is not a show-off, but she's a Leo, she can't help herself. The boy sat off to the side, watching the freckled blue-eyed girl do her hustle-like dance and at the end, he clapped.

We all know what THAT means.

Eight years later, the boy with the black hair and the pale skin and the girl with the brown hair, freckled skin, and blue eyes, were married.

They now have four grown children, and one grandchild (well, two - counting the one who is on its way!)

This past year, on February 18, my parents had their 41st wedding anniversary.

But there's another anniversary we always remember in our family. That's the December 28th anniversary, which was yesterday. That was the day when two Irish-Catholic Massachusetts kids met at a record hop, and danced and laughed, and he pretended he had a car just so he could offer her a ride home.

Exeunt

The weight of this sad time we must obey;
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.
The oldest hath borne most; we that are young
Shall never see so much, nor live so long.

-- King Lear, Shakespeare (spoken by Albany or by Edgar, depending on the version you read. They are the final lines of the play)

My father and I share a love of marginalia. I suppose I inherited it from him. He would pull down one of his books from the shelf and point out to me the markings that so-and-so had made, and what it might mean. At a certain level, marginalia becomes not an annoyance, an intrusion from a bossy reader - but something that makes the book priceless. Like Thomas Jefferson's cross-outs and markings on his draft of the Declaration of Independence.

This morning, at about 5:30, he asked me to look for a book for him. "It'll be on the top shelf. It's a Shane Leslie book." I stared at the shelf, scared that I wouldn't be able to find it. Dad said, "They're all Shane Leslie books up there." Oh, okay, so that makes it a bit simpler. I pulled down the first five books from the shelf. "Open them to the title page and let me see," said Dad. I opened the first one, he took one glance, "Nope, that's not it." Hysterical. He could tell in a second. I opened the second one. Nope. Third one. Nope. Fourth one. Nope. Fifth one ... BINGO.

On the title page of this book (The Passing Chapter) was a quote from King Lear, the one above. Dad showed me how on the page before there was a stamp - someone had stamped the book to show ownership. It was from a Jesuit house (in Ireland) called St. Ignatius (naturally). Okay, so I'm oriented as to what I am looking at. The book was published in 1934, and a Jesuit house obviously had the book in their library.

Now back to the title page.

The quote from Lear sat there beneath the title, in smaller typeface. But it read like this:

The weight of this sad time we must obey;
Speak what we feel and what we ought to say.
The oldest hath borne most; we that are young
Shall never see so much, nor live so long.

Instead of "comma NOT what we ought to say" - the typo made it all one thought, as though one part of the sentence agreed with the other (when it does not, in the original). The original is a sentence of diametrical opposites, it pits one way of being against another. That is the point of the "comma not". But the typo took away the comma and replaced "not" with "and". The typo completely negates the sentiment.

But here is what my dad wanted to show me:

The Jesuit had crossed out the word "and" and had put the word "not" over to the side - in pencil. He hadn't even made it into the book itself before the typo had immediately become apparent to the learned Jesuit, and he had to correct it.

I love that man.

There were markings in pencil through the rest of the book, and my dad (who has given papers on Shane Leslie, and also bibliography and marginalia) had put on the blank first page a list of page numbers where the markings occurred. We looked through those as well. These were more your standard markings - paragraphs marked with an X, sentences underlined (all in pencil) - but it is the stunning correction of a typo and what it all signifies that interests my father, and interests me.

Dad said, "Here's this Jesuit - he hasn't even gotten into the book yet - and he notices a typo on the title page ..."

And not just a typo, but a word-change which totally alters and irons out the original meaning.

It MUST be "not", it cannot be "and". If it is "and" then it becomes a benign toothless saying on a cross-stitch wall-hanging. Nothing threatening, nothing really profound, the equivalent of "I'm okay, you're okay." If it is "not" then it has teeth, it has life, it is a difficult profundity - full of grace and tragedy, and it makes demands on you the reader (or, listener, as Shakespeare would have thought of it). It is a command. It indicts those who feel they must speak "what they ought to say" in hard moments, when the "weight of sad times" buries them. If you speak what you feel "you ought to say" in those moments, then no, you are not "obeying" the weight of sad times. It is when you have the courage to "speak what you feel" in such moments that you can come close to touching divinity, to the eternal. There is much we can never understand, especially those of us who are young, who "shall never see so much", but at least we can decide to not be "polite" in sad times and speak only the accepted words. Even if we are young, we can decide to speak what we feel. And that is what it means to truly "obey".

The Jesuit's note of correction has all of that in it.

It makes my dad's copy of the book an important one.

Doing your best

I suppose that life is all about being tested. Some tests are obvious, some not so obvious. I know that I am cagey on my blog about my "real" life - and that is by design. This is why I am very picky about who I "friend" on Facebook so don't take it personally. I am not deliberately deceitful, but I certainly withhold. Especially recently. My blog is for me, essentially, and posting every day keeps me sane. Personal posts have, for the most part, gone by the wayside in the last year, because first of all I am really busy with my off-line writing and also I have no words or no desire to share all here. I think I'm smart. Because every time I write a post expressing uncertainty, someone always swoops in instantly and tries to give you the answer. They do not understand that living in the uncertainty is what I am about, and pondering things, and NOT coming to rock-hard conclusions. I like to leave things open for interpretation. I have learned that a blog is not always the best venue for such things, and I have decided to protect myself from those misunderstandings. I can't afford the energy to be explaining myself right now. And yet I still need to share things here. I still love to talk about movies and books and that passion shines through. It makes it a nice place to hang out. I know that, and I am proud of it. The fact that people still like to show up and read what I write is a blessing to me.

I am being tested right now. My whole family is. It is part of life. It sucks. I feel surrounded by their love and support and Facebook has completely changed my life because I chat with my cousins on almost a daily basis and so every day I get a message of love from one of them, letting me know that we are being thought about, prayed for. A candle was lit for us in Bruges, for example. I weep reading these messages.

A couple of days ago I wrote a post about going to Lydia's baby shower and how, in the middle of the maelstrom, I got a sensation of the goodness of people, how everyone is "doing their best". I do believe that. Perhaps it is because I am wounded right now. Being wounded gives you a different perspective on other people's misbehavior (or so it seems to me). Maybe that frustrated woman in line at the grocery store has a dying husband at home. Maybe that teenager acting out just lost her mother. You just don't know. You don't know. And it is better not to assume. It is better to cut people slack, rather than condemn them for their surface. This is my philosophy.

And so I know what it takes to just get up and keep going, to "do your best", to meet your obligations, to "show up" at events you are going to, to not reject life - but try to accept it. In all its complexities and tragedies. It was such a strong feeling that I got at that shower. Not to mention the fact that, again, I was surrounded by family, who love me, and support me, and are THERE for all of us in this terrible time. It is always in our minds. I meet up with other friends now and sometimes it is forgotten, what I am going through, because life is busy and people have their lives to live. This is not the case now, actually - but it has been. But with my family, it is front and center. As it should be. We hunker down. We put up the barricades. We cling to one another, and we try to be there for each other. The strong protect the weak. That is the way it should be. Not those who are weak perpetually, but to someone who is wounded ... it is good to have protection. To have people looking out for you, cutting some slack. Who know that you freaking out about how you have to get your car inspected is really about something else, and who are gentle with you in your distress, guiding you in the right direction. For example, I know that I am being thought about right now by many. many. people. I can feel it. Perhaps that is the meaning of grace.

The day after I wrote the post about the baby shower, I wrote the post about my 7 weird reading habits. And people started sharing their own habits - we're up to 44 comments now - and early that morning I got the following comment:

That whole commute line is such a crock of unauthentic crap. You're a liar. Poor ugly Shiela. Give me a break. Maybe if you didn't lie, your life would be easier.

I get comments like that from time to time (complete with misspellings of my name - even though my name is the URL so how could you miss it), usually from people who are not regular commenters. It's always people who appear to have been lurking - and sometimes people lurk with love and fear because they don't know how to leap in to the established conversation - but sometimes others lurk with hatred. I have had a couple of those. These are not comments that have to do with some political opinion I've expressed, where I could expect to be abused. These are personal and go right for the jugular. These people have been lying in wait. There aren't many of them but when they hate me they hate me. They judge me. They are obviously not my kind and I don't have people like that in my regular life, so I don't worry about it too much, I just delete their filth and move on. But this one on Monday took me aback a bit. I emailed back and forth with Tracey about it, and my cousin Kerry, and they were properly outraged, mama lions on my behalf. To me, there is something actually satanic in that comment, in its breathless hatred, its obvious glee in expressing it ... but there's also something ridiculous because hyberbole is part of my writing style, and the "chickens and goats" bit was hyperbole. People who are very literal do have a problem with how I write, but again, I don't worry about that too much because you can't please everyone, and I learned very early on that I can only write for myself - and "if you build it, he will come". I attract people who have the same sense of absurd humor, who "get" it. But there are always the holdouts. The ones who play "devil's advocate" on purely personal posts ... like - what? What is so threatening to you that you can't just be in the conversation that is going on rather than trying to dominate? But it happens all the time. I know people don't like uncertainty. I get that. But I won't BE dominated - not by blog commenters anyway who don't know me ... and having deep conversations about all the multi-faceted sides of one issue is how I like to talk. I have found my kind on this corner of the web - some have found me ... you know, it happens naturally. That's the beauty of it. And now those who can't stand uncertainty are outnumbered by those who can tolerate it. This is good. It's a good balance.

This commenter from yesterday has never commented on my site before (not that I can tell anyway) and I imagine their hatred of me is so acute that they would be unable to disguise it in a casual way. Who knows.

But what interests me about the comment is that only the day before I had written my post about realizing that everyone, after all, is just doing their best. It has made me feel gentler towards others, certainly, people who cut me off while driving, for example ... I just don't let those things get to me right now. There's a lot of free-floating rage and hurt out there and it doesn't always come out in helpful or rational ways. I know that is the case with me as well.

And so. What to say. Is that person who left the comment "doing their best"? You know what? I do think so. I really do. There has got to be so much anger there to leave a comment like that, and this person needs a place to put it. I represent something to this person - I don't know what - and the knowing-ness of the comment, the feeling that this person has been reading me a long time and has formed an opinion of me - is very clear to me. This person feels they have me down. And maybe, in their mind, they do.

But it did not escape my notice that just one day after I wrote a post about realizing everyone was doing their best that I would be attacked, from out of the blue. How do I feel now? How do I feel now? Comments like that are meant to diminish, soil, hurt, and demean. They are meant to destroy. I didn't feel on the verge of destruction reading it, because like I said - I've had comments like that before. I was called a "starfucker" once although - please - enlighten me - what star did I fuck and why wasn't I there?? I was called a "stupid cunt" because I wrote openly about a guy I loved. I was told "well, no wonder you're single", after writing a long post about some heartbreak I had had. (It also does not escape my notice that these comments have all been from men who have gone straight to my sexuality or womanliness or my LACK of power as a woman in their insults - in the same way that the commenter from yesterday did by calling me "ugly". These people mean business.) I've also had people get obsessed with me and want to be involved with me personally and while I have made many friends through this blog - it has always happened organically. Lisa, Emily, Bill McCabe, Stevie, Tracey, Tommy, De, Jonathan, Ken, Dan ... you all know who you are. I have recognized that a sycophantish tone in comments is the first warning. That situation will go south and FAST. They will turn on you, look out for the boomerang! I have not been wrong yet.

But I stray from my topic.

I feel that when you are wounded - yes, sometimes you lose perspective, and you find yourself freaking out in line at the bank, or flying into a rage because the printer won't work - but I also feel that you can be more aware of the beauty of life, its fragility and complexity. I do not think it is an accident that that person left that comment on that particular day, when I was feeling fragile and upset. There are larger forces at work out there than any of us can know.

I do not know why that comment came, and I am actually not interested in that person's reasons. Because the whole question seems larger to me.

I declared the day before: people are just doing their best. I am doing my best.

The next day came the test.

It is not always that the test is so immediate. But this is not just about me. This is about whatever twisted hatred this person has that would make them lash out like that.

The typical line is, "If that's your best, then your best ain't good enough." But that's cold comfort when you are wounded, as I believe this person who left that comment is wounded. Maybe no, it ain't good enough, and maybe yes, there are just malevolent people out there in the world who just want to hurt others - I do believe that, too - but here, in this moment, I choose to believe my earlier thesis: that everyone, in general, is just doing the best they can.

Love

I drove over the Brooklyn Bridge this morning. It was my first time. The Bridge is my favorite one in this city of bridges, it has a grandiosity to its architecture and yet a democratic energy with the throngs of people walking across on the walkway, stopping to stare at the harbor stretched out below, the Lady Liberty in view over by the southern corner of Manhattan. I couldn't linger over the beauty, obviously, or I would have plummeted to my death, but I felt a thrill ... a real thrill ... at the sheer size and beauty of the bridge, with the giant towers flanking the ends and the huge swooping cables coming up, coming down ... not to mention the view, which is enough to take your breath away.

I had left plenty of time ... too much, actually, and was an hour early for the baby shower. Brooklyn Heights is so beautiful and quiet, with wooden houses beside brownstones, and dormer windows, and tiny cafes, closed on Sunday morning, and the sound of church bells in the air. I found a parking spot, and grabbed my book and took a walk. I did find a tiny hole-in-the-wall cafe that was open and grabbed a cup of coffee, and then went to sit in the park. It was pretty cold. No one was in the park. I sat on a bench, gloves on, and drank my coffee, reading Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? by Lorrie Moore. It was still early enough that not too many people were out and about.

Then I went back to my car to get my giftbag. As I closed the door, I saw a woman walking down the empty street holding an enormous box with a pink glittery bow. I figured, she's going where I'm going and followed her directly to the shower.

It was held in a gorgeous house, full of light and artwork and beautiful artifacts, gorgeous old books, and everyone was nice and friendly. I hadn't really wanted to go because this has been the raw-est week to end all raw weeks - and I feel exhausted - but this is family. I knew there would be people there who knew what was going on, my sister would be there, and really, when you get right down to it, it's all about showing your love. It's important. There was food laid out, and wine and coffee ... weird to have a glass of red wine at 11:30 a.m., but what the hell. More people came. My uncle Tony and aunt Marianne arrived. They are here in town for the shower but also to go see their daughter Kerry in White Christmas (for, what, the 8th time?) ... a one-two punch. The second I saw Tony in the lobby I lost it and he hugged me and we both started crying. I was so right to come. The love of family. You do what you have to do. You are there for each other. That's just what you do.

My aunt Regina arrived, my sister Siobhan ... so we all stood around talking, and it was just so good to be there, to be with people who love me, and who are there for me. I have the best family.

Lydia was wearing a black knit dress and looked fabulous. From the front you couldn't tell she was pregnant at all. Her friends are really nice, I chatted with many of them ... and then came the gift-opening extravaganza. These teensy onesies on display, these adorable little pajamas, so small you can't believe a human body would ever fit into them ... all these women, beautiful, all of them, some mothers, some not ... all oohing and ahhing and making comments. You know, it's easy (too easy) to get cynical sometimes about such events. I think that's a great mistake. I have done it myself. Or I let my self-pity balloon into something monstrous, which ruins the whole thing for me. It clouds my perspective. But when I looked around the room at all the faces, I just saw love. Love for Lydia, love for Liam, and love for the baby that was soon to make its appearance. Lydia's mother crocheted the baby a beautiful blue and white blanket, and everyone went nuts over it, which then sparked a whole conversation about crocheting, knitting, and crafts, in general.

In that room, I could feel the goodness of people. Almost like a light was emanating from everyone.

Because you know what? In the end, even with all the bullshit and difficulties of life, people, in general, are just doing their best, and it is really important to remember that. I am doing my best right now. It may come out awkwardly, or emotionally, and I may forget to call people back, or need more alone time than I normally do ... but honestly. I am doing my best. I think it is important to cut each other lots of slack. Even if someone appears to be freaking out or over-reacting. Because you know what? Maybe that person is just doing her best.

Longfellow wrote:

Believe me, every man has his secret sorrows,
which the world knows not; and oftimes
we call a man cold, when he is only sad.

And so with all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.

Hudson

Hudson was my sister Jean's dog. She had him for years, and she counted it out last weekend - he had actually lived with her in nine different places. He was a beautiful black lab, and a member of our family. He came on our vacations with us. He swam in the lake or the ocean, feverishly chasing down sticks. A sweet friendly boy with big soft brown eyes, who would lie in the floor in the living room, wanting to be a part of everything, even as he gassed us out of the room.

He got sick very quickly over the last two weeks. He stopped eating and drinking. You could see the pain dulling his eyes. Even his face looked different, slimmer, more pinched.

Monday, Jean and Pat made the difficult decision to have him put down.

Hudson was sweet, warm, and funny as well. He had a squeaky fish toy that he loved so much that it was almost embarrassing to watch him play with it. He would escape and run through the woods, rolling gloriously in nasty substances. Once he was sprayed by a skunk. Once, he ate an entire blueberry pie that was left on the counter when Jean left the kitchen for 10 minutes. He had a very good life and he was very much loved.

In late September, he served as the ring-bearer in Jean and Pat's wedding. He wore a little pillow on his back like an elephant with the rings tied on with a ribbon. Mimi walked him down the aisle, and we could see his poor tail waving slowly ... first this way ... then a pause ... then that way ... pause again ... so different from his normally frantic wagging ... it showed that he knew it was a happy moment, but it also showed that he didn't know what the hell was going on. At the top of the aisle sat my parents, waiting to walk Jean down the aisle and as Hudson passed he walked right up to them, sniffing them, perhaps looking for a comforting scent in the weird world he now found himself in. But he did a great job. He sat on the grass beside Mimi during the ceremony and Siobhan and I both looked over at him during the service and he was lying there with his mouth WIDE open, panting for breath, but it made him look like he was totally blissed out, in a state of ecstasy. It was hysterical.

We love you so much, Hudson. You were a good good boy.

You saw to it that you stuck around long enough to see Jean happily married to Pat ... and then I guess you knew it was time for you to go.

We miss you already.

Hudson is:

A really really good dog.

Sung to the tune of "Jack and Diane":

... lyrics by Siobhan:

Oh yeah their love goes on and on
Jean and Patrick ... and even Hudson

The Marianne Influx

Mitchell: "So there are - what - 4 Mariannes in your family? So basically I'm calling everyone I meet Marianne - because the odds are, I'll get it right more often than I'll get it wrong."

The tall ones

Emma and Rachel (to me): "We're the tall cousins."
Emma: "But you can stand with us, shorty."

A phone call:

Katy (my best friend when I was 8 and 9 years old): "It's so hysterical - a really good friend of mine LOVED that show Yes Dear and is still really sad that it's off the air - so we just had your cousin Mike call her to say Hi."

Mike shouting into the cell phone on the dance floor.

128 North, 95 South ...

Me: "Poor Emma asks for simple directions and she gets a dissertation on the complicated development of the freeway system in and around Boston."

A helpful tip

All you need to do to whip the O'Malley/Sullivan cousins into a veritable frenzy is to blast "Pour Some Sugar On Me".

Happy groom

Pat: "My face hurts from smiling so much. I'm serious. I wish I could stop smiling just to give my face a rest, but I can't!"

Another reference to my blog

Uncle Tony (after making some off-color remark): "Now I don't want to see that on your blog come Monday! I don't want The Sheila Variations to report that!"

Happy

Cashel: "Sometimes I feel so happy that I just want to cackle."

James Frey redux

My cousin Mike and I re-enacted the James Frey-Oprah standoff for Mitchell and my cousin Matt.

Me as Oprah: "Was the dentist scene real?"
Mike as James Frey: "Well, you know, there were some parts of it that were .... Oh hell. No. I made the whole thing up."
Me as Oprah: (deep breath, turn away, blink rapidly, nod a couple of times as though trying to accept the unthinkable)

"I'm too old for this crap"

Rob: "I'm 40 now. I'm getting too old to dance like a maniac."

