50% Off and Then Some

Wednesdays are ‘Family Tag’ sale days at Salvation Army in Brooklyn. This means that everything is 50% off. Since the change of weather last weekend, I had been looking forward to sale day when I could find some gems for summer: tank tops, retro skirts, vintage dresses, clothes for dance rehearsal. Unlike the Saturday shoppers, the folks who shop during the weekday hours are not mere Weekend Warriors. There is a sense of solidarity on Wednesdays as folks investigate armpits of t-shirts, smell the fabric, test stains by scratching at them. Bargain hunters are not easy to please, even if their desired item is 99 cents.

Each week there is one color that is not 50% off and this week it was pink; coincidentally, pink was the color of most of the desirable summer clothing in the store on Atlantic Avenue. Nevertheless, I was on mission and started scouring the racks near the center of the store where there is a circular rack that holds two tiers of tank tops and hipster t-shirts. I was psyched. Within the first five minutes, my left hand fingers were gripping three hangers while my right hand shuffled through the selections.

The clothes at this store are arranged by color.

As I flipped through the various shades of green, I overheard a woman commenting out loud yet to herself (“oh, that’s too expensive”, “this is cute”, “West Virginia?”) responding to each shirt as though she was meeting them for the first time. I smiled to myself as my back was towards her. I thought about the perks of shopping at Salvation Army. Whether it’s in Laconia, NH, Berkeley, CA, or Brooklyn, NY, there is always a crazy in the store with me, within a ten foot radius. I could feel the impending interaction creeping into my near future. The crazies like me, everywhere I go. Not just in Salvation Armies.

About six years ago at the Harvard Square T Station, a crazy old, white, homeless man picked me out of a crowd. I was standing next to a pole waiting for the train and he slowly stood up from the bench where he was sitting, walked up to within my peripheral vision and starting screaming profanities at me. His spittle landed on my face. I cringed, I panicked, and ran to a family that was further down on the platform. I was totally embarrassed, as I often am when my Fight or Flight Instinct kicks in. I am a flyer, not a fighter and after my flights I tend to feel bullied by this weak survival instinct. In any case, that was my crazy in Boston.

In San Francisco, in 2003, a teenage boy of Hispanic descent grabbed my crotch as I walked down the sidewalk. I had just left rehearsal and my estimation of personal space was a bit skewed as I had been lifting and touching other dancing bodies for three hours. On my way to the BART station, I had a bag of oranges in one hand and my cell phone in the other. I was talking to my mother and not quite registering that this ‘man’ was walking toward me. I kept bearing to the right, waiting for him to finally succumb to his lane on my left. But, he wasn’t getting the drift and suddenly, before I could assess the situation, he took his two fingers and plowed them between my legs. Flabbergasted, I started screaming, “What the fuck? You, asshole!” Once my flight instinct subsided and I understood that I was no longer in danger (he was walking away), I started to embrace my secondary fight instinct. I started chasing him, swinging my bag of oranges. All the while, my mom was on the phone calling out to me, “Erin, what is going on? Should I call the police?” I couldn’t address her concerns yet, but I could not multi-task to hang up the phone. Finally, he sprinted away and I lost my will to seek revenge. I told my mom what had happened and after comforting me with some “Oh my God” and “He is gone?” comments, she proceeded to tell me that, “Yeah, that happened to me once when I was young.” I was floored. I thought this sort of behavior was a new thing.

That same year, I was followed from the Downtown Berkeley BART station to the intersection near my apartment by a legitimate schizophrenic. A middle-aged, white schizophrenic man. For the ten minute walk to my neighborhood, he stayed about 15 feet behind me, mumbling “Cunt, Bitch, Fuckface” repeatedly. I decided that I could not go the extra 50 feet to my front door because he would know where I lived. So, I criss-crossed the intersection for about ten minutes as the lights went from red to green and back again. He got confused and finally I made the dash across the street right when the blinking orange hand was counting down “5, 4, 3, 2, 1” He was stuck on the other side, he got tired, and I saw him lose his concentration and walk down the street in the opposite direction.

I’ve had a black teenage boy scream at me while waiting for the train about my spoiled, racist life. I never said a word. I sat there for ten minutes before I got up and left the station to go back home and abandoned my plans for an excursion to San Francisco for the day.

I’ve had a middle-aged, middle-class-seeming white woman stop me on High Street when I lived in Brookline, MA to ask me if I spoke English. We were on a secluded street after dusk, albeit in a safe neighborhood. Although her approach was meek and not aggressive by any stretch of the imagination, I had witnessed her interactions with others prior to that evening and knew that she had lost some integral marbles. I told her “nyet” (Russian for ‘no’). This was totally feasible, as Brookline has a large Russian population and I spoke enough Russian to convince a non-speaking American. She proceeded to calmly look me in the eyes and ramble off a laundry list of profanities in English all the while smiling at me.

That last one was probably the scariest. That sincere and patient I-hate-you-so-much-that-I-am-smiling-while-I-secretly-put- a-curse-on-all-your-family crazy. That one unsettled me because I had to respond to her as though she were asking me for directions. I was Russian after all.

But I digress.

At Salvation Army on Wednesday, this t-shirt commenting black woman attached herself to my ten foot radius. She began picking up all the clothes I was rejecting and commenting, “you’ve got a stain”, “this one might fit me.” And then she addressed me as she approached me from the mirror where she had been modeling a pink cardigan in the mirror.

“What do you think about this? Is it too small?”

I turned to her nonchalantly, like we had been shopping together all afternoon and said, “I like it. I don’t think it’s too small, but I think it may be too short. But it’s a good color on you.” I had experience with the stranger-telling-you-how-it-looks routine.

“Yeah, it’s a little short,” she said as she refocused her attention to the mirror. “But it’s a blue tag, so it’s only two dollars today.”

“You can’t beat that.”

And she took her hands and cupped her breasts and said, “And my breasts look nice in this, don’t you think?”

“I think it looks good on you,” avoiding answering directly the question posed to me. I went back to my t-shirts (in the yellow category now) and pulled out one with green lettering and a picture of a MACK truck that read “Tom’s Auto Truckers Inc. …In for the Long-Haul.”

“You going to get that?” She was looking at my selection.

“I’m thinking about it.”

“It’s only 99 cents.”

“You can’t beat that.” As many of my prior experiences with unsettling strangers prove, a conversation that lasts for sixty seconds or longer invites a misinterpretation. A fleeting friendship. I passed this marker.

“Are you from New York?”

I always think this is a funny question because so many people here are not from here. I also wonder what makes you a New Yorker. How long do you live in one place before you can say that you are “from there”? Will I ever live in a place long enough to say that I am from somewhere other than Boston?

