If you write...

...eventually you tend to go back and read yourself. And perhaps you realize how small and claustrophobic your skull has become. And perhaps you want out.

So you don't write for a while.

Then words come and come, racing and leapfrogging to the front of things until they insist to be set in type. It no longer matters if writing is worthwhile, if you have an audience, if you're improving a craft or spilling your ugly guts. Writing is better, you hope, than trapping the words in the ever-shrinking real estate of your brain. Anything, when trapped, displays its most primal side. Something trapped will hide in a shell or lash out, hopelessly but nevertheless driven by animal instinct to flail against its cage.

Don't mind my flailing words. Once I start letting them out in the light here and there they will settle down. Their wings will flutter then fold, and they will know they have all the time in the world to pass on their tiny messages.

and also red.

I was up in my parents' room, Baby Bean in her christmas outfit finally, after days of wearing nothing but her pajamas. She's six now, getting longer but still so small next to kids her age. Her face has changed shape, gone from cute to astonishingly pretty.

I brushed her hair back from her face as she sat primly on my mother's vanity stool. She was busy messing with the three mirrors my mother keeps there now that she has trifocals.

"Whoa, I'm upside down," she said, leaning into the first and going silly on me.

"Get up closer until you're right side up," I said. She approached the mirror slowly, expecting a trick of some kind.

"There!" she said, her nose nearly touching the surface.

"Why does Gramma have three mirrors?" she asked.

"Because each one shows her a different distance. She sees in three distances."

She sat up again and told me she wanted her hair way up, "like this," she said, with a fist on the top of her head, "like a rock star."

I brushed and brushed her soft hair. It's brown with a red tint to it and lighter streaks. It would be impossible to replicate that color in a salon. As I brushed she moved her head a bit, leaning into the caress of the brush like a cat. I caught her eye in the mirror.

"Actually, I think," she said, "that with his outfit, maybe not the rock star hair."

"What do you want, peanut?"

"Umm... I dunno."

"Braids?"

"Yeah, braids is good!"

"Okay, but you have to sit still for a while."

She sat up straight again and put her hands in her lap. I chattered to her about christmas, her brother, grandma's amazing tri-focal eyes. At some point I noticed she was staring at me again. I thought suddenly of this role reversal, the many times I sat here while my mother wrestled with my tangles and attempted french braids, later on when she helped me blow it dry and straighten it. I used to watch her face, the furrow in her forehead and the hairpins in her lips. She would talk around them as I asked her questions, a ponytail holder tight around her strong wrist.

"Aunt Jo, why is your hair brown and also red?" asked the Bean.

I smiled at her in the mirror as I completed the first braid. "Because I am cheap and also lazy," I said. This joke was not funny to her, so I gave her the real answer.

"Because I went to the salon and had it colored, like your mommy does." She nodded. "But it's been a while since I had it dyed. Now you can see my real color." She squinched up her nose. "Can you tell which one is my real color?" I asked.

"Ummmmmmm... the brown!" she said, hopping a little in her seat.

"Smart girl."

There was another answer I could have given her. I could have told her I don't see the point in spending money on myself these days. I could tell her I barely notice what I look like from day to day, only keeping to my strict patterns and rules about cleanliness and order. How do you ever tell a six year old girl that her Aunt Jo is so depressed that she can't imagine investing even that little bit in herself? It was insufferable to tell this child, the one my mother calls Jo accidentally, the one sitting just where I sat so many years ago, that I have curdled somehow and I don't know how to fix it, that I'm usually in the middle of a gesture to give up entirely.

I finished the second braid and wrapped a tiny clear ponytail holder around it.

"Okay, shake to see if it stays," I said. She shook her head fiercely from side to side, laughing. "Good. All done. Go show Grandma."

She skipped, actually skipped out of the room. I sat in front of the mirror and pulled my hair until my fingers hurt and the fierce need to cry melted away.