An hour later, I glanced across the dance floor, and saw Rob whipping around someone's Pashmina as though he were a matador, and then gyrating like a Solid Gold Dancer, surrounded by a circle of people howling with laughter.

Bridget in LA

Cousin Bridget: "I love LA. I don't understand LA but I love the climate. I live in the hills and I'm really into gardening. I mean, I'm growing goddamn cantaloupes right now."

Appropriation

Mitchell: "I was just telling your cousin Kerry how I completely appropriated a relationship with her. 'Well, you know, I'm really good friends with Kerry O'Malley ....' "

Tribute to da cousins

O'MALLEYS

Liam - the oldest of the O'Malley cousins. A classic old-school gentleman, with his porkpie hat, and black suit. He's a Rat Pack kind of guy, who still listens to records on vinyl (because, of course, why wouldn't you?) He is encyclopedic on music (get him talking about the Beatles or the Kinks - He wrote 2 posts on my blog about the Kinks - here's one, and here's the other and be prepared to be educated), pop culture, books, and anything that is, well, interesting. He and I are reading War and Peace right now. He is far ahead of me but I am loving reading this with him. He really cares about his family. He is there, solid, a rock, you can lean on him. Lydia, Liam's wife, has been in my family for years. A beautiful serene and amusing woman - she has this way of just making everything all right just by showing up. She and Liam are a true pair. It makes me happy to see them together. Her stories of doing set design on everything from indie films to television to big blockbusters have kept us entertained for eons. She is pregnant now - with their first child - and it's all very exciting.

Mike - my cousin Mike is uproariously and inappropriately funny. He is a common sense kind of guy (just like his father) and has a way of cutting straight to the heart of the matter. When he asks, "How are you?" he really wants to know the answer. If you lie to him, he will know it. He also has taught me about generosity because my cousin Mike is one of the most generous people I have ever met. If you say to him, "Please give me the shirt off your back, I need it" he will not hesitate. He is a rock. He is someone I have gone to in some of my darkest moments and he also provides a continuity ... He has known me always. Please tune in to the new Christian Slater series to see my cousin Mike in action. Lisa - my cousin Mike's wife is a beautiful person, a perfect counterpoint for the Tasmanian devil that is Mike. She is stable, funny, capable, and a true grown up. She has accepted the crazy life of her husband as her own and provides a warm and open space whenever any of us come to visit. I love her. They have 3 children - amusing specific little beings with three of the most Irish names ever born to man.

Marianne - Marianne was my true compadre growing up. We are one year apart. We went through everything together - puberty, family deaths, romance, marriage ... I have watched her grow and blossom over the years into the stupendous woman she is now. She is so much her mother's daughter it's not even funny. She just shows up, when the going gets tough ... she's right there, she'll do anything - cook you something, hold your hand, make you laugh, or send you a nice email in a dark moment. I don't see her enough but I can always feel her there. Marianne is married to Jimmy - just an awesome friendly NICE man ... (being 'nice' is so underrated!) - and they have two rambunctious CUTIE little boys.

Kerry - In the last 10 years or so, Kerry and I have become true friends. We were not always close - for various reasons - having to do with our ages and also not seeing each other enough, but now - all that has washed away. We probably chat, on average, once a day - at least in the comments of my blog, but also thru email and phone conversations. She, like her brother Mike, knows the true meaning of generosity. Over this past weekend, we needed a couple of favors from Kerry ... it's hard to ask someone to do something for you ... but when we got over it, and called her - she was right there. "Tell me what I need to do." Family. That's what you do. It's tribal. Kerry has that tribal thing in spades. I treasure her friendship. Make sure you check in with Brotherhood to see Kerry in action!

Bridget - Bridget has taken on vaguely mythical status due to her absence and the continued promise that she will appear - but she rarely does. Yet she is always on our minds. It's like waiting for Godot. "Will Bridget come?" "Is Bridget coming?" "Did Bridget RSVP?" Bridget is the treasured daughter of uncle Jimmy (my godfather - who passed away way too soon) and even though she is almost like an urban legend at this point - her humor and love are really why she has taken on such a status with all of us. We want her there. We love her, and we always hope she will show. I will never forget the day of Mike's wedding when, once again, we all were like, "Is Bridget coming? Did Bridget RSVP? Will she be here?", as we all milled about in the hotel lobby, when suddenly a gleaming black car pulled up in the drive, the door opened - and a slinky leg appeared ... black strappy heels. Then Bridget unfolded herself from the car, in a floor-length fabulous red gown ... she had taken the car service from her mother's house (over an hour away) ... and we all rushed at her as though we were the paparazzi and she were Angelina Jolie. She is important to us.

Rachel - What you need to get about Rachel is that she is, hands down, the funniest person I know. In a family full of professional actors and comedians, RACHEL is the funniest. It's not that she has one-liners, or ba-dum-ching punch lines. It's her delivery. She is a true delight, a beautiful person - who lives in Southie and, perhaps, always will - she loves it, despite all the shenanigans and controversies involving parking spaces and snow plows. For an infamous year, she worked for Martha Stewart - and i still have a Martha refrigerator magnet from Rachel's reign there. Rachel is glamorous, too - a beautiful babe - and I always look forward to seeing her. With my cousins, it is easy to just get to the heart of the matter. There may be small talk, but it never ever FEELS small.

Matt - for many years, Matt (Rachel's brother) was this huge mystery to me because he was just a little boy during the time I was in high school and college - and my main memory of him was of Matt misbehaving in an apocalyptic and totally memorable way during one Thanksgiving at my grandmother's. Matt is now about 8 feet tall, and is studying classical guitar. He's rather brilliant, and has his father's dry wit and demeanor. I saw him for the first time in years at Mike's wedding (which was years ago) and i was amazed at the tall strapping man beside me - could this be the same boy who misbehaved at Thanksgiving and had to be banished to my grandmother's bedroom? I look forward to getting to know him better. He's also, like everyone in my family, committed to the family. He's flying in this weekend ... and it's very very exciting.

Marianne - Yes, two Mariannes in one family! Marianne is the daughter of my uncle Joe - who also was taken from us way too soon. Joe died when I was about 10 or 11 years old - and I didn't really understand what my dear cousin was going through at that time. We were best friends. Her family would come to visit our family and we would spend the entire day at the beach. I have the pictures to prove it. This is us, age 11, jumping off the diving board at my uncle jimmy's. It captures our relationship perfectly. She was a little bit more worldly-wise than I was (she reminds me of Jodie Foster) - and so she taught me:
1. how to put on a bra
2. how to practice kissing by using your pillow
3. how to prepare for getting my period ... the emotional issues, pad vs. tampon, failsafe ways to avoid accidents - she filled me in on it ALL.
In many ways, Marianne is a raw nerve. Every time I spend with her is intense and real. The last time I saw her was in 2003 when I took a bus up to her town in Maine and spent a weekend with her and her husband Paul. Marianne had slipped on the ice and broken her ankle -but we still managed to go to the lighthouse that Longfellow liked to visit, and for the most part, stayed holed up in her apartment - with Paul plying us with food and wine, as she and I sat in the living room, talking, crying, and listening to the Monty Python album, singing "Every sperm is sacred" at the tops of our lungs. She and Paul have two children now - absolutely delicious little butterballs who look like composite portraits of both Marianne and Paul. Motherhood seems to suit her.

Tim - Marianne's brother. Tim is, along with Rachel, one of the funniest people I know in real life. He is a LUNATIC. Gorgeous as a movie star, covered in tats ... he is also, like all the O'Malley men, a standup guy, who shows up when the going gets rough. I come from good stock. Good county Mayo stock. Tim and my brother lived together in Brooklyn for a while - and he was a huge part of Cashel's life when Cashel was a baby. He's still a huge part of Cashel's life. Brendan and Timothy now live within walking distance of one another in LA. Tim can be big trouble. He makes us laugh so hard that sometimes we are asked to leave public venues. He's awesome.

Ian - I haven't seen Ian in a couple of years myself - but Siobhan has seen him quite a bit. He is a smart, sensitive person - who is starting to make a living for himself with his band. Siobhan bartends and sometimes she'll look up and there will be Ian and his posse. Ian was a terrific little boy - sweet and intelligent - and he and my father had a special bond. Ian is another stand-up type of guy - who knows that family is the most important thing. He will be there for you if you need him. He's done with college now, and striking out on his own, and I am sure whatever he gets up to will be fascinating. He's an O'Malley man, after all.

Emma - Ian's younger sister. I wrote a bit post about her here, in honor of her 16th birthday. Emma is now in college, and slim and beautiful as a supermodel. A tall thin Irish glass of water. She is creative, hilarious, intense, and a beautiful human being. I don't see her enough but now that she is going to college in Manhattan I hope to see her more. Siobhan tells a funny story about getting off the train once, and emerging onto a street which had been blocked off because a movie was being filmed there. She tried to make her way down the street - only to be stopped by a PA (production assistant), wearing a headset and a little mike - and the PA was starting to say to her, "Excuse me, miss, the street's blocked off" - and then Siobhan realized: Oh my God, it's Emma - and the PA (Emma) realized Oh my God, that's Siobhan - and much hilarity ensued. Emma is a PA on her summer vacation, policing the streets of the city. Look out, Manhattan.

Grace - In true Irish fashion, I have a cousin who is barely in grade school yet. Grace is my uncle Tom's daughter - and she is smart, funny, runs around wearing a tutu in public, and is unable (as of yet) to pronounce the letter "R" correctly. Apparently, she said to my aunt Regina, in a vaguely defensive and combative manner, " 'R's are the enemy. They are not in my schedule." Like: get off my back about the letter R, thankyouverymuch. She is a beautiful fierce little creature, and I can't wait to see her grow and develop.

Henry - Henry is Grace's younger brother who is just a baby. So the O'Malley cousins span from mid-40s to diaper-wearing butterballs. Henry is a small square solid human being who kills us all with his cuteness. Grace is a good older sister, and Henry will have nothing to fear as long as Grace, the girl who has declared war on the letter "R", is around.

SULLIVANS

Nancy - the oldest of the Sullivan side of cousins. Nancy always had a glow of glamour and grownup-ness to all of us, when we were kids. She wasn't that much older than us - but she was applying to college when I was just a freshman in high school, so that is a huge age difference. Nancy is deep, friendly, sensitive, and fun to be around. She went to Princeton (Brooke Shields was in her class) - and was always tremendously intelligent, hard-working, and dedicated. She was a big runner. She played piano in recitals and took her lessons seriously. Anything she did, she put her all into it. She is now married to a wonderful and funny man, with 4 kids, and living in Texas. I don't see her enough.

Susan - Susan was one of my kindred spirits growing up. She was a year older than me - and Christmas and Easter and our family vacations in New Hampshire shimmered with excitement because SHE would be there. The adventures we have had together are beyond number. We have laughed so hard, as children, that we literally pissed our pants and had to hang our undies out to dry. Anything Susan did, I wanted to do. I have recently realized just how many books Susan introduced me to - when we were kids. If she read it, I read it. And in that way, I was introduced to Jane Langton, the Gone Away Lake books, Enid Blyton, and oh, so many more. We spent hours upon hours together as kids, and I treasure all of those memories. She became a news anchor and now lives in Ohio with her husband - and they have a beautiful big farmhouse, and she seems to be happy.

Ken - Ken and my brother were kindred spirits growing up - and they had a long-running project called "The Mad Killer" - where they would stage increasingly violent attacks by a serial killer on the loose, and capture it with a Polaroid camera. The rest of us were all extras in this ongoing series. I was murdered in cold blood in the back of a grocery store in Sunapee, New Hampshire. The Mad Killer climbed over walls, traveled via outboard motor, crept through trees ... He used guns, knives, and also throttled people with his bare hands. My brother and Ken both still have The Mad Killer Polaroids - and they are family favorites. Ken was an outstanding athlete - a true natural. He just had that thing that all great athletes have. Hand-eye coordination, grace, and an ease with the game. Watching him play a Little League game was sometimes like watching Ted Williams in embryo. He was truly gifted. He's funny in a kind of quiet way - he makes me laugh. He is married to Suzanne - a true powerhouse, who sews her own clothes, bought a piano for 20 dollars on eBay, and basically can do anything. They have three awesome children.

Kathleen - Kathleen and my sister Jean were kindred spirits. My childhood photo album is filled with pictures of the two of them, little pipsqueaks, playing and hanging out on random sunny patios, surrounded by Fisher Price toys. She is kind, sensitive, deep, and is continuing the family tradition by being a librarian. She got married a couple of years ago - to an awesome man and they have a son - a small apple-cheeked cutiepie. Every year, my aunt Geddy throws a "cousin brunch" around Christmas - where as many of us who are able gather, for food, talk, and a Yankee swap. Bringing a boyfriend or a girlfriend to the cousin brunch is a rite of passage - and rather frightening for the boyfriend/girlfriend in question. But if you pass the test, you're in! Kathleen's boyfriend (now husband) came to the cousin brunch for the first time in 2004. We all had to bring gifts for the Yankee Swap - and he brought the Boston Globe from October 28, 2004. I'll let you deduce what was on the front page. Suffice it to say, it was the most fought after gift at that particular Yankee Swap - and we loved him from that moment on. If you're in with the cousins, you're IN!

Lisa - She's up there with one of the funniest people I have ever known. We were BFFs growing up - even with the horrible blot of a certain family trip to Sturbridge Village. We survived! She is smart, a good listener, and has a really graceful way of taking the edge off intense moments by making a joke that will have us all in tears of laughter. She is married to Rob - a man who is so funny that he seems actually dangerous at times ... like, you can't look at him in solemn moments because it could be fatal. His dancing at family weddings has become legendary. Apparently, at my cousin Cecily's wedding (which I could not attend) - at one point he was doing a Cossacks-style Russian dance - squatting and jumping back up - arms crossed - in the middle of a cheering circle of people. He is crazy! Lisa and Rob have three (NOT TWO, THREE) sons. I get excited whenever I get to hang out with the two of them.

Kelly - Kelly is warm, kind, funny, and has three children - a baby boy and two of the cutest little daughters you will ever see. They are usually in identical outfits, little plaid skirts and black velvet tops, and they are usually carrying My Pretty Ponies around. I asked one of them what she wanted for Christmas, and she replied shyly, "Anything that is pink and sparkley." Pink and sparkley - got it! Kelly seems to treat life's little bumps in the road with humor and grace. She is a comforting presence. Always.

Jay - I still find it hard to believe that my tiny baby cousin Jay, last seen staggering around in diapers and a Red Sox T-shirt - is now a pilot. I see the pictures of him sitting at the controls for various giant airplanes, in his white uniform, and I think: "Do they let small babies become pilots? Who is that tall handsome Irish-looking man flying that plane? Is that Jay??" Jay has made a wonderful life for himself, and is married to a beautiful girl - and they have two cute sons - who are usually seen in Red Sox T-shirts themselves.

Meredith - Meredith makes me laugh. I sometimes lose track of how old she is - 12?? Is that right? She's got big curly locks, a beautiful freckled face, and a wonderful and funny demeanor. She is so much younger than the rest of the cousins, but that has never held her back from feeling like she belongs. Yes, all of her cousins are adults, but what does THAT matter? She is sweet, funny, and a good person - and I look forward to seeing what she will do next.

Matt - Matt is someone I cherish - and I don't see him enough - but man, what a nice person he is. Kind, caring, a good listener, funny ... and with a memory like an elephant. He remembers things about our collective childhood that have vanished (for me) into thin air. He holds it all. He is a toweringly tall man ... and really has the best of his father and his mother in him. He has married a woman we all love dearly - she's just a superstar, basically. Funny, bubbly, supportive ... they are a great pair.

Cecily - Cecily and Siobhan were BFFs growing up and are still close now. Cecily is beautiful, funny - and one of my favorite memories is at Siobhan's album-release party, when Cecily (a wonderful musician and singer herself) joined Siobhan on the stage to do back-up singing. There were the two cousins - onstage at a club in lower Manhattan - wonderful!! Cecily recently got married - and is about to have a baby any day now.

Owen - A tall sweet funny man - committed to family (I don't think he's missed one of the "cousin brunches" - or as well all call it: DA BRUNCH) and to being there for his family. He's a musician, covered in piercings and tats - and has been dating the sweetest funniest girl for a couple of years now (they get married in a couple of weeks!) - We just LOVE her - again, she showed up at Da Brunch one year - and participated in the Yankee Swap, and was just awesome. We're a tribal sort of family, and I know it can be kind of intimidating to meet us all at the same moment. But she fit right in. I'm so glad the two of them found each other and I'm so sorry I won't be able to attend their wedding.

Olivia - She's another one that I sometimes can't get used to her being, well, a grown-up. There's a big age difference between us - so for years, she was a little kid, and I was a college student, or whatever ... but now here she is, a college graduate - we're friends on Facebook - and she has developed into a warm and caring young woman, just as funny as her siblings (Matt, Cecily, Owen) - and just as committed to family. She is flourishing in her life, and I look forward to seeing whatever she will get up to next.

I am terrified that I have missed someone. I keep counting it out on my fingers.

Why I love my father

Because he's fascinated by the fact that I have set up a store on Amazon and enrolled in their Affiliate Program ... and he wants to know, on a monthly basis, how much I have made. He thinks it's great.

I told him last night that one particular post of mine, back in 2003, about Alice in Wonderland - gets a ton of Google Search traffic for some reason ... so I went back and put in links to Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass into that old post - and since I did that, I have sold probably one or two copies of those books a day. Isn't that extraordinary?

So basically my blog has now become profitable.

But I told my dad last night about the Alice in Wonderland thing and how successful it was, and his response was,

"Good girl, good girl."

Oh, my heart.

Why I love my mother

Talking to her last night.

Me: "I'm in Hoboken right now. I wanted to buy a book. Any book. I haven't bought a book in about 2 months, trying to save money, but today I just had to."
Mum: "What did you buy?"
Me: "Portraits From Serbia."
Mum: (bursts into laughter)

Not that there's anything inherently funny about Serbia. I guess you just had to be there.

This is akin to my "Tajikstan" moment during Trivial Pursuit which everyone in my family still makes fun of me about. Stretching my leg after a run, leaping into the game, saying casually (and guessing correctly): "Uhm .... Tajikstan?"

Again, maybe you had to be there.

But my family reading this will understand.

Mum: "What did you buy?"
Me: "Portraits From Serbia."
Mum: (bursts into laughter)

A man who works with a hoe ....

We love playing Taboo. It's one of our favorite group games. We had a rousing round of it on our vacation ... and there were many hilarious moments (Schindler's List is a children's movie? Who knew?? Or Bren trying to get Jean to say the word "Iron" - so he started off with the slam-dunk clue "Robert Downey Jr." and Jean promptly replied, "Junkie." Like- WHAT??? We all sat around howling with laughter, lounging around on the big curvy couch, after a long stressful day of swimming and reading and paddle-boat-ing.)

So.

I was trying to get Jean to say "Manure" ... WITHOUT using the words "farm" "field" "cow" "farmer" or ... you know, you get the idea.

I began with the clue:

"Poop from an animal."

I SO thought that my clue would make this a done deal. There was no way on earth that anyone could ever say anything other than "manure" in response to my BRILLIANT clue!! I had NAILED it! I was so ready to go on to the next card! Ba-da-BING - ba-da-BOOM!! Slam dunk!

Jean said, "Scat."

And it was downhill from there. We all started just laughing (not that "scat" isn't correct - it was my own certainty that "manure" was the ONLY thing she could say ... and how it so derailed me into madness) - and everything just started going nuts - and so now I had to turn myself inside out to get her to say "manure".

My next clue was:

"A man who works with a hoe ..." (I was not allowed to use "farmer", you understand ... ) and I had more to say about that "man working with his hoe" - because I needed to paint a more detailed picture - but before I could go on, Jean said:

"A pimp."

