Jew Eat Yet?

Young Estella

 

How can I not comment on the passing of beautiful Jean Simmons who died on Friday at her home in Santa Monica? Above is a photo of Simmons in one of her first (and best) movies—the magnificent 1946 version of Dickens’ “Great Expectations” directed by David Lean. How I loved the teenaged Jean Simmons in this role. She was so deliciously beastly to young Pip that I used to imagine the part must have been close to her actual personality. But by all accounts, Jean was a lovely woman and, in my opinion, a wonderful actress who had the misfortune of later being cast in a series of overblown and not very good costume dramas. While she became famous for her roles in bloated epics such as “Androcles and the Lion,” “The Robe,” “The Egyptian,” and, the best of the bunch, “Spartacus,” her exquisite acting chops were on much better display in films such as Laurence Olivier’s “Hamlet” (at 19 she was nominated for an Oscar for her haunting take on Ophelia), “Black Narcissus,” “Angel Face,” “The Actress,” and “Elmer Gantry.”

I enjoyed Simmons’ performance in the misguided film version of the musical “Guys and Dolls.” Misguided because even though Simmons fit the spirit of Salvation Army Sergeant Sarah Brown, neither she nor co-star Marlon Brando (playing gambler Skye Masterson) could sing a note. And in an era of many leading stars being dubbed in musicals, the surprising decision was made to let Brando and Simmons do their own singing. Producer Sam Goldwyn reportedly said, "You might as well wreck it with your own voice than somebody else's. Ouch. Simmons said she enjoyed the rehearsals with Brando trying his best not to step on her and choreographer Michael Kidd looking very worried. Though Brando and Simmons were excellent actors, their creaky pipes especially paled when matched up against Frank Sinatra and Vivan Blaine as Nathan Detroit and Miss Adelaide. But after so many somber roles, it’s still a delight to watch Simmons in such a fun part. Sing out, Jean!

In one of our first dates in the early 1990s, Kendall and I went to see Jean Simmons and her former “Big Country” co-star Charlton Heston in the A.R. Gurney play “Love Letters” at the old Canon Theatre in Beverly Hills. She was 60 years old at the time but looked as beautiful as she did as Estella in “Great Expectations.” 

My only problem with that film is when Jean’s character turns into Valerie Hobson in the later scenes. Hobson wasn’t half as effective as the grown-up Estella. In Feburary 1947, a New York Times reporter writing from London heralded the rise of the beautiful teen:

The big star news of the month is Jean Simmons, a 17-year-old Rank property who is tipped as the hottest favorite discovered over here in seasons. Little Miss Simons smashed through just before Christmas in a almost terrifyingly mature performance as the young Estella in “Great Expectations,” and pulled off another smart trick in “Hungry Hill” a couple of weeks ago. As a bonus, she has been given her first starring part as the frightened heroine in Sheridan Le Fanu’s period thriller, “Uncle Silas.” Laurence Irving, grandson of Sir Henry Irving, who is producing “Uncle Silas,” says Miss Simmons is “the nearest thing to a young Ellen Terry I’ve encountered in a long career in the theatre.” “She’s got it all here,” he adds, pounding his heart. “Nothing can stop her because she’s just a natural-born acting miracle. It was the most amazing experience to watch her playing her scenes with Katina Paxinou. You might have expected the child to be nervous, but not a bit of it.”

No Miss Havisham herself, Simmons was married twice: to actor Stewart Granger and then to director Richard Brooks. She is survived by her daughters Tracy Granger and Kate Brooks, named after her close friends Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn.