Death in the children's store

The bells on the door jingle. I look up to see Mr. H (for Harmless) and his new pal. Both 60-ish, a little scruffy, and markedly slow. Mr. New (his buddy) wears a cap that’s been washed a few times and won’t ever look nice again. His baseline expression is one of slight amusement, near-smiling. They both slouch. Mr. H has big lips that chew up his words as he gets them out. He looks at me only from the periphery, but he always comes in. I wonder what he’ll take out with him today. It’s usually a free brochure on businesses in Cambridge. Sometimes it’s a flyer for a babysitter or cloth diaper service.

Mr. H: Hellah-o. You’ve seen us before, right?

Jo: Yes I have.
Mr. H: Because we come in here sometimes.
Jo: Every weekend.

Mr. New: Everyone has to pass away eventually
Jo: busies herself looking in cabinets.
Mr. H: We come in here. Me and my buddy here. What’s your name again?

Jo: It’s Jo.
Mr. H: Jooaa… Jo?
Jo: Yes. Jo.
Mr. New: Do we all have to pass away? Why should we all have to pass away?

Mr. H: Yoomans do pass away. We have to.
Mr. New: looking to me, although seemingly addressing Mr. H
I don’t see why we should have to.
Mr. H: plucking a business card, because he only takes things that are free.
The animals, they don’t live as long as yoomans.
Mr. New: We should live forever.
Jo: as though there’s something essential inside cabinets that must be found. looking busier...
Mr. H: If you think of a dog they only get to be about twenty before they die.

Jo: eyebrow spike...
Mr. H: Or a small dog they only make it to about twelve.
Jo: Yep.
Mr. New: But why should anything die?
Mr. H: rocking from foot to foot.What do you think about little people? I bet little people pass away earlier. I bet they don’t last as long as we do.
Jo: shrug.
Mr. H: I’m 58. That’s me, I’m 58 years old now. This year.
Mr. New: How is it we’re going to pass away?
Jo: I don’t have an answer.
Mr. New: It seems like we should have been made better to not pass away. Why do you think it is we pass away?
Jo: Um… well, we’re made out of stuff that rots.
Mr. H: Because if you think of it little people are like little dogs. They probably don’t last as long.
Mr. New: I think maybe we won’t pass away.
Mr. H: heading for the doorWe will though.
Mr. New: following
I’m not so sure about that.

The door jingles as they exit, still jabbering, talking to themselves as though they were never speaking to me. Out into the world.

Ahh, memories.

I found myself saying this today and I'm still chortling:

"I thought we were dating, but it turns out he was merely French."

I guess this is proof that those "you'll look back on this and laugh" moments truly exist...

the boulevard of broken strings

There are few events that can come up that will make me cancel plans with other people I like, but Jake Armerding playing at Club Passim is one of those events.

Apologies, person with whom I canceled plans, but the show was flippin' amazing!

I forget, over and over again, how much I love live music, only to be smacked in the face with the power of it when I'm in its presence again. Watching these men expertly, lovingly drawing music out of mandolins, saxophones, guitars, guitar cases! There's an alchemy there that I miss and feel throbbing like a phantom limb. I used to be capable of that.

More than that I miss Arahsae, who introduced me to Jake Armerding. I miss listening to my brother play his guitar/bass/whatever through the bedroom wall, even being annoyed with him for it. I miss the feeling of slipping my voice between the notes of guitar, trumpet, keyboard in that basement jazz club in Galway.

Last night Cap'n Armerding broke a string during the first song, which he solved prettily enough by switching for his mandolin. Then he asked the crowd if anyone could change a guitar string. I wanted to raise my little hand, but honestly, I'm clumsy. There was a moment when I would have done anything to hold the guitar, warm from the performers hands, be somehow a part of the machine of that music.

I hope the neighbors didn't mind me belting in the shower this morning.

Seventh grade. I carried six notebooks most days for each subject, six binders, the occasional steno pad and calculator, all in a tired backpack populated by whole villages of broken pock-marked pencils and non-functional pens. The school year waxed and waned and my notebooks became predictably tattooed with notes, doodles, stains and other batterings.