A man who works with "hos" is CLEARLY a pimp!

I never recovered. It was a lost round of Taboo. We are still laughing about it.

"Poop from an animal!"
"Scat."
"A man who works with a hoe ..."
"A pimp."

Put a "hoe" in Sheila. This round of Taboo is over.

Samurai call this ...

For some reason, yesterday morning Jean became a samurai calesthenics instructor - and was making Cashel and me laugh so hard that we were close to drowning at certain points. We had to stop playing the game becaue Cashel was guffawing so loudly he was drinking the entire lake.

"Samurai call this ... the albatross ..." she would intone, and then do some goofy "calesthenics" with her noodle. (We've been all about the noodles. We can't stop talking about them. "Hey - could you grab me a noodle?" "Where's my noodle?" "Do we have any more noodles?")

"Samurai call this ... great dog ..." and Jean swam off away from us, pushing the huge noodle along with her nose.

We played Samurai Calesthenics Instructor for about 45 minutes. It's a game that keeps on giving.

Comedy of errors

I arrived at Vintage Bar on 9th Avenue to meet my sister Siobhan just like we planned. I was right on time. I did a scan of the place for my sister and did not see her. I nabbed us a table, and settled in. The skinny gorgeous waitress with huge boobs came over and asked if I wanted to order. I said I was waiting for someone, so, could I wait to order until she showed up? Skinny Boobs said fine. I was a tiny bit scared of my waitress, and she was a teensy bit snotty. Whatevs. So I settled in. There were two guys next to me - one with a goombah Jersey accent, the other with a deep Southern drawl - and they were loosening their ties as they walked in, obviously young ad execs or something along those lines, talking about work and strategies, and also dirty martinis and interns and the joys thereof. I kept glancing out the door for my sister and the two guys kept thinking I was staring at them. Finally, I let them off the hook and took out Fortune of War and started reading. Vintage is known for its martinis (there are 7 pages of martini drinks on the menu ... you can get an Oreo Cookie Dough martini if you want it) - so obviously the joint starts HOPPIN'. But I can read anywhere, anytime, and so I did. About 20 minutes in, I caved and ordered a glass of wine from Skinny Boobs, who gave me a wine recommendation that turned out to be stellar. I didn't worry at first. It's normal to be late in the city. I didn't think much about 20 minutes but after that, I started to wonder. Where was Siobhan? I reached in my purse for my cell phone only to find, horribly, that I had left it at home. If you ever NEED a cell phone, it's for when you're trying to meet up with someone, and I had forgotten it. It was now a good 45 minutes after our meeting time, and this was totally unlike Siobhan. I didn't know what to do. I finally realized (duh) that I had my blackberry on me ... and it's also a phone. But ... duh as well ... I do not know my sister's cell # off the top of my head, because everything is on speed dial now and so ... my parents number I have memorized but that's only because it's the same number I've had since I was, what, 11 years old? A nuclear holocaust couldn't erase that number from my head. But I didn't know Siobhan's number. The martini decibels were now at their peak. I caved. I needed to contact her, and had no other way to do so. I called my parents. Retarded. "Hello?" said my mother. I launched right into it, regardless of whatever my parents might have been up to in that moment, shouting above the martini noise and the jocular post-work conversation beside me in 2 thick regional US accents, "Hi! I know this sounds crazy - but what is Siobhan's cell number?" And bless my mother (although this shouldn't be a surprise, if you read my blog) she said immediately, "Hang on a second. Let me get it." Within 10 seconds, she read it out to me. I tried to explain, shouting above the Oreo Cookie Dough martini racket, "Siobhan's 40 minutes late and I don't have my cell phone and I also don't have Siobhan's phone number!" Sheila? Stop talking. You sound like a moron. So. I call Siobhan, from the blackberry - shouting into it, "HI! I'M HERE AT VINTAGE! I'M CALLING FROM MY BLACKBERRY! I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT MY BLACKBERRY NUMBER IS THOUGH. SO I HOPE YOU CAN SEE IT ON YOUR PHONE. BUT I'M HERE. SO I HOPE YOU'RE OKAY!" Sheila? Stop talking. Then I realized that I could find out my blackberry number (I never use it as a phone) - and so I wrote it down and called back, shouting, "OKAY, SO HERE'S MY BLACK BERRY NUMBER --" and as I started to read it out I saw Siobhan herself emerge from the back of the bar, stalking towards the front, looking around her like an insane person. She had obviously just gotten my message and had been sitting in the bar the entire time. I hadn't seen her though, in my original sweep, I swear! I shouted up at her, "SIOBHAN!" We then hugged and laughed and Siobhan went back to the back of the bar to grab, you know, all her stuff - to join me up front. She had left me numerous messages on my cell phone which I, naturally, had not gotten, because it was sitting at home on my desk ... so we could have gone the entire night, sitting 30 feet away from each other, total missed connections, if I hadn't remembered that I could use my blackberry. Sheila. Why else does one have a blackberry? But let's disregard that. So Siobhan came up and joined me and we were laughing about how ridiculous the whole thing was, both of us practically crying about the fact that we were sitting so near to one another, and yet so far ... and at some point Snotty Skinny Boobs came over to our table (she had also been Siobhan's waitress) and she said, gesturing at the two of us, now finally together, "Okay, this? Is hysterical." She totally got the entire situation, the missed connections part of it, the comedy of errors - and then Siobhan and I said, in unison, "And we're sisters, too!" And that sealed our fate. Turns out, Skinny Boobs has two sisters, and they all live on the same floor in the same apartment building, and so Skinny Boobs will get a call from one of her sisters at 8:30 in the morning, saying, 'Hi. I bought a dress yesterday. I need you to come over right now and tell me if I look cute in it." Skinny Boobs goes next door, and her sister answers the door wearing the dress in question. Skinny Boobs looks at her sister in the dress. She then silently leads her sister back to her apartment, opens her closet, and shows her that she had bought the very same dress on the very same day. She told us that entire story. We totally fell in love with her. You know. Sisters. Anyone who has sisters understands. She absolutely loved us - and the snottiness I felt (oh, and that Siobhan felt, too) was probably just being harassed by having too many tables and too many Cookies 'n Creme martinis to make. Oh - and off of their huge wine list, Siobhan and I separately had both ordered the same glass of wine. Skinny Boobs loved that, too. She swooped by us on her way to another table and stopped just long enough to say, "You know what is also hysterical? You ordered the same drink. Brilliant. This is brilliant!"

My Mother: "The Periwinkle Dishes"

In 2003 I moved into my own apartment after living with the same woman for 9 years. It was a huge adjustment, and very exciting, and thanks to Craig's List I found an amazing situation for myself. My mother was so excited for me, so involved. She came down and went through the whole move with me ... It was her contention that as long as, by the first night, your kitchen and your bathroom are all set up - you will be fine. So even as my movers were lugging my furniture all about, my mother was tearing through boxes marked "KITCHEN" and "BATHROOM" - and hurriedly putting things away - scrubbing the tub, scrubbing the insides of cabinets - all while I was consumed with playing Traffic Cop for my movers. My mother made the transition unbelievably calming. I was so grateful to have her there.

But more on this whole move:

My dishes/pots/pans have always been hand-me-downs, unimportant. I buy crap dishes at flea markets, I don't have a 'set' of anything.

But as my move approached, my mother got it into her head that I should have a nice set of dishes. I should have a pattern that I wanted, I should pick out dinnerware for myself - with no concern for cost.

I'm not married. Married people get that stuff at their shower. But what happens if you never get married, AND if you have no money? Does that mean you never get to have a nice set of dishes that you like?

So my mother took me out shopping. Basically, it was like my own personal shower. We had such a good time together - she took me to shops in Rhode island, and I picked out all the stuff I liked. Stuff that spoke to me.

I picked these great big chunky plates, painted this heavenly color - a periwinkle blue. I picked these tall water glasses, with autumn leaves wrapping around them. I picked placemats- a pale lavendar color. I also got the silverware I wanted - nice solid silver. (I've always had crappy silverware - I never could justify the cost - I'd buy 10 crappy forks at a church flea market and call it a day.) So I cherish my beautiful silverware that my mother bought me.

We were both suffused with girlie excitement.

But let me tell you the deeper thing: I was so moved at how much my mother wanted to give me something. It meant the world to her - to give me what I wanted - to hear me say, "Oh, aren't these pretty?" (about the autumn leaf glasses) - and then be able to say, "Let's get a couple of them. You like them. Let's get them."

As is probably obvious, I am stridently independent and have been on my own for a long time. It is not often that my mother gets to GIVE like that to me, and it meant so much to her.

It's hard for me to accept gifts - but I also could feel, in my heart, how happy it made her to be able to give me something I wanted. So i was able to accept.

But here's the coda to this whole story about my dishes - and why I wanted to write about this in the first place:

A month or so later, my parents drove down to New York, to all of us who live here, and to see what I had done to my place. My mother had already seen my apartment, my father had not.

Now as I write this, I am fully aware that there are people on this earth (many of my friends included) who have parents who could not give two shits about "seeing" their child's "new place". Some people just don't have that parental involvement in their lives. I do. And my God. My God. I am fully aware of how blessed I am. How amazing my parents are. Truly. When I was in my 20s, trying to break free, it felt like a burden, at times. Like: "Jesus, other parents aren't so INVOLVED....why are MINE???" But now, of course, I see how fortunate I am. And was.

My parents arrived. I was so excited to have them see my place, to have my dad see it for the first time, to have my mom see what I had done to it. I loved being able to have them both sit in my kitchen, to serve them drinks, to be all set up.

My father took one look around my main room - with the hard wood floor, the ceiling fan, the patterned ceiling, and the PILES AND PILES OF BOOKS - and said, in his understated calm way, nodding his approval, "Good. Good."

But what I want to talk about is my mother.

I was in the kitchen with my mother, so excited to show her what I had done, how I had set things up, where I had put things.

And this is what is extraordinary about this woman - or one of the many extraordinary things:

NOTHING was boring to her.

I know mothers who are bossy, who come into their child's space and immediately re-arrange things, or criticize. I know these kinds of mothers. Bitchy petty controlling mothers. My mother could not be petty if you paid her a million dollars. My mother would turn down the cash. She would not do it. Her inner compass is too strong.

If her child is excited about something, then she is excited. (Well, let me re-phrase. If I came to her and said, "Omigod, I am so excited about how much blow I am doing right now!!" she would not be excited. She has her limits.)

I opened my cupboard and said, smiling, "And here are my dishes!!"

Now: reminder: SHE had bought me those dishes. She had already SEEN those dishes!!

And yet -she took one of the dishes out, and said, "Oh, gosh, they are so pretty."

I don't think I'm describing this right. I am sitting here with tears running down my face, and I don't feel that I'm describing this.

Let me try to get clear:

She was the one who bought me the dishes. She had already seen them. And yet she was excited to see them placed in my new cupboard. She was right there with me, in my excitement.

Here is what that moment with the Periwinkle Dishes meant to me, and what it says about my mother:

My mother is ALWAYS doing her best. ALWAYS. I cannot say that I am always doing my best. There are many times when I am jealous, when I am bitter, when I let negativity overcome me. But my mother - without EVER being a pious self-righteous woman (and that's the whole point - that's the whole point - her ego is not wrapped up in her "righteousness") is ALWAYS doing her best. In every moment in life, we are faced with a choice: Should I go the high road or the low road? My mother probably knows better than I do, but I have never known her to take the low road.

I am not saying that she is perfect. Of course not. But I am saying that she is always doing her best in any given moment. Always. It has taken me YEARS to realize this about her. YEARS.

Another mother would have either scoffed at my dish placement, or would have squashed my excitement, "Yes, I know what they look like. After all, I paid an arm and a leg for them."

My mother just ooohed and aahed over how pretty they looked in my cupboard.

I told my sister Jean this story once, and Jean said, "You know ... it's actually kind of holy, isn't it." In the true sense of the word, yes. It is.

Grace. My mother teaches me grace.

Happy mother's day, mar mar.

41 years

Happy anniversary, Mum and Dad, from your first-born.

2007 Year in Pictures

To the beach!

2007 Year in Pictures

Mojitos!

2007 Year in Pictures

You are not alone

2007 Year in Pictures

Darts

2007 Year in Pictures

Sisters.

2007 Year in Pictures

Family.

2007 Year in Pictures

Palm Sunday

Family

-- stopping by the hospital on my way out of New York to see my cousin - who had just had an operation. His wife was there (I feel silly calling her "his wife" - she's a member of our family, for God's sake, and has been for years) - and also my uncle ... an anxious time, a scary family time, so it was so so good to see everyone, to listen, to talk, to laugh, a quiet morning spent basking in the glow of those I love.

-- my parents. My God, my parents. I hover over them lovingly at all times. Even when I am not with them.

-- my sister Jean. Her dog Hudson. Jean and I lying in bed in the upstairs room laughing so long and so loud about that Diary Friday that tears streamed down our faces.

-- my sister Siobhan. Playing the piano, waiting anxiously for her gifts to arrive via postal service. Cooking her amazing brussel sprouts dish and also a yummy cranberry pie. Wrestling with Hudson on the floor. And then, when we were watching The Muppet Movie, poor Hudson was lying next to her, wagging his tail right in her face, batting her with it, oblivious in his joy and contentment to how obnoxious he was being. Siobhan brought her old VHS tape of The Muppet Family Christmas, and we watched it, howling with laughter at poor Miss Piggy, trying to push her snow-bound taxi out of a drift, her snout getting angry and downturned, as the mud poured over her. It was great to see how much Cashel enjoyed it, too. His shoulders shaking with laughter about the Muppets falling on the ice-patch on the doorway ... and he KEPT laughing about Miss Piggy shouting up at the cab driver, in her gutteral tough-dame voice, "GUN IT."

-- my brother Brendan. Devouring the book on The Replacements that he got for Christmas. He read it in less than 24 hours. Brendan: taking care of things, being a good dad, a good son, a good brother. The way he listens. The way he shares.

-- Cashel. Being a good boy. Opening his presents and giving presents. Writing a note to Santa, leaving Fig Newtons and carrots. Cashel explaining to us at the dinner table that World of Warcraft is "highly addictive". He made a comic book for all of us. He's an amazing artist.

-- Jean and I driving up to the "cousin brunch", a yearly tradition - otherwise known as DA BRUNCH. My Aunt Geddy hosts it every year and as many cousins as possible from my mother's side of the family converge. Uncle Timmy was there, wearing a cross between a Santa hat and court jester hat. He also had on bulky snow pants in case any of the children present wanted to go sledding. Doug ... God, it is always so so good to see Doug, too. My cousins truly light up my life and I look forward to seeing them whenever possible. Owen is engaged - hooray! Kathleen, Lisa, Kelly, Jay, Meredith, Cecily, Owen ... and all of the multiple children of the cousins, all of whom have increasingly complex Gaelic names. It sounds like an old-school County Mayo gathering, to hear my cousins round up their own children. Quote of the day came from my aunt, who recently had her music played at Carnegie Hall, and who just finished a stint teaching bell-ringing at a middle school: "I have discovered that not only do I hate bell-ringing as a musical form, but I hate bell-ringers." hahahahaha SO GOOD to see everyone. Lisa, as always, making Jean and me laugh like lunatics. Rob was sorely missed - but he was at home with their youngest. Rob is so nuts that it is dangerous to sit near him at serious family functions. Oh, and as we left - my aunt (who hates bell ringers) followed us out to our car, and handed us a wine bottle, saying, "We made this beach plum cordial for you. It is completely un-drinkable. Merry Christmas!" Jean tried it later and said that she thought it wasn't so bad!!

-- Jean and I had to leave DA BRUNCH early - to race into Boston - to see my cousin Kerry in her last performance of Irving Berlin's White Christmas at the Wang. We were sad to leave the gathering but excited about seeing Kerry in action. This is her third (is that right, Kerry? Or am I missing a year?) year doing this show - and we were thrilled to get to go see it. Jean and I got to the theatre, found our seats ... and 5 minutes later were shocked and excited to see our aunt (Kerry's mother) coming to sit down in the seat right next to us. What a surprise! We sat there, in the buzz and hubbub of the SPECTACULAR theatre - catching up with our aunt - sharing news, listening, talking ... it was all wonderful and very Christmas-y. In this tough time, a rough time for us all ... I do feel very buoyed up by the love of family. Surrounding us. In the same way that we have all surrounded our cousin in the hospital, buoying him up. It's a blessing, it truly is. I just KNOW we are being thought of.

-- And Kerry!!!! Holy mackerel. First of all, the show itself is a wonder. They have multiple companies ... Kerry's done the show in Boston twice, and in St. Paul once. If you ever see that it's coming your way, do yourself a favor and SEE IT. Kerry played Betty (the Rosemary Clooney part) - and she gave me goosebumps. Her big dramatic number in the second act - where she's wearing a black velvet dress - was truly spectacular - I think I held my breath the whole way thru - and Jean and I just huddled together in awe and love, beaming up how proud we were of our amazing cousin. Afterwards, Kerry took us (and about 48 people from her hometown who were also there that night) on a tour backstage - which was as large as a football stadium. It still was barely big enough to contain all of us following Kerry around - but it was awesome - to see the amount of work that goes into the production. We only got to spend about 2 seconds with Kerry because we had to get back home ... Kerry was going out to a bar to watch the Patriots game, and oh how we wanted to join her! But still: what a wonderful job, a wonderful show. I murmured to Jean during the show, when the soldiers came out to pay tribute to their general, "Okay, are we about to get patriotic now? Because I seriously cannot TAKE IT if they do!" And of course they did, and there were salutes, and there was a teary-eyed yet macho general, and please, I wept, and made a general spectacle of myself. Christmas AND patriotism? Put a fork in me, Sheila's done. Jean and I screamed and hollered for Kerry when she came out to take her bow. Pride! Bursting out of our chests!

-- Phone calls thru Christmas day. Family. Talked with my uncle - the one I had seen only the day before - and told him about sitting next to my aunt (his wife!) at Kerry's show. Good news about my cousin. He is home. We are all very thankful.

-- Hudson got a squeaky toy for Christmas. He could not have been happier. He is such a good dog.

-- I gave everybody the NESN DVD of the Red Sox 2007 season - so we all watched that. And re-lived it. Screaming at the same old spots. Raving about Jacoby. Ranting about Gagne (seriously, the vitriol we feel towards that man - people almost get violent). How much we love Padroia (little Buddy) - and Papelbon doing air guitar wearing a kilt. What?? Later on Christmas Day, I was watching NESN and they were playing Faith Rewarded - and Jean, Pat and I watched it. The moment before Dave Roberts' steal ... the steal of the century ... Pat said, "God. I have goosebumps!" I did too. And we all know how it turned out.

-- Mum brought home a Charlie Brown Christmas tree on Christmas Eve. The Advent Police of our town won't arrest us!! We trimmed the tree together, the old cardboard box of ornaments taken out - all the painted macaroni ornaments of our childhood, taken out year after year. The old-school star on top. It looked really nice, even though the tree was really little. It was very sweet. I put my iPod in my parents stereo and played the Rat Pack Christmas CD that Mr. Bingley sent to me last year. A fire in the grate. I hadn't gotten out of my pajamas all day.

-- Last night, my 2 sisters and I (and Hudson) all slept in the same bed. We had to lie there, flat and solemn, like mummies in a tomb. It was hysterical. But we got a good 8 hours.

-- Cashel did a magic trick with his Christmas magic top hat he got. It was quite impressive.

-- Oh, and my mother - bless her heart - had been working hard on a gift for my most recent birthday. She had put out a call to all family members to send her memories, anecdotes, whatever - about me ... via email. She had received them all and pasted them into a composition notebook - the black and white kind, the kind I use for my journals. So my God, it was like This Is Your Life reading all of that. Aunts, uncles, cousins - my cousin Emma, my cousin Susan - Cecily - Matt - Mike ... all of their memories about me - It's almost too much to deal with. I haven't even processed half of what I read, it was so intense. It was a bombardment of love.