Jean Simmons revisited her first big screen success in a 1989 TV version of the Dickens classic where she finally did get the chance to play the ghostly Miss Havisham. She was wonderful in the part but I will always remember her as Miss Havisham’s manipulated protégée:

A Post About SEX

 

Charlie went to his very first movie yesterday. It’s been raining all week so Leah’s school cancelled classes (only in L.A.!) and in the afternoon we decided to go to a film Leah had been wanting to see: “Youth in Revolt” starring Michael Cera. The policy at Arclight Cinemas is to charge infants FULL-PRICE, they don’t even get the children’s discount. I guess that’s to discourage parents from bringing their babies to the theatre. And they should be discouraged, I always look on aghast when I see babies in the audience. But...not MY baby! Shouldn’t Arclight make an exception for an infant who already knows the score to every Rodgers & Hammerstein movie ever made? After getting his $16 ticket, Charlie was the perfect moviegoer, staring at the screen in silent, rapt attention for the first half of the film and then sleeping soundly for the second half (a pattern I’ve been known to follow). Did I mention that Charlie’s first movie was R-rated?

The very first shot of “Youth in Revolt,” even before the opening credits, was of Michael Cera furtively masturbating to an old Penthouse magazine. Oy. It was then that I realized that one of the main plots of the film was Cera’s quest to lose his virginity. Many scenes of wild sex-making among young teens followed during the next two hours. This wasn’t “Porky’s,” it was actually a very good film with a wonderful cast (including Jean Smart, Fred Willard, Steve Buscemi, Mary Kay Place, and Ray Liotta) but it still felt uncomfortable at times to be watching this movie with my 15-year-old daughter and my baby son. Hello? Department of Child & Family Services?

Not that anything in the film was news to Leah, she learned all about the birds and the bees (do they still call it that?) starting in 5th grade in a series of very frank classes at her elementary school. And she’s seen many films that depict young people's fascination with sex. Her favorite musical is “Spring Awakening” which begins its second act with a graphic bit of simulated sex between the two main characters (both now starring in “Glee,” one of Leah’s favorite TV shows that also pulls no punches in the teen sex department). I assume Charlie will also have straightforward sex ed classes in grade school, and we will certainly be responsive if he has any questions or concerns before then.

I come from the first generation of young kids who had sex education classes at a very early age. As I wrote in a post several years ago, my 4th grade classmates and I were the guinea pigs for a new sex education program they were piloting in the Chicago public schools in the 1960s. Our educators thought they were being oh-so-hip  and progressive, but the information was steeped in so much awkwardness that it’s a wonder any of us ever lost our virginity. We frequently did responsive readings from our sex ed textbook—the one that made human bodies sound like grotesque undulating masses filling up with blood at every opportunity. As we sat waiting for our turn to read aloud we would count the number of kids who were ahead of us and then count the paragraphs in the book to find ours in advance, praying that we wouldn’t have to read the words “vagina” or “penis” in front of our classmates.

One day our teacher sent the boys out of the room and had a private session with the girls. When we returned, the girls, looking a little queasy, were clutching thick brown paper envelopes. We longed to know what was inside those mysterious packages. The next day during lunch some of the boys tackled Adrienne Becker on the playground and grabbed the contraband. We were all deeply disappointed by the color illustrations of the female menstrual cycle. The uterus looked like a venus fly trap, waiting to snap its prey. The cross-cut view of fallopian tubes and ovaries looked like some kind of evil monster mask, a little like the disembodied head of the fake wizard before Dorothy discovers the man behind the curtain.

Our public school sex ed experiment continued into the upper elementary grades. By then we were immune to the embarrassment of reading certain words out loud and we even looked for ways to cause more discomfort to our well-meaning teachers, most of whom would rather have stuck forks in their eyes than teach us about our blossoming sexuality. I’ll never forget the day that my friend Helena, just to freak out our teacher Mrs. Pink, raised her hand during sex education and asked how homosexuals had sex. Mrs. Pink turned several shades darker than her name and tried to act like the groovy hipster she longed to be (earlier that month she had us singing “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “Scarborough Fair” at our school assembly). Searching her brain for an answer that wouldn’t make her the subject of the next PTA meeting, she finally stammered, “They rub each other until it feels good. Next question?” Poor Mrs. Pink. Even her white lipstick and paisley mini-skirt couldn’t hide the fact that she was more Pat Nixon than Gloria Steinem.

