Mold Removal

Thanksgiving Eve Day. A beautiful cold Chicago morning, with a pale blue cloudless sky. I love cold. I love trees stripped of leaves and lawns turning brown and flower beds dug up and hunkered down, waiting for snow. I love chunky sweaters and thick socks and lined boots and puffy ski jackets.

It was 80 degrees in Baton Rouge when we drove away. I should never come north during the winter. Denied long enough, my winter soul ices over, settles down in a hard lump, kicked into a forgotten corner of Me. But back up here, that lump expands and explodes; icycles sliver through and shred all the bits of southernness that stick and cling, like mold, building up over time and distorting the shape of Me.

It hurts.

And what's the use of getting Me all clear and uncovered, when we're heading back south on Sunday? Easier and less painful to stay moldy.

Human-Scale

As I mentioned in the last post, I had a family wedding in Atlanta last weekend. My first visit ever to Atlanta, if one doesn't count the airport, which of course one shouldn't. Gah--the idea that folks might mistake O'Hare for Chicago. . . Anyway, I have to say I was distinctly unimpressed. I did expect to be impressed, I really did. I mean Atlanta--home of the New South, an Olympics venue, the place where all the young movers and shakers seem to spend time. But the downtown was so dead, so utterly empty of people except for a few bewildered tourists like us, so lacking in urban edge, that I felt perfectly ok sending my really-not-much-to-be-trusted 16-year-old and his 13-year-old cousin off on their own. They had a great time getting sick after sampling 60 different kinds of Coke at the Coca-Cola Museum. As a result, Hugh is now a passionate wanna-be Atlantean. "We should move here!" he enthused.

Damn. One more thing dividing me from my son.

We made the mistake of staying in the Westin Peachtree--the highest hotel in the western hemisphere in "an iconic downtown location," according to the website (how weird is that? the hotel isn't "iconic," just the location?), but according to Wikipedia, actually only the second tallest all-hotel building in the western hemisphere. So who do you trust, Westin or Wikipedia? Ah, the dilemmas of life in the internet age. Designed by renowned Atlanta architect John Portman, the Westin Peachtree is the embodiment of modernist alienation and elitism. Now mind you, I love modernist architecture; I'm a Chicagoan, for pete's sake, and any Chicagoan worth her organic seasalt is a fan of modernist architecture--but the thing is, Chicago accustoms you to modernist architecture done well, done right, done with respect for the humans who will inhabit it and the society that will swirl around it. Ah, Mr. Portman. You should have spent more time in Chicago. Your hotel, Mr. Portman, sucks. Excuse the highly technical language there, but it just really sucks. Your hotel makes its guests feel they've just booked a weekend in a parking garage--except most parking garages are far more easy to find one's way around in and, frankly, far more attractive. Your hotel is cold and uncomfortable and dehumanizing and godawful ugly.  It is staffed by fine and friendly people, all of whom wear a look of terror and doom. They know they cannot compensate for the physical ghastliness of the place and that their tips will reflect this fact. But at least they haven't absorbed the hard lines, the unforgiving nature, of all the concrete around them. Still, my tips were miserly. I couldn't help it. Everything around me demanded unkindness, a heart of stone, a heavy boot. Orwell, oh Mr. Portman, what Orwell could have written about your hotel.

And the thing is, Mr. Portman, you don't actually have to travel way up north to Chicago. Just go down the street to the High Museum of Modern Art. There's a splendid building, a wonderful example of modernist architecture done with feeling and sensibility and a basic humanity. Go wander around there for awhile. It will do you good. It certainly did me good after being subjected to the brutalism of your hotel.

So now I'm home, in my 1930s Craftsman-inspired, Chicago-tinged, totally funky Baton Rouge house. It's crumbling around us, but it's a lovely house, a house for human beings. And when I go to work, it's in a crumbling 1930s building that is part of the original LSU campus--a lovely building, tho' slowly disintegratiing due to years of budget cuts and deferred maintenance. Despite the exposed asbestos and the paint shards that fall on my head, I love Himes Hall. Like my house, it was built to human scale. So, Atlanta, thank you. And thank you, too, Mr. Portman. Thank you for reminding me of what I have. Unlike so many people, I get to spend my days and my nights in physical environments that I find sustaining and restorative. And as I begin to realize that there really aren't all that many days and nights left, not in the big scheme of things, such things matter. Life is too short to be spent in concrete.

