Initiation

The maintenance man at my gym calls me “kiddo” and “buddy”: “Hey kiddo, how’s it going?”, “Hiya, buddy.” I know that sometimes I am paranoid that people think that I am 15 years old, but clearly he does not think I am 31. He reminds me of my dad, who still calls his 40 year old co-workers “kids”. So maybe the maintenance guy actually knows that I am 31 but is sympathetic to the fact that he is 20 years older. Or maybe, and here’s where my paranoia settles in, maybe he feels bad for me because he sees me at the gym every day: in the middle of the day. I imagine he wonders if I am lonely and unemployed and have an unhealthy self-perception of my body since I am at the gym so much more often than the 9-5ers. When I see him now, I can hear his thoughts: “Here comes the compulsive one. She doesn’t really need to lose weight. But she’s trying so hard. She’s been here for three years and hasn’t lost a pound. Actually, the winter hasn’t treated her well.” Little does he know that he should feel bad because his pre-occupation with my lifestyle has interfered with his ability to satisfactorily perform his maintenance work at the gym. Well, it may not be solely his job but work with me...

His gym attacked my leg with fungus.

About 3 weeks ago, I noticed a rash on my inner left thigh. Thinking it was excema, or some sort of allergic reaction, I applied hydrocortisone cream hoping it would clear up. After a few days, it didn’t change. It was incredibly itchy and took up an area about the size of my palm. I showed it to Chris and his mouth watered as he said, “I think you have poison ivy.” Chris is extremely allergic to poison ivy and was slightly disgusted with me. I tried convincing him that I had been nowhere near a climate that harbored plant life in March. He was skeptical. He pointed at the bumps without touching me (“now, don’t move, I don’t want to touch it”) and shook his head with disappointment.

A few days later, I happened to have my annual OB/GYN exam and decided that I could just ask her about the rash instead of making a separate appointment with my primary care doctor. It was itchy, it was mysterious, and I was far more interested in getting it checked out than my reproductive organs. Sitting in the pre-exam one-on-one consultation with the doctor, the OB/GYN asked me if “there was anything else” and I told her about this “weird rash thing on my leg”. So she said would take a look when she performed her exam.

She left the room and I changed into the paper outfit (“front open”). When she returned, she invited me to place my heels up into the stirrups. Then, with her head between my legs, she looked at my left leg and I could feel her hands applying pressure to my skin. She made a couple incoherent sounds and then turned on the light, at which point she said:

“OH! I know what this is. You have pets.”

At that moment I panicked and tried to respond calmly, “Um, nope. No pets.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Hmmmm. Well, it’s fungus.”

I sighed, groaned , rolled my eyes and she gently reprimanded me by saying, “oh, there is no reason to be upset. We live in New York City. We share the same germs. We live all over each other.”

I had a surge of conflicting thoughts:

1. So, now I am officially a New Yorker because I have a mysterious fungus growing on my leg? Is this like an initiation to a collegiate sportsteam? I would rather have a party thrown in my honor now that I was a true New Yorker.

2. Well, it’s not meningitis. But, it sounds like that will come in my next stage of being a New Yorker. And I shouldn’t panic.

3. Bird Flu. It’s a just a matter of time. I need to store up on dry goods and an escape route from this island.

But the overwhelming question mark floating through my brain was: “Where did I get this?” I always wear pants at the gym, so her suggestion that I got it on the bike didn’t really make sense. She was perplexed as well. I asked her if I could have gotten it from a toilet at the gym and she said, “No, that’s not likely.” She patted my right leg and said, “I’m surprised you don’t have it on this leg.” She was not concerned about the origin of the fungus, but I was obsessed with it.

By that night, I was sitting on the couch grimacing from the sting of the prescription cream as I chased my prescription steroid with a tall glass of water.

So maintenance man gave me fungus.

Unless it was homeless man.