Our sex ed classes were frequently accompanied by filmstrips or movies. I recently found one educational film online from that time period that I’m sure we watched in class. We certainly saw many just like it. Viewing these films today, I can admire the intentions of the filmmakers to cut through the bullshit of the previous era and present a no-nonsense view of human sexuality. But the films are so awkward that it’s a miracle any of us ever had sex. If you have about eight minutes to spare, you MUST take a look at some scenes from this 1960s masterpiece:

YIKES! Again, I admire the message, but I’m not sure any of these actors went on to successful film careers. I did think that teenaged girl talking about her period to the leering man (why couldn’t they have her talking to a woman?) was very good. I felt for the teen boy discussing his negative feelings about masturbation, especially if this film was ever shown in his high school class. I had to edit out several scenes of the film that actually showed naked toddlers touching their genitals because I worried that I could get arrested for trafficking child pornography. As icky as this film is (girls’ “nests” filling with blood?), in some ways it is more progressive and daring than a lot of the materials used today, especially in the misguided abstinence-only programs. I may just save these clips to show Charlie the first time he asks where babies come from.

Charlie Loves Conan

 

With all the harsh realities in today’s world, including the untold misery and devastation caused by last week’s earthquake in Haiti, it’s hard to imagine anything less important than the current late-night wars between Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien. Nevertheless, my son Charlie would like to go on record to say that he is firmly entrenched in the Conan camp, as is my entire family.

Is there a species on the planet more misguided than the current slate of NBC executives? Everything about the Leno/O’Brien debacle was made worse by their utter stupidity and cluelessness. Charlie and I don’t claim to be unbiased here. We just believe that Conan O’Brien is about a thousand times funnier than Jay Leno and can’t believe that O’Brien is being kicked to the curb (albeit with an eye-popping settlement of up to $40 million—go NBC execs—way to spend money in these troubled times!) in favor of bringing back Leno and his crude, mean-spirited humor. I remember first being disgusted by Leno years ago when the Laci Peterson murder was in the news. This was frequent fodder for jokes in Leno’s awful monologues. I only hope her family and friends never had to hear these horrific jokes, unless some of them happen to think the murder of a  27-year-old woman and her unborn baby is a laugh riot. I found much of Leno’s humor to be in that vein, despite his nice-guy persona. Conan, on the other hand, while being an acquired taste, always struck me as truly funny in a goofy, self-deprecating way.

I admit that I didn't watch this show that much in recent years except when my brother-in-law's band was the musical guest. I attended “The Tonight Show” three times during Leno’s reign and again in June less than a month into O’Brien’s brief run. Each time Wilco appeared on Leno I remember seeing Jay’s pristine vintage car parked right at the entrance to the soundstage. He’d always be walking around in the exact same outfit until the cameras rolled—perfectly pressed blue jeans with a new blue jean shirt. I never spoke to the man, of course, but found the shows almost painful to watch. I just don’t get why he was so beloved, at least before his nightly prime-time experiment that sank like a lead balloon. I was thrilled about the changeover last June and enjoyed every second of our visit. Charlie was still in the NICU then and we went to Conan's new studio straight from Cedars. Unlike Leno, Conan never seemed to just kiss the butts of his guests, he engaged them in real conversations. I think he is a much better successor to Johnny Carson’s brilliance than Jay Leno could ever be.

But that’s okay. I’m not going to lose any sleep over NBC’s suicidal moves over the past few weeks. I loved Conan’s letter in response to the NBC honchos and I hope he keeps biting the hands that fed him until he is yanked off the air later this week. As Conan himself is quick to point out, no pity party is required. He’s getting a bigger payout for leaving than many relief agencies will see in Haiti this year, and he is free to do whatever he wants at any other network. I’m sure we haven’t seen the last of him.

In honor of Conan's last week, here are some brief clips of our visit to “The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien” last June followed by some new material:

“The Tonight Show” began its run in September 1954, five years before I was born. Steve Allen was the first host, followed by Jack Paar. Johnny Carson debuted when I was 2 years old and stayed on until I was 32. In between Paar and Carson, NBC tried a different host every week. This group included Art Linkletter, Merv Griffin, Pat Boone, Joey Bishop, Spike Jones, and, as the first woman host, from May 7-11, 1962, Zsa Zsa Gabor. That’s IT! I’ve got the answer to NBC’s embarrassing predicament. BRING BACK ZSA ZSA!