This I'd Like to Forget

So, the thing is, I lied in my last post.  Not "lying" as in "actively making stuff up"--everything I wrote was true; we did go to a tiny Greek island  and we did have an amazing experience--but "lying" as in "consciously omitting big chunks of that experience."

The truth, the whole truth. . . the whole truth is hard.

Like that friend that Owen made? The one who made him feel ok once again? What I didn't write was that when we returned home to Manchester Owen wrote and tried to phone this boy several times. He never responded. Owen was devastated.

And Hugh's jaunts out and about the village? The whole truth demands that these jaunts be set against our previous 48 hours in Rhodes. An entirely unexpected stay (a storm prevented us from taking the boat to Halki as planned), it caught us without any preparation. We ALWAYS prepared before going anywhere with Hugh, who could have been the poster child for ADHD at that point in his young life. So as we wandered about  Rhodes, trying to fill the time, Hugh kept running away from us. Keith was of the mindset that, well, he'll be fine, let's not worry about it.Right. A five year old. In a friggin' foreign city. A friggin' foreign city filled with insane Greek teenage boys on mopeds.  Fiinally, frustrated and furious, I lost it and began screaming at Hugh while I smacked him on his bottom--right on a busy sidewalk. A cluster of Greek women, witnesses to my breakdown, clucked in horror and shook their heads. I hated them with an intensity I am still ashamed to admit to.

And the entire Greek idyll needs to be reframed in the awareness of the the fact that we never ever worked as a family. I know all siblings fight: I have six of my own. But, as anyone who has spent any time with Hugh and Owen together will testify, "sibling rivalry" in no way adequately describes my sons' relationship. They have rarely interacted like brothers, rarely played together, rarely enjoyed each other, rarely hung out--and never ever looked to the other for comfort or companionship, never even bonded together in an alliance against us. A constant strain, a source of deep grief, the antipathy between the two of them of course simply intensified on family holidays as they had to endure each other for hours and days on end. I remember a good family friend spending some time with us on one such vacation and then turning to me and saying, "Why do you do this? This isn't good for any of you. Just stop it. There's no law that says you all have to vacation together." It took me a long time to give up, to stop it, as she advised. I did, eventually. The four of us have not traveled together since 2002. But that was after Greece.

And then there's the constant fact, the thread that weaves through my adult life: I didn't sleep for the entire trip. And I had a headache every single damned day. So that hilltop abandoned monastery that Owen climbed to? He wanted me to come along. He begged me to come along. But I didn't. I was too fucking tired.

The whole truth.

But surely it's better to forget it, isn't it? Owen is a beautiful man and Hugh is on his way to becoming one. They still loathe each other, but I guess that just as there's no law requiring family vacations, there's also no law requiring brothers to like each other.

This all started with olives. And if every time I eat an olive I want to remember the four of us, eating and laughing together, on a Greek island, rather than all the rest, that's ok, isn't it? All those surveys showing that people become so much happier omce they hit their 50s--I'll bet forgetting plays an essential, probably the central, role there.

This I believe: that one is better off forgetting the whole truth.

This I Believe

National Public Radio runs this periodic bit called "This I Believe," where ordinary and sometimes not-so-ordinary folks talk about what they believe--not always, or in fact, not usually, in the religious or dogmatic sense, but rather, in day-to-day life. Fill in the blank I believe in __________.

Everytime I hear one of these segments I think, "I believe in. . . olives."

This concerns me. What sort of person believes in olives? What does that mean?

So,tonight, fueled by a couple of glasses of wine, I intend to find out. Here goes.

I believe in olives.