-- A huge box arrived for me. What could it be? Took it inside - to find that my cousin Mike had sent me 5 books he picked up at a second-hand bookstore - books he found that he thought I might like. Patricia Neal's autobiography (hoo yah!), a biography of Laurette Taylor, Cheryl Crawford's autobiography, "Oak Leaves and Lavendar" by Sean O'Casey and lastly: The Sean O'Casey Reader - edited by the great Brooks Atkinson. I was SO touched that my cousin Mike would think of me and send me such things. I have been dying to read Neal's book, in particular. Mike: you're the best!!! It was a great capper to an intense family-focused Christmas week.

Uhm ... wow. That parking lot is empty.

I cannot explain why looking at the following two photos I took with my cell phone makes me laugh out loud. I know my blog is all private-jokey these days, like I'm writing in code, so, whatever, sorry - lots going on that I'm not talking about - I cannot explain why the surrounding situation is so outrageously funny and insane and horrible that I guffaw (and wince in horror) just thinking about it - I have tried to write about it but ... so far, I can't find the right words.

In sum, I seriously can't even BEGIN to tell the story of these two cars ... but I post the photos nonetheless because I need the laugh.

Nice things said to me yesterday on my birthday

"Today is certainly one of the most important days of my life ..." - my mother

"I'm glad you were born." - Kate

"Happy birthday dot org." - Caitlin

"We're proud of you. You're a good girl." -- my father

"Harpee Barthdar Dar Sharlar." - Jean

"Hey, Sheil, hope you enjoyed my gift! I sent you a tarantula farm!" - Bren

"Sheila, you are so marriageable." - Preeta

"I am watching 'The Boy with Green Hair' AT THIS VERY MOMENT!!!" - Alex

"Sheil-babe O'Malley
workin' at the Pit
Someone has a pizza
and they didn't order it
Sheil-babe O'Malley
takes the pizza pie
Gives it to the people
And we begin to cry
Sheil-babe O'Malley
workin' at the pit ..." -- Jackie

And a long phone message from Allison that made me cry.

I was love-bombed yesterday.

And I topped it all off with an insane night of karaoke in Korea Town. Many funny stories to follow, involving tamborines, vodka tonics, inappropriate duets, and a renewed love of Olivia Newton-John. We also had two pizzas delivered directly to our karaoke room. Knock on the door, and there was the little pizza guy - as though this dark room with couches and a karaoke screen was our own personal apartment. And to order more drinks, you just picked up the phone on the wall - and a voice said, "Yes?" and you would give your order and shortly it would appear. Genius. And, to reiterate, "Xanadu" is the best song ever written.

thanksgiving

Quiet time with family. Fire in the grate. Pumpkin pie. Sleeping deeply. Crossword puzzles. Carpet of red and brown leaves. In pajamas 24/7. Brunch at my sister's house. Bloody Mary's, shrimp, bagels, French toast, coffee. Oh, and there were 3 dogs cavorting around, wreaking havoc, looking for scraps. Back at parents. Quiet, sometimes talking, sometimes not. Reading. Doing dishes.

Oh, and we had a small birthday gathering for me. Ya gotta watch out there with my mother. I said to her casually, a couple weeks ago, "I hate my French press, I miss having a real coffee maker" (I wasn't hinting, I swear) and voila. Coffee maker for the birthday girl. Love that. Now that I have a car I can transport it back without having to bring the damn thing on the train.

Getting mani/pedis with sisters today. Then going clothes shopping and walking the dog on the beach. It's freezing out today.

Walked around on campus this morning, visiting all my old haunts from when I was a student there. Eerie, and strangely comforting. Magical, but echoey, too. I took pictures, I'll post them later.

Here's to 2008, man. Let's cross 2007 off the list and move ON.

Scanner Sunday

I love how this one came out. Sisters on the beach at Block Island.

This is not posed.

Cape Cod montage

Objects/landscapes.

More vacation shots HERE

typed in from blackberry ... hence, the serial killer typing style:
mad libs
pilates with the o'malley siblings
ocean - the beautiful beautiful ocean
stubbies
boggle
reading
crossword puzzles
sunblock
daily red sox game
the mason jar
ipods being charged all over the house - we each have one ... keeping them straight has been quite a task
wind and sun
laughing
ice coffee
comparing beds Me and siobhan:"our beds suck ... can we switch tonight?" Jean: "uhm ... no?"
two rabbits and a toad
every time siobhan plays one of her playlists thru bren's speakers, one of us asks about this or that song: "who is this??" she has great music.
used book store
Fact or Crap
star market
bourne bridge confusion
Aye carumba - "authentic" mexican restaurant
watched cash's movies he made
goggles
singing the Barnum soundtrack while sitting in beach chairs on the beach:
quite a lotta
roman terra cotta
livin' lava from the flanks of aetna
statuary
ride a dromedary
see the temple tumble and the red sea part
mcnamara's band the fattest lady in the land
a pickled prehistoric hand
a strand of pochahontas' hair
.... our neighbors at the beach must have been like: holy god, when will it end
swimming wtih cash
citronella candles
cashel sitting watching buster keaton movies, laughing out loud "Oh, this one's really funny, sheila - you have to watch THIS one."
kayaks
karaoke plans
reading (did i mention reading?) - I've finished one book, started another
pictures of Siamese cats being emailed to siobhan every 5 minutes
painting rock people at the table Jean: "See the grandmother's pearls I just made??"
it is as though dice k, mike lowell, jd drew, tek, manny, coco, pedroia (Jean calls him "little buddy") and papi are all on vacation with us. we speak about them as though we know them personally. Oh, and gagne. we scorn him. Continuous 8th inning balderdash! Oh shit, here's Gagne, get ready to lose! We scorn him!! until the moment last night when it came time to love him. then we loved him without reservation. because he deserved it.
Books:
Me: Game of Shadows (finished), now reading Compulsion, by Meyer Levin
Bren: Game of Shadows (handed off to him when I finished)
Dad: The amazing adventures of kavalier and clay
Mum: the stranger
jean: wicked
cash-man: once and future king, and also this series about Titans
siobhan: stumbling on cough cough

Quote from cash: "auntie sheila, i'm not the type of guy who feels the need to intrigue people ... I'd much rather ......" (long pause as he tried to get his thoughts together. I waited.)
Then I suggested helpfully, "Make people laugh?"
He nodded. "Yes. I'd much rather make people laugh."

"i'm not the type of guy who feels the need to intrigue people ...." Just blurted that one at me, out of the blue.

Uh-huh. Got it. You'd rather make people laugh. good to know what type of guy you are.

Things Bren said on the phone to me last night

"Zen samurais do not become dissolute."

"There is a Sleestak on the phone with us right now."

"It's the most fun you'll have being contemptuous." - on The Village

"You're half impatient and you're half totally ambivalent. Which is totally fun. And then there's Adrien Brody in the middle of it doing Retard 101." - more on The Village

"Look. I dont like nappy-headed hos in my British comedies."

Thanksgiving snapshots ... part 2

-- Friday dawned clear and beautiful. I was up before the kids got up - which surprised me. Mum, Dad and I hung out in the cozy kitchen for a while, having coffee and talking. Surrounded by random copies of The Sewanee Review, of course. Then slowly everyone else got up. Grace and Henry appearing, well-rested, sleepy-headed, a bit cuddly, but ready to go NUTS once they really woke up. They are so cute!! Grace immediately went to start banging on the piano but Betsy said, "No, honey, it's too early for the piano." hahaha The dawn's early light ... and banging "chords" from the living room.

-- Nice morning. Breakfast. Hanging out. Lazy day. Nothing to do but just ... hang around.

-- I was reading a FASCINATING book called Snapping ... could NOT put it down. It is a book that Emily must read as soon as possible. I finished it over this past weekend. So I sat there, as Grace and Henry played with Fisher Price toys all around me, and read about Jonestown. Awesome.

-- Later in the day - we went shopping. Me, Mum, Jean and Siobhan. We converged on Marshall's. I got a ton of stuff, after a wee meltdown ("nothing fits! I don't want to go shopping! I hate my body!") ... Jean talked me down ... and I ended up getting a boatload of really cool clothes that I feel happy about. It was my birthday present. (Well, my birthday's today, but you know ... we had the whole birthday thing this past weekend). I got the coziest slippers ever known to man. Fur-lined. I mean ... heavenly. If I could wear them 24/7 I would. I have them on now. I could not be happier.

-- Plans were made to meet up at the beach later and get a bit of exercise with Hudson.

-- Came home and read more of Snapping. Moved on from Jonestown to read about David Koresh as well as Loonytunes Moonies. AWESOME.

-- Siobhan and I drove down to the beach to meet up with Jean, Pat and Hudson. It was about 5 pm when we got there. The sun had gone down, so darkness was falling pretty quickly - but there was still a wash of sunset glowing in the west, blurring up into the black ... You could see the "towers" black and stark against the glow ... and the string of orange lamplights lit up, along the sea wall. The tide was low. The waves were crashing - but they were breaking pretty far out ... one after the other after the other. The foam was dim, bluish in the twilight ... and the water picked up all the stray gleams of colors - so everything looked psychedelic. The sand itself was dark, but then the water rushing across it would gleam like a blue mirror, flecked with orange, smudged with silver. It's one of my favorite times of day to be at the beach. Siobhan and I pulled up beside jean's car - and there they were, down at the shore - Jean, Pat, and Hudson. I said to Siobhan, "This is one of those moments when I wish I lived in Rhode Island." Hey, let's meet at the beach! So we walked down to the Dunes Club and back ... night was really falling by the time we returned, sunset dying out. Hudson chased sticks, and also disappeared into the night to inspect seaweed, or whatever it was he was doing. But then, vroom, he would catch up to us, and fly by us, a blur of ecstatic black. There were a couple of other folks out with dogs - so there were many congresses of the animal world, up and down the beach. Nothing like the salty smell of the ocean, the sound of those pounding waves. It does more for my spirit than pretty much any other healing medicine ever could.

-- We made plans to meet up at The Mist later that night. You know ... to see John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band. Or, to Rhode Islanders: "JC and the Triple B". Uhm ... Eddie and the Cruisers anyone? well, they are still going strong and have a regular gig at The Mist which, in general, draws massive loyal crowds. I've never been to a "Triple B" show so even though the whole thing makes me feel unbelievably old - I just HAD to go check it out. They're our local boys!

-- When Siobhan and I arrived, the joint was jumpin'. JC hadn't gone on yet - but the opening band was going strong, they were a cover band - and people were dancing like crazy, jitterbugging. In the rickety shack above the waves. Oh, and the white seagulls (or are they terns?) were in attendance, bobbing on the black-green surging waves outside. What the hell? I love them.

-- The JC crowd was already showing up. Rhode Islanders will know what I'm talking about. This is all just local color, local humor ... hard to explain to an outsider. Jean was out on the deck of the bar and this girl came out there with her - obviously a JC fan. She had long straight hair, she was rather fat, and she was wearing a gold puffy vest. She stood on the deck staring out at the dark ocean, the bobbing seagulls, the crashing waves ... transfixed ... Jean was doing her own thing, maybe talking with Pat, whatever, but Gold Vest was having her own private experience. Suddenly, she shouted, to herself, "I LOVE THIS SHIT." Shouting at the ocean. By herself. In the Rhode Island accent. With the puffy gold vest. "I LOVE THIS SHIT." We loved Gold Vest. We kept an eye out for her all night.

-- Oh - and I just fell in love with this big huge goombah in his backwards baseball cap - who had no neck - and a blonde petite girlfriend with a tan that seemed burned onto her skin ... but the cover band was playing "Signed Sealed Delivered" and suddenly I happened to glance at him - he was standing with his back to me - his huge back - the back of a linebacker - and he was hugging his girlfriend from behind, and they were watching the band, and he was just jamming out, in his own small way, to "Signed Sealed Delivered". He was jiggling his butt back and forth, bopping his head up and down ... It was adorable. We couldn't stop appreciating him. We appreciated him from afar all night.

-- By the end of the night, and by the end of my 2 vodka gimlets, I had made plans to go to Burning Man with Sean in a huge Winnebago. Hahahaha "We have to go!" "We must!" "Burning Man! Burning Man!" 'See you at Burning Man!" Guys ... is this a REAL plan or just vodka-fueled enthusiasm?

-- And then .... JOHN CAFFERTY!

-- You know, people make fun and all that, but here's the deal, and here's what I saw: I saw someone who has not gone bitter and pissed because his moment of fame did not pan out to a lifetime of fame. According to the folks in Rhode Island, he IS a star. And he IS. And not only that: but there he is, playing the songs that everyone knew once upon a time - way back in the 80s when they suddenly were national, rather than local ... and he has probably played them thousands, and thousands, of times. And to me it felt like the first time. He had that same enthusiasm. He's not pissed that people remember. (A lot of one-hit wonders ARE pissed if you remember their one-hit ... because all it means to them is that they didn't have TWO hits. Now I get that ... I get that it's freakin' tough to not have your dreams pan out ... I get that on almost a cellular level, because I've lived it ... ) But to see someone who LOVES that people remember ... and who plays those songs with as much gusto and as much enthusiasm as when he played them in the 80s ... You know, I just really loved him for that. I loved him for being okay with being loved. The crowd goes NUTS for the Triple B ... and I was telling Beth and Michele about it the next night and they both were saying, "Oh my God, we all HAVE to go the next time you're in town." This is our high school years. There he is. The same band. All together. John Cafferty would come out into the crowd with his guitar - and people would jostle him, crowd around him ... give him a stool so he could then step up onto one of the tables in the middle of the crowd. Jean and I, watching, were just laughing and clapping and loving him. He's an entertainer. He's a local staple. He made it big for about 2 seconds. And people remember and still come out in droves to see him. And he loves that. I had a couple of moments when I teared up. Because I am a geek of the highest order. But I've also been an emotional basket-case for about 3 weeks now. Just let's go way up, shall we? And then let's go way back down again, shall we? Seeing John Cafferty stand up on that table, in the middle of a sea of pulsing throbbing arms in the air, people shouting up at him, people who know all his lyrics, who remember him when ... gave me a little lump in the ol' gizzard, I'll tell ya.

-- But we also sang along at the tops of our lungs. Pat was openly laughing at us. And Sean was openly scornful. I think he didn't want to go to Burning Man with me after seeing me go nuts over John Cafferty. Hahaha

-- It was a BLAST. TRIPLE B!!!

Livin in the C-I-T-Y! Livin' in the city!

Or ...

On the dark side, oh yeah
On the dark side, oh yeah
On the dark side, oh yeah

-- When I got home, Alex called me ... I've missed her ... and I stood out in the driveway ... and we had a great talk. I've missed hearing her voice. I was probably shouting. And the neighborhood is dark and quiet at about 7 pm ... so to the neighbors ... my apologies for shouting into my cell phone at circa 1:30 am.

Thanksgiving snapshots ... part 1

-- Rain. Torrential rain. For the entire day. No let-up. Not one iota. Rain, rain, rain. And wind battering against the house from the north. Siobhan's friend was the lead-off dude in the Macy's Day parade - he's a stilt-walker - and he was going to be the FIRST ONE in the procession - and I thought about him, occasionally, over the morning ... staggering down 5th Avenue on stilts in gale-force winds with the rain pouring down. What the hell??? Would he carry an umbrella? Apparently, he text messaged Siobhan later in the day saying something like: "Nothing like a 2-mile walk on stilts with Julie Andrews riding your ass."

-- Took the car to drive down to Jean and Pat's house to get the dog ... I was fearful that maybe they would be late coming over - hang out - not get home for a couple hours - and I just was nervous about Hudson. So ... after the huge feast - I blithely charge off into the torrential rain to go get the dog. Once I was on the road, I realized how bad it truly was. My car was being buffeted about by the wind. The rain came swooping across the road in long billowing sheets, undulating. The entire town was deserted. There was a massive flood by Old Mountain Field. I had to drive on the other side of the road to avoid it. Visibility was NIL. I tried to keep my wits about me. I arrived at the house - with their cute little pumpkin lights up - a leftover from the Halloween bash - there was a knocked-over plant on the porch from the gale force winds - and I could literally hear the HOWL of the ocean at the end of the street. Insane. I ran to the porch through the rain - getting soaked in 1.5 seconds ... and could see Hudson's disconsolate black head through the window. He was lying on the coach, staring morosely out the window. Ha. When he saw me, he began to have a nervous breakdown. His excitement was palpable - almost painful. He leapt at me, whining, moaning, writhing. He had been in AGONY for the THREE HOURS he had been left alone. I could not find his leash. I was worried I would lose him in the monsoon. But I took that risk. Opened the door. Hudson went bounding off into the dark. I raced to the car, opening up the back seat for him, and shouted into the void: "HUDSON!' He came racing back - and leapt into the car. And then began the drive home. Through the floods. Hudson lay in the back, silent, morose again. He had no idea what was going on in his life. He just succumbed to the chaos.

-- Did I mention the rain? It was insane weather - and it lasted for only 24 hours. The next day dawned sunny and beautiful. The rain was not just a drizzle, or your ordinary downpour. It was a battering ram of water that lasted for hours. So bizarre. Happy Thanskgiving!

-- Tom and Betsy joined us for dinner - with their two kids - Grace and Henry. Grace and Henry are my first cousins - and they are 6 and 2. I love having first cousins who are less than 3 feet tall. It reminds me of just how Irish we really are. Grace and Henry are awesome. I love them both. Neither of them pronounce their "r"s so it gives them odd unplaceable foreign accents. Henry talks in his own babble - with vaguely discernible words - Betsy translates for us - and sometimes he will just stand, stare at you seriously, and say, with total purpose and meaning: "Ah-ka-kee-ka-no-key-cah." Uhm ... come again? And Betsy will flatly say, "He's telling you he loves Thomas the train engine." Of course he is. Henry has boingy-boing curls like Shirley Temple, and his body language of twists and tumbles and leaps and writhings make it seem as though he is working on an audition for Cirque de Soleil. He and Grace play really well together. Grace has the jack-o-lantern smile of a 6 year old - and is just an awesome kid. At one point, the grown-ups were in the kitchen and Grace and Henry were playing in the living room. Suddenly we hear Grace begin to cry. It's the serious crying - the crying of "Ow, that hurt." A moment later, Henry appeared in the kitchen doorway, face worried, cheeks red, and announced, in this "I just want to help!" tone: "Gwace cwying!" Sadly for him, though, he was holding out his fist as he made the announcement - and you could see a huge HUNK of Grace's hair in his hand. Like: dude, you are so busted!! I wonder why Gwace is cwying???

-- That morning we had all gone over to Jean and Pat's for a pre-Thanksgiving-dinner brunch. It was so nice!! Cozy and warm in the house ... crazy rain outside. (Did I mention the rain?) Dad had sent over a rawhide bone for Hudson - who immediately took it over to his corner and did not emerge for over an hour due to the hard work of tearing that thing to shreds. Jean made spicy Bloody Marys. We had this amazing French Toast thing - made famous by my aunt Geddy - and potatoes - and bacon ... coffee ... Oh, and someone had brought cookies with little tiny Reeses' peanut butter cups on top of them - maybe sugar-glued on? I have no idea. But someone made the comment that the plate of cookies - with the little brown cups on top - looked like a bunch of buried dead Pilgrims. Like they had been buried standing up and only their little Pilgrim hats stuck out of the earth. We were howling. "This would be the Thanksgiving dinner we would have if the Indians had won." A celebration of the massacred pilgrims. Guffaws every time we looked at that plate. Amy brought quiche. There were blueberry muffins. The whole thing was INSANE. We played music - I got to hear all about Pat and Jean's huge Halloween party which apparently was a raging success. Jean dressed as Princess Leia and at one point got so into dancing to Prince that the entire world dropped away. She was embarrassed to think about it later but in the moment it couldn't be helped. I just want a picture of Princess Leia zoning out to Little Red Corvette.