Family Exposure

 

Every Christmas I perform what has become an annual one-man show in Kendall’s mother’s living room in which I recite a stack of those infamous Christmas letters people send over the holidays. Oh, don’t worry, I NEVER make fun of YOUR funny, articulate letter, if you write one and happen to know Kendall’s mother—I only perform the bizarre missives that are horribly written and contain shockingly inappropriate information and/or excruciatingly detailed reports about every moment of the previous 365 days including every surgery, slight, and sexual dysfunction. I read the letters in various voices and accents and then feel terribly guilty for mocking the humorless ramblings of these proud but clueless individuals. 

Yesterday I was wrapping up my performance art with a late-arriving letter that detailed the accomplishments of the sender’s three children including every grade they received over the course of the previous school year, their current relationship status (including the one who was dumped by his girlfriend), and endless minutiae on their extracurricular activities, all punctuated with excessive exclamation points and written in a tone that made it sound like the writer was describing a trio of Nobel laureates. After reading the letter aloud I commented how I would never do that, I would never torture people with an unflinching account of my family’s achievements.

A visiting friend of mine fidgeted in her chair at my pronouncement and said quietly, “Um…your blog?”

Woops. She was absolutely right. Is that what my blog has become—a year-round Christmas letter? In a way, I guess. Truth be told, since I am a blogger and I love reading blogs, I have to admit that I actually enjoy hearing the minutiae of strangers’ lives, the more details the better. I simply ask for a soupçon of writing ability, a bissel self-awareness, and a teench of humor.

I think my sensitivity of what to include in my blog about family members and what to leave out is way more developed now than it was when I started this blog. I got in trouble early on for including some old personal correspondence between two family members without asking for the living relative's permission. More recently, I’ve been yelled at for including photos of family members that they hated. 

But I hope I’m never guilty of sharing too much about my family members or saying anything inappropriate.

Hey, did you hear that my 14-year-old nephew is responsible for a huge increase in abortions in the state of Illinois? It’s true—it was on the front page of the Chicago Sun-Times last Sunday!

Oy! I was flabbergasted when I saw my nephew and his bandmates’ photo under that headline! Hello? And since when does an article like that warrant a picture that big on the front page of the newspaper? I haven’t seen a photo that size on page 1 since Neil Armstrong walked on the moon in 1969! Abortions aside, it’s an interesting article. All about teen bands in the Chicago area including Spencer’s band “The Blisters”—you can read it here.

In other exploitative family news, now that the story has finally leaked in the media,  I can report with giddy excitement that my brother-in-law is in the middle of producing Mavis Staples’ upcoming album. Yes, Mavis Staples of the amazing Staple Singers, a Chicago-based but internationally famous band I worshipped as a kid. Pops Staples died in 2000 but Mavis has carried on the family tradition all these years and I’m thrilled that she’s recording at my brother-in-law’s loft and that my sister and nephews are getting the chance to hang with such a legend. Spencer took some great photos of Mavis at the loft (which I'm stealing from his blog without his permission—what did I just say?). Staples has adopted my nephews as her honorary grandchildren. Doesn’t that make her my spiritual mother?

 

The Mavis Staples track I listen to most often is a duet she did with her friend Aretha Franklin that was recorded for Aretha’s gospel album from the 1980s, “One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism.” I love their take on “Oh Happy Day” and I can never get enough of it:

Who am I kidding? I’ll never stop writing about my family members on this blog. Isn't that what blogs are for? All I can do is try not not to be as obnoxious as some of the worst Christmas letter writers. Hey, give me some credit—at least I’m not scanning Leah’s first-semester grades which came in the mail today and posting them here. (Ow, stop twisting my arm! Okay, fine—she got straight As!)