Recently Chris and I were riding on our subway line (the F train) from Manhattan to Brooklyn. It was a packed train, standing room only at 9pm on a Thursday. We were standing toward the back of our car and could see into the subway car behind us. Our view was priceless: a homeless man, taking up five seats with his body (torso on two, legs outstretched on three). He had the zipper to the crotch of his pants undone and had his right hand conveniently placed inside the opening. One of his laceless combat boots was about three feet from the seats, in the middle of the aisle, and ten minutes later, the other fell off and landed close by. At each subway stop between 14^th Street and 7^th Avenue, approximately eight people would jump out his subway car and leap into ours. No wonder there was standing room only. By the time we reached the first stop in Brooklyn, the folks in our car were asking me and Chris (the people with a view through the back window) for a play-by-play:

“Oh, ok. Now, he’s switching hands. No….wait. Both hands. Both hands are down the pants!”

“Man! It stunk so bad in there. Still one shoe off?

“No, both shoes on floor.”

“Wow, I can’t imagine how those people are still standing in there.”

A transplant passenger from that car was standing near us and I could see him pursing his lips, squinting his eyes, scraping his tongue with his teeth, stretching out kinks in his neck by rolling his head around. It was like he had been attacked by a skunk.

So, here I am three weeks later wondering how I caught that homeless man’s fungus. Evidently, I shouldn’t worry about it though.

We live all over each other.

Life on Pluto

Sometimes I feel like a visit with my parents challenges my brain to become a rubber band. As I sit and listen to their discussions about retirement (“I need to retire” says one while the other says “I will never retire”) and relocation to Florida, my rubber band is pulled in a direction so that my brain fits their dilemma into my orbit of consciousness. Before I am able to decipher exactly what has happened, I am sitting at my father’s laptop explaining that this ad on craigslist for the condo in Bonita Springs is a rental for $1000 per week not $1000 per month. By the time I realize that I have invested effort into their exploration on my planet of consciousness (and technical capabilities with modern day search engines) they think that not only are they going to find an affordable place near Ft. Myers (dad) and within walking distance of the beach (mom), we are also going to find that magical place at this very moment. Meanwhile, I am in the midst of a career crisis and have mentioned my idea about being a nutritionist to my father who responded by saying, “Everyone is a nutritionist today. Did I ever tell you I went to a nutritionist about 15 years ago and she just told me to stop eating junk? I could have told myself that.” The feedback is incredibly insightful and encouraging. It’s a trying time for them: there are major decisions to be made at the brink of retirement. Far more important decisions than those that one is making at the age of 31 (minor things like marriage, children, career). So I ask myself, “Why visit people who are always on the brink of a transition when you yourself are trying to negotiate your own decisions? Is this helpful? Is this relaxing? Is this creating clarity?” And my instinctual responses respectively are: “Masochism. No. No. No.”

Don’t get me wrong. Part of the reason I come to visit my parents in time of confusion and doubt is because they dwarf my worries and I find that comforting, albeit probably not in the most conducive way. Their lives are Jupiter and mine is Pluto (it is not a coincidence that I mention Pluto, which was recently stripped of its planetary status by NASA). In my studio apartment in Brooklyn, my Pluto life seems large and ambiguous with lots of cold, dark places that need investigating and definition. But next to Jupiter, Pluto looks just about right: the right size, the right banished placement out in the depths of existence (New York City). Somehow, though, there is always far more exploratory adventure on their Jupiter than there is on my Pluto. They are terrific tour guides who present the most dramatic of their landscape: “Exhibit A. House Heating Tank Buried Under a 12 Foot Snow Bank, Exhibit B. Should the new Faux-Antique-Countryish 5 foot sign that says something like ‘Good Friends, Good Times’ go on the wall in the kitchen or the living room?” They are great marketers, too. It seems that their neon “OPEN” sign is always blinking. Stepping into their lives is like driving down to 7-Eleven at 2am on a Tuesday: it has what you need and maybe a few distractions.