-- Siobhan and I then made our way back through the RAIN RAIN RAIN to Mum and Dad's. Betsy and Tom and Grace and Henry had arrived ... so Siobhan and I were in recovery-mode from the huge brunch - but we still had a couple of hours until dinner. Lots of family visiting. Henry came towards me in the kitchen when I walked in, holding out his arms, and hugged my legs. So cute!! And Grace looked very nice in her purple sweater, with her jack o'lantern smile.

-- My parents bought 30 copies of The Sewanee Review They are everywhere.

-- Oh! And Pat wrote an article about Siobhan's show in New York for the local paper - and it came out on Thanksgiving day. There was a picture of her - a nice big write-up - and also a little lead-in on the front page. So cool!

-- Thanksgiving dinner was massive. And yummy. It was already getting dark outside, the rain pounding on the windows, but inside was cozy, family, lots of kid behavior (Grace banging on the piano, etc.), and lots of grown-up talk. A perfect day. Jean and Pat came over after their dinner - and Hudson, who had recovered from the strange chaos of being air-lifted out of his home, experienced huge ecstasy at the sight of his owners. He had been enduring the "love" of Grace and Henry for about an hour: the two of them were rolling Fisher Price trucks over his paws, trying to poke him in the eyeballs, following him around relentlessly and screaming joyously at the experienced of being with the dog (his eyes were silent and long-suffering during this whole time), patting him hard on the head (but affectionately), and trying to pull his tail (and being stopped every time by this or that grown-up). When Jean and Pat showed up, Hudson ran at them in a feverish frenzy. "HELP! SAVE ME! WHAT IS GOING ON? WHERE IS THE RAWHIDE? WHY DID THAT GIRL OVER THERE COME AND ABDUCT ME IN THE NIGHT? WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN??"

-- After Jean and Pat left, the Grace and Henry frenzy reached such a pitch that they were like the cartoon of the Tasmanian Devil. Their limbs were blurry, their legs flying this way and that, their faces a frenetic flash as they raced by. They were just having such a good time chasing each other up and down the hallway, and running around the circle of the house, screaming like absolute maniacs. Flashbacks to my own childhood.

-- It was a good day. What Thanksgiving should be. We missed Bren and Cash, most definitely ... but still, it was good to be together.

A grey and chilly Saturday

As I walked from 8th Street over to Jimmy's - I passed by the big rotating sculpture on Lafayette (which was gone for a while, but now it's back). The streets were packed with people, and everyone was bundled up even though it wasn't THAT cold. That is one of my favorite areas of town even though it's always a madhouse - because when you look down to your right as you cross that street - you can see the Public, and Joe's Pub, and the Stella Adler studio - and there are flags, and the buildings are massive, with red stone - huge blocks of red stone - and enormous arched windows - and there's something almost SOVIET about that particular view. The flags billowing just say PUBLIC or JOE'S PUB and have the plays of the season listed ... but there's something about that particular vista that is my favorite one in the whole city. Even though it looks rather Soviet, as I said, it also has this feel of creativity. It's a great block. And as I crossed that street - I could hear the sound of three fiddlers - who were standing over by the rotating sculpture, fiddling away, bluegrass music with a strangely Celtic feel. And there were people all around, people wearing scarves, and puffy coats - and even though it was 2:30 pm, 3 o'clock - the sky had a lowered heavy feel to it. No rain, just heavy, and still. The fiddlers and the Soviet block just added to the richness of the atmosphere. I don't think I could live in that area - way too much foot traffic - but I wish it was more in my everyday path.

Jimmy's was packed. Warm, kind of humid. After the chill of the outdoors. Jimmy's is under the street, so you feel like you're going into a secret hideaway, a speakeasy, a hobbit hole. Down there - the walls are whitewashed - and yet the light is dim. Huge wooden kegs hover above, lining the ceiling. The doorways have these strange arches to them - and the place has a meandering shape to it, so you feel like you're in a Renaissance-era tavern. And you're below the street. If you sit at the bar - you can look out the window and see people's feet walking by above.

In honor of New Orleans, they were serving jumbalaya and gumbo in little plastic bowls. Dee-lish. I had a couple pints of dark frothy beer, and chowed on spicy jumbalaya, waiting for my sisters to show. Jean and Pat arrived first - I saw them through the window clattering down the cast-iron steps. It was so good to see them both! We huddled up in a corner of the bar, talking, eating, drinking. The noise was quite loud. Jimmy himself came over to us to chat. We applauded him for getting Mike Viola. We applauded him because we knew how much this meant to Siobhan. We were beside ourselves. Siobhan sees Mike Viola play once a week at his regular gig - it's a ritual for her - but Jean and Pat and I have never seen him play. So we were PSYCHED.

Siobhan arrived, lugging her guitar and keyboard behind her. She looked fantastic, her hair long and blonde-ish - and her outfit was vaguely Janet Jackson circa 1991. Gorgeous.

But you know. The main thing was: she was opening for Mike Viola! A surreal experience, indeed. How do you "play it cool"? You don't. How do you be "over" getting to introduce your idol - and sharing the stage with him? You don't.

So Siobhan went off to set up. Jean, Pat and I hung out and eventually went and grabbed seats in the back room. Nate then joined us. It was great. Siobhan's peeps. So for a while it was just us in there ... oh, and also the owner's daughter who is, uhm, 4 years old? They were projecting a cartoon onto the blackboard which is at the back of the stage - and she sat in the back - wearing her pink tights - playing with her dolls, and making a little carousel turn and turn. jabbering away to her mother, and being completely at home in that environment. Every time I see that little girl she is in a costume of some kind. She has her face painted like a cat. She has on a tutu. She has on a pointy princess cone hat. I love it. She lives her life in costume. Chattering away. So that was the background for us.

We ended up having a great talk about books we loved as kids. It was so fun. Nate actually remembers Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and me - or whatever it was called. The OTHER book written by the great EL Konigsburg. It had been one of my favorites so it was so GREAT that he remembered it too!!! Nate told me that he re-read Where the Red Fern Grows - one of those books we all had to read in 7th grade - must have been in the curriculum at the time - and that he thought it stunk the second time around. "The language is all: 'Oh GEE, maw and paw' and shit and it's just horrible." We talked about going back and re-reading them - and seeing which books stand up as literature - and which books just, uhm, don't. You know, the ones that are obviously just "for kids" and once you outgrow them you can't see the merit in them at all. But then there are the books that are just good books PERIOD. Jean and I mentioned Tiger Eyes as an example of a book that is just a good book PERIOD. But it was a really fun conversation.

Eventually more and more people arrived. Jean and I saw Mike Viola arrive. We recognized him immediately. He was with a woman who was obviously his wife and he had his daughter with him who is ... 3? Maybe younger than that. The show was early in the day, hence the presence of children. So the two kids sat in the back, jabbering away ... The funniest moment was when Viola finally took the stage - and he stood up there, tuning his guitar for about 2 seconds - and his daughter shouted out, clapping her hands, "YAYYYYYYYYYY". It was so hysterical. He was just tuning his guitar. But she was very validating of this process for him. At one point - he started messing around with Siobhan's keyboard which she had left up on the stage - he was trying to get a certain sound to come out - He kept trying different chords - said to all of us, "I dont feel awkward right now ... do any of you feel awkward?" Ha. But anyway, his daughter just got kinda freaked out by the fact that he was at the KEYBOARD and not playing the GUITAR. It totally stressed her out. She became very quickly inconsolable. hahahaha And what I loved was that Viola heard her begin to weep like an Italian widow - and he quickly gave up the keyboard, picked up the guitar, and launched into a happy song just for her. "I know it has minor chords, baby, but it is a happy song!" We just were all very taken with the daughter - and his communications with her in the back of the room. She was adorable - totally involved in the show. Filled with grief at his experimentation with the keyboard. Filled with pride and joy at the sight of him tuning his guitar. Hysterical.

Siobhan played about 5 or 6 songs - she was wonderful - we were all so proud and psyched. Mike Viola clapping and cheering for Siobhan - being so cool and supportive - Siobhan doing such a great job - it was a really really good afternoon.

And it was doubly thrilling to get to see Mike Viola play - and play some of the songs I've been listening to almost non-stop over the last couple months. He opened with "Hang on Mike" (sniff, sniff) - which we all knew - so that was awesome, so fun to see him in person. He's very likeable. Seemed very cool, funny, sweet - and was sweet with our sister, so that's all that really matters.

Easter Sunday

So of course. I grew up Catholic. Easter was a big deal. Well, not just Easter. Holy Week beforehand. All of Lent. Ash Wednesday. Palm Sunday. Seriously. For a kid, that is a high-maintenance month, religiously.

Naturally, on Easter Sunday we had to go to church.

But afterwards - MUCH steam had to be let off.

So what did we do?

We proceeded to stick the halves of plastic easter eggs into our eyeball sockets and then we staggered around the neighborhood, like zombies. We would hide in bushes and then slowly emerge juuuuuust as a car went by. There are pictures of all of us peeking out from behind trees, Sleestak eyes goggling in the Easter Sunday morning light. We stood standing stockstill, spread across the street - facing cars as they came near - cars filled with happy religious families coming back from mass ...

and this is what they saw as they approached ....

Happy Easter, everybody.

Why I am wearing a straw cowboy hat, a down vest, a pale blue sweatshirt beneath that, RED dickies, and suede Wallabies is all just part of the cornucopia of mysteries which are dissolving forever (thankfully) in the fog of time.

Let's try another one!

Here's one of my favorite pictures. It is me and my cousin Marianne (or one of my cousins named Marianne) leaping off the diving board together at my Uncle Jimmy's pool.

Cousins!!!

So the O'Malley cousins - and siblings - and aunt - and spouses - all got together at O'Flaherty's Pub last night for my cousin Emma's birthday.

An amazing feat. We are all so busy - and to coordinate even CHRISTMAS takes unbelievable planning - nobody's schedule is set ... but dammit, we organized the entire thing over 10 minutes of frantic emailing that very morning. We were all VERY proud of ourselves.

Of course my dear aunt Regina keeps saying stuff to us like, "I don't know how to email." We all were like baffled by this, like: "What the hell are you talking about?? You don't know how to email? Ya press send ..."

But then of course, Emma (her daughter) said something about the 25 emails in her mailbox from all of us later that day - and she said, "I wrote to Liam - cause I didn't know how to reply to everybody."

So perhaps there really are some email issues here. Kerry said patiently, "You just press 'Reply All'."

heh heh Anyway - we all couldn't get over how easy it had been to plan this dern gathering! The email was essential.

We sat around a long table by the roaring fire at O'Flaherty's and we all talked at once. 5 conversations going on simultaneously.

-- My cousin Ian's band just had a show recently - and nobody told us about it. Regina said she didn't know how to email us the information. We all were like: "What?" Then Regina said, "I know you're all busy ..." Kerry said, "Yes. We are all too busy to support our cousins. That's very true." Anyway - next time, Ian - we will all be there!!

-- Liam and Lydia had a helluva fall - what with her insane job, and his pneumonia and his jury duty. His birthday is coming up ... so I already need to gear up for another karaoke extravaganza which will obliterate me for about 3 days. I still don't think I have fully recovered from last year's party. Also - Liam is reading The Count of Monte Cristo and is absolutely looooooooving it. I've never read it - or maybe I did in 10th grade required reading, which kind of doesn't count - so now I think I have to give it a shot, based on his recommendation.

-- Emma is busy in her film class yet again - and has a SERIOUS case of senioritis!! She's such an awesome girl. We're already planning to drive up for the film festival again this year. I think it made her happy that we all got together to celebrate her birthday.

-- It was wonderful to see Adam and Kerry - it's been a long time. The last was at their apartment for a Red Sox game this fall - when Kerry served us ice cream in small Red Sox helmets. heh heh heh It's always good to see those two. What a pair. Kerry with her FABULOUS phone that can basically do everything for her - unbelievable. "Okay, and look here ... see what it can do here?" Kerry, Siobhan and I all just raved at each other about Bill Simmons' book and how great it is.

-- Oh, and I was requested to "do the 'Break it Up' lady" for the group. Which I did - to thunderous laughter. hahahaha It was fun - I haven't done that imitation in a long time. It's fun to be evil.

-- Siobhan is having a great time recording her new CD - everyone is really excited about it - we already are counting the days to the CD release party. I'm so proud of her. She's really worked her ass off to get to this point.

-- We heard that Seamus' first word was "Ted". As in Ted Williams. Yup. This is my family.

-- And Regina informed me (and I have no idea how I didn't know this before) - but when she performed at the Kennedy Center Honors show in the early 1980s, she was introduced to Cary Grant. What??? She was taken over to meet him - and he was old - with the white hair - the big thick glasses - and spectacular looking. He shook her hand, saying, "Very nice to meet you" in that classic Cary Grant voice. I am blown away by this information. I was like: "How on earth did I not know this? Tell. Me. Everything. Right. Now."

Much laughter, and eating, and toasting and we sang Happy Birthday to our dear cousin Emma.

Being a cousin in the O'Malley family is not something to be taken lightly. It's a commitment. It's kind of gorgeous, actually, if I really think about it.

Family. Family is IT.

The birthday girl

This is a re-post - in praise of my cousin Emma - who has turned 18. We're all getting together tonight to celebrate her birthday.

If you have ever read John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany, then you will know the relationship that I have with my throng of cousins. John Irving completely GETS the specificity of the whole cousin-thing - and it's really hard to describe if you haven't experienced it, or if you hate your cousins, or if you have no cousins. Owen Meany just GETS it. There is a manic quality to my relationships with my cousins - on both sides of the family - mainly because we would see each other rarely, and when we did see each other, we had to cram in months of fun into a 2 hour period. So we all would lose our collective minds. The FUN that was had was absolutely frenetic. Somebody always ended up bloody. Someone always cried. But the FUN. Insane. I have many many cousins. The oldest is in his 40s now, and the youngest is a baby. Typical Irish stuff.

Emma is a teenager. However, her soul is probably about 45 years old. Her soul has ALWAYS been about 45 years old. Even when she was 3 years old, she had this wise-cracking world-weary persona. It was as though she always had an imaginary cigar clenched between her lips. She was a 3 year old Robert Evans: a freckled chubby-cheeked toddler, making weary wisecracks, saying stuff like, "Lemme tell ya, sweetheart, that's what life is all about."

Uhm ... what? You're three.

It makes me think that this is definitely not her first time around on this planet.

There is a picture of Emma, standing on a hill in Los Angeles, with the Hollywood sign unfurling behind her in all its blindingly white weirdness. Emma must be about 3 years old in the picture. She is wearing huge movie-star sunglasses (not kid's glasses, but adult glasses, so they are enormous on her face - It looks like Glenn Close as Sonny Von Bulow), and a scarf around her throat. She holds up her arms in a victory gesture, and her face is absolutely insane. Her mouth is open, she is obviously screaming in celebrity triumph. It's like she's Harvey Weinstein or something.

But she's THREE.

Well, now Emma is a teenager. She's a beautiful young woman, still with the freckles and the rosy cheeks, still with the same "lemme tell ya, sweetheart, that's life" world-weary attitude.

Here is one of my favorite anecdotes, which will illuminate Emma's personality.

My cousin Mike got married a couple years ago. It was a massive affair, with hundreds of people. Emma was 12 years old at the time. I sat next to Emma in the pew. Emma dresses like she's Mary J. Blige or something. Big puffy coats, big chunky sneakers which match the coat ... Anyway, at the wedding, Emma was in a powder-blue Mary J. Blige ensemble. She looked great.

The ceremony was wonderful - very detailed - very traditional Catholic - and Emma, throughout the entire thing, peppered me with questions. Whispered under her breath.

"What's happening now?"
"What are those candles? What's that?"
"And what does that mean?"
"What's that about?"

Finally, I hissed at her, "Emma. I don't know."

There was a long pause. Emma did not respond. She turned back to look up at the pulpit, and didn't say anything. I continued to focus on the beautiful ceremony.

Then, I heard her say, out of the corner of her mouth, her eyes still looking forward, "Hey. Lose the 'tude."

I couldn't help it - her attitude was so right ON that I just burst into laughter spontaneously.

She was so RIGHT. I had a 'tude. She called me on it.

"Emma, you're right. I have a 'tude. I am sorry."

We still laugh about "lose the 'tude".

A couple of years ago, I was busy at work on a one-woman show. I am not going to say what it is about, because I fear piracy. But suffice it to say, it is based on the life of a real person. Who had an insane husband. This woman would write letters, describing how she could hear him moaning down the hall in psychic agony.

Emma and her mom were visiting my parents while I was home - and we were sitting out on the patio. Regina (Emma's mom) asked if she could hear a little bit of what I was working on. I said sure, fine. I gave a bit of background, before I launched into what I had written.

"So she has an insane husband, and he would moan all night down the hallway, and she would lock the doors of her study to keep him out."

Then I did my little reading - which, frankly, I thought went very well, and I was very proud of it. Basically, I was moved by MYSELF.

When I was done, there was a pause. Regina, who is also an actress, a wonderful actress, was deep in thought. I was excited for the conversation that would ensue. What did they "get"? What was their response? Did they understand? Had I translated my passion for this topic in a way that an outsider would be able to click into? Very exciting.

Then Emma piped up. "Hey, Sheila, you know what you should do? When you're doing that monologue during the production - here's how it should be done." (Suddenly, again, with the Harvey Weinstein persona.) "You should be standing downstage - and everything should be dark - and then - as you do the monologue - slowly - way over in the corner - a circle of light should come up on your husband and this is what he should be doing..." (Emma hunched over, biting her nails nervously, her eyes flitting about in a panic, and she began to rock - back and forth, back and forth - making strange odd moaning sounds.)

The precious little spell of my monologue was broken by this hysterical and almost Mel Brooks interpretation of insanity - and ... it all started seeming deeply deeply funny to me ...

Suddenly the madness of the husband is going to be used as a comic device??

Regina said, "Emma, please, let's have a serious conversation about Sheila's work."

Emma kept rocking back and forth, back and forth, rolling her eyes around in her head, making these cow-like moaning sounds.

In spite of herself, Regina started laughing ... I started laughing too - I'm laughing now...

Emma kept going. "So it'll go like this." She stood up straight, as me, and said, as though she were doing the production, "So I have always felt that life must go on - and that I must always focus on my work -" Suddenly Emma hunched over herself, and started rocking manically - moaning like a cow - Then she straightened up again, as me, and said, "My work. My work is the most important thing." Back to the lowing-like-a-cow husband in the corner.

Regina and I were CRYING.

One other Emma story -

Regina, Emma, my other cousin Rachel and I went to the anniversary production of "Forbidden Broadway", here in New York. The audience was full of Regina's old friends, people we all knew. It was a BLAST. Again, Emma looked like a little Irish ghetto goddess, with her puffy coat, and her big sneakers. Emma knew mostly everyone, too, because they were friends of her mother. One of the guys was the head writer on a major soap opera, I can't remember which one. Days of Our Lives, or something.

Emma buttonholed him before the show. This is a paraphrase of the conversation, but here's the spirit of it:

Emma said to him, point-blank, "Okay, listen, I just don't like what you have done to my favorite character."

He was fabulous, whoever he was. He said, "Oh no, which one?"

She told him how she didn't approve of the plot-lines for her favorite character, and that she thought that another actor (who was in most of the scenes with her favorite) was terrible.

"It's boring, my friend, boring." Emma said in a tired voice, basically scolding the head-writer of One Life to Live. She called him "my friend", in this kind of world-weary cynical tone. "That whole plot line is very boring, my friend."

He completely took her concerns seriously, which is why I loved him. He nodded seriously, and said, "Yes, we have had some problems with that actor. You won't have to watch him for much longer."