Charlie Eats!

 

Charlie had his first experience with food this week. The above photos document our son’s very first taste of real food. It was organic rice cereal and he seemed to like it well enough even though he was surprised by the texture and taste. This day was a long time coming. For his first several months Charlie was fed through an IV line. At first he could only take a liquid called TPN (Total Parenteral Nutrition). This is given to premature babies whose digestive tracts are not well developed enough to digest breast milk or formula. It contains sugars, electrolytes, vitamins, proteins, and fats. When Charlie was finally ready to try feeding by mouth they used a pre-digested formula specially made for preemies. I remember how excited we were when Charlie was able to suck down a measly 5 cc. Eventually, he was able to take all his feedings by mouth and thank God eating hasn’t been an issue since.

But now it’s a whole new ball game with real food. Per our pediatrician’s advice, we’ll stick to rice cereal for a few weeks and then gradually introduce new foods, one at a time. I have no doubt that Charlie and his digestive tract will adapt quickly. I so look forward to cooking for him and with him. I wonder how long it will be until he’s ready for my chopped liver cooked in schmaltz (chicken fat) or my garlicky brisket that roasts all night long? Can I serve you some crème caramel, Charlie boy, or perhaps a big slice of my patented coconut cake? Oh, the culinary delights that await you! Not to mention those guilty pleasures, especially when we’re visiting family in Chicago, such as Superdawgs and Lou Malnati’s pizza.

I remember Leah’s first spoonful of food like it was yesterday but, of course, have no memory of my own. I can only imagine what sludge passed for baby food in the early 60s. I cringe with horror when I remember my childhood diet of canned vegetables, TV dinners, gallons of soft drinks (with saccharine and cyclamates), and packaged sweets. When Leah was four, I wrote an article about my junk food-obsessed childhood that was published on the early online version of Salon magazine. My mother was still alive then and while she loved the article she took some offense at the implications I was making about her cooking skills. Truth be told, my mom was an excellent cook but that did not prevent her from succumbing to the glories of 1960s convenience foods. After years of kitchen drudgery, why shouldn’t she serve these easy-as-pie science fair projects to her kids? Many of my childhood foods reflected the wonder of American technology. Why spend countless hours preparing the traditional meals of our grandparents' generation when you could simply grab a box, open a can, break a plastic seal, or pull back a foil lining?

My day began with breakfast cereals that boasted a staggering array of artificial colors, flavors and preservatives. Cocoa Puffs, Sugar Pops, Cap'n Crunch. My favorite was Trix—tiny spheres of crunchy Day-Glo sugar that sent spirals of fluorescent colors strafing across my bowl of milk. You can see my sister and I downing Trix in the ancient Polaroid photo at right. I can just taste that colorful milk! I also liked Lucky Charms, which featured mini-marshmallows in leprechaun-inspired shapes. I foraged past the bland cereal bits to find the yummy hearts, moons and clovers in a spectrum of hues that never existed on God's rainbow.

Lunchtime foods sprang forth from a stock of canned goods that was big enough to outlast the Cold War. Our luncheon menu might include Spaghettios (“the neat new spaghetti you can eat with a spoon!”), Chef Boy-Ar-Dee mini-raviolis, Goober's peanut butter and jelly swirled together in the same jar, or the glorious marshmallow fluff, a pristine white concoction of sugar and air that was made into heavenly “fluffernutter” sandwiches. When she had a little extra time, my mother prepared comforting Kraft Macaroni 'n' Cheese. As she mixed the powdered topping with milk, it was magically transformed into a cheesy goo guaranteed to stay in the colon until Nixon's resignation. All of these treats were washed down with refreshing sugary beverages such as grape Kool-Aid, strawberry Fizzies, Tang, Fresca or chocolate-flavored Yoo-Hoo.