What is bewildering is that my parents seem slightly uninterested in their children’s storefronts. I’m not sure if my neon sign isn’t plugged in, or if they already have what they are looking for, but they don’t seem to pull into my parking lot. And, actually, I wonder if I am just not in their planetary neighborhood. They’ll open up their orbit to Pluto but they’re sure as hell not going to lug Jupiter to the outskirts of the universe for a visit. Again, this relates to their inability to travel down Interstate 95 for 180 miles to come visit their two daughters in New York City. That is really stretching the space-time-parental-travel continuum a bit too far. [Let’s not dwell on the two siblings in California or one in India]. Jupiter’s moons, of which there are numerous, consist of Daily Routines, Debt, Mortgages, Nieces, Nephews, Sisters, Brothers, Parents, Houses, Cars, and Children. My 7-Eleven is up and running. It’s location is just not public. It never has been. My parents have only found it a couple times and it’s because I handed them a map.

I sound awfully cynical. It’s a coping mechanism. Bear with me.

I bumped into an old friend last week whose mother always had her figurative car parked in her daughter’s figurative 7-Eleven parking lot. As a kid I remember it being torture when I was at my friend’s 7-Eleven and her mother was there, too. Always and (what turned out to be) Forever. I recall the internal strife I felt when a parent other than my own, would want to be friends with their kids (and me). It was weird. It was annoying. It was worse than having a younger sibling want to hang out with my friends. It was desperate. It was embarrassing. When my carpool dropped me off at home, I would walk in the door to a house full of chaos. With a sports announcer magically raising his voice over the family, a brother testing out his slapshot on me as I opened the door, and a sister microwaving her ice cream I would go directly up to my room to do homework and wonder who these aliens were. Upon my ascension on the second flight of stairs, I could hear one of my parents say, “Was that Erin? Is she home?” And then would hear one of my siblings respond with a South-Park like voice, “Yes, that was Er-WIN, she is HERE!”

It was tough transition: being with other parents who asked lots of questions, wanted to know the gossip, wanted to know who was good and who was bad and then coming home to my parents who simply wanted to know if I was present. I craved some middle ground. Honestly, I wouldn’t have it any other way. They have plenty of other 7-Elevens and moons and planets and probably other universes, actually, to keep tabs on. What works out nicely in big families is that “keeping tabs on” doesn’t mean a thing. But thinking you know what is going on means more. As the family extrovert and hence as the Family Spokesperson, my mother projected what family goings-on were happening throughout my childhood. These projections, like today’s newscasts, were not always accurate. And to my surprise, to this day cousins, aunts, and uncles can still be astonished to learn the real version of any given story from the other six members of our household. My mother is generous, funny, straight-forward, among other qualities, but accurate she is not, at least when it comes to memory and story telling. My dad covers that area, but unless there is a need to fill in for the star news anchor or unless there is a personal appeal for a re-telling of the story, most of the audience is going to get the not-so-true story from my mom.

But I digress.

My parents lives, since I was a child, put my life in perspective. I was a worried kid. I worried about things that didn’t matter and could only pull myself out of my spirals by watching my parents try to figure out how to divide $10 between a gallon of milk, a loaf of bread, enough tuna fish for three lunches, dish soap (used alternatively until the next pay day as shampoo), and enough unleaded gas to get my dad to work and back. It was just the ways things were and we never felt emotional about those decisions. I would need to be aware of that $10 crisis in order to push away the 12 year old anxieties I had.

The problem is: at 31, I’m not sure if I can take my parents worries and replace mine. Actually, I am pretty sure that they are going to be ok in retirement. I am pretty sure that if they made it this far, then things are looking pretty peachy for them. I am pretty sure that life on Jupiter is stimulating and that navigating their planet through the solar system of family members and life choices is a piece of cake for them at this point. I am pretty sure about them.

I’m just not pretty sure about me.