I believe in the memories they conjure, of a tiny Greek village on the tiny island of Halki close to the Turkish coast, and of a magical week spent there when the boys were little. Once sustained by diving for sponges, Halki's population turned to honey cultivation after an epidemic wiped out the sponges. Then the honey bees died, and now --or then; this was 11 years ago--Halki survives solely on the tourist revenue generated by a small English company specializing in "unknown Greece."

Our time there was magical--a villa on the harbor, with our own steep descent into the water, and this little village containing nothing but the bakery where we bought our breakfast pastries, a beautiful church, an ice cream parlor, an assortment of tiny houses and five other tourist villas, one souvenir shop, one minscule grocery store, two beaches (one with a donkey and one without), and four harborside cafes. Every day, two decisions to make: where do we eat lunch? and where do we eat dinner? Not that it mattered; each of the cafes offered the same stunning view, the same just-off-the-boat seafood, the same heavenly feta cheese, the same to-die-for tomato and olive salads.

In Halki we sent 5-year-old Hugh off every morning to collect the bread and pastries for breakfast. He was so proud, so pleased to be off on his own, trusted with money, able to wind his way through the stone streets and across the church courtyard to the bakery. The villagers loved him, with his dark brown skin and curly brown-black hair and big brown eyes. In just one week, he chrmed them all, the quiet priest, the cranky young cashier in the souvenir shop, the old lady at the bakery, the fishermen in their boats. 

In Halki ten-year-old Owen, lonely and beaten down after a year being bullied in English state schools, met a friend, a fellow Harry Potter fan. They climbed up to an abandoned monastery and talked about Hogwarts and Owen remembered what it was to be ok.

I eat olives and in the salty tang and the soft yet firm texture, I taste sunny days and spiced lamb and a friendly donkey and a fresh breeze across the harbor and my boys. Happy. Thriving. Laughing.

This I believe. In olives. And my sons.

Blarney Trees

On the grounds of Blarney Castle sit the most amazing trees. Sigh. Yes, yes, Blarney Castle, I know, I know. Total tourist trap, shameful that we take our students there on what are supposed to be serious study trips but hey, the Young Ones demand it; they really truly want to kiss the Blarney Stone and, as a Young One sternly said to me, "Sometimes it's really fun to be a tacky tourist." And if you turn your back on the castle and head out into the grounds, the trees make the otherwise ridiculous Blarney admission price worth every cent. Centuries old with enormous trunks and limbs polished smooth and hard by wind and rain, these trees tower above and yet intertwine with and spread themselves all about the surrounding boulder-strewn hills and cliffs, so that rock and tree and sky blend into one.

I thought of those trees when I came home after five weeks abroad and discovered that my dog had shrunk.

Why is it that old age so diminishes us ambulatory creatures? Experiences and efforts accumulate; pains and pleasures pile up; we dwindle. My poor, pitiful dog.

Not that he sees it this way. Let loose amidst the  Blarney trees, he'd just pee on them and amble off to resume his endless quest for a chicken bone. 

It Was Simple

I'm home after four weeks abroad with 34 undergrads. Home to my lovely husband and bright boys and lovable pets. Home with my good bed and thick towels and uninterrupted internet access. Home (amazingly) to temperatures lower than those baking much of the United States these last few weeks. 

Home. No more lengthy headache-exacerbating bus rides listening to America's Future discussing  where they drank last night, what they drank, how drunk they got, where to go to drink tonight, what to drink, and how drunk they hope to get.

Home. So why am I incredibly out-of sorts, ill-tempered, cantankerous, downright bitchy?

Perhaps it's the fact that I'm on Day 2 of the 17-Day Diet. Sadly, four weeks in the company of 34 undergrads is not good for the Facing-50s waistline. Every day one wades through mounds and mounds of french fries and gummy bears and candy bars and potato chips. . .  But, no, this bitchiness is more than just hunger, more than the grumpiness induced by having to forego bread and wine and chocolate. (Although, gotta admit, seeing those words in stark print-- bread and wine and chocolate, I am doing without bread and wine and chocolate -- sheesh, it really is enough to send someone over the edge, isn't it?)