“Not originally. Are you?”

“Yes. So, where are you from?”

“Boston.” I imagined that my answer would bring about some Yankees v. Red Sox discussion. Possibly, the 1986 Mets/Red Sox game. But I was not prepared for her response.

“Oh, yeah. Good old segregated Boston.”

Silence on my part. Clearly, no response I could give will suffice. Saying “no, Boston isn’t segregated” will upset her and I don’t like to make off-kilter strangers upset, saying “yep, that’s right” is a flat-out lie and an affront to my hometown.

She continues, “Yep, Boston with all their black and white. Segregation. Busing.”

I felt that I could participate in some way, now that I understood she was talking about busing. After all, Boston did have a history of busing and I could focus on that. So I said, “Well, that was awhile ago.”

Here’s where we started to go downhill. “AWHILE ago? Honey, that shit is still going on in Boston.” I declined to ask her to elaborate.

I could feel a rush of tears come to my eyes. This isn’t unusual. When I feel that someone is criticizing my background or part of me, I crawl into my emotional hole (flight instinct, remember?) and feel bruised. But I realized that part of the reason I felt bullied was because this was happening in the middle of a store filled with mostly non-white people. I can’t get into a conversation defending my race or the city of Boston. It wasn’t the time or the venue. So, I concentrated on flipping through the clothes as I blinked my eyes rapidly to swallow the tears before they leaked out onto my cheeks.

“You know, my brother teaches up there and there is RESERVED parking. Can you believe that shit? Reserved for the whites.”

It was becoming easier to make the tears disappear because now I knew she didn’t have any idea what she was talking about. She was dismissable now. And I just nodded my head because I wanted to escape to the other section of the store without making it seem like I was being bullied…even though that was exactly what was happening.

“Do your parents still live up there, in segregated Boston?”

“Yep.”

“Do you have brothers and sisters?”

“Yep.”

She was trying to veer off the subject of segregated Boston and re-establish small talk, but she had sealed her fate with me. But I didn’t want to appear hostile or offended. Remember, I am white and part of being white in a big city is that you are constantly reminded of the crap that our ancestors left us with. So, at the moment I was dealing with some of that fallout. I decided to elaborate, “I’m the oldest of five.”

“Wow. What do you mean the oldest? How old are you? 32?”

Again, I am offended. Most people think I look at least five years younger than I am and here she was guessing that I am two years older than I actually am.

“30.”

“Oh, you’re a baby. It’s very brave of you to live in New York. You can always go back to Boston.”

“Yep,” and I began to drift down another aisle, gently slipping away from the ten foot radius with this woman with the pink cardigan breasts.

She continued on with her train of thought, though, “You know all the schools up there and their RESERVED parking. But Georgetown is a good school.”

I wondered to myself if all people have these one-on-one conversations during their lifetime, “Is it just me? Is it because I look normal, approachable, average, a spokesperson for your typical white American female?” I looked across the rack of black blouses at the black, male employee stocking the dresses and he glanced at me, not really in solidarity, not really in contempt, but just kind of like “That’s life. She’s crazy. You’re white. You shop at Salvation Army for your hipster clothes. What do you expect?” And I think he may be right.

When I checked out at the register, there was a black woman standing behind me who told me that I “chose some really nice stuff” and that I had “very good taste.” I thanked her and felt slightly redeemed, not because a black lady said nice things to me, but because I had re-established my solidarity with the shoppers at Salvation Army. I was proud of my purchases, my bargains, my t-shirts that once had been segregated by their color and were now laying in a heap together on the counter.

The Un-Weird

There’s this really interesting financial gap between the Massachusetts Gottwalds and the Virginia Gottwalds. Actually, it’s more than just a financial gap. There seems to be a political gap as well. Schockingly, when surfing the web for “Gottwald Family”, it is not this blog that pops up but instead many pages that unveil a wealthy Republican family from Richmond, Virginia. These are two items I found:

• “Richmond's Gottwald family worth $965 million”
• "The Gottwald family, the owners of Albemarle, one of the largest manufacturers of methyl bromide, donated $345,000 to Bush and the Republican Party between 2000 and 2002.”

The picture below is of the $37 million Gottwald Science building at the University of Richmond.

I am not totally surprised. When I arrived at Bates in the fall of 1994, a fellow freshman from Virginia Beach realized that my last name was Gottwald and with eyes ablaze, asked if I was any relation to the “Richmond Gottwalds.” I laughed and said, “Not that I know of.” He told me that they were a very powerful family and over the course of the next four years, I know he subconsciously associated me with that family. Or maybe I had a subconscious desire to be associated with the rich Richmond Gottwalds. After all, I have this identity issue. I mean that’s why I started writing this thing in the first place.

Going to Bates was the most liberating thing I ever did. I dare say it will be the most liberating thing I will do in my lifetime. In some ways, it was typical: going away to college, living away from family, securing an identity, establishing ‘adult’ relationships, taking responsibility for life, going into debt. But for me, and I am sure for a handful of others, there was an aspect of fantastical escape. Entering freshman year was dreamlike. By the second day on campus, I distinctly remember feeling like I belonged to a community and I sensed that I had many more things in common with the students at Bates than with students at BB&N. There was more personal depth and complication which immediately made me comfortable. In general, stereotypes were much more difficult to come by at Bates. I was no longer the ‘Financial Aid’ student that I felt I had been in high school.

The president of my Bates class is Rob Curtis. He came to college to play football but by senior year, he had quit the team and was focused on his studio art major. Rob and I weren’t close friends, but we were friendly. I remember waking up in a hostel in Paris, while I was traveling during my Junior Semester Abroad, prying my eyes open because I heard a loud American voice talking about beer in the courtyard downstairs. I got out of bed, walked out of the room, onto the balcony and looked downstairs. Squinting in the bright sunlight with my pajamas on, morning breath and all, I called out, “Rob Curtis!” And Rob, mid-morning beer swig, looked up, threw down his beer, ran up the stairs and gave me a bear hug. Rob and I have honors theses photo pages in our yearbook that face each other: his art, mine dance.

For all four years, I dated a touchy, feely, metrosexual, U2-adoring lacrosse player who my gay dancer friends had crushes on. Crossing a dancer with a lacrosse player helped integrate the general dance audiences as the “white hats” tended to fill the seats of the theater (white being the preferable baseball cap color at the time, I guess). But this never left us short of acid-tripping hippies in the audience who had spur of the moment monologues in the aisles during intermission.

I befriended a dancer whose FBI Agent father had something to do with the capture of the Unibomber or Timothy McVeigh (I can’t remember) and who forbade her to carry a United States Passport because of “the things he knew.”