Don't Grimace at Me

As I stood in line (with 14 other people) at CVS yesterday, I looked over my left shoulder and saw a DVD for sale. The Edge is a 1997 movie starring Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin. My first thought was: I don't understand why this movie is a featured sale item at CVS during the 2007 holiday season. My second thought was: I feel like I watch people make these faces [see Alec and Tony's expressions] every day. Maybe it's living in a big city, maybe it's the weather, maybe it's the crazed holiday season...I'm not sure. Nevertheless, I resented the grimaces silently shouting out at me over my shoulder. Last night I went online to find the movie poster so I could post it on this blog and I discovered something fascinating. The American poster is the grimacing-men version and the UK poster features a subdued-golden trio of Alec, Tony, & (get this one!) Elle MacPherson. I saw this movie almost ten years ago and I have no recollection of Ms. MacPherson starring in this movie. Anyway, it piqued my interest and thought I would share the two versions.

American:

and British:

Playing Catch Up

Well, getting back on the blogwagon proved to be a bit more of a challenge than originally thought. I’ll need to hammer out some details to get you caught up. Details like the Coopers’ visit to the Gottwalds, our trip to Munich, Germany, my literary love affair with Paul Auster, a clan of Gottwalds visiting Coors Field in Denver for Game 4 of the World Series, my recent dance performance in Brooklyn, and my newly found gluten-free lifestyle.

Where does one start with such a plethora of subjects?

COOPERS IN NH
Malcolm and Robin came to visit Fred and Priscilla in Laconia in August. My liberal grandmother and Chris’s conservative father cozied up to each other on the pontoon boat and as we floated atop the waves on Winnepesaukee, they provoked one another with political jargon. Tommy spent the first few hours on Sunday desperately trying to expedite a hangover, finally pulling the trigger while laying on his stomach with his head two feet from the lake’s surface. The whole family (plus the Coopers) was privy to the experience.

MUNICH

Chris and I went to Munich for a week in August. The lightweight men’s eight from Riverside Boat Club represented the USA at the 2007 World Rowing Championships in Germany. The week-long trip was split between attending crew races and riding our bicycles around Munich. Our first bicycle trip was a research trip; we wanted to see how long it would take us to bike to the race course which was on the outskirts of the city, about 15 miles from our hotel. Due to inadequate maps, vegetation pastures, overgrown bike paths, dense wooded areas, hidden parking lots with prostitutes who stepped out of their brightly colored umbrella-laden vehicles, and mazes through Florida-like retirement communities we had a rather difficult time finding our way. In hindsight, we estimate that we biked about 50 miles over the course of about seven hours. Somehow we ended up going in circles (we think). At 3:30 we saw a sign that told us that we were 2.5 km away. At 4:30, we passed a sign saying that we were 7.5 km away. The rural setting spooked me, as we were about two miles away from the Dachau Concentration Camp site and occasionally our bike ride took us over some old railroad tracks. There were patches of what seemed like forest, so thick that my heart-raced, thinking that ghosts from the past (whether Nazi or Holocaust survivors) were going to lurch out and grab me from my bike. I’ve never rode a bike so fast through pebbles, grass, and puddles. Finally, we could hear the fans cheering for the crews but couldn’t find the body of water (a man-made, spring-fed, perfectly rectangular, perfectly German piece of architecture). Once we saw the massive stands in the distance with people waving an array of international flags, we couldn’t figure out how to get to the entrance. The entire thing turned into a treasure hunt and became comical, especially when we arrived and the final race of the day had “just” finished. At least we figured out that we should take the train for the following race days when the Riverside (now the USA!) boat was racing. But at 5:30pm, we had only begun to think about the bike trip back to the hotel. Again, we got lost. This time in Munich: in the neighborhoods, in the parks, near the Mercedes headquarters. We finally made it home that evening just before dark, my speed had picked up as we rode through the English Garden (I knew we were close to our hotel). I was sunburned and exhausted and the next day my sit bones felt like someone had taken a jackhammer to them.