"Well, that's good to hear. Because he's very boring." (Again, I had the impression that she was chewing on a cigar, as though she were Jack Warner or something.)

This man was hungry for more feedback from the teenager. "What else, Emma? What else?"

She launched into an in-depth analysis of every element of the show - character development problems, boring side-plots, bad actor issues - She also made sure she complimented him on what DID work. He was very grateful for her praise (which she gave to him with the tired attitude of throwing him a bone - which was equally hysterical). I loved this guy. I loved how he was with Emma.

He said, "I should have you come in to one of our script meetings."

She is, after all, representative of a huge chunk of their audience.

As she continued on her long analytical monologue, completely unafraid, and also completely clear on what did work and what didn't work - I suddenly saw that the victory-dance in front of the Hollywood sign when she was three could actually be a prophecy of things to come. This girl could do anything she wanted to do. She really could. She could be a stand-up comedian (OBVIOUSLY) - she could be an actress - but she also could be a movie producer. Hell, Emma could run a movie studio someday.

She is a lovely girl, a kind person, very funny, and also - mixed in with all of that - she is a wise-cracking world-weary cynical movie producer who dresses as though she is Mary J. Blige.

I also love that she told me to "lose the 'tude." I'll never forget it. I needed to be taken down a peg, and she did it. She talks straight, she tells it like it is.

Whatever Emma ends up doing - wherever her life takes her - I know that I will watch with baited breath. It looks like it is going to be an incredible journey.

Happy birthday, Emma!

Things learned at karaoke last night

-- I had no idea that I knew all the words to "Love lifts up where we belong." Not only do I know the words, but I know the harmony lines.

-- I had no idea that Kelly Clarkson's songs are so awesome. Go, Siobhan!! Listening to Siobhan and Becca kick some serious butt with that one Kelly Clarkson song (Miss Indifference? Miss Self-Sustaining Empowerment? Miss I Rule the Universe? What was the name of it) made me a Kelly Clarkson fan. I say that with pride.

-- I had forgotten how much I love Jesus Christ Superstar, and I realized, yet again, what an intense bonding experience can be had with people when you realize that you are all musical theatre geeks. To hear a bunch of 20 and 30 somethings sing "Heaven on their minds" at the tops of their lungs was a joy indeed. "JESUS. You've started to believe ... the things they say of you ... You really do believe ... this talk of God is TRUUUUUUUUUUUEEEE ..."

-- I learned that Eminem has phenomenal breath control during my version of "Lose Yourself". Holy crap. I nearly passed out from lack of oxygen to the brain.

-- I literally had no idea what the words to "Africa" by Toto were. Did you know that there's something about a "leopardess" on the "Serengheti"? Who knew??

It was a great birthday bash for my dear sister, Siobhan. Just what Siobhan wanted, I think. And everyone had a blast: Siobhan's friends from grade school, high school, college, her present-day life ... all doing karaoke in this small sound-proof room at this joint on Avenue A. What a blast.

And today, Siobhan and a friend are driving up to Fenway Park to see the Sox. Could it get any better??

Weird thing: one of Siobhan's really good friends is a kid I used to babysit. And there he was. I did "Love lifts up where we belong" with him as a duet (and he did a kick-ass Joe Cocker - everyone was howling). But how funny. To be doing a raging karaoke duet with a kid I BABYSAT FOR.

I am old, Father William!!

To my father

... who played catch with me in the backyard, for years, during my childhood ... as dinner was being prepared. We threw the ball back and forth in the cool summer night, with the fireflies blinking ... until it got too dark to see the ball.

... who, if you ask him a random question about pretty much anything, will stand up, walk over to a random bookcase, pull out a book (without having to look for it for longer than 10.2 seconds), and read to you a relevant quote that will answer your question

... who made multiplication-table flashcards for me when I was in 4th or 5th grade and really struggling with math. He sat down and just drilled them with me, over and over and over ... I still use some of his little mental tricks when I multiply stuff

... who would tell us stories, when we were kids, about his Boy Scout trips. With the flash flood. And there was a story involving swallowing a goldfish too. We would request to hear these stories over and over ...

... who loves to body-surf. When we all were little, we used to run after his body, as he careened by us in the middle of some wave, and try to catch a ride on his back.

... who was my tutor/guide when I first read Ulysses a couple summers ago. He was RIGHT there. I would call him with questions. I would read him one sentence, with an unfamiliar name in it, and he would reply without a thought: "That's from the Eolus episode. So-and-so was the editor of the Irish Times at the time." Astonishing. Also, I was reading one section, and just WAS NOT GETTING IT. What the HELL is going on? My father walked by, and I said, "Dad - I am baffled. I just started up a new section, but I have NO IDEA what is going on." I gave him the book, my dad scanned the page - he didn't even READ the page - just glanced at it, and said, "This is from the Cyclops episode." He hadn't looked long enough to take in the text itself, so I said, "Uh ... how do you know?" He held out the book to me: "It's in first person. Look at how many times the word 'I' appears on the page." All he did was look at the text on the page, and he saw all the: "says I" "I said" "so I said" "says I" "says I" ... and it's true. If you just glance at a page of that section, in a cursory way, all you can see is I I I I I I I I I. A ton of "eyes". But I never could have seen that without my father. He helped me crack the code of that book. He helped me see in a new way. You couldn't have a better Joycean guide than my dad.

... who is a wonderful grandfather. He looks at Cashel, and beams.

... who loves all of my friends. Mainly because they love me and treat me well. He is fiercely protective of his kids. You're good to his kid? He will let you in. You're bad to his kid? You are TOAST. He is all about family. He would prefer to sit around surrounded by his kids than do pretty much anything else.

... who pulled his 4 kids out of school when we were kids, and took us over to Ireland. I grumbled about all "the stupid monasteries" at the time, but it was a growing experience, a time that changed me forever. We drove, and went to graveyards, and abbeys, and monasteries ... He made us pay attention.

... who always made us pay attention to our heritage. We grew up having an allowance ritual. We had to memorize certain things in order to get ... oh ... 50 feckin' cents, or whatever it is. We had to memorize books by certain Irish authors (we each were assigned a different author - I had Yeats). We also had to memorize the US Presidents. Kind of says it all. It's wonderful to have BOTH. Appreciation of where you came from, and appreciation for where you are now.

... who is an amazing gardener. You should see our side yard. He's an artist.

... who has come to see pretty nearly every damn show I have ever done. That's dedication.

... who is the quintessential Stand-up Guy.

... who is an absolute Red Sox fanatic. I mean, we all are - but my father especially. He knows everything. Not just about the Red Sox, but about baseball in general. Again, random statistics are there for him, at a moment's notice. He's great to talk to about baseball.

... who has helped me to understand James Joyce. I decided a couple years ago (believe it or not, I came to Joyce late) that I needed to just dig in and do it. Read every word. Read the biographies. Just ... see how I felt about it. James Joyce changed my life. But it was my dad's guidance that helped me to "get" James Joyce.

... who loves art. He and my mother are always taking random afternoon drives into the west of Massachusetts, or the northeastern corner of Connecticut, to go to some random museum that has 3 Edward Hoppers, or 1 Winslow Homer sketch ... They're incredible. All of us children laugh about it. "Where are Mum and Dad?" "Oh ... at some museum in Portsmouth or something." But it's a great thing.

... who reads my blog every day. Sometimes he comments. I love it when he does.

... who supports me in whatever I decide to take on. He's there. He's just plain there.

... who every year, at Thanksgiving, when we go around the table and say what we're thankful for, he says: "I say it every year, and I'll say it again this year. I'm thankful for Sheila Mary." (My mother.) Every year. Every year he says it. (Lump in throat right now)

It's his birthday today. My father. Every day I thank God for him.

Here's an EXTREMELY funny (to me, anyway) Diary Friday entry about playing Trivial Pursuit with my dad, my mother, and Jean. hahahaha

Happy birthday, Dad!!

Film festival

Last night, Lydia and I drove up into Westchester County to see my cousin Emma's film, which was in a film festival. My cousin Emma is 17 (I raved about her here), and she takes a film class in high school, so this festival showed off the work of all the students over the year.

First of all, and this sounds kind of lame: it's always exciting to leave the city. Lydia and I, when we got in her car, felt like we were going on a massive road trip. The drive was 30 minutes long, mkay? But still: WE WERE LEAVING THE ISLAND. Big deal. We drove by the massive wall-collapse on 9A ... woah. To actually see it ... you can't even believe it. A landslide of tremendous proportions, an entire wall collapse - and the wall is HIGH, man ... so there's a hell of a lot of "wall" to collapse. At that point in the wall, it has become a huge rampart, like a medieval castle. I cannot believe, having actually seen it with my own eyes, that nobody was killed. Unbelievable.

The festival was at Emma's high school, in the cavernous school theatre. (Damn. I didn't have a theatre like that in MY high school. We had a piddly little rickety space called "The Music Room". Emma's theatre was like an old Broadway house.) It was so fun - the place was packed, with students, parents ... You could feel the excitement, it was so cool.

Emma is a big star, and it was neat to see her in her element. Her brother Ian was there, too, and it was great to see him. We all just laughed when we saw each other ... because everything felt so random, and so funny. Like: what? Where are we right now? We're seeing each other where???

I think the students had to each do a music video, and a short film. So we saw all of that work. Some of it was hilarious. Some of it was touching. You could see all of the concerns as themes in the work - the main thing was grades, getting into college, stressing over tests ... A really funny short film called "The Valedictorian" was about a girl who decided to knock off her main competition for valedictorian. It was hysterical. There were kung fu matches involved. And some slo-mo action, as she chased down each student she felt threatened by.

Emma's film was a mockumentary about high school called "Welcome to the Jungle". heh heh heh Emma directed it, wrote it, and played a part in it as well. There were multiple characters, all who had interviews with the camera - in true mockumentary style. FUNNY. Emma played a girl who was so obsessed with Harry Potter that she actually bordered on insane. She sat crouched in the library, hunched over herself, murmuring up to the camera about Harry Potter and quidditch ... She said, in one of the faux interviews in the movie, that her #1 choice for college was Hogwarts. This character was 19 years old, but she was still in high school. She was obviously a WEIRDO. Her boyfriend, in her mind, was "Harry", a great man, and FAR superior to the stupid high school boys around her. She mentioned that she had to speak to her Chemistry teacher about getting some chemicals for her sorcery potions. And the last shot of the movie is of this character, already in line outside of Borders, saving her spot for when the next book comes out ... uhm ... months from now??? It was so damn funny. People were cheering, laughing ... I was so proud of her.

Her music video was for "The World You Love", by Jimmy Eat World. I thought it was fantastic. It had minimal plot: a girl is getting ready to leave her parents house to go to college, and she starts flashing back on all the good times she had in high school. The memory parts were in black and white, the present-day was in color. The memory scenes were beautifully filmed: really good camera work. We see a group of friends at a party, and we get images, flashes: of girls laughing together, people dancing, random shots of laughing faces, we see them jumping on a trampoline in the back yard ... it was a collage. Brief flashes of people talking, laughing ... they acknowledged the camera, so the whole thing ended up having a very documentary feel to it. Like: this was a real group of friends. And now high school is over. The music video ends back in the present day, with the girl getting into her car, obviously leaving for school (we see a Tulane sticker on the back window) ... and as she drives away, you can tell that she's thinking over all her memories, saying good-bye to them ... It was just terrific. Terrific. One of the high school girls sitting behind us said, when it was over, "Oh my God ... that was so sad." Then, a second later, to her group of friends around her, "You guys ... you guys ... it's almost over!" Meaning: her time in high school, their experience as high school friends ...

So the video worked its magic, Emma! Great job.

Lydia and I were really glad we made the trek (the long long long long 30 minute trek) up to Westchester to see Emma's movies. It was awesome.

Emma has her prom this Saturday, and her group of friends were looking to rent a limo. Emma said, "They wanted to get one of those Humvee limos, but I nixed that." Good job, Emma. I hate those things.

The Boston Marathon Continuum

My grandparents lived in Wellesley (actually, my grandmother still lives there, in the same house). Wellesley is just about the halfway mark in the Boston marathon - which just took place a couple of days ago. It's always in April, and watching the Boston marathon was part of my childhood experience. A yearly thing, like Thanksgiving, or going to camp.

When we were kids, we made a whole day of the marathon. It was hugely exciting. Some of my "Boston marathon memories" go way back and become fuzzy and dream-like - so I must have been very small. These qualify as "first memories", because they all reside in the senses - not the intellect. Going to my Uncle Jimmy's apartment before heading out to the marathon. I think it was Uncle Jimmy, my godfather. I remember a really thick rug. Cool air-conditioned air. A beanbag chair. Cold ginger ale.

Later memories though: we would convene at my grandparents house. My cousins would also be there, because the Boston Marathon is a big deal. And we LOVED that we got to see all the runners at the halfway point.

My cousins and I would mix Kool-aid in big pictchers, or we would get Gatorade, or we would mix sugar-free Crystal Light-y stuff, and then take a couple packages of Dixie cups from out of my grandmother's cupboards, and traipse down the hill to join the crowds lining the street. Everyone waited for the first runners to appear. You could sense it - the streets stretched back, empty, waiting to be pounded over by the runners.

Feeling suffused with seriousness and purpose, we would pour out Dixie cups of liquid, line them up behind us, and wait, peering up the street, tense, thrilled.

Then - one by one - they would come.

The first runners who pounded by never stopped for a drink. They were about to finish a Marathon in less than 3 hours, and were usually from Ethiopia. These people are barely human, in terms of their endurance. They do not need Gatorade. They are definitely in the lonely realm of the long-distance runner.

We watched them pound by, in awe. It looked like they were on the first mile of the race, as opposed to the 13th. No sign of strain, and intense speed. Amazing.

Then - we could feel it. We just could feel the crowds approaching. The throngs of other runners, the ones way behind the leaders, the pack. We knew that they were going to NEED us. We trembled with the responsibility, which felt awesome to us, as 8 and 9 year old kids.

I remember holding out cups with my wee 9 year old arm, and a thundering sweaty giant would swoop by, snatch it out of my hand, and pour it over his head, his mouth open and gaping, without even stopping.

There was a skill to this hand-off. Definitely. I made a couple of mistakes at first, but I learned quickly. I never made the same mistake twice.

You had to keep a very gentle touch on your Dixie cup. No gripping. You didn't want the runner to have to struggle to take the cup away.

You had to be ready to let go.

Hold it very lightly with your fingertips. Keep your body out of the road, only let your arm go into the road. They are looking for you. As they pound down the pavement, they are looking for you. They need you. Make your arm stick out, stand out.

Your job, should you choose to accept it, is to make this drink-exchange as easy as possible for the runner.

You must be invisible. You must merge with the Dixie cup. And then the second they grasp it, you must let go of it. That way, nothing will be spilled.

Oh, my cousins and I spent rapturous hours getting all of this down to a science. We loved this job. We loved being all important, like little Boston Marathon Florence Nightingales. We felt essential to the effort, we knew we were a part of the big day, not just spectators.

I remember the first time we went to the finish line. We had watched the first big batch of runners go by, holding out Dixie cups to them, and then one of our aunts - or maybe it was Uncle Jimmy - piled us all into the car to go watch the finish of the Marathon. Obviously, we would beat the runners there. Being at the finish line (I was about 9 or 10) was a whole other story, and not at all fun. The runners were past the need of liquids. We could not help them. A Dixie cup became meaningless. We saw grown adults (men and women) weeping, being held up by their parents or spouse, we saw people throwing up, we saw people leaned over spitting onto the ground - draped with these silver Mylar jackets - I think that's the name of the body-heat material - So the runners at the finish line, lying on the ground, covered in silver, falling against their friends, being unable to speak, all wearing silver tin-foil cloaks, was a surreal sight. We saw people lying on the ground surrounded by doctors, while others staggered around in a dazed way looking like disoriented refugees.

By that point, after 26 miles, people's personalities have broken down. I remember reading some quote somewhere, from someone who has run a ton of marathons: "A marathon is actually 2 races. The first 20 miles, and then the last 6." Having watched marathons at all stages of the race (mile 13, mile 18, mile 10, and then mile 26) I can say, without a doubt, that that is the case. People are still themselves at mile 13. People are no longer themselves at mile 26. (Except for the speed-of-light Ethiopians who didn't need our Dixie cups.)

I saw this phenomenon again when I watched my friend Liz cross the finish line at the New York marathon a couple years ago. I saw her at the halfway mark, and then we went to Central Park to see her cross the finish line. The transformation of human beings, runners we had just seen an hour or so before, was startling. Unbelievable. I'm not just talking physically, although you can see people obviously struggling with pain. It's the other transformation - the psychological transformation - that really struck me. The look in the eyes.

When I was a little kid at the finish line, I thought all of that vomiting and falling-over stuff was terrible. I felt so BAD for everyone. I much preferred standing at the halfway mark with my cousins, watching the giants thundering down towards us, holding out their arms for our Dixie cups of Gatorade.

O'Malleys on the loose

My cousin Liam had his birthday last night. O'Malleys from all around descended onto the city, to celebrate. Liam's wife Lydia organized the whole night, and did an incredible job. I'm still kind of all verklempt about the whole thing. I love my family. I had moments when I looked around the bar, and saw cousins sitting and blabbing with each other, my uncles and dad all sitting together talking, friends of the family talking with multiple O'Malley cousins, my brother, my sisters, my parents ... just the whole O'Malley THING ... and think: God. This is truly fantastic. To me, there is pretty much nothing more important than my family. I can't think of one thing that would win out. Ever.

Babies have been born since last we all saw one another. Seamus ... Henry ... there are babies out there who I STILL have not met. Fiona comes to mind. And so everyone had digital cameras or little iPod thingies ... so we could all revel in the new O'Malley babies. And we all talked about how this baby has THAT mouth, that baby has THIS chin ... you know. Family stuff. It's all about the baby-worship.

Photo albums were passed around, filled with old snapshots of Liam, and his siblings when they were kids ... late 1960s photos, early 70s photos ... photos with the white border to them, some color photos, mostly black and white. There is this sort of infamous picture of my cousin Liam, my cousin Mike (they're brothers), and me, all sitting on the couch. I am a baby, I must be 6 or 7 months?? And so Liam is 3 and Mike is 2. It is SUCH A FUNNY PICTURE ... basically because none of us have changed AT ALL. I think the 3 of us now, as adults, should re-create that picture, because it's classic. I am in a onesie, I am smiling goofily at the camera (is that a real smile? Or is it just gas? Hard to tell). I am a small lima bean shaped creature, I cannot move, but I am a happy baby. Mike looks like he is being FORCED to sit still for the picture, kind of pouting and scowling at the camera, and he's sitting with his knee up, and you can blatantly see the cuts on his knee. And Liam, with the sweet face, sits there, smiling openly at the camera. The contrast between Mike and Liam is hilarious. Meanwhile, I lie propped up between them, oblivious.

I got to catch up with my cousin Kerry, my cousin Tim, my cousin Marianne ... her husband ... Pretty much everybody is talking about the Patriots now. Not QUITE as much as we talked about the Red Sox, but still. The Patriots are on everyone's minds.

And then came the MANIA of karaoke. We rented a room at the weirdest place on the planet, called Orange Valve. (Highly recommend it to New Yorkers who love karaoke by the way. The rooms you can rent are really comfortable, you can totally settle in there. It was a blast.) It was our entire clan, in this weirdly lit cheesy room, with mirrors, and strange little glowing space heaters, and low plushy couches ... but it was filled with my FAMILY. So incongruous, and funny. Like ... my uncles, aunts, my parents ... a multi-generational group clustered in what looked like a cheese-ball decadent Miami Vice set. The drinks were INSANELY expensive, and also so watered down as to be irritating. I ordered a scotch and soda from the terrifying Japanese female bartender, and I watched how little scotch she put in the glass. Usually they try to be a bit more subtle about it, but this bartender did not care. It was a glass of soda, with a teensy weensy splash of scotch. The next time I came up for a drink, I ordered a straight scotch, and she SO did not want to give it to me!! She gave me this look, like: Hmm. I can't get out of this one ...