Still, more than diet is at work here. I'd love to blame jet lag, but as an incurable insomniac, I've lived most of my life in a state of chronic jet lag, and actually I think I'm fairly good at it.

So, nope, not a matter of food or sleep deprivation. Instead, I do believe I am suffering from the loss of simplicity. Life for the last four weeks has been stunningly simple: a small suitcase, a series of barebones hostel rooms, breakfasts of tea and toast, and best of all, a packed and inflexible schedule. Everyday I got up and knew what I had to do and when I had to do it. I did it. And then I went to bed. Few decisions, limited choices, and oh! glorious bliss! no self-flagellation at the end of the day. No "I shoulda coulda"s.  No wondering at how little I achieved. No guilt at chapters not written, errands not run, chores not completed and checked off the List. No sense of failure because I didn't make phone calls or dinner or love.

Just me, Irish history, and 34 hungover undergraduates.

Simple.

Undergraduates in Ireland; or, Suburbanites Unleashed

Do sheep bite?

If I were a sheep, I'd totally want to live here.

We don't have sheep in America, do we?

How do you tell the difference between a sheep and a lamb?
     I think the lambs are the little ones. Except there are rams, too. I'm not sure how they fit in.

On a Cliff's Edge

Today three dozen undergraduates and I climbed through torrential rain, gale-force winds, and a steady slamming stream of tiny hail stones to a prehistoric fort perched on a cliff's edge at the very end of the civilized world. Just another typical day in the life of a typical European history professor. Sort of.

It's a good life, all in all. The pay is crummy but the perks are splendid. At least if you like fierce winds and dramatic rain and the icy cold that slices through your skin and settles deep within your bones. Which I do. Always have. It's weather with integrity, sharp-edged, clearcut, purposeful, direct. Not like the miasmic heat of the Deep South, the humidity that envelops you, the heat that first lures you in--"shush now," it whispers, "just slow down, have a rest, why don't you put your feet up and have a nice cold drink?"--and then warmly smiles as you slowly suffocate.

After I made my way down from the cliffs, I sat on the bus, my jeans completely soaked, icy cold against my skin. And just like a certain smell can suddenly catapult you into a memory so vivid, so present, that the lines of time and space collapse, so this physical sensation sent me spinning into Mrs. Wolterstorff's third grade classroom. Eight years old, just in from recess, the windows all fogged up, water beneath my desk puddling up as the snow embedded in my corduroys slowly thawed, the cold and clammy cotton firmly stuck to my thighs, my feet little blocks of ice within wet socks. This is not, actually, a happy memory. I was an extraordinarily grumpy child, and I sat there on my plastic seat, my hands so cold they burned, even my underpants soaked from the snow, and I glowered at Mrs. Wolterstorff. How in the world, thought my indignant eight-year-old self, can I be expected to concentrate on homophones and homonyms while my butt itches and prickles as it thaws?

I imagine many of my students, Deep Southerners born and bred, were asking themselves something along those lines today. But, the thing is, integrity is not comfortable. It cuts and chills and makes your butt prickle. Still, it's rather bracing when you're perched on a cliff's edge at the end of the civilized world.

Bicycling in Central Park

I bicycled in Central Park on Saturday.

I realize that all over New York and New Jersey there are hundreds, no, certainly thousands, tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands or even millions of people who would respond to that statement with something along the lines of, "Oh, how nice. Isn't that a pleasant outing?" Because, of course, they live there. And because thee live there, They Don't Get It.

Bicycling in Central Park is not just nice. It is not just pleasant. It's totally amazing, utterly cool, friggin' mind-blowing, fucking unreal.