I carried one folder. Inside this folder I kept the loose leaf collection of the awkward stories I wrote and let no one see. They were halting, haunting and very likely unfleshed. At the time I thought writing could only be an organic process – an unplanned and unsupervised ride powered by some punch-drunk muse.

The stories were universally dark… about suicide pacts, deadly car accidents, people wasting away with horrible diseases. If I had known what Goth or Emo meant, I might have found a niche. Perhaps not… I was horrified by the nightmare highway my muse continually chose. I was afraid and fascinated by my own propensity for darkness. It was manageable, however, because no one else knew.

It was eighth grade. That was the year terrible things began to happen. A classmate, already socially shunned and ridiculed, found out that his mother died during the school day. He disintegrated before our eyes into a mass of howls. That same year another classmate’s obese sister was found dead. There were rumors; she’d overdosed on diet pills, she’d had a heart attack, she’d choked on a sandwich, her brother killed her with emotional abuse. I felt I knew the truth then. These horrible things happened because I wrote them.

I remember so well the feeling that the events around me were like a camera’s iris, closing into tighter focus. I was choking inside that aperture like it was a 360 degree guillotine. Now I see that my brain was ready for all of it. I was an open soul, begging to be trod on and tried. I didn’t create the events; they blazed inward, highlighting pre-existing sensitivities. It was as though I had an acute sunburn in the winter time and was utterly surprised when dishwater scalded me.

I think of this today because my vocabulary of this life has expanded once more and opened me to new sensitivities. Where before I thought of cancer as a general, unfathomable disease, I can now hear the word cancer across a crowded subway train and it sets my brain reeling. I think of the women who call me at work begging for an earlier surgery. I think of the wheelchair-bound patients in the elevator with their wigs askew and their fragile, bare ankles. I think of how a nurse talked of one of her patients, how he already smelled like death.

So at my brother’s wedding my ears twitched open to the family friend, the woman we call “Aunt” and whose husband we call “Uncle.” Her cancer, I hadn’t known, was one I deal with daily. She asked me if I could pull strings to have her seen at Mass General. I told her, honestly, that I’m new there, and I have no idea. I didn’t want to discuss it further. I hated the immediacy of knowing the possibilities.

And now, a month later, another family friend was claimed by cancer. I saw the New York area code on my work phone but it didn’t click until halfway through my, “This is Jo, how can I help you.” My dad told me to call my mother tonight. Our old neighbor died after a long and strenuous fight. I asked about the kind of cancer, how long it’s been going on (and no one told me). She had a gynecologic cancer, the kind I deal with. She had metastases in her lungs.

Is it possible I was so self-involved before that I never noticed that the women I love on this earth are dying? Is there some energy in the world that draws these coincidences together? I want to believe that it has to do with this sensitivity, like the honing of a musical skill. I can hear the pitch and color of the word cancer in its full spectrum now. It existed before I could hear it and won’t stop its cacophonous echo now that I can.

the incredible shrinking jobiv

I truly am disappearing. There's a positive aspect, at last: I'm losing weight.

I can't figure out how I'm doing it, either. At first it was pure poverty, and maybe the stress of running between four different jobs, never quite remembering my stomach needed feeding. There were several nights when I'd get home at 10 and realize that it was far too late for dinner.

And now, I think, it has something to do with financial security. I can't completely connect the dots, but perhaps it's that I grab and gulp less. I used to devour food whenever I could get my hands on it because it seemed like a precious commodity - one I couldn't afford most days. Now I'm at leisure to choose what I consume. Very new.

On the dark side of all this is my increasing need to become invisible. I am full to bursting with a distressing dichotomy: I'm ever so happy in my work life and find the rest of the world outside of it deeply embarrassing and troubling. More and more I find myself sending brainwave imperatives to those around me: "Don't look at me. Don't look too closely. I'm not here. Don't notice me."

This is apropos of the need for new clothes, by the way... I've been shopping because my clothes look funny on me - too big - but find myself shying away from colors I used to love. My wardrobe is a limited and muted spectrum of gray, beige, black and brown.

I am a cloud passing through. Don't notice me. I am a mud puddle. Avoid me. I am blending with the pavement, shiftitng my chameleonic skin to the steel of subway stations. I'm invisible.