I mention sunburned in the previous sentence because I did not bring moisturizer with me. Luckily, the Holiday Inn had “Skin Moisturizer” in the shower. And luckily, I used it for the next four days. I was so lucky that by the fourth day, my skin was flaking off, my cheeks were irritated and red, my legs were itchy and my back had dandruff. Chris happened to ask me what moisturizer I had been using and I told him that I was using the moisturizer that the hotel provided. Upon my answer, he gave me the look. The Look is his way of not overtly condescending yet simultaneously seriously doubting my course of action. I get The Look rather often and to my chagrin it is usually apt. It turns out that “Moisturizer” in German means “soap”. I made Chris swear that he would not tall everyone about my stupid mistake so here I am, unveiling my idiocy to the world at large. We made a trip the pharmacy and purchased some Aloe Vera Moisturizer (not soap) and my body drank it in like it was the fountain of youth. Nevermind that 6 ounces cost $17.

PAUL AUSTER

This summer I started reading his books. First I read The Book of Illusions and then Oracle Night. Then I decided to read his Collected Prose. Now I am reading The New York Trilogy. Several of his stories take place in my neighborhood (where he also resides) so they have piqued my interest. His grandmother murdered his grandfather at his father’s boyhood home and Paul did not discover any of this until immediately following his father’s death. He has a fascinating family history. And his fiction is unsettling: peculiar plots, depressed characters, and bizarre adventures. I watched him interviewed on The Charlie Rose Show and decided that Paul Auster is my New Favorite Person Who I Don’t Really Know. Charlie Rose kept trying to get Auster to say who was the best artist of the century…and the best writer…and the best…and Auster looked at him like he had asked him who had the bigger shoe size, Picasso or Hemingway. Auster did not really answer the question but instead just said that “there is no best.” I suggest you get to know him.

GOTTWALDs AT COORS FIELD

Kirsten, Danny, Tommy, Nicole, Kerri, and Alison (Gretchen’s roommate) flew to Denver for the Red Sox World Series SWEEP. I don't think there was much drinking going on (see photo below):

To make a long story short, they ended up atop the Red Sox dugout for the post-win celebration on the evening of October 28. Here are a couple photos with my brothers (from boston.com) so you can play the Gottwald version of Where’s Waldo?.

DANCE

I performed with Digby Dance while the Red Sox were demoralizing the Rockies. The cast was chock full of Red Sox fans, so as soon as the house lights went up we all were aware of the score (thanks to text messages from fellow fans and siblings in Denver). The show was a collaboration with Urban Juke Joint, a group of poets. It was totally mesmerizing to see how another performance art form rehearses. As dancers we are so used to rehearsing and by the time tech week is upon us, we know all our cues (for the most part) and general outline for the performance evening. The poets were much more improvised and we didn’t really get a clear sense of what they would be performing until the actual showtime. It added some nervous performance energy for me, which I realized I had missed a little bit.

GLUTEN-FREE

Without going into lurid detail about my gastro-intestinal issues, I have been having issues for quite some time. I finally had my first visit with my Primary Care Physician and he asked me a series of questions about my symptoms. I did not know that he was giving me a gluten allergy screening test. Anyhow, he suggested I try going gluten-free for two weeks and see how my system would react. Chris thought I had found a ‘touch-feely’ doctor but nevertheless agreed that I should try it out. So, I did. And I cannot express to you how much better I feel. It blows my mind. If you want more details, I can give them to you upon request. I will leave it there for now.

Getting Back on the Blogwagon

But first, just a brief entry.

Chris and I were on the subway and I saw a crinkled-up New York Post hiding underneath one of the seats. I could make out the back page that said something like "Red Sox are Floundering." My heart raced and I could feel my stress level increase. Another September is here and I need to avert my eyes from gazing into sports bars as I walk down the streets of New York City. Anyhow, we got off the train in Brooklyn and were walking home when we overheard a man behind us. He was talking to his date about "those Red Sox fans."

"I don't understand them. They're still a game and half ahead and they act like they've already lost."

I looked up at Chris as we crossed the street, raised my eyebrows, and imagined the blissful existence of a baseball fan who has never routed for the Red Sox...who has never been tortured in the Autumn season.