For our nightly dinner meal, my mother demonstrated a flair for the exotic. Hawaiian meatballs made with canned pineapple in heavy syrup; lemon chicken, cooked all day in a Crock-Pot with frozen lemonade concentrate. Sometimes she served honest-to-God fresh produce: wedges of watery iceberg lettuce drowning in the dazzling gelatinous red-orange of Kraft French Dressing. Her desserts included Dole pineapple upside-down cake, sticky Rice Krispies treats, and the infamous “mock” apple pie made of Ritz crackers instead of fruit. My favorite dessert was the short-lived Jello 1-2-3. Although prepared like regular Jello, this amazing product would separate into three distinct layers as it cooled: creamy top, fruity middle and plain artificial black cherry bottom. Top the whole thing with non-dairy Cool Whip and you have a dessert fit for an Apollo astronaut!

Looking back, it’s hard to believe I was a skinny kid. It’s a miracle I wasn’t clinically obese, especially when you consider the overstocked candy bowl at the entrance to our kitchen. This bottomless candy bowl was legendary in our neighborhood and responsible for a good portion of my popularity. I never left the room without grabbing a Mars Bar, Milky Way, Butterfinger, or Hundred Thousand Dollar Bar. Other daily snacks included Twinkies, Ho-Hos, Suzy-Qs, Fiddle Faddle, Screaming Yellow Zonkers, and my favorite delicacy, pink snowballs: globes of cream-filled devil's food cake cloaked in a thick layer of the softest marshmallow and coconut that science could deliver.

I'm not sure what the repercussions were of ingesting all that junk food, but I don't want to play nutritional Russian roulette with my own baby son. I wouldn't dream of letting Charlie near a box of Trix or Lucky Charms and I would worry that every sip of a sugary soft drink might take a year off his life. Over the years my own metabolism has slowed down to the speed of Log Cabin syrup and it's hard as hell to get rid of my middle age spread. I feel like the food I grew up with is partly responsible: I visualize the mutated molecules of pink snowballs jumping onto my fat cells and hanging on for dear life.

For now, Charlie still prefers the taste of his own fingers to the one food he’s tried. But I’ve no doubt that will change pretty quickly. At the moment I plan to make all of his baby food myself but we’ll see if, like my mother, I eventually succumb to the convenience of prepared foods. But I feel safe in saying that no Spaghettios shall ever pass his lips, he will never be drinking caustic soft drinks out of his sippy cup, and that any apple pie he may eat will contain real apples.

Still Drooling After All These Years

 

One thing that I missed completely in all the holiday hubbub was my blog’s five-year anniversary. I’m not saying I needed a catered affair to celebrate the event, but being a dutiful Virgo, I like to mark such occasions in some way. When I began this site five years ago last week, I barely knew what a blog was. It took me a while to figure out what I was doing but it ultimately became the most consistent writing project I’ve ever done and one that has given me innumerable gifts. I am so grateful for this venue and for all the people I've met because of this blog. I used to write in here every single day. Those days are long gone but even now I don’t think I’ve gone more than eight days without a post. Maybe ten. There have been so many times over the years when I’ve consulted my blog to place an event in my life that I might otherwise have completely forgotten.

When I started this blog I was a youthful whippersnapper at 45 years old. Kendall and I had just gotten married earlier that year and we were still setting up our 1909 house. My daughter Leah was about to turn 10 and on her Christmas break from 4th grade. I was going on my fifth year as a full-time Acquisitions Editor for a progressive publisher out east and I was enjoying the job (and the regular paycheck) immensely. What would I have thought if I could have seen all the changes on the horizon? God knows what changes are in store for the next five years. Would we really want to know? I think not! Better to live in the moment and take things as they come—it’s a lot less overwhelming that way.

That said, to commemorate my blog’s birthday I’m reprinting a short, rambling post I wrote five years ago today on January 5, 2005. It’s one that I still see coming up often in search engines for some reason and I’m surprised at how much it still resonates for me even though I’ve got a much better handle on happiness these days.