Why, though... I push my thoughts out to grab at answers and they come back empty handed.

in which our heroine hates doctors but takes a job in a hospital

Working among health professionals strikes me as perilous for a person as unhealthy as I am. I knew this, going in. I knew I'd be walking directly into the lion's den every morning and sitting among them, reeking of delicious eland or ibex or whatever lions particularly love to eat.

It's difficult to guard my health issues, most of which I keep extremely private because I usually think my body came along for the ride with my soul just to embarrass me. At a hospital, however, there is no thing they have not seen before. Practically.

One of my least favorite nurses, with whom I do not work directly, thank god, loudly pointed out my limp one day. "Do you have foot drop?" she exclaimed, like she'd discovered proof of my deep dark past and was displaying it to the jury. Yes, I told her... yes I do. I limp. I had a back thing. It's much better now. MOST people don't notice, or at least never mention it.

The woman who sits in my glass cage with me has noticed many a symptom by now. At first I was good at controlling my little issues, but soon enough the hair began to fall. I don't even notice when I'm pulling at it. She's never said anything, but she watches out of the corner of her eye with a creased forehead. I do it when I'm speaking to someone on the phone, begging for OR time, or convincing a woman with cancer that she can wait six weeks for surgery because the doctor said it's okay.

And of course the panic attacks haven't truly abated. The more I try to suppress them, the more likely they are to spread and fester. So I try to use every coping strategy I've ever learned. I try to pull from my secret stores of strength. There was one morning, though, when I couldn't control it and I hadn't even left for work yet. There was no mistaking that I'd been crying and distressed since the wee hours of the morning. I called my doctor's office for some other little thing, got an appointment, called in to work to say I had to see the doctor and would be in later... told people some vague thing about allergies - not a lie, but imprecise.

These disguises are so thin among women who work with distressed women. They notice everything, down to the nurse who points as she walks past and says, "squinting!" to remind me to visit the optometrist. In my more paranoid moments I'm sure she'll walk by, pointing and shouting out my darkest secrets, like the old crone in The Princess Bride who boos Princess Buttercup in her nightmare. "Bow down to the queen of putrescence," etc. I don't even know what this nurse could notice that could be so bad and why I think I'm not obvious as it is. Is it so horrible if people know I'm anxious or tend towards depression?

It is if it's incapacitating. If it interferes with my job... if I'm not able to help people get the care they need because my personal resources are so depleted...

In the immortal words of D. Bowie, "Turn and face the strain."

Wednesday morning and I woke up in an immaculately clean room. I stretched for an hour, got up and assessed the milk situation (completely out), made a cup of jasmine green tea and a serving of corn mush. Everything is different from the last time I was out of milk; that’s what I thought to myself. Just a few months ago I was getting creative with all I could afford – cheap, chewy bread, eggs, and heads of lettuce. I made myself eat the greenest parts. I hate the really green parts. They offer no resistance for the teeth, but that’s where the vitamins hide.

A few months ago I would check my bank account daily to make sure no weird little fees were going to incapacitate my rent check. A few months ago I would wake up before God for my daily corporate coffee catechism: “Good morning, how are you today? Would you like room for milk? Soy milk is on the counter now. Have a nice day!”

Here it is, June of 2009. My brother Cripps got laid off and just lost his work-from-home job, too. My dad is always reading on the back deck when I call him, “Waiting for a business call.” My friends are scrambling to keep jobs they hate. And I got hired at the hospital.

This feeling is something like survivor’s guilt, I think. I’m thrilled, on one hand, to have lucked out so completely; I temped in two places, loved the second one and they loved me back. It was a mutual fit with some time to luxuriate and research if it made sense for me. I’m still adjusting, of course. I went from working 6 hour shifts at a coffee shop, running to old lady sitting, running to the kids’ clothing store… Now I have one job to dress for. One place to establish friendships. One set of people to surprise or disappoint. I can faithfully say I’ve never had just one thing on my plate until now. It’s jarring and strange, but I tell myself it’s a good thing.