Normal people do not get to bicycle in Central Park. We normal people, we live our normal lives in normal places like Paducah, Kentucky, or Lombard, Illinois, or Grand Rapids, Michigan or Lima, Ohio or Cedar Rapids, Iowa or Jenks, Oklahoma or Walnut Hills, California--or Baton Rouge, Louisiana. We, the people of Paducah and Lombard and Grand Rapids and Lima and Cedar Rapids and Jenks and Walnut Hills and Baton Rouge, we see people bicycling in Central Park in movies or on tv, and they look normal and ordinary like us, but we know they're not. We are not fooled. We are not fools. We see the difference. There is New York. And there is Us. We're prose, they're poetry. We plod in polyester, they soar in silk. We intone dirges, they belt out Broadway melodies. They eat food we've yet to hear of and get their hair cut in styles we 've not yet dreamt of and they laugh loudly at jokes we do not get and they swear with words we do not understand. Even the taxi drivers and doormen and waitresses and subway attendants bear the traces of fairy dust, that New Yorkyness.

So now I'm back in Baton Rouge. Normal. Ordinary. OK. But on Saturday I bicycled in Central Park. And life is just that bit more magical.

Just fine

I spent the last week in Chicago.

This is Not Good. It's akin to a recovering alcoholic taking a wine tour of southern France, or an addict deciding to vacation in an opium den.

I live my life in Baton Rouge and I am fine. I made my peace long ago. It's the Deep South and it's suburban and it's damned hot and it's provincial and parochial and politically primeval. . . but it's fine.

Until I go back to Chicago. And then it's. . . not fine. Because suddenly there I am, once again. Me. The Me who fits, who belongs, who gets it, who can explain it; the Me-in-embryo who stared out of the windows of our family station wagon during our tri-annual visits from the western suburbs into The City and thought, "I'm going to make this mine" And I did.

And then I lost it.

But I'm fine. I've made my peace. I have a great life. Keith and I enjoy satisfying jobs and the support of good friends in a very livable city. I bike to work along a lake filled with egrets and gigantic turtles and squabbling ducks. I while away the hours in an excellent local coffee shop. We live in, and can afford, an amazing house in a charming, tree-lined, historic neighborhood. We enjoy world-class drama, courtesy of LSU. We have a decent public radio station. A good airport. Easy access to New Orleans. A regenerating downtown. An . . . a . . .

Shit.

Chicago, it is not.

I'm fine.

But who wants to be fine? Just fine? I want to laugh so hard that I pee. I want the el. And the Cubs. And the ferocious wind off the lake. Brick bungalows. Plump parkas and deep dish pizza and hotdogs without the blasphemy of ketchup. Hispanic groceries jumbled against Korean take-outs and Serbian Cultural Centers and Polish bakeries. The flat Chicago aaaaccent. The breathtaking beauty of skyscrapers' reflections in the Chicago River. The startling combination of the accelerated metropolitan pace with genuine midwestern friendliness: "Hey, you OK?" And mostly, that adrenalin rush, that sense of yes, that smooth slipping into a place I always wanted and I always knew was mine.

But I'm home now. In Baton Rouge. It's fine. I'm fine. Just fine.

At the Beach

Am at the beach. Blogging at the beach. Is that cool? Or is that pitiful? I'm ambivalent.

The Beach, in this case, in all cases concerning me and my family, is Gulf Shores, Alabama. One doesn't have real beaches in Louisiana--just bayous and marshes, teeming with leeches and alligators and such like. Then comes Mississippi, but its beaches pre-Katrina were rocky and dirty, and post-Katrina, well, let's say they remain a work in progress. One could bypass Alabama and continue down the interstate to Pensacola, but as soon as the car crosses the state line into Florida the prices rise, as does the socio-economic status and the physical fitness of the beach-goers, and the quality of the goods in the shops and restaurants.

Since we don't like to go out when we're at the beach, we prefer Gulf Shores. Decent prices. White sand. The appropriately uber-tacky souvenirs. And, the absolute essential of any beach break, lots of obese Americans in all their glory--the guy with the gigantic beer belly curling over his belt like a generous scoop of ice cream on a cone, his buddy with the tattooed eagle proclaiming "Liberty or Death," his amply proportioned girlfriend who sports a string bikini all the same.

My, but we are an ugly people.

Yet the sun is shining and the breeze is fresh and the laughter, like the waves, rolls up and peaks and diminishes and crescendoes again; the beer belly guy leans over and gives his girl's broad shoulder a gentle kiss; the tattooed friend walks over and offers us a beer and a chicken wing.