But still, it's okay. It's all good. Terrifying-Japanese-bartender-lady was a part of the night. Part of the comedy of the night. (And yes. That is how we all referred to her. "So have you had a run-in yet with terrifying-Japanese-bartender-lady?" "No, man ... no. Have you?")

The karaoke began. Liam is basically a rock star. The guy knows every song ever written. My sister Jean is pretty much on the same level. They know all the lyrics, they don't need to read the words ...

My parents had never been to a karaoke place, and were crying with laughter. Just CRYING. Actually, we all were. The VIDEOS they played, too, behind the lyrics to all the songs ... I can barely describe how ridiculous they were. It was a loop of footage, completely random. A boat going through the waves, shots of Venice, strange shots of what looked like Octoberfest, guys in lederhosen, random shots of Russian churches, a random shot of an Amish farmer on his horse and buggy (I'm not kidding ... and yet that image is on the screen while my cousin Tim and my sisters are doing a KICK-ASS version of "Superstitious" ... like ... what? Amish? Superstitious?) My parents were like: where on earth ARE WE RIGHT NOW?

Liam and I pretty much brought down the house with our rocking version of "Lithium". Yeah, baby. Lithium. I'm so happy. Cause today I found my friends. They're in my head.

Liam and I also kicked some ass with "Baby You're a Rich Man". First of all, I had no idea I knew all the words to that song. "How does it feel to be one of the beautiful people??" I know every stinkin' word. But performing it is another ballgame: You feel distinctly insane during the performance. Why? Because during the verses, you must sing in a tiny delicate falsetto. And then, for the chorus, you must SCREAM. So you must embrace a split personality for that particular song. I think Liam and I did so admirably.

My sisters did "Fame". (The video-screen informed us that this song was performed by "OREME CARA". heh heh heh) Jean, during the musical interlude, stepped out with the microphone and said, point-blank, to all of us, speaking dead seriously: "You got big dreams. You want FAME. Well, fame costs. And right here is where you start paying. In sweat." Those of you who know the reference will know that she said it word for word. Genius. I thought Mike was gonna piss his pants.

Also, Mike and Liam, sitting on the couch during the "Fame" rendition took it upon themselves to shout out the echo "FAME" whenever appropriate, as occurs in the real song.

"Fame! (Fame!) I'm gonna live forever ..."

Etc. So at the beginning their shouts of "FAME" were filled with energy, hysteria, greed. They were right ON. But who knew how many echoes there really were in that song?? By the end, their shouts of "FAME" were exhausted. They could barely get them out anymore. It was a chore.

At one point, my cousin Mike had gotten all sucked into watching the ridiculous "videos" ... and he leaned across his couch to say to my parents and myself, "You know ... watching these videos makes me not want to travel."

My sister Siobhan performed the SHIT out of "Oops I did it again". Excellent work, Siobhan. Excellent.

Liam just kept singing, strolling around in his suit, engaging all of us, like a lounge singer on the loose. It was AWESOME. He knows every song ever written.

I was out until 2:30 in the morning. And for the first time in ... uhm ... FIVE YEARS ... I overslept. I woke up at noon. This is positively unheard of. But I figured I'm entitled.

A great great night. I felt a positive GLOW, standing there, surrounded by my crazy beautiful loving family.

Oh, and here's some humor:

Multiple times over the evening I was introduced to a friend of Liam's, or a friend of Lydia's, or a friend of my cousin Mike's.

Invariably, this friend would ask me: "So are you one of the cousins?"

heh heh heh I'm sure it happened to all of the other cousins, too. Just put us all in a huge labeled lump: "the cousins". That's all you need to do. I would say, "Yes. I am one of the cousins", and the friend would nod, accepting it. I just find that so funny.

Happy birthday, Liam. Great job with the planning, Lydia. Beautiful night. Beautiful. There's never enough time to revel in my family ... but still. Last night was a feast for the soul and heart. Loved looking around, in the crowded bar where we all gathered at first, and seeing my entire family scattered throughout. Makes me feel like "God's in His heaven, all's right with world".

Halloween

This is the earliest Halloween photo I have from my childhood. I am in kindergarten. So that means that my brother (LOOK AT HIS CLOWN HAT ... Oh God, that just makes me laugh SO HARD ... the hat is taller than his little body) ... so my brother is 3, and I am 4.

My mother made that rabbit costume. Actually, she probably made the clown costume too.

Thanks, Mum.

Simple pleasures

Girlie post filled with domestic details ... :

My mother and I had been talking about getting nice curtains for my main room for about a year now. One of those: "We've got to do that ..." But then finally - last month, we went to pick out fabric, after I had measured the windows. The project had begun. She and I went together, browsed, asked questions, I agonized over my choices, I tried to picture living with the fabric, day in, day out ...

I had a fantasy for my room. My room has pale yellow walls. It has a gorgeous hard-wood floor. I have a small Oriental rug, with dark colors - dark blue-black, deep maroon ... The ceiling is high, and old-fashioned - it has a pattern on it, like those old tin ceilings. It's a white painted ceiling. Then I also have a huge ceiling fan. On one wall I have a large window, with a nice wide sill. This is where I live. I have a small kitchen off to the side, but I spend all my time in that main room. I've got dingy blinds in the window, leftovers from the former tenant, completely uninteresting.

I'm not into sunlight, really. I don't like bright colors, they give me a headache, and make me nervous, and I like my room to feel a wee-bit cave-like. Cozy. Like I can shut the world away, and be safe and warm in my humble abode. Basically, what I'm saying is - billowy sheer white curtains are not my style.

So I picked out this heavy dark fabric - a deep dark chocolate-y brown, with a Paisley pattern in it (but not a Paisley pattern that would give you a migraine ... it's more like the memory of a Paisley pattern, swirling through the dark brown). I just liked it. It reminded me of a dream. I could see it ... the dark brown in contrast to the pale yellow walls ... I knew I could live with it. I loved it.

My dear mother became a Tasmanian devil and made me the curtains in a matter of 2 days.

She and my dad drove down yesterday to bring the curtains, and to hang out ... spend a bit of time together ...

It's in these circumstances, these moments of simple pleasures ... that I realize, in my heart: There are moments, indeed, when curtains = love. I look at my gorgeous curtains and I can see the love that my mother has for me.

My curtains make me ridiculously happy.

My dad brought his tools. And he went to work setting up the hooks, the brackets, measuring, marking, drilling, etc. You know, the "guy" side of curtain-hanging.

Meanwhile, my mother and I are busy huddled over the curtains, clipping on the little hooks, and handing up tools to my dad if he needed them. The "girl" side of curtain-hanging.

It's in a moment like that when I realize: my dad with the drill gun = love.

It is not SAYING "I love you" that matters at all. It is what you DO. What do you DO?

My dad was busy at work, doing his manly part of the project, and my mother was showing me the basket she had made for me - well, she didn't make the basket itself - but she lined the basket with the same material as the curtains. To put on my dresser, perhaps.

So there's all these projects happening in my small space.

And I felt kind of overwhelmed by love. You know? I felt lucky. That's what I felt.

It was beautiful. Beautiful to have them down in my apartment, we talked, we laughed (once the curtains were up) - we sat in my little kitchen, we caught up a bit. I kept peeking back into my main room at the unbelievable GORGEOUSNESS of my new curtains. The deep dark brown folds, hanging next to the pale yellow walls ... It changes the feel of my room. It feels cozy, enveloping ... warm.

Thank you, Mum, thank you, Dad ... for ... well, for everything. I woke up this morning, made coffee, sat in my little cozy chair, and stared up at my beautiful new curtains for, no word of a lie, 20 minutes.

Reveling in the simple pleasure of it.

Grania

My sister Jean Grania had her birthday yesterday. I thought for a long time about what to write about her, how to describe how I feel about her, what she means to me ... but then when the tears came, I decided: No, I don't know how to write about her. All I can say is - the woman means the world to me (both my sisters do ... and my dear brother) - and I can't imagine my life without her. The worst nightmares I have are when something horrible happens to my siblings. I had one about Jean years and years ago that makes me shudder to this day.

In trying to come up with an acknowledgement post about this beautiful woman - all I could really come up with was how afraid I get of losing her.

Not a very positive birthday message.

Jean Grania is a classic human being, warm, hilarious, intelligent ... People get excited to see her. A party is planned, a gathering ... people ask: "Is Jean gonna be there???"

She's a teacher. A good one. She's passionate about her work, she's an amazing woman.

She's my younger sister, but there have been times when I've felt like she's the older. People seem to think that Jean knows things. It's so funny. And, in general, she does.

I remember when my roommate Jen and I were throwing a Valentine's Day party. We had bought decorations, hearts and stuff. Jean and Siobhan came over to help us get set up. Jen didn't really know Jean all that well, but ... within 10 minutes, Jen was standing on a chair in our living room, trying to dangle big red hearts from the ceiling, and I heard her say, "Jean - is this right? Will this work, you think?"

That's what I mean. People turn to Jean for stuff like that.

I love my sister. I have tears in my eyes now, because I'm a big goofball, and because I get overwhelmed.

She's a great woman. Happy birthday, Jean Grania.

Marathon Memories

Today was the Boston Marathon.

My grandparents lived in Wellesley (actually, my grandmother still lives there, in the same house) - which is just about the halfway mark in the Boston marathon.

When we were kids, every year we made a day of the marathon. Some of my "Boston marathon" memories go way back and become rather fuzzy and dream-like - so I must have been very small. These qualify as "first memories".

Later memories though: we would convene at my grandparents house. My cousins would also be there, because the Boston Marathon is a big deal. A big day for the city. And we LOVED that we got to see all the runners at the halfway point.

My cousins and I would mix Kool-aid in big pictchers, or we would get Gatorade, or we would mix sugar-free Crystal Light-y stuff, buy a couple packages of Dixie cups, and traipse down the hill to join the crowds lining the street. Everyone waiting for the first runners to appear.

Feeling suffused with seriousness and purpose, we would pour out Dixie cups of liquid, line them up behind us, and wait, peering up the street, tense, thrilled.

Then - one by one - they would come.

The first runners who pounded by never stopped for a drink. Of course not. They were about to finish a Marathon in less than 3 hours. These people are barely human. They do not need Gatorade. They are on another plane. They are definitely in the realm of the lonely long-distance runner.

We watched them pound by, in awe. It looked like they were on the first mile of the race, as opposed to the 13th.

Then - we could feel it. We just could feel the crowds approaching. The lesser runners, the ones who are way behind the leaders, the ones running in the pack. We knew that they would NEED us. We were trembling with responsibility. It was an AWESOME burden. (Remember, we were ... 9 years old. 10 years old.)

I still remember holding out these wee Dixie cups, with my wee 9 year old arm, and this thundering sweaty giant would swoop by, snatch it out of my hand, pour it over his head, without even stopping.

There was a skill to this. Definitely.

You had to keep a very gentle touch on your Dixie cup.

You had to be ready to let go.

Hold it very lightly with your fingertips. Keep your body out of the road, only let your little arm go into the road. They are looking for you. As they pound down the pavement, they are looking for you. They need you.

Your job, should you choose to accept it, is to make this exchange as easy as possible for the runner.

You must be invisible. You must merge with the Dixie cup. And then the second they grasp it, you must let go of it. That way, nothing will be spilled.

Oh, my cousins and I spent rapturous hours getting all of this down to a science. We loved this job. We loved being all important, like little Boston Marathon Red Cross nurses.

I remember the first time we were at the finish line. Which was a whole other story, and not at all fun. You see people weeping, you see people throwing up, you see people lying on the ground surrounded by doctors, staggering around looking like refugees - By that point, after 26 miles, people's personalities have broken down.

I read some marathon runner who said something like: "A marathon is actually 2 separate races. The first 24 miles, and then the last 2 miles."

Things happen to people during those last 2 miles. I saw it again when I watched my friend Liz cross the finish line of the New York marathon a couple years ago. I saw her at halfway mark, and then we went to Central Park to see her cross the finish line. The transformation of human beings, runners we had just seen an hour or so before, was startling. Unbelievable. I'm not just talking physically, although you can obviously see people struggling with pain. It's the other transformation - the psychological transformation. Liz was running, and openly weeping. I've never seen her cry like that.

It was kind of incredible.

However, when I was a little kid at the finish line, I thought all of that stuff was terrible. I felt so BAD for everyone.

I much preferred standing at the halfway mark with my cousins, watching the giants thundering down towards us, holding out their arms for our Dixie cups of Gatorade.

Last night

So last night was my sister's gig at a very cool mid-town club called Downtime.

She was awesome - she did a great job, sold a CD, and conquered her own nerves enough to play a great and relaxed show. I was proud of her! She even dealt with the hostility of a Yankee fan screaming at her from the back, as she introduced "161". She looked beautiful, she sounded great, and I was really proud of her.

The band that went up after Siobhan (and she was just up there solo, Siobhan and her guitar) had as much equipment as if they were going on tour for 5 months. They were three guys, and they had dollies, and cases, and trunks, etc. Siobhan, holding her guitar, came down the steps, and they hauled their 2346 tons of equipment up the 3 steps - and Rachel and I burst out laughing. I have to admit, it seemed a bit like Spinal Tap.

This 3-person band was so loud that I literally had to do caveman sign language to the bartender. "Here is what I want..."

"WHAT?"

Even screaming at the tops of lungs made no sound.

Here is how the chorus of one of their songs went: (Imagine loudness so loud that you feel like your body is going to shatter into 5 millioin pieces):

WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY? WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY? WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY? WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY? WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY?

I mean, over and over and over with the "why"s.

Later, when we finally escaped, and moved, as a group to a quieter bar, we all started howling with laughter about it. About the "why's".

I was saying, "Why? You ask why? Just BECAUSE. Okay? Just BECAUSE."

There were 7 or 8 of us, hanging out at a bar around the corner, which was great fun. One of the girls, a friend of Siobhan's from college, was sipping her cocktail, and she was wearing these odd little black cotton gloves.

I didn't think anything about it, really - but then Siobhan said, "If you're wondering why she's wearing gloves like that - it's because she's a hand model."

This seemed unbelievably fascinating. I mean, I had HEARD about them, I had HEARD about these models who wear gloves 24/7, and who are highly prized - because beautiful slim fingers are very very rare. Hand models get work all the time, because there are so few of them.

But I had never met one.

She was this adorable young woman, with a ponytail, wearing plaid pants, big high-top sneakers, and black cotton gloves.

I said, wondering if this was inappropriate, "Could I see your hands?"

"Sure!" she said.

She drew off one glove, and displayed the most perfect most beautiful hand I have ever seen up close in my life. All of us, men and women, exclaimed, "Wowwww." (Which is kind of funny, when you think about it.)

We all recognized the difference between her hands and ours instantly. There is no comparing. Her fingers were slim, absolutely perfect, tapering - her skin was even - and smooth - her hand was perfectly white - They blew us away.

"How did you become a hand model?"

She's an actress, and she said that when she first came to New York, she met with a casting director, and she was sitting there, talking about herself, and her acting, using hand gestures, of course. The casting director interrupted her monologue and said, "Let me see your hands."

Within a week, she had her first modeling gig. And it hasn't stopped since then.

I just found the whole thing fascinating.

She said, "It's weird - but there is a weird skill to it. Like - I have to practice stuff like being able to move JUST my pinky finger a quarter of an inch up or down ... Like the photographers will ask you to do weird stuff like that. So I have to be able to isolate my fingers ..."

She treated the whole thing with humor and a kind of: Jesus, look at my good luck! Which was very cool. She didn't take it too seriously, although she took it seriously enough to wear special cotton gloves at all times (even when sleeping) - and she has refrigerator magnets as business cards, with a picture of one of her hands on it. She passed them out to us, and we all were just laughing at the whole thing.

After she left, we all sadly checked out our own hands, sitting in a circle, holding out our imperfect specimens for the group to see. We could never compete.

More Martinis

Another martini evening. A gathering of good friends in a lounge on Avenue B. Joey's birthday. A kind of cool place, with exposed brick, tons of candles, and old comfy arm chairs and couches. Unfortunatley, it was also a bit chilly, so we all sat there in our scarves and gloves.

Martinis.

Somehow we all discovered, collectively (please do not ask me how) that - as children - we all feared the coelacanth.

What a random thing.

Somehow, the coelacanth came up - and Liz said, off-handedly, "God, that fish haunted me as a child."

It spread like wildfire.

"Me too!"
"God, me too! I used to have nightmares about the coelacanth!"

We were roaring with laughter and chattering like crazy about the coelacanth.

"What IS it?? Why is it so scary?"
"Didn't they just find one recently?"
"It just is the scariest fish to me - I don't know why ..."

coelacanth coelacanth coelacanth coelacanth coelacanth coelacanth

I found it so humorous: A big Italian guy with pinky rings and a tough New York accent, saying seriously, in this kind of "No kidding" way: "I used to have nightmares about that fish."

HAHA!

It was 37 years ago today...

that Bill and Sheila said "I do."

My parents met at a sock-hop (no, literally, a sock-hop). They were 16. He went to a boy's parochial school, she went to a girl's parochial school - and they met at a joint dance. There are pictures of this dance in one of my parents' yearbooks. There's a picture of my mom, 16 years old, her face lit up with excitement, her hair up in a big early 60s bouffant, and still, to this day, it is strange for me to see that picture. It's like: "Damn, that teenage girl is going to end up being my MOTHER - and that very night she would meet the man she would marry!"

My dad offered to give my mom a ride home from the sock-hop. My mom said, "No, that's okay, I drove here myself." There was a long pause, and then my dad, who had actually ridden his bike to the sock-hop, and had offered her a ride having no idea how he would pull it off if she had taken him up on it, said, "Then - can I have a ride home?"

They got married on February 18, 1967 - on a snowy day.

9 months later, they had a daughter with cross eyes and crooked legs - who eventually turned out to be me. (My eyes straightened out, and I wore a brace on my legs for the first year of my life to re-align my hips. My poor parents, 23 year old kids, didn't know that most babies are cross-eyed at the beginning, were a bit panicked about me. My mom describes driving me home from the doctor, my legs now encased in braces, I sat in my car-seat, perfectly happy, fine, and my mother was SOBBING. Every time she would look back at her "crippled" daughter, she would burst into sobs again. But all ended out fine. When they finally took the brace off of me, I was the one who sobbed like a maniac. I missed my brace!)

I also, even as an infant, slept 8 hours a night.

My parents would prod me awake, to spend time with me. "Okay, she's slept long enough. We miss her. Get her up."

So now it is 37 years later.

I have said it before, and I will say it again - I almost feel like, on some cosmic level, that I might have chosen my parents. I am definitely blessed. Definitely blessed.

Here is, I think, my favorite story about my parents:

I was in my mid-20s, and home from Chicago for a visit. I was in that awkward stage where - I was living a free and independent life in Chicago, an adult, making my own choices, doing my own thing - but then I would come home and suddenly feel like I was 12 years old all over again. I still had some level of a rebellious attitude towards my parents, as in: "I'm doing what I want to do right now!!" (Meanwhile, they weren't criticizing my choices at all!!)

Basically - my whole life was centered on myself. And I'm not sorry about that, by the way. It was a necessary stage for me to go through. I had never lived for myself before, I had never created my own life before. I needed to cut the strings with the past, and figure out how I wanted to do things.

But I was in the awkward in-between stage of that process.

One morning, while I was home, I woke up at around 5:30, maybe 6:00 am. It was dawn. I was sleeping upstairs in my old room - and so I definitely had a feeling of regression. Like: Get me back to the life where I am an ADULT! Jesus!