I had a roommate who was from Berkeley, California, had a boyfriend at Bates and a boyfriend at Dartmouth. Both boyfriends were aware of the other and were ‘okay’ with the situation for two years. I’m not sure how that one panned out.

I met this guy from Texas who convinced his friends to take a dance class so that he could meet female dancers. I thought he was funny when he wasn’t trying to be and thought he was sincere when he was trying to be funny. Our chemistry was a little off. I got the sense he was intelligent but not totally harmless. Ignoring my cautious side, I asked him to do the lighting design for a dance I choreographed. As we were hanging stage lights high above the lip of the stage, I was strattling a few pipes, using my wrench to tighten a Leko and he made some comments on my flexibility. I wondered if I had made a good decision with my lighting design proposal. Making a comment to a dancer about her flexibility in tight quarters at 35 feet above a stage while she precariously balances each butt cheek on either side of a pipe and reaches over her toes to screw a lamp by his feet seemed overtly insinuating (if there is such a paradox). But his stage lighting was excellent (in hindsight I wonder if that was the best aspect of the piece). This guy from Texas introduced me to another guy from Texas. That other guy from Texas is grinding his teeth next to me in bed as I write this.

The diversity of Bates was refreshing to me. People were mostly weird. I fit in.

Being associated with the Virginia Gottwalds tickles me. I imagine that they are not very weird. They probably don’t have problems with their water pipes at home (“SHUT THE WATER OFF!”) and haven’t spent much time in trailer parks. I bet they don’t worry too much about getting to the Laundromat on time or concern themselves with fellow vomiting subway riders.

The Future is Green

I was on the subway today: the F train. Three seats to my left was a middle-aged man with dark hair and a black coat. I chose my particular seat because I sensed nothing out of the ordinary. I sat down and started reading my book. After two or three minutes, my peripheral vision caught some jerking motions and I began to understand that he was dry-heaving. I continued reading my book. He began to vomit. I continued to read my book. He spat. He wiped his mouth. I thought about how sick I have been for the past two weeks and contemplated whether I am recovering from bronchitis or pneumonia or the bird flu. He took a deep exhale. I decided that since I was already sick it was unlikely that I would get sick from whatever this dude had. He threw up a little bit more. All the while, we were passing through subway stations, the train doors were opening, he had the chance to exit the train and hug a trash can, but he chose to use the train as his toilet bowl. And I chose not to get up and change seats. Everyone else on the train made the same choice. He finally got off at Jay Street and a business man entered the subway car with his briefcase. The business man chose the vacated vomiter’s seat and after a few minutes realized that his foot was in the middle of a strange secretion. He extended his leg and dragged his foot across the aisle, so as to rid the bottom of his shoe of the greenish substance. He didn't change seats. And I was reminded of an email I recently received about the future being green.

I was too implusive and told my mom that I had created a folder in my email account where I was storing all of the forwarded emails that she sends me. My plan was that I would expose her in this blog after one month’s time. Over the course of one week, I received four forwards from her and (un)fortunately they stopped coming once she knew of my sabotage arrangement. Here are the subjects of the messages that made their way to my inbox:

1. Blonde Cowboy
2. The Future is Green
3. Nostalgic Emails
4. Mother-of-the-bride dress

I will not go into detail about the subject of each one, as I did not read three of them. But I will highlight #2. Actually, I will paste the entire body of the email here:

“If you're looking for a new career and looking to enhance your current company, try to capitalize on the green movement. Business leaders speaking to MIT's Sloan School of Management said companies should make customers feel guilty for not buying products that are environmentally friendly.

Gretch, you should hook up with these tree huggers and try to find employment among them.”

This message is not technically a forward, since my mom is the original composer, but I find her emails like this most intriguing. Here are some fun facts:

• My mom emailed “The Future is Green” to her five children.
• Only one of her children is the owner of a company. A travel company. A company that mostly deals with people who fly (on a heavily fueled jumbo jet) to Italy.
• I’ve mentioned to her that I am on the brink of a career transition.
• My mom’s job is all about promoting energy conservation and eco-friendly alternatives yet she does not recycle paper (let alone glass, plastic, aluminum).
• She directly addresses only Gretchen. She’s vegan, she would definitely get along with these tree-hugging “business leaders” who give lectures at Sloan. Right.

After complaining to her about the excessive forwarded emails that I receive from her, she told me that “Gail reads them all and always sends an email back saying they were very funny. She actually writes L-O-L.” I explain to my mom that usually when I am checking email, I am crossing my fingers that I have no messages, that email is work, email is draining. I also tell her that Chris agrees with me and has created a filter in his account so that all emails from “pgottwald” go to his “Priscilla Spam Folder.” He likes to clarify that he does not delete them, they all just skip his inbox and congregate in a folder together. She responds characteristically to the challenge with a threat: “Then I will never send him an email again.” Right.

I visited my parents last weekend and assisted in introducing one Dell Notebook Computer to one Fred (& Priscilla) Gottwald. It was an eye-opening experience for me. My dad discovered the CTRL ALT Delete function and was awestruck: “That’s FABulous.” I showed my mom how to transfer photos from her camera to the laptop which she performed very well. It was the turning on the computer that was the impossible moment: “I don’t do laptops” is actually what she said. And this brings me to my next issue.

My parents have started to say “I don’t do…”

My dad: “I don’t do reunions.”

My mom: “I don’t do laptops.”

Who says that?

At Jimmy’s Steakhouse on Friday night, I actually asked (knowing full well the pretentiousness of the question and smirking as I posed it) my dad, “I know you don’t do reunions, but can you intellectually explain what you think and how you feel about attending one?”

My own personal assignment is to think about what “I don’t do.” Clearly, I “do” vomiting subway riders and wonder where I draw the line.

Bostonians

I’m on the Chinatown bus to Boston: the Lucky Star, not the Fung Wah. Diagonally from my seat are two hipsters popping off the tops of their beer bottles at 11:15 am. They look harmless with their oversized sunglasses and brightly colored t-shirts and after a brief reconsidering of my seat placement, I decide to say put. They are from Boston. Although it may not seem logical to folks who are not familiar with both Bostonians and New Yorkers, there is a major difference. Bostonians are used to breaking the rules and take for granted that everyone else breaks the rules. They believe that this sense of entitlement belongs to everyone, not just the wealthy and powerful: all people deserve exception from the rules. It’s quite democratic, actually.

I know these guys are from Boston because of they way they talk. It’s not their accents (I can’t detect any), but it’s a combination of their refined gregariousness and their Sam Adams bottles. There is something about they way people from Boston interact. Although they may be relating about personal stories, Bostonians never quite seal off the outside world. If I made eye contact with them in the midst of their conversation, I imagine one of them might say, “you know what I mean, don’t you?” There is a recognition that they are in public and are willing to engage strangers in the immediate vicinicty. Bostonians don’t like strangers and they will try their mightiest to de-strange-ify you.