Here’s the extraordinary part: I write the rent check without looking now. I can do it with one hand tied behind my back. I’d have to hold down the checkbook with my nose, but still…

All of this puts me in a better position for the week to come. I’m still scared shitless, but, y’know, when people ask what I do I have an answer that doesn’t make me cringe.

My brother Smacks gets married this weekend. I’m headed home.

I actually took off Monday and Tuesday (and clearly Wednesday) to prepare myself. I couldn’t explain it to anyone at work so I told them I had to catch up with doctors’ appointments. The truth is I need this time to breathe and be sure of myself. I cleaned the crap out of my room, I went through old journals, I fed myself kindly… I want to think of Boston while I’m there and remember how well I’ve done. I won’t be able to say it much so I have to know it.

The truth is that these are still lonely, scary days. I know the day will come when I’ll have a panic attack at the hospital and they’ll have to know a few things I don’t want to share. And I still have to face the part of me that was so sure I’d grow up to be something different – someone completely in my own skin, creative and growing and bursting with extra love to give out freely.

I’m not there yet. I’m getting there. I can almost see that person behind my reflection, kinda waving me forward, encouraging my steps.

speak

The small birds are chattering in rained-on outrage. I wish I could say what kind they are, but they’re puny and hide in bushes. I only hear their tiny voices, raised together to form a brave cacophony.

I only have one voice, and it’s surely puny right now.

My panic attacks are leading to another job ending abruptly. This will be the third time. It’s very hard to speak up for oneself when one's throat is collapsing.

The path near the intersection of St. Paul and Beacon is a narrow one, hedges on one side bullying pedestrians toward the curb. The concrete slabs of sidewalk pitch and lean whichever way. Huge roots push them around in the summer time and ice splits them in the winter. It's not unsafe to walk there; merely difficult. Being a bit tilted, I feel like a wide, ponderous load for those who exit the trolley at that same stop. Most of the crowd heads the same way - up that narrow path.

I've made an art of unreadiness and it seems to help. I hold my book until the last minute, bury my gloves in the bottom of my bag and leave my coat unbuttoned. I stand there under the shelter for a moment, fixing and digging and putting-away. These little natural movements make me appear merely disorganized, I hope, although they are carefully choreographed. To a girl with a limp, a pair of gloves are a saving grace. A finicky bag is a godsend. Every button on a coat makes the walk more endurable. People rush past and I let them, along with the terror of becoming a hindrance to humanity in general. Pass me by pass me by... please oh please pass me by.

and thank you for riding the MBTA

Confession: I secretly believe that Lucretia The Guitar and I will rise to stardom through busking in train stations. I will be that pitiable yet alluring starving artist who rejuvenates songs by one-hit-wonders that have since settled into the backwaters of pop music due to overly rich and hopelessly dated soprano saxophone solos. People will lean against tiled pillars, perusing their text messages and avoiding each other’s eyes until, lo!, they hear a familiar strain and can’t quite place it. Such musicality! Such expressiveness! What talent to draw out pure beauty from a song heretofore passed over by even the most nostalgic of music lovers! Unrecognizable, and yet immediately embraced by those weary denizens of rat-races and corporate ladders! Yea, even the Ugg-clad adolescents find they must lower the volume on their sonic devices to hear her rend her soul for the mere coins in her guitar case…

I should learn how to tune my guitar first.

I fall down sometimes.

Especially when it's icy and gross outside, and the irresponsible/over-privileged citizens of Brookline and Boston don't clear their sidewalks.

The other day I did a split on some black ice. Well, it was more of a jack-knife maneuver than anything, but the result was the same searing muscle pain that comes from stretching a part of one's body that has not been stretched in, oh, say, ever.

Over the course of two days, I fell five times.

Other people fall down when it's icy. I just fall more. It's this here limp, y'see. It's the lack of control over my left foot. I think I'm fine and then I slip a little and can't get my muscles to do what they're supposed to and fwoop, "Mother EFFER!" Down I go.