Dimly - somewhere else in the house - I heard something.

Voices? No, that couldn't be. It's 5:30 in the morning! But something ...

So I got out of bed, and tiptoed down the stairs to go investigate.

The door to the kitchen was ajar, although mostly closed. The sounds were coming from in there.

Let me just say right now: that I am so glad I didn't just barge in. Because then I would never have had the opportunity to really SEE my parents. As separate beings, autonomous from myself.

I don't know if you know what I will mean when I say the word "see". I'm not just talking about seeing with my eyes. I'm talking about perception, about a deeper kind of sight - how sometimes, in just one seconds-long glimpse, you can see EVERYTHING in a person.

I peeked through the crack in the door.

The sun was rising through the trees across the street. I could smell coffee brewing.

And there were my parents, up at 5:30 in the morning, both sitting at the kitchen table.

My dad was reading the newspaper.

But what blew me away was my mother. My mother sat next to my dad, softly and gently strumming on a guitar.

A tiny bit of background: My mom is a great guitar player, and made extra money when we all were little giving guitar lessons to the kids in the neighborhood. She would take out her guitar at family parties. There are pictures of her in her college yearbook, sitting on the Quad, holding a guitar, playing. My earliest memories of my mother have to do with her playing a guitar.

But for years - maybe since I was 10 or 11 - who knows why - my mom never ever took her guitar out.

Or - I never saw her do it. She didn't play for us, like she used to when we were little. She didn't teach lessons to kids in the neighborhood anymore.

My mom put her guitar away.

Now here is where the narcissism of kids is obvious: My mother put her guitar away and I barely even noticed. I was 11 years old. I didn't say, "Hey, Mom, why don't you ever play the guitar anymore?" My mother was not a separate autonomous being to me - she was my mother. That was all.

So it wasn't until I was 26 years old, basically spying on my parents at 5:30 in the morning, that I suddenly realized: "Holy shit, I have not seen my mother with a guitar in her hands in ... 15 years ... What happened? Why did she stop playing?"

But then in the next moment - I thought - Wait a second, maybe she didn't stop playing. Obviously she didn't, because there she is, playing for my dad - in a private moment - while her 4 children slumbered throughout the house.

Suddenly, I felt like I had no idea who my mother was. I saw her - completely - as a woman, separate from myself - a woman with dreams, ambitions, complexity ... It was beautiful.

Maybe I'm making this sound bigger than it was.

All I know is - I took one look at that dawn-lit tableau of my parents - my parents stealing a quiet-moment together in the craziness of having all their kids home - drinking coffee - not talking - my mom playing the guitar for him - and I never quite looked at the two of them in the same child-like way again.

I tiptoed back up to bed, realizing that this was "their time".

My parents needed alone-time. Their kids are not their whole life. Their entire relationship is not based on their children - although, of course, we are all HUGE to them.

And - I was always grateful that I got that glimpse of the two of them - together - with no kids around.

It was so peaceful.

It made me very glad that they were my parents.

They're precious people to me, dearer to me with every passing year - and I'm so glad that they met at that sock-hop so many years ago.

Happy anniversary, Mum and Dad. You guys are the best.

Sweet Sixteen

Today was a family brunch for my cousin Emma - who is now 16. (With a diamond stud in her nose and a driver's permit in her wallet to prove it.)

I'm not sure "sweet" sixteen is appropriate, because the O'Malleys are many many things - but ... I would not say "sweet" is one of them. (Thank God. Who needs "sweet"?) LOUD, perhaps. Loving. Intelligent. Conversation filled with insults - people getting all riled up, people warned, "Don't take the bait, don't take the bait!" But someone always takes the bait.

"So where's the loser?" my father called out to Emma - referring, lovingly, to Emma's brother.

In the O'Malley family, "where's the loser" translates as: "I miss Ian. I wish he were here. How is he doing?"

It was wonderful, though - My parents drove down, my uncle Tony, aunt Marianne - my uncle Tom, his wife Betsy - my unbelievably cute 3-year old cousin Grace (I asked her how old she was and she shouted, enthusiastically, "FREE!!")- Grace had an enormous barrette in the front of her staticky hair, holding together about 5 strands of hair, and even with all her writhing about and running around - it never moved, it never fell out. My cousin Liam, his wife Lydia - my uncle Tom's son Chris (it was his birthday too) and his girlfriend - my aunt Regina (Emma's mom) - my cousin Kerry's husband Adam ... my sister Siobhan ... Hm. Did I miss anyone?

We all convened on the Bowery Bar for brunch - to celebrate the 16th birthday of Emma.

Family is IT.

Family is all that matters.

Each and every person - precious to me.

Happy birthday Emma! And Chris!

In Praise of my Cousin Emma

If you have ever read John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany, then you will know the relationship that I have with my throng of cousins. John Irving completely GETS the specificity of what that whole cousin-thing is about, and it's extremely specific. There is a manic quality to my relationships with my cousins - mainly because we would see each other rarely, and when we did see each other, we had to cram in months of fun into a 2 hour period. So we all would lose our collective minds. I have many many cousins. The oldest is in his 40s now, and the youngest is a toddler. Typical Irish stuff.

I have been wanting to write something about my cousin Emma for a while. Emma is now a teenager. However, her soul is probably about 45 years old. Her soul has ALWAYS been about 45 years old. Even when she was 3 years old, she had this wise-cracking world-weary persona. It was as though she always had an imaginary cigar clenched between her lips. She was a 3 year old Robert Evans: a freckled chubby-cheeked toddler, making weary wisecracks, saying stuff like, "Lemme tell ya, sweetheart, that's what life is all about."

Uhm ... what? You're three.

It makes me think that this is definitely not her first time around on this planet.

There is a picture of Emma, standing on a hill in Los Angeles, with the Hollywood sign unfurling behind her in all its blindingly white weirdness. Emma must be about 3 years old in the picture. She is wearing huge movie-star sunglasses (not kid's glasses, but adult glasses, so they are enormous on her face - It looks like Glenn Close as Sonny Von Bulow), and a scarf around her throat. She holds up her arms in a victory gesture, and her face is absolutely insane. Her mouth is open, she is obviously screaming in Hollywood triumph. It's like she's Harvey Weinstein or something.

But she's THREE.

Well, now Emma is a teenager. She's a beautiful young woman, still with the freckles and the rosy cheeks, still with the same "lemme tell ya, sweetheart, that's life" world-weary attitude.

Here is one of my favorite anecdotes, which will illuminate Emma's personality.

My cousin Mike got married a couple years ago. It was a massive affair, with hundreds of people. Emma was 12 years old at the time. I sat next to Emma in the pew. Emma dresses like she's Mary J. Blige or something. Big puffy coats, big chunky sneakers which match the coat ... Anyway, at the wedding, Emma was in a powder-blue Mary J. Blige ensemble. She looked great.

The ceremony was wonderful - very detailed - with many different traditional moments. Emma, throughout the entire thing, peppered me with questions. Whispered under her breath.

"What's happening now?"
"What are those candles? What's that?"
"And what does that mean?"
"What's that about?"

Finally, I hissed at her, "Emma. I don't know."

There was a long pause. Emma did not respond. She turned back to look up at the pulpit, and didn't say anything. I went back to trying to lose myself in the beautiful ceremony.

Then, I heard her say, out of the corner of her mouth, her eyes still looking forward, "Hey. Lose the 'tude."

Oh God, I just burst into laughter.

She was so RIGHT. I had a 'tude. She called me on it.

"Emma, you're right. I have a 'tude. I am sorry."

We still laugh about "lose the 'tude".

A couple of years ago, I was busy at work on a one-woman show. I am not going to say what it is about, because I fear piracy. But suffice it to say, it is based on the life of a real person. Who had an insane husband. This woman would write letters, describing how she could hear him moaning down the hall in psychic agony.

Emma and her mom were visiting my parents while I was home - and we were sitting out on the patio. Regina (Emma's mom) asked if she could hear a little bit of what I was working on. I said sure, fine. I gave a bit of background, before I launched into what I had written.

"So she has an insane husband, and he would moan all night down the hallway, and she would lock the doors of her study to keep him out."

Then I did my little reading - which, frankly, I thought went very well, and I was very proud of it. Basically, I was moved by MYSELF. (Not a good sign for an artist, by the way.) But I was excited to share the monologue with them. It was heartfelt, it was tragic, etc. etc.

When I was done, there was a pause. Regina, who is also an actress, a wonderful actress, was deep in thought. I was excited for the conversation that would ensue.

Then Emma piped up. "Hey, Sheila, you know what you should do? When you're doing that monologue during the production - here's how it should be done." (Suddenly, again, with the Harvey Weinstein persona.) "You should be standing downstage - and everything should be dark - and then - as you do the monologue - slowly - way over in the corner - a circle of light should come up on your husband and this is what he should be doing..." (Emma hunched over, biting her nails nervously, her eyes flitting about in a panic, and she began to rock - back and forth, back and forth - making strange odd moaning sounds.)

The precious little spell of my monologue was broken by this hysterical and almost Mel Brooks interpretation of how I should do my play - and I started roaring with laughter.

Suddenly the insanity of the husband is going to be used as a comic element??

Regina said, "Emma, please, let's have a serious conversation about Sheila's work."

Emma kept rocking back and forth, back and forth, rolling her eyes around in her head, making these cow-like moaning sounds.

In spite of herself, Regina started laughing ... I started laughing too - I'm laughing now...

Emma kept going. "So it'll go like this." She stood up straight, as me, and said, as though she were doing the production, "So I have always felt that life must go on - and that I must always focus on my work -" Suddenly Emma hunched over herself, and started rocking manically - moaning like a cow - Then she straightened up again, as me, and said, "My work. My work is the most important thing." Back to the lowing-like-a-cow husband in the corner.

Regina and I were CRYING.

One other Emma story -

Regina, Emma, my other cousin Rachel and I went to the anniversary production of "Forbidden Broadway", here in New York. The audience was full of Regina's old friends, people Emma knew. It was a BLAST. Again, Emma looked like a little Irish ghetto goddess, with her puffy coat, and her big sneakers. Emma knew mostly everyone, too, because they were friends of her mother. One of the guys was the head writer on a major soap opera, I can't remember which one. Days of Our Lives, or something.

Emma buttonholed him before the show. This is a paraphrase of the conversation, but here's the spirit of it:

Emma said to him, point-blank, "Okay, listen, I just don't like what you have done to my favorite character."

He was fabulous, whoever he was. He said, "Oh no, which one?"

She told him how she didn't approve of the plot-lines for this character, and that she thought the actor this character had to work with was terrible.

"It's boring, my friend, boring." Emma said to the head-writer of One Life to Live. She called him "my friend", in this kind of world-weary cynical tone. "That whole plot line is very boring, my friend."

He completely took her concerns seriously, which is why I loved him.

"Yes, we have had some problems with that actor. You won't have to watch him for much longer."

"Well, that's good to hear. Because he's very boring." (Again, I had the impression that she was chewing on a cigar, as though she were Jack Warner or something.)

This man was hungry for more feedback from the teenager. "What else, Emma? What else?"

She launched into an in-depth analysis of every element of the show - character development problems, boring side-plots, bad actor issues - She also made sure she complimented him on what DID work. He was very grateful for her praise (which she gave to him with the tired attitude of throwing him a bone - which was equally hysterical). I loved this guy. I loved how he was with Emma.

He said, "I should have you come in to one of our script meetings."

She is, after all, representative of a huge chunk of their audience.

As she continued on her long analytical monologue, completely unafraid, and also completely clear on what did work and what didn't work - I suddenly saw that the victory-dance in front of the Hollywood sign when she was three could actually be a prophecy of things to come. This girl could do anything she wanted to do. She really could.

She could be a stand-up comedian (OBVIOUSLY) - she could be an actress - but she also could be a movie producer. Hell, Emma could run a movie studio someday.

She is a lovely girl, a kind person, absolutely hysterical, and also - mixed in with that - she is a wise-cracking world-weary movie producer who dresses as though she is Mary J. Blige on occasion.

I also love that she told me to "lose the 'tude." I'll never forget it. I needed to be taken down a peg, and she did it. She talks straight, she tells it like it is.

Whatever Emma ends up doing - wherever her life takes her - I know that I will watch with baited breath. It looks like it is going to be an incredible journey.

Brrr...It's cold in here...

There must be some Toros in the atmosphere...

It's freezing in my apartment. I sit wrapped up in fleece blankets. The heat is blasting out of my radiators, but it must be absolutely freezing outside.

I was really busy at work yesterday, and my mom called me.

I saw it was her number, and I picked up.

"Mum?"

"Hi, Sheila!"

"I can't really talk right now."

Mum took a deep breath and then said (and this was pretty much what it sounded like): "It'sgoingtobefreezingtomorrowsomakesureyoubundleup."

Oh God, it makes me laugh.

I said, "Okay, bye."

Later I called her and we laughed about it. She said she had just called to say Hello but when I couldn't talk, she decided to get in as much motherly advice as possible before I hung up.

In Memory of Sam

I just had an email exchange with an old boyfriend, who reminded me of a story from my life he particularly loved: The story of "Sam and the Coffee-Can stilts". I will tell it here. It is a story of heartbreak, pathos, and unconditional love.

Sam was my grandmother Mummy Gina's sheepdog. Sam's white hair fell over her eyes. Sam was a member of our family. But her allegiance was to one person, and one person only: my grandmother.

Oh, did that dog love my grandmother.

It still cracks my heart to think of it. (Sam is long dead. She got very old, she lost her sight - one time, when she was at our house, she got stuck in a corner - a corner in the kitchen where there was a Lazy Susan - and Sam kept pressing her head against the corner, stuck ... unable to get out ... until one of us noticed her plight and rescued her.)

My grandmother would go off on trips, to visit my aunt, or to travel with her friends, and would drop Sam off at our house.

Before she departed, Mummy Gina would lean down and say right into Sam's peaceful white furry face, "Sam: I'm going to church. I'll be right back."

Sam knew what that meant: "I only have to bear the unbearable separation for an hour."

And then, of course, Mummy Gina would be gone for two weeks, which must have felt like FOREVER to Sam. Sam never got her bearings at our house. Getting stuck in the corner is only one example. She never stopped missing Mummy Gina, and mourning the loss of Mummy Gina.

Me and my siblings were kids at this time.

We had made coffee-can stilts - do kids still make those? Pierce holes in the corners of coffee cans, put strings through those holes ... and then put your feet on the upturned coffee can, holding onto the strings, so that you can then stagger about, on "stilts".

Well, the O'Malley children were VERY into coffee-can stilts. Pairs of them were lying about the house, like carnage on a battlefield.

One night, the family was woken up by a terrible metallic crash.

Now this story has a tragic element, so be warned:

My father responded to the crash, and found Sam, lying at the bottom of the cellar steps, her feet stuck in the coffee cans.

She obviously, in her blind wanderings through the house, searching hopelessly for Mummy Gina, got her feet caught in the coffee cans ... and staggered around ... stuck ... until she finally fell down the stairs, crash ... crash ... crash.

Poor little thing! All the love we gave her did not make up for the loss of the Mummy Gina love. And, actually, knowing Mummy Gina, and having been loved by Mummy Gina - I don't blame Sam!

One rainy night, Sam escaped from our house ... and went on an adventurous trek to find my grandmother, who was, at that moment, sipping a cocktail on a cruise ship in the Caribbean, or something like that. Sam disappeared. The rain poured down.

It was like that movie - what was it called? - where the dogs travel 800 miles to get themselves home. "The Incredible Journey" or something like that? I read the book when I was a kid, MERELY because the author's first name was Sheila too. Yes. Egotist, thy name is Sheila Kathleen.

Anyway. Sam could no longer stand it in this confusing world of Lazy Susans, and corners which surrounded you, and coffee-can-stilts which would not leave you alone, and 4 little kids who occasionally try to ride you like a pony ... and she flew the coop.

The ASPCA (or somebody - Dad: was it a neighbor? Or someone who took Sam in?) contacted us, telling us that they found a mud-soaked half-blind dog - 5 miles away from our house ... wandering around ... as though she knew where she was going.

Poor little wee dog. She loved my grandmother so much.

But damn. I still laugh (with pity and horror) at the thought of Sam, white furry-eyed Sam, crumpled up in the O'Malley children's coffee-can stilts, completely bewildered at what her life had become.

Return of the Redheaded Whirligig

So much going on, so much to comment on. My own personal life has flowered up into importance: vacation, and moving to a new apartment (which went quite well)

Meanwhile:

Well, I don't even know where to begin. The headlines are - terrible. The world is in flames. But we got Chemical Ali. This is good. My radio wakes me up in the morning and to hear the headlines rattled off like that, in between consciousness and unconsciousness, gives off the impression that it is the end of civilization. "Explosion" "20 dead" "13 dead" "human remains" - It's lunacy. I have nothing else to add to the commentary at the moment.

But for now, I am easing my way back into blogging - a rather difficult prospect, I am finding, after so long a break. I was completely out of communication on the Cape, and I absolutely loved it. I had my cell phone on me, but no one called me, and that was heaven. To be left ALONE.

So now. To communicate again.

Here is a bullet-pointed version of my time on the Cape with my family:

-- pretty much wearing my bikini and flip-flops 24/7

-- strolling down to the beach 4 or 5 times a day

-- reading Pride and Prejudice for the first time - fantastic

-- taking showers in the outdoor shower - is there a better sensation??

-- playing Taboo with my siblings on the porch late-night (much laughter)

-- reading Harriet the Spy to Cashel, my dear nephew, my dear platinum-headed nephew, light of my life

-- watching the blackout on TV, having discussions about the power grid with Cashel who kept asking penetrating questions ("But Auntie Sheila, how do they KNOW that it wasn't bad guys who made the lights go out?")

-- becoming absolutely OBSESSED with the jigsaw puzzle we brought up to the beach house ... I'm not normally a puzzle girl, but I kind of lost my mind about it. I actually dreamt about the damn puzzle one night.

-- going for a moonlight swim on our first night up there - an almost-full moon - you could read by the light of it -- swimming in the silver moon-path, the dark ocean all around, the sky crowded with stars. So beautiful that none of us could speak.

-- burgers on the grill, iced coffee

-- Cashel's transformation in terms of going swimming - he is now, officially, a water-baby. So fun to go swimming with him. His laughter is my favorite sound on the planet

-- the biggest choices were: "Hmm. Should I go down to the beach for a second time this morning? Or should I stay at the house and work on the puzzle? Or do I want to drive into town and get ice coffees for everybody, and 3 newspapers so that everybody can work on crossword puzzles?" You know. Those kind of days.

Beautiful.

And then my beautiful mother (happy birthday, Mum!) drove down with me to support me emotionally through my move. She made the experience so much nicer!

I am now living on the cliffs in Weehawken ... surrounded by the controlled chaos of all my boxes ... but it certainly is coming along.

I look around at all my things, at my bed, my ceiling fan, the trees out the window, my desk, my Oriental rug ... and get this overwhelming feeling of well-being. And peace. If you know me at all, then you will know how rare this is. I am, in general, a restless rather edgy being ... prone to melancholia, and 3 a.m. epiphanies (hate those epiphanies - they add up to nothing - and are borne out of panic).

But the walls in my new place are good walls. It is a friendly place. A welcoming space. (Right, Mum?)

I will be happy there.

And what a beautiful gift, too, to walk out my front door, look to my right, off the cliff, and see the span of Manhattan, all in one glimpse. It is rare to get perspective like that in Manhattan, among the concrete canyons ... Coming home to that kind of perspective will be good for me.

I don't have a TV yet, or internet hook-up at home ... Hence, my silence at the computer.

All should be worked out by next week. This is my goal.

I've missed all my new blog friends and have very much enjoyed reading through everybody's posts over the last week ... I will love getting back into the fray. It's been good for me to step off the track for a while, but it's time to get back on.

Yeah, baby ... The redhead is in the house!!