New Yorkers have a harder time deciphering between public and private conversations. Their lives are constantly public. Because it is big, it is small. The sheer number of people makes sidewalks smaller and subway rides claustrophobic. Grocery shopping is like scuba-diving: only so much oxygen will last you – grab the gems. Strangers are constantly in your private space that sometimes I think I get touched more often during the day by strangers than I do by my boyfriend. But these touches from other New Yorkers are not love taps, they are just collateral damage from cramming one’s body on a crowded elevator, subway car, produce aisle. There is no such thing as private space in New York, so private things happen in public spaces. A personal cell phone conversation riddled with cursing and threats happens next to a woman with her baby stroller on a crowded subway platform. On more than one occasion, I’ve seen women sobbing on the train. Domestic verbal abuse is run of the mill even if it presenting itself in a foreign language. Typically the surrounding strangers, adorned with I-Pods, books, newspapers, Sudoku puzzles and laptops, ignore the situation. It’s a 3 step process: recognition, understanding, and separation. They recognize that this private thing is happening in a public forum, they understand its plot, they deposit themselves in another train car. Rarely is their intervention. I have never seen someone ask the swearing cell phone dude to tone down his language in front of the toddler and I’ve only seen one person ever confront a sobbing woman, who quickly waved him away almost revolted by his sympathy.

In Boston (depending on what train line you’re riding), there is more interaction. It’s hard to tell the difference between homeless drunk guys and plain old drunk guys. They look the same in their Red Sox hats and jeans. They both engage you, ask if you want some fries as they hold out their McDonald’s grease-stained paper bag. You’re not sure if they bought the fries or if they dumpster dived for it. Cell phone conversations are more reserved for the most part and if there is excessive swearing or yelling around surrounding children, there is often a spokesperson who requests that they “tone it down.” Bostonians recognize the public when they are in public.

These two hipsters on the bus recognize that they are breaking the rules and would be ecstatic if I asked them for a Sam Adams. I imagine that they would enjoy the comraderie. But now that I live in New York, I am more reserved with my participation. Since I got on the subway at 10 am this morning, sitting next to a rancid homeless man, I have looked forward to my private time on the public bus.

Getting Punted

My memories of my first year of high school are so awkward and embarrassing that I feel myself blushing as I begin to write about it. During my 8^th grade year at St. Patrick School, the mother of one of my classmates asked me if Buckingham Browne & Nichols (BB&N) was a secretarial school. I could tell by her intonation that she was slightly concerned about what my parents were doing with my life. At 8^th grade graduation, Ms. Andres announced scholarships and other notable awards to the family filled church. Unaware that this was part of graduation, I was surprised when she told everyone from the lectern that “Erin Gottwald has received a $6000 scholarship.” Most of my fellow 8^th graders were attending Catholic High Schools with tuition costs that were half as much as my scholarship. I’m sure that the mother who was concerned about my secretarial school education was now certainly more concerned with my over indulgent parents.

During the summer before high school, I begged my mother for a perm. I felt that if all my friends were going to Catholic or public high schools, that would be the least she could for me: let me perm my hair. Sure enough, I got a perm. I loved it all summer. I felt like a Stoneham High School girl. I got to use Dippity-Doo and style it anyway I wanted. I was thrilled that I had my perm in time for the NKOTB (New Kids on the Block) concert that summer at Foxboro Stadium.

The week before high school, we went shopping for everything I would need for Bivouac. On BB&N’s current website, it is described: “A pivotal bonding experience, Bivouac is a twelve-day outdoor education and team-building program at Camp Marienfeld, BB&N's New Hampshire retreat. In an area of about 200 acres of woodland, the students are divided into small squads responsible for building a kitchen area and cooking their own meals.” My mom and I had to travel distances to find stores that had the special, bio-degradable shampoo that I could use in the lake. I had never been to stores like that. Bivouac would be my first taste of BB&N, where I would meet my high school classmates and spend 12 days with them in the middle of the woods.

I should have known that ninth grade was going to be painful by my squad placement. It could have been random, after all administration couldn’t quite tell who were the nerds, but I felt that I had been placed in the loser squad. This feeling was confirmed when we met our squad leader. All of the squad leaders at Bivouac are teachers. There were plenty of young, hip, attractive, fresh-out-of-college teachers at BB&N, there were a handful of older, seasoned, extroverted, grandparent-ish, wise yet humorous teachers at BB&N and there were a few introverted, nerdy, Bivouac-is-the-highlight-of-my-career teachers at BB&N. Guess which one I had as a squad leader. Needless to say Bivouac, although it was mostly fun, established me in a foreign network of nerdy girls who had a nerdy squad leader.

When we returned home from Bivouac, I immediately grew concerned about my perm. There were only a handful of other students who had perms and tight-rolled their pants. I had the impression that they were on scholarship, too.

My first day at BB&N, I remember climbing the crowded stairs to the auditorium with my other squad friends, wearing my pink and yellow checkered, tight-rolled Skidz with black pat n’ leather, MC Hammer-inspired, lace up shoes with half-moon shaped taps on the tips. I had taken time that morning to Dippity-Doo my perm. I noticed other students with their straight hair pulled into a loose pony-tail, strands falling around their ears and brushing against their cheeks. A sea of new things drowned me. There were plaid headbands, unbuttoned flannel shirts, backpacks from a company called L.L. Bean that were all custom embroidered with initials. And the shoes: boat shoes with laces that didn’t tie but wound around themselves in a coil, shoes which I came to learn were called “Birkenstocks” and “Doc Martens” and “All-Stars.” I squirm just thinking about how out-of-place I looked. But then I remember that there were the other scholarship kids who shared my fashion sense.

My ninth grade classmates would be horrified if they knew I had screamed “JOEY!!!” at the top of my lungs at an NKOTB concert just a month before. They listened to music I occasionally heard on the oldies station on the radio: Van Morrison, Steve Miller, The Allmann Brothers and The Grateful Dead. What gave me leverage was that I was a “ballerina.” If my townie perm and MC Hammer clothes turned them off, the fact that I was a professional student at the Boston Ballet intrigued them. I added diversity to their worlds.

Freshman year was a nightmare. In the winter, during “Nutcracker”, I got a painful ovarian cyst which my mom initially thought was just pangs of anxiety. In the early part of Spring semester, I was overwhelmed with the amount of homework and not used to receiving B’s and C’s. I was a straight A student at St. Patrick’s. All year long, I carried a brush and went to the bathroom several times a day just to get the perm out. I cheated on a Russian test in March and found an anonymous note in my box (we all had mailboxes)that read something like this:

“We know that you have been cheating. Do it again and we’ll tell Mr. Deptula.”