History Repeats for Another Family

This article appeared in the Boston Herald today. Ed (or Eddie, as I call him) is my uncle & godfather.

Service and sacrifice
Family of firefighters mourns lost brother
By Peter Gelzinis
Friday, September 7, 2007

Lt. Ed Gottwald was 11 years old when he first took part in the heartbreaking majesty of a fallen firefighter’s funeral. The hero being carried to his rest that day 27 years ago [this is actually incorrect...supposed to read '37 years ago'] was Ed’s father, Boston Fire Lt. George J. Gottwald.

Yesterday morning, Ed Gottwald walked behind Engine 30, a fire truck that had made the poetic transformation into a funeral bier. It cradled the flag-draped coffin of his friend, Firefighter Paul J. Cahill.

Pipers from departments all over the East Coast led Cahill’s casket past the sea of dress blue uniforms on Centre Street and through a West Roxbury rotary - Lt. George J. Gottwald Circle.

As Ed Gottwald slowly marched into the spot memorializing his father’s valor, his heart most certainly swelled with equal parts of pride and sadness. Yet, there was no one who could understand the symmetry of being the son of a fallen jake and helping to carry a brother firefighter’s casket into Holy Name Church better than him. His family’s sacrifice reaches back to the 1898 line-of-duty death of his great-grandfather, another George Gottwald, for whom his fallen father was named.

The thousands and thousands of ordinary heroes who stood at attention for more than a dozen blocks yesterday usually don’t waste much time pondering the more spiritual aspects of a job that is actually a calling, something deeply rooted in the blood. That kind of reflection is saved for scenes like the one that unfolded in West Roxbury yesterday . . . and will be duplicated today in Dorchester with services for Firefigher Warren Payne, the man who perished beside Paul Cahill last week.

It is within the panorama of these magnificent fanfares for common men that the basic notion of public service is redefined by sacrifice.
Paul Cahill was lovingly remembered as a good and kind man who adored his family, loved to fish and could do things with a steak that would make Wolfgang Puck jealous. But what separated this modest, self-effacing man from the rest of us is that he went to work at the firehouse each day knowing that it could cost him his life. That kind of unvarnished courage and devotion are not part of most job descriptions.
“When people are having the worst day of their lives,” said Ed Kelly, president of Boston Firefighters Local 718, “we show up and try to make things better. And sometimes, it costs us our lives.”

Capt. Steven Keough walked down Centre Street yesterday, out ahead of the engine company he commands. He held the helmet of a brother he lost a week ago when a routine kitchen fire went horribly bad. Keough was among those who were rushed to the hospital in the aftermath of a disaster that unfolded two blocks away from the firehouse.

What he chose to remember from the altar yesterday - and will carry with him for the rest of his life - was the echo of jokes, the sounds of laughter, the dinner table conversation, the proud accounts of his children’s exploits . . . and above all, the understanding that in Paul Cahill, Engine 30 had a guy who would be there with you, and for you, in the midst of whatever hell you happened to stumble upon.

Only a tiny handful of the men and women who flooded Centre Street yesterday knew Paul Cahill well enough to have tasted one of his gourmet beef dishes. But then again, they all knew him. What binds them to each other is a kind of pedestrian, blue-collar courage the outside world really doesn’t understand, until a city is humbled by the drone of the pipers and the sight of fire apparatus as it rolls slowly and silently through the neighborhood, carrying the remains of a public servant who gave us . . . his life.

Yes, we will take notice for a little while; we will be grateful and then get on with our lives. But the thousands who stood shoulder-to-shoulder outside Holy Name Church were linked to Paul Cahill by blood, much in the same way that Lt. Ed Gottwald is linked to the father and great-grandfather who willingly surrendered their lives answering the bell.

Dessert

Ordered Chinese food last night.
This was my fortune inside my cookie:
"Today, your mouth might be moving but no one is listening."
That was a nice way to end my meal.