Easter weekend. All things made new.

Stuck in the "way back"

We are about to enter the realm of iPhonedom. Hugh's in charge of the driving and directions on this trip. Keith, I guess, is in the passenger seat; at least he's the one with the wallet. Me? I'm the drugged dog in the pet carrier, wedged in the "way back" of the station wagon, in between the suitcases and the cooler.

I just don't get the cell phone. I know that's like saying "I just don't get chocolate" or "I just don't get the Beatles" or "I just don't get Jane Austen." I mean, there are things one cannot and should not and does not live without. But here I am, cellularly inept. Not only does it take me an uninterrupted hour to compose and send a four-word text message, not only do I not know how to take a photo or check email or go online or play music or watch videos with the thing, I have trouble using it to make a phone call, mostly because it's lost, forgotten, or uncharged. I think I could have a cellular disability; I know I'm cellphone-intolerant.

Hugh assures me, however, that all will be well, I will be well, once we're settled in iPhonedom. So what the heck. I like to travel. I even like moving. Just hope the new neighbors will cut me some slack.

Generation Gap

As I noted in my last post, this summer's month-long tour of Ireland in the company of a gaggle of undergraduates provided me with a number of unpleasant reminders that I am no longer 25 years old. Example 2:

Traveling from one place to another, the undergrads would often play the "Would you rather" game--the one that requires you to choose between two usually disgusting or horrifying options: e.g. Would you rather eat a cup of slugs or a plateful of live cockroaches? Would you rather be hit on the head with a hammer or stabbed in the chest with a scissors? etc. etc. etc. Fairly tedious after awhile, obviously, except one afternoon when the following question came to the top of the pile: Would you rather be handsome/beautiful yet always look bad in photographs, or physically unattractive in person but nice-looking in photographs? Eavesdropping, I immediately thought, Well, duh. The first option, clearly. To my astonishment, all the students opted for the second. Image over actuality. The triumph of the virtual over the real. Photographs, they decided, would reach more people. And they would last.

The generation gap, already the size of the Grand Canyon, suddenly widened further. The cliffs on both sides crumbled and crashed; the bridges spanning the chasm slid into the deep. Peering through the dust thrown up by the collapsing canyon walls, I could just make out figures on the other side. They looked familiar, but when the air cleared, I realized that no, no, they were another species altogether.

Age on Wheels

My month-long jaunt with university students in Ireland finished up a few weeks ago, but I am still recovering. So many unwelcome reminders that I am no longer 25. For example--

Most of the female students traveled with breathtakingly, backbreakingly huge suitcases (despite repeated orders to "pack light"). As we were gathering for the bus one day, some of the guys were kidding the women about the enormity of their cases and the women were insisting that they had packed only the essentials for a four-week trip. Foolishly, I interrupted the conversation.

"You know, when I was a college student, I traveled through Europe with a group like this for eight weeks and my only suitcase was a little square bag about half the size of your typical carry-on."

Sullen silence, shuffling feet, rolling eyes.

I realized I had just uttered the equivalent of the classic geezer "in-my-day" monologue: "When I was a lad, I walked five miles to school and five miles back over hill and dale in shoes made of cardboard and only a cold potato in my pocket. . . "

It got worse. One of the more assertive young women piped up. "But why? Why would you travel with such a ridiculously small suitcase?"

"Well, we moved around a lot and we had to. . . to. . . "

I couldn't, I simply couldn't continue. How could I tell them that I had to be able to carry, literally carry, whatever bag I brought, that my suitcase didn't have wheels, that no suitcases back then had wheels, that, yes, I am so old that I actually attended college back in the days when no one had yet thought of putting luggage on wheels. How could I admit that to them? How could I so clearly, convincingly confirm my dinosaur status? And how, oh how can I be that friggin' old?