After school that day in March, I felt my knees buckle as I read that note and walked directly outside where I waited anxiously for my ballet carpool. Once at ballet class it was difficult for me to focus, I went through the motions but began to problem-solve. I decided that I needed to transfer to Matignon, a Catholic high school where my best friend had gone. In the midst of this revelation during ballet class, I was not concentrating on the exercise at hand and slid out on my pointe shoe, severely spraining my ankle. I went to the emergency room where the doctor told me and my mom that I did not break my ankle, but that I would be on crutches for at least two weeks. I sobbed all night. My dad sat with me on the couch and applied an ice pack and I screamed not because I was in pain, but because I had been caught cheating, I was no longer an A student, I didn’t have Doc Martens, I didn’t have an ATM card or a bank account, I had a hair of frizz, I didn’t have an L.L. Bean Backpack with “EEG’ embroidered on it. But, I never shared the reasons for the crying and my dad placed the icepack on the coffee table, told me that I needed to calm down, and retreated to the TV room.

That night I crutched my way to my parents’ room around 2AM and asked my mom if I could sleep with them. She was accustomed to my anxious tendencies and obliged. I didn’t sleep much that night and my parents did not even entertain the thought that I would stay home from school the next day. Trembling, I went to Russian class the following day on crutches. All the students were kind and sympathetic and boys who I had crushes on offered to carry my books. Spraining my ankle was a turning point.

A few nights later, still shaken I walked into Danny’s and Gretchen’s room where my mom was reading a story to them and I asked if I could talk to her. She asked me what was wrong and I told her that I had cheated on a Russian test. My mom has a way of changing my heart rate. These days, she tends to make it race as I get phone calls from the passenger seat as my dad weaves through traffic, but as a teenager she usually brought my heart rate down. She told me that it was okay, asked me why I cheated, and said not to do it again. It seemed simple enough. I realized during that conversation as five year old Danny and seven year old Gretchen flanked her that part of my increasing anxiety was that she couldn’t help me in an increasing number of areas in life: Ballet, Russian, Chinese History, private school fashion and behavior. This made me feel lonely but I never cheated again, no one ever confronted me, and there were no more letters in my mailbox.

I begged my parents to transfer to the catholic high school. They told me that I needed to finish freshman year and then “we would see.” Usually, this parental phrase was optimistic and could be translated into a “yes.” So, I finished out the year, daydreaming about how I could go to Matignon and be an A student again and listen to pop music. The summer after freshman year, I went to Matignon and filled out paperwork to transfer for sophomore year. I was so relieved and excited about September. My best friend told me all about her friends there, and I even got to meet some of them. This transition would be easy and I deserved it.

You can imagine my dismay when one day in early September, my parents confronted me with developments in my educational future. I remember my dad sitting in the rocking chair and my mom standing up near him. I was standing in front of them as they started to present their plans. It took me several minutes to understand what they were saying, partially because they were each waiting for the other to say it and neither was really stating it clearly.

“Erin, you’re going to go back to BB&N.”

As my four siblings milled about in the background, watching television in one room, playing street hockey in the hallway, I threw a teenage tantrum. I screamed and hollered, I hyperventilated, I physically crumbled to the floor, I stomped my feet, I stared out the window dreaming of better parents. And I remember each of them intently watching me go through this tantrum. I imagine that their empathy had them on the verge of caving in but their morals and commitment kept them steadfast in their mission. I would receive this first class education and nothing less.

I don’t think I ever said, “I hate you.” I never really felt that. But I did feel like the football which my parents punted from one end of life’s field to the other. I had been officially catapulted into an educated class. I felt this at age 14. And after that tantrum and their display of resolve, I knew that this was irreversible.

So, I returned to BB&N for sophomore year. The perm was fading, the tight-rolled pants disappeared, I got some All-Stars and flannel shirts, and joined the Russian Club.

Shut the Bathroom Light Off

It’s midnight and I’m laying in bed on my side with the blankets pulled up to my nose. My eyes are open and I’m watching the headlights from the passing cars on Elm Street search my room from one wall to the other. I’m processing my transition from college life to summer family life, figuring out how I am going to remain calm and independent for the next three months. I begin to fade into a light doze. Suddenly, from right behind the wall next to me I hear Gretchen commence.

When the house was built around 1900, I think that our rooms were one. At some point during the past 95 years someone constructed a thin wall and separated the room into two. For all intents and purposes, Gretchen and I could be sleeping in the same bed: I can hear the bed springs creak when she tosses and turns. And I can certainly hear her now:

“Whoever put the bathroom light off, can you turn it off?” A simple request, it seemed.

Our bedrooms are on the third floor of an old colonial house. Gretchen’s room has two windows, one that overlooks the side yard and the other that overlooks the back yard. The latter is also kitty corner to the bathroom window, which for some reason (as I write this, it is ringing a bell with the “Brightest Streetlight in Laconia, NH” blog entry) does not have blinds. Consequently, when the bathroom light turns on Gretchen’s room is flooded with light and she cannot sleep (again refer to the previous blog entry to understand Gottwalds and sleeping in total darkness).

This is my first night back in Stoneham in quite awhile and I am not anticipating what comes next. I have decided that although I will be at home this summer, I will really separate myself from family dynamics. I will not get sucked into the vacuum and enter the realms of foolish fighting and bickering. I am 18. I am adult. I am having this revelation during the interval between Gretchen’s first request and her following:

“Can you shut the bathroom light off?”

I look at my alarm clock and it’s 12:13. I assume that whoever was in the bathroom will return to it and do as she has asked. Clearly, I have been away from home for too long. This rationale does not apply to our family dynamics.

“Shut the bathroom light off.”

It’s 12:17. I am committed to keeping myself sealed off in my bedroom, not caving into whatever dysfunctional relating is beginning to unravel. I wonder who put the light on and figure that they must still be awake. They are just being stubborn and will eventually wave their white flag, climb out of their cozy bed and turn the light off.

“Shut the bathroom light off.”

It’s 12:19. The intervals are getting shorter, Gretchen is beginning to sound like a broken record and my anxiety level is climbing. Who put the light on?

“Shut the bathroom light off. Shut the bathroom light off. Shut the bathroom light off. Shut the bathroom light off …”

This is reminding me of those “Emergency Broadcast System” tests on television: “If this were an actual emergency, this message would be followed by…” I feel my heart rate flutter as I fear the rest of the summer at home will be like this.