At the moment I'm sitting in bed after my get-this-coffee-smell-offa-me shower and letting my scabs dry and heal while my knees are bent so they won't tear open when I go to walk. I remembered that trick from childhood playground injuries of yore.

My knees always looked like this in those days.

Although I did tan better back then.

Once again, that deep ache has solidified my ribcage. It's the ache of impossibility, I think. By that I mean I keep wanting the course of my life to shift to something it can't be. I want it to shift to loving families and exciting work and a healthy body. How is it that I can't get there? It's this Alice-y feeling of frustration - just barely catching a glimpse of the right path and not getting my feet on it in time.

To clarify; the ache isn't merely that I don't have satisfying work, it's that I don't have the courage to find it. It's not that my body isn't functional, it's that I have one more layer added to the nonfunctionality of my already messy body. It's not that it's my brother's 30th birthday tomorrow and I can't be there, it's that he doesn't want me there.

I feel my ribs hardening and cracking and resisting the expansion of my lungs. I can't make any of it right. I can't write a script for my life that anyone else will read out with me. "Just do this, stand here, and say the following," I want to say. It never, ever works that way.

Resolute.

I shall not do my roommates' dishes anymore. I will stick to this, even if I begin to twitch and cry and they find me rocking myself on the kitchen floor when they come home.

I shall not plan trips to Le Victoir that span longer than 72 hours.

I shall write to the people whom I love in this world, and, when I have time, to the people I like and admire. (Luckily, the two categories overlap quite a bit.)

I shall cook with zeal, not only because I can't afford ready-made meals, but because food is fun.

I shall divorce myself from Starbucks. And soon.

Giving actual factual thanks

I worked on Thanksgiving morning. We were understaffed because we were just as crazy busy as I told people we would be and I was mildly ignored. Ah well. We got a lot of people their coffee who would have otherwise had caffeine headaches, including hospital staff, stranded foreign research types, and families on their way to the feast. I saw one of my regulars put a fiver in the tip box out of sheer appreciation. Awesome.

But here's the excellent news: Christmas came early! Santa deeply appreciated my ingratiating comments and poured socks and chocolate and can openers and happiness down upon me! Not one, but TWO tear-inducing boxes showed up on my doorstep brimming with help from lovely, lovely friends.

And here's what I have to say: Thank you, thank you, thank you. And also, thank you for reading past my self-amusing bullshit to help me out when I'm too ashamed to really ask for help.

My feet are warm. Delicious.

Calling all cooks...

It's that time of year again, when I am pointedly not in New York for Thanksgiving. Please send me a favorite holiday recipe for my mini-feast! I will think of you fondly as I prepare it in my jammies on Thursday morning.

a baleful bachelorette

Galloping toward me with terrifying velocity, here comes my ten-year high school reunion. Put aside the usual stressors of the holidays and think of the horror of facing high school all over again. I wasn’t so good at it the first time.

I freely acknowledge that I’m not actually going back to high school. It’s not like the movies – we’re not queuing up outside the gym in nice suits and shoulder-padded dresses, playing grown-up in the nursery. The class president (who’s actually not a douche, thank goodness) organized some space at a bar big enough to accommodate a crowd.

Not sure who will show up, but I know I won’t remember names or details. We will ask each other, “So what are you doing these days?” and, “How’s life in Florida?” and, “How are the kids?”

It’s occurred to me that I should have a sentence prepared that I can repeat on command; something simple and only slightly artful where facts are smudged. I need something translucent but not transparent. No one need know how much I’ve struggled over the last ten years, right?

My parents, who were in town this weekend for a chorus concert, bless’m, reminded me that my view of my own life is a bit exclusive these days. My mother reminded me of grad school, travels abroad, publishing, non-profits, Boston, singing… The facts are all there and they seem impressive from afar. My brain glances over these things as surreal or unimportant and clings to hospitals, deaths, surgeries, dumpings… the soul-swindling monotony of a job that does not pay a living wage for a company I can’t believe in.