January 05, 2005

Sad Jessica Lange

I heard Jessica Lange being interviewed by Charlie Rose a few years ago and was amazed during their discussion when Jessica said, “I consider myself a sad person.” She said this with a smile on her face and added that she also felt much happiness and joy in her life, but that a big part of her basic nature included feeling sad a lot of the time and that she accepted this truth about herself. Wow. For some reason that has always stayed with me and I think about it all the time. I remember being struck by the unabashed freedom in this point of view. You mean, we don’t have to be happy every minute of the day? It's not a school assignment that we'll get in trouble for if we don't do it really well? Sadly, being happy to me often feels like an obligation, and I go through so much guilt when I’m coming from other places which is a lot of the time. And then, if I even let it slip to the world that I’m not feeling deliriously happy at that second (not that I’m ever really fooling anybody when I’m not), I have to quickly add all the asterisks about how I really AM happy but I’m just in a weird space and I’m so sorry so just give me a moment and I’ll try to get back to happy…wait, it’s not working, what’s wrong with me…no, I promise I’ll be happy in a minute, hold on…yes, I realize how lucky I am and how much I have to be thankful for and that’s why I know I really am happy, damn it, so just give me a second here. **Cue guilt/shame spiral.** I’m now learning that I can have a happy, fulfilling life and still acknowledge my feelings of pain and sadness without feeling ashamed or spoiled or self-indulgent. If anything, it’s only by allowing my feelings of sadness to see the light of day that enables them to run their natural course and dissipate. When I force them underground with all my guilt that I’m doing something wrong, they get stuck there and hang on for dear life since they’re so afraid of being attacked again. And then at those times when I'm feeling so emotionally constipated I think of what Jessica Lange said in that interview and it’s like a mantra to me. And I know that I can only be happy if I stop trying to be happy or thinking I must be happy.  

Good-bye 2010…

 

…or should I  be saying hello? Oy, do you see why “living in the moment” is such a big deal for me? I wasn’t ten seconds into the new year before I started freaking out that 2010 was practically over and time was flying by faster than the calendar pages in a Busby Berkeley movie. Or maybe I was just rattled by the frightening image of Dick Clark’s face on the New Year’s Eve countdown we were watching. I don’t want to seem cruel or ageist but that man has had more plastic surgery than a Hollywood starlet. He looks like he was embalmed some time during the Reagan administration.

On some New Year's Eves I’ve rejoiced in the passing of a challenging year. “Good riddance to bad trash!” I’ve shouted over my glass of Veuve Clicquot. But even though this was surely the most difficult year of my life, I found that I couldn’t turn on 2009 with such steely-eyed vengeance. Yes, large parts of it were absolute hell to go through but it also brought so much amazing learning and so many invaluable gifts. And, of course, our beautiful miracle baby. But 2009 was also the year that our son Oliver arrived and left us, and part of me feels sad to be in a year that he will never know, at least not here with us.

But his brother is here and is an endless source of joy and wonder. In addition to his parents and big sister, Charlie welcomed the new year with his Aunt Susie, Uncle Jeff, and cousins Spencer and Sammy who were visiting from Chicago.  I can’t remember ever having such a fun, relaxing New Year’s Eve. Leah had two girlfriends over and we had a visit from our champagne-toting friends Blake, Kerry, and Evan. I refuse to be anything but optimistic about 2010 and I promise to continue my quest to live in the moment and stop neurotically hurling myself into the future. I fear some of my issues have already passed on to my daughter. Her Facebook status last week on her birthday was “Leah Anita Rachelle Miller is FIFTEEN!!! jeeeezuhs i am practically out of college and married with kids! my life's over!!!" Eek, what have I done?

Here are some photos of Charlie's first New Year's celebration. The good photos were taken by my talented photographer sister and nephew. 

Charlie enjoyed breakfast at DuPar's in his new Wilco onesie.

 

Aunt Susie was totally smitten and could not put Charlie down.

 

Uncle Jeff took a cuddling nap with Charlie and said that Charlie "gets" him.

 

Cousin Spencer took about a thousand photos of Charlie, some of which have already appeared on his excellent blog.

 

Cousin Sammy began teaching Charlie about the glories of air guns and violent video games.

 

Charlie can't wait for his first trip to Chicago.