“Shut the bathroom light off. Shut the bathroom light off. Shut the bathroom light off. Shut the bathroom light off.” She is waiting exactly 2 seconds between each repeat.

It’s 12:22 and I can’t stand it any more. I get up, stomp my way to the bathroom and shut the light off.

“Thank you.” I hear Gretchen behind her closed door as I pass it on my way back to bed.

I feel bullied. I’ve just lost several battles: the one with myself about not caving into dysfunctional family dynamics, the unstated one with Gretchen and caving into her demands, the passive aggressive one with the other 5 people in my family who are certainly not asleep but outlasted me in caving into Gretchen’s demands.

I go to sleep anxious.

I wake up anxious.

Downstairs the next morning, everyone is preparing for a day of activity: baseball games, dance classes, grocery shopping, Red Sox watching. The kitchen is buzzing with logistical conversations and telephone calls and I walk into the fray by asking, “Ummm, who put the bathroom light on last night?”

Everyone stares at me. My dad stops chewing his mouthful of egg sandwich and smirks at me like I just asked, “Who’s the President of the United States?”

Tommy elaborates the reaction by saying, “Are you serious?” I have no idea what’s happening: why people are reacting to my question in this manner. “She does this every night. Sometimes she’s the one that leaves it on.” I roll my eyes and realize that he is the culprit. I grab a bagel and walk over to the toaster.

“Is she ready, Freddy?” My mom walks out from the downstairs bathroom, where she has started an epic day of laundry. “You’re going to be late.”

My dad nods in comprehension as he chews.

Then it happens again. This time she is in the upstairs shower. I’m staring at the toaster fantasizing about how it would make a wonderful time travel machine. It could deposit me three months into the future, back at Bates.

“Shut the water off.”

The house is old, the pipes are sensitive, the water pressure is weak. Certainly having a washing machine and shower run simultaneously causes distress to both the house and my sister. I continue staring at the toaster, wondering if anyone has ever cleaned it. My bagel is getting smoked rather than toasted: the leftover crumbs in the bottom are burning and there is a cloud of smoke hovering above it. I’m exasperated. Kirsten is leaning with her back against the counter and she smiles at me, recognizing my internal breakdown upon return to family life.

“Shut the water off.”

No one acknowledges the broadcast. People walking on the sidewalk outside can certainly hear, as the windows are open and Gretchen’s voice travels down the stairs right outside before it wraps itself around the corner, down the hallway, and into the kitchen. I am baffled. But I will not surrender this time.

“SHUT THE WATER OFF! SHUT THE WATER OFF! SHUT THE WATER OFF!” Then I hear stomping from above my head and Gretchen has decided on an alternative method. She would like to stomp us into submission.

My toast pops up into the smoky cloud.

Stomp, stomp, stomp. “SHUT THE WATER OFF! SHUT THE WATER OFF! SHUT THE WATER OFF! SHUT THE WATER OFF!” The words evolve into a sing-song rhythm (with the “WA” of “water’ as the melodic stress) and she is dancing to the syncopation.

I begin to butter my bagel and look over at everyone else in the kitchen. My dad is reading the Herald, Kirsten is staring out the window drinking her juice, Tommy is making weird faces at Danny, who is desperately trying to ignore him, my mom is on the phone.

“Oh my GOD.” I fling my bagel onto my plate and everyone looks over at me. It almost seems that I am the only one aware of the singing, dancing, showering banchee of a sister. I walk into the bathroom and turn off the washing machine.

“THANK YOU!” The stomping comes to an end and I walk back into the kitchen.

My dad looks up at me from the paper and chuckles.

As I sit down at the table and start eating my bagel, I come to the realization that maybe they have collectively decided that I am on Gretchen patrol since I have missed out on most of the year. Then I wonder if they have all grown so accustomed to it, that they no longer hear it.

“Dad, Tommy’s making faces at me,” Danny has lost his composure and is on the verge of tears.

“What kind of faces?” My Dad responds to Danny’s desperation with a question that will result in all of us (aside from Danny) cracking up.

“Like this,” Danny contorts his face and his body and imitates Tommy.

“Just like that, hunh?” My dad looks around at us as we are all laughing.

“Yeah.”

“OK, Tommy don’t make faces like that anymore.”

So, Tommy tries some new ones.

I hear the stairs creak as Gretchen descends and she walks into the kitchen dressed in her baseball uniform with her wet hair pulled back. I am mesmerized by her fleeting temper and think about how I am going to help her get a grasp on it. Before I can say anything, she smiles at me and says, “Hey, Er, what’s up. Welcome back.”

The Stop and Wave

Danny played hockey like he was a figure skater. At least when he was five years old. The whole family would sit in the stands at the Stoneham Arena and watch Danny glide down the ice on two rubbery legs during his very first hockey games. He loved being out on the ice, especially because he got the chance to wave to his adoring fan club. Sitting between sparse family clans in the bleachers with my hot chocolate, I was envious that I didn’t have older siblings myself. I would stare out at Danny and watch him hustle halfway toward the traveling puck and then grimace as he would inevitably give up on the pursuit. Like a figure skater who just ended a perfect routine, he would search the stands, and then wave to us from the ice with a smile that could have powered the zamboni. He was thrilled to be skating, he was thrilled that we were all there, and he was thrilled to be the center of attention for an hour.

My mom thought it was adorable – the waving and the happiness. Danny’s future athletic frame was hostage to flexible and supple muscles and every move he made on the ice echoed through layers of hockey equipment. When he would do the “Stop & Wave”, he never quite stopped or waved. He would lift his hand off his stick, nudge his helmet off his forehead with the oversized glove, look up almost to the ceiling with his eyes barely peeking out from underneath, smile and twist his arm at us like the Queen of England. This would all happen as he was still gliding on the ice. We all thought it was adorable. Actually, the only person I imagine did not find this behavior adorable was Gretchen, who at the time was deadly serious about hockey and had her deadly serious reputation to uphold around boys who doubted her serious talent. I can see her at seven, rolling her eyes at her brother on the ice as she stood with her nose against the plexiglass boards.

My dad thought it was cute, too, but noticed that Danny was having a hard time re-establishing his grip on his hockey stick after each “Stop & Wave.” After what I am sure were deep contemplations about strategy and implementation, my dad decided that he was going to place a piece of hockey tape at the point on the stick where Danny should replace his hand after each waving episode. I recall standing in the kitchen, eating cereal, watching my dad sit on a chair as he questioned Danny about the precise spot where the tape should be applied.

My dad is very precise and offers a similar line of questioning to each of his children, regardless of the subject matter: “Ok…now, show me exactly.”

Which always results in exasperated responses like Danny’s at the time: “Right there, Dad!”