The Queen Goes Shopping

I've finally solved a mystery that has been perplexing me for years: Where does the Queen of England get those dresses and handbags? Now I know. From a small coastal town in Norfolk called Sheringham. Like all coastal British towns, Sheringham bulges with tea shops and fish-n-chippies and ice cream counters and hopeful watercolorists. Unusually, however (at least in my experience, and I actually do have some experience in British beach holidays--much more so, bizarrely, than most of the natives of my acquaintance, who flee to Spain or Egypt or Thailand for their seaside getaways), Sheringham also includes a large number of ladies' clothing shops, all frozen somewhere in the mid-1950s.

So now I know. In the off-season, Her Maj must scutter on down and load up the Rolls with heaps of flowered frocks and boxy handbags. Maybe she stops at Ye Olde Tea Shoppe for a herring bap or a bacon buttie, and then strolls along the promenade and watches the waves. I hope so. I'm sure it would do her good.

What-the-hell hair

There's a certain "what the hell" freedom in being in the latter half of one's allotted lifespan. This week, for example, I paid more for a haircut than I have ever before (and, I imagine, than I ever will again). I won't tell you how much; suffice it to say it was in the three figures, and the last two were not zeroes. And I did it with no consideration or planning whatsoever. One moment I was finishing up my coffee in a Dublin Starbucks (may I just say to opponents of globalization that I would have far preferred to be in a locally owned coffee shop, but Starbucks offered free wi-fi and the locals did not; sadly, practicality trumps principles almost every time) and the next I was bent back over the shampoo sink in the chi-chi hair place across the street.

I had flown off to Ireland a month earlier with what I thought was workable hair--no blowdryer, no straightening rod or curling iron, just wash and go. So I washed and went, for a month, with Really Bad Hair, hair that looked as if it resulted from the mating of one of those string mops and a clown's wig. And the thing is, despite being in the latter half of my allotted lifespan, I have yet to learn to be "what the hell" about my hair.

I have, of course, honed a number of coping strategies over the years, all of which I relied on regularly over the past four weeks in misty moisty blustery blowy Ireland: I reminded myself that I am an intellectual and a deeply spiritual person, someone who is really above bothering with something as trivial as hair. I contemplated barrettes and pondered headbands. I tried different side parts. I applied copious amounts of Product. I combed it all backwards. I brushed it all forwards. I avoided mirrors. I wore my hood a lot.

But still, Bad Hair is Bad Hair, and so, in one impulsive moment in Dublin, I chopped it all off. That is, I gave the incredibly sexy, 30-ish, cutey hairstylist guy the liberty to do with my hair what he would. And he chopped it all off--with the most amazing attention to detail, precise technique, and gentle patience. I mean, if this guy does sex like he does hair, well, golly.

And then he told me what the cut cost.

What the hell.

It's a good cut. I now have Good Hair. And life is better. Of course, I'm also at this moment sitting on a stack of pillows alongside my husband on an enormous bed in an "Exquisite Boutique Bed and Breakfast" (so the advertisement) in a Norfolk seaside village. That helps too.

A walk in Cork

Yesterday, a bracing blustery very Irish day, I sauntered across the Lee River bridge. I was feeling fine, better than fine, really downright fantastic: hey, look at me, at home in Cork after less than 24 hours; here I am, taking command of this city, making this place mine; I am Sophisticated Traveler; I am urban and urbane; I am. . . and then a fart suddenly bellowed forth from my nether regions. I kept walking, but at more of a slink than a saunter.

Clearly, however, the gods had determined that I hadn't been punished enough. Pushing on up the hill to the hostel, I found myself walking behind a small boy dancing alongside of what looked to be his grandfather, who was carrying a new scooter. When the boy turned to glance at me, I smiled broadly and nodded in an effort to signal, "Hey, cool! A scooter!" The boy's face crumpled. He ran to his grandfather, clung to his leg, and gasped out something about "that crazy lady."

Good lord. I am not Sophisticated Traveler. I am Scary Crazy Lady. With gas.