Here’s the fascinating thing, however: my mother kept bringing up my single status. She said that I could tell them I was “in love, and now looking again,” to appease them. I know that a ton of people from my class are married or attached, but it never occurred to me to be uncomfortable as a bachelorette. She mentioned it enough to make me realize how preoccupied she is with my marriage prospects, or total lack thereof. This must be one of the things she worries about when she frets away with thoughts of me. To her, I must be lonely.

So I present to you yet another dimension of parent-induced insanity. While they’re here they not only convince me that I’m unstable, unable to support myself, sickly and pitiful, but now I’m also incredibly lonely – adrift in the world without a captain to steer me right.

Yes, I know that’s ridiculous. I know I should have some rallying anger against the very thought. I should dig up thoughts of all my excellent friends, tepid dates, excellent daily flirtings; all the things that show my own agency in creating connections in this city. Alas, there’s something tempting in my post-parental-visit emotional hangover that pushes me toward self-pity. I am alone. I am lonely. I am unloved… even (gasp!) ten years after High School. I am a hopeless case.

So this is the feeling that propels tv heroines to take a stranger to a party and pretend he’s the fiancée. Silly.

booooks are goooood

Paper Towns came in at the library! Yay John Green!

JoBiv: (smiling, thrusting library card at young, pleasant librarian) I have a book! I have a book!
Young Pleasant Librarian: You do, eh? (She pops out of seat and checks her shelf)
JoBiv: I do! I'm kinda excited.
YPL: No kiddin'. John Green? (Returning to seat and proceeding with checkout.)
JoBiv: Have you read him? Great stuff: funny, intelligent, respectful to the reader...
YPL: I've been meaning to read him... He wrote... An Abundance of Katherines...?
JoBiv: Yes yes! So good! Read it read it!
YPL: Okay... (laughing, humoring JoBiv) ... So you have a two-week due date on this book, but by the look of things you won't need that much time.
JoBiv: I don't think it'll be a problem. (melodiously) Thank yooouuu!
YPL: Thank you. Heehee.

Oh holidays.

So.

I don't go home for Thanksgiving. I haven't been home for Thanksgiving since undergrad, I believe, and this has worked well for me. I have my little ritual: rent movies that I would be embarrassed to watch with other people around, watch the parade in the morning and cook recipes from friends for a mini-feast.

Last year I ended up at a serious feast after working the day at the cafe. That worked out alright. It was a huge crowd of friends and I enjoyed myself, but honestly, was pretty happy to get the hell outta dodge when it was all over.

The year before I spent with The Novelist's family in a quaint picturebook New England house. Roaring fire, spiked hot cocoa, fair isle sweaters included.

This year I want to work at the cafe, and I'll tell you several excellent reasons why:

1. I don't need to go home, and several other people do. Being available that day means other people can spend time with their families. That's cool with me.

2. I like to see my regulars on holidays when they expect us to be closed and are ever-so-happy when they see we're open. They need their coffee before they travel, they need a place to study for the paper that's due next Monday (there's always a paper due after Thanksgiving), they need a warm place to take the kids for an hour so their mother/father/caregiver doesn't kill them with a turkey baster. And the hospital doesn't close on holidays, does it? No sir. How pissed would you be if you had to do surgery on Thanksgiving and there was no good coffee around to start your day? PISSED, I tell you.

3. I like to laugh at foreigners who have no idea why the whole city closes down so people can eat turkey in celebration of a handful of religious zealots swindling the aboriginal culture. Poor foreigners.

4. We make mad tips, and we split them for that day. Whatever we're tipped we take home, on the spot. This usually doubles my tip income for the week.

5. It's a palpable excuse for staying in Boston. Maybe that should be number one.

Our manager conducted a casual poll on everyone's holiday plans and discovered that - lo! - all the college kids would be gone. Shocker. He scrambled to figure out everyone's availability. I told him that not only am I available, I would LOVE to work on Thanksgiving.

He... didn't schedule me.

Hmm. What now?

I could go on with my mini-feast, but I honestly can't afford the groceries. I could acquiesce to several impatient friends who have invited me to their assorted meals. I could beg some of the people who ARE scheduled to give me that shift.

Yeah. Think I'll beg.