My dad requested that he show him exactly how he held his stick.

As Danny was standing in his hockey uniform he displayed one of his stronger characteristics that he exudes today: confidence bordering on arrogance. He took the stick and without an ounce of humor, which at age 14 I thought was very funny, walked into the living room where there was plenty of space and studiously envisioned himself on the ice. He placed his hands on the stick, bent his rubbery legs, and grounded the blade into the wood floor. My dad watched him with equal solemnity.

“Ok. Come back over here. Let me see,” he had convinced my dad that he had marked the correct spot on the stick.

With cereal in mouth, I was giggling and Danny saw me. That’s always bad. If he’s not trying to make you laugh, and you are doing just that, he will hold a grudge for days (it may be longer now). I got the grudge face thrust at me that morning.

That day at the rink, Danny’s recovery from each “Stop & Wave” routine sped up just a little bit. After each Queen Elizabeth wave, he quickly placed his hand right back down on the stick, where it was marked with tape and continued on his rubbery legs to catch up with the puck. I’m not sure how long the “Stop & Wave” continued during Danny’s early hockey career. At some point the puck stole his undivided attention, or the competition to reach the puck presented itself, or maybe Gretchen gave him a talking to, or maybe the fan club dwindled.

Nine years separate me and Danny and it is almost impossible for me to not chuckle when I see him for the first time in awhile. He was eight years old when I left home for college, so the majority of my memories of him are affectionate. For the most part I missed the 12 year old brother phase which I “enjoyed” with Tommy and nothing that Danny and I went through together was traumatic. I think that I have been in physical fights with all of my siblings except for Danny: he quickly went from being too small to being too big to engage in anything of the sort. And him being too big makes me giggle. He may be 6’2” and weigh 185 pounds, but little does he know that when he walks into a room I see rubbery legs through his athletic frame. When I watch him drive off in his car waving out the window, I imagine him gazing back at the steering wheel looking for the piece of tape where his hand should land.

"Tumbleweaves"

After all of the advice being sought after regarding my move to California, this is by far the best. EVER. You'll see...
I read this to myself this morning and started choking on my food, and to then to others (many times), who literally laughed so hard they cried. It is clear that I must share this excerpt with the 106 blog community on behalf of N.G.

"Before I forget, more importantly than the murder rate in Oakland is the fact that there are literally hundreds of hairweaves strewn about in the middle of every street in this city. When I first moved here I almost drove off the road because I thought I was about to run over a cat, but upon further inspection I noticed it was a freakin' hairweave just hanging out in the middle of the road. They're everywhere and they're dangerous. I like to call them tumbleweaves and I have no idea where they come from they kind of just exist. You'll see."

Clarification

After reading the latest blog to my mom, she responded by clarifying:

"We are not trailer trash."

The Brightest Streetlight in Laconia, NH

I am sitting at a coffee shop in Brooklyn wondering why men shake their legs so much. I’m gazing over the top of my computer screen and there are three men in my field of vision who are nervously thumping their legs against the floor. Two of them are working on computers, one is flipping through a stack of papers.

Thump, thump, thumpity, thump…there are flashes of a nursery rhyme going through my head as my stare jumps intermittently among the six legs.

I am trying to hypothesize why men twitch their legs so much when they sit at a table. I don’t remember my dad ever doing this, but maybe his nail-biting is a substitute. I glance over at the women in the shop and they are calmly typing on their keyboards: one woman has her shoes off and is sitting criss-cross applesauce (I teach too much) in her seat while the other woman has her feet twisted around the legs of the chair where they meet the floor.

The women are all wrapped up and the men are flailing.

A cell phone rings and a woman answers with a barely audible “hello.” She’s trying to keep her voice down. This is very polite. As if this call is a signal to make his own phone call, one of the thumpers digs in his bag for his cell phone and then announces “HEY, JEREMY. WHAT’S UP.” This is not very polite. All the women in the room agree on this via eye contact. All the men in the room seem oblivious.

Thump, thump, thumpity, thump.

The woman whispers into her phone and the man uses a voice I imagine he uses at an overcrowded bar to talk to Jeremy.

I put on my headphones.

Fast forward twenty minutes later and there is a gap between my Kings of Convenience tracks and I hear the music that is playing over the coffee shop’s sound system. It’s music that brings such a visceral reaction that I consider packing up to leave. I’m almost done with my coffee, anyway. Instead, though, I take off my headphones and listen and write down some of the lyrics:

Seeing you
Or seeing anything as much as I do you
I take for granted that you're always there
I take for granted that you just don't care
Sometimes I can't help seeing all the way through

It's important to me
That you know you are free
Cuz I never want to make you change for me (falsetto)

I don’t know who sings this song. I don’t know if it’s a good song. But I hate it.

It reminds me of the long summer drives to New Hampshire in our minivan when I would press the scan button on the radio and watch helplessly as the numbers cycled through, landing only on one station that played oldies. At the coffee shop, I realize that I know all the lyrics to this song not because I like it but because it dominated the airwaves on my commutes to New Hampshire as a kid. I resent songs like this: there are quite a few. Compliments of the song, it brings along a wave of anxiety as I remember this period of my life. I decide to surrender to the anxiety and rediscover its roots.

Thump, thump, thumpity, thump…

During my pubescent summers in New Hampshire, I experienced bouts of panic. Sitting inside my grandmother’s trailer at the end of a long day spent at the beach, it dawned on me that the things I had in common with my family were fading. There were the obvious things like being the oldest of five children and feeling isolated in the eye of my very own hormonal hurricane. I had outgrown the walks to the penny candy store at the lakefront but I wasn’t yet interested in the kitchen conversations that happened between the adults while making hamburgers. There was no phone and no television: while this was a source of relief and escape for the people over the age of 25, it made me incredibly nervous. A disaster could strike and we would never know. Actually, disaster did strike one time and I was prepared that it could happen again.

When I was about 8 years old, my aunt Gail pulled up to the trailer in her car. She lived in a real house in New Hampshire and was plugged into the real world. It wasn’t unlike her to visit the trailer, but it was morning time and we were all getting into our on bathing suits, planning to meet her at the beach. She walked into the living area and I could tell that she had been crying. While holding the Boston Globe in her hand, she told my dad something and then went back to the bathroom where my mom was taking a shower. I heard the shower turn off and then some muffled conversation. A few minutes later, my mom and Gail walked into the kitchen; my mom had shorts and a bathing suit on and her freshly showered hair was gathered underneath a bright pink towel. I remember that pink towel vividly. And I don’t recall her crying, but I do remember her going into her default stress mode: down to business, unemotional, logistically productive. These traits make her an invaluable worker but her emotional shut-down can be quite bewildering to her children. At that moment, as I watched her with the pink towel on her head, I was utterly fascinated that she reacted this way after hearing that her best friend had died of a sudden brain aneurism.