Phoning Home

Yesterday I phoned home for the first time since I arrived in Ireland a week ago. In this New Age of satellite phone technology and Skype, I am antediluvian. I do email Keith and send the occasional Facebook message to the boys but I just can't wrap my mind around the idea of casually phoning (or ye gods, texting) between Europe and the U.S. For me, it remains one of those Only In Cases of Emergency things. But, in an effort to be an up-to-date cool kind of person, I phoned home.

I got Hugh.

"HI YA!" I say, in my excited, can-you-believe-it's-me-and-how-amazing-is-this voice. "Hi," Hugh says flatly. "Honey, it's me. Mom. Calling from Ireland," I enthuse. "Yeah," replies Hugh. The subtext is clear: "So what?"

When Hugh was little, all I had to do was enter a room and I was a star. He's the first person I've ever known whose eyes really, truly light up. And once upon a time, they lit for me. He'd smile this huge, infectious grin and those eyes would shine and he'd roll, crawl, toddle, run over and leap into my arms.

They demand so much when they're little. They want you and want you and want you. And it's exhausting and inconvenient and annoying and suffocating and relentless, oh god, it's relentless.

Then they stop. And, like childbirth, nothing and no one can prepare you for the pain.

Out of Place

I'm beginning to think it wasn't such a good idea to spend the month in which I turn 50 in the company of 15 undergraduate women. All these slender waists and slim thighs and firm butts and oh, the perky boobs, perched up above flat tummies like a couple of cupcakes piled high with frosting. My boobs look more and more like dead flounders. Out at dance clubs til the wee hours of the morning, these Lovely Young Things then show up all bright and yes, perky, goddamn perky, at 8:30 breakfast while I, I of the are-those-boobs-or-are-they-dead-flounders, I struggle to stay up til 10.

Our student apartments here in Ireland adjoin a conference hotel that seems largely to cater to busloads of German retirees who, in between bouts of porch-sitting, shuffle around in sensible trousers and clunky shoes. Not a perky boob among them. I think I'll just hang out with the Germans in my free time. Sensible and clunky with lots of porch-sitting--sounds about right.

Birthday

So, today's the day. This is it. I'm no longer facing 50; I've arrived, I'm there, I'm now in my 50s.
Whoa.

It's weird. I really do feel different. As if I'm jetlagged and in a foreign country.

Oh wait. I am jetlagged and in a foreign country.

Which does kind of help with the whole Big Birthday half-a-friggin'-century thing. For one thing, I'm in Ireland and who can be down in Ireland?--other than the Irish, of course. And far from family and friends, cut off from routine responsibilities, I don't feel 50; I just feel, well, jetlagged and in a foreign country.

Although actually, jetlag is fairly routine for me, because chronic insomnia and jetlag are pretty much indistinguishable. Except that jetlag usually means that somewhere along the line you've been somewhere you really wanted to be. Just like the sleep deprivation you get with having a baby is like what insomnia feels like, except at least you get the baby.

Now that I think about it, tho', insomnia does make even the most familiar place into a foreign country; it's just that it's one of those foreign countries you never ever want to visit--say, the Soviet Union, 1954. Stark, cold, grey concrete buildings, all unforgiving angles and relentless drab.

But I, I get to come face-to-face with 50 in Ireland, with its gentle curves and soothing greenness. My dominant impression of Ireland thus far is that of softness. Of course there's that legendary Irish landscape, sculpted and smoothed by centuries of deforesting and grazing and cultivating. But take the lilt of the Irish accent as well: Listening to the Irish speak is like the auditory equivalent of cuddling up on an overstuffed sofa with a fluffy comforter. Or take one of the most common sights in Ireland (at least if you're traveling with a pack of undergraduates)--that of a barman pouring Guinness into a pint glass--the liquid swirls and foams as smoothly as a silk shawl slipping over bare shoulders. Even traditional Irish music--I learned today, courtesy of my music prof colleague--has a softness, a lack of definition, as one tune follows another without break or breath.

It occurs to me that I've spent most of my first 50 years drawing and maintaining clean, sharp, straight lines. Perhaps I can spend the next 50 smudging, curving, blurring those lines. A bit of Irish softness seems in order.

I'll start with another pint of Guinness.