At twelve years old, I felt like a veteran. I knew that bad things could happen. I preferred not to hear about my best friend dying via an obituary in the newspaper but I liked to think that I was prepared for that possibility.

On summer evenings like this (held hostage at the trailer park), I would physically situate myself between the children and the adults. My sisters, brothers, cousins, neighbors, and family friends would inhabit the dirt roads. Their numbers made the 10 mph traffic come to complete stops and sometimes resulted in Cadillacs off-roading as to not disturb the congregating children. Unimpressed by their simpleton ways (literally playing with dirt, playing catch with a baseball, exuding such excitement over trivial things like the dollar with which they were going “to buy fifty goldfish” candies at the front store), I would stare and bite my nails while listening to the adult conversations. Sitting in the big indoor porch area that housed four pullout couches to accommodate my ever-expanding family, I had a bird’s eye view of the dirt-goers. This positioning also allowed me to overhear bits of grown up conversation that I probably wasn’t “supposed” to hear. But since I wasn’t slightly interested in the subject matter, they were like background noise that never fully tuned in.

The problem was that there was no structure.

And I was twelve.

When I was ten, I begged my parents for chores and a chalkboard that we could place in the kitchen on which we could rotate household responsibilities. I wanted to have an allowance and attempted bribing Kirsten and Tommy to join my cause. They found me uninspiring and my protestations went completely unsatisfied by both my parents and my siblings. Early on, I felt like I was different. They seemed content with the way things were. Now that I was twelve, I decided that if I couldn’t influence the management of my house the least I could do was be the boss of my own world: my room. I tore through magazines, ripping out ads that I thought were cooler than my wallpaper: Anna Nicole Smith’s early Guess Ads, pictures of Kirk Cameron & Leonardo DiCaprio (Growing Pains), Chad Allen (Our House), and Sinead O’Connor (Nothing Compares 2 U). With scotch tape in hand, I plastered these magazine pages all over my pink flowered walls. I also banned entry to all four siblings. Danny and Gretchen, ages 3 and 5 respectively, would come to my door and ask if they could some in and sleep with me (or whatever other requested maternal need) and I would clearly state “no.” Kirsten, aged 10, quickly became the nurturing sister. One day Tommy, aged 9, began stuffing notes through the hole in my door and I quietly creeped up to it, timing his approach, and then abruptly thrust the door open right into his face. As he stood there crying with a growing egg on his head, I yelled at him. I was a hormonal wreck and he should have known that. Although my private den didn’t work out so well for my siblings, it helped me cope with living in a house filled with people that I felt God had mistakenly assigned me to. It must have been around then that I “lost” my Boston accent. (Honestly, I don’t know when that happened but I have audio tapes from pre-pubescent times that feature a Boston accent-laden Erin. Somewhere after age 12 the accent joined the others and was banned entry into my life.) My coping skills at home may have been effective, but when we were in New Hampshire, they failed miserably. I had no escape. At times, there could be seven adults and eight children sleeping in a three bedroom trailer. My own world was limited to an internal existence of worrisome thoughts and anxious confusion.

One summer night at the trailer, I was laying amidst three other small bodies (not enough sleeping areas this night…it must have been the 4^th of July) on the pullout couch in the living room (pull-out couch #5). It was the middle of the night and I wasn’t sleeping. It could have been someone snoring, it could have been someone flushing the toilet, it could have been a leaking diaper pressed against my back, it could have been the heat. But I think it was my uncle Eddie. He was out on the indoor porch, pinning up a piece of fabric over one of the windows that looked out onto the dirt road. I think my uncle Dickie was directing him, “to your right…yep, that’s good.” What they were finagling was not a mystery to me. It happened many times, but it struck me that night.

The entire park has about 300 summer trailers and there are about 10 street lights. Mostly, it’s a dimly lit, cozy place... mostly. Outside the Gottwald trailer, however, the brightest streetlight in Laconia, NH resides. And the Gottwalds (including adult Erin) need perfect darkness for sleep. Whenever indoor porch sleeping was required at the trailer (summer weekend family overnight attendance), there was 2:00AM whispered bickering as the men would try and figure out how to block out the blinding light. The problem was that a sheet was not thick enough to diffuse the light and a towel was too heavy to hang over the window. At least, I think that was the problem. I know there was a problem, because it never quite worked out for the guys.

The night that Dickie was directing Eddie, it dawned on me that someone should hang blinds. And this thought led me down a dangerous road of worrisome thoughts and anxious confusion: Why doesn’t someone just put up some blinds? Why hasn’t anyone thought of this before? Why am I smarter than everyone else? Why am I sleeping with Danny’s wet diapered bottom pressed into my back? Why are the remote controls to the TV at home taped to 6-inch segments of a hockey stick?

As far as I know, blinds never made it to the trailer. About four years ago, my grandmother sold it after spending fifty summers there. The streetlight drove her (and her sons) out.

About five years ago, Chris and I went to see “Angela’s Ashes” at the movie theater. In the film, there is a puddle that lives outside the Dublin home of the McCourt Family. The street was angled at a certain direction where it met the front doorstep and it created the perfect environment for a wide puddle to establish residence for twenty years. Throughout the rainstorms and sopping wet feet trampling all over the house, no one thought of covering it up with some plywood. There were babies dying of consumption and pneumonia, but everyone continued to walk around with wet shoes and socks. During the rainy season, the rapidly growing puddle would require a running leap in order to make it to the doorstep without submerging one’s whole foot. After the movie, Chris pointed out the symbolism of the puddle and how the Gottwalds had some things in common with the McCourts. This was not difficult to see, but recently I thought about the brightest streetlight in Laconia, New Hampshire and thought the comparison was eerie.

I remember my summers at the trailer park with great trepidation for no apparent reason other than my inability to relax in, what I thought, was an unstructured environment. Of course there was a hidden structure of which I was unaware: showers and baths schedules for 15 people with use of one bathroom, intricate parking configurations so that family vehicles could pull out early without being blocked by the cars owned by my single aunts and uncles, compressed communal grocery shopping lists as to avoid redundancies, laundry rotations of dirt-laden, food-stained clothes. But it all seemed like mayhem to me at the time.

There were efforts to sideline what my mom now refers to my “anxiety attacks”: playing cards, going to arts & crafts fairs, attending a community orchestra performance. Each of these activities helped distract me, but to this day I flinch when someone asks me to play cards and I think twice about going to see community productions. In these situations, like at the coffee shop today listening to that anxiety-provoking music, my worry washes over me briefly.