remember my friend beth?

i remember my friend beth. my generous, gregarious, funny, flawed, sweet friend beth.

i remember the tattoo she got that long weekend we spent in new orleans – a guardian griffin with a n’awlins crescent on her shoulder. she was a new yorker with a southern sensibility. she was equal parts impulsivity and fierce loyalty, protective to the core. her friends were her family, and she guarded those relationships closely. she would forgive her friends anything – any hurt, any slight, any neglect – the relationships came first, and her feelings came second. seems like she was always coming second to someone else, but that was her nature.

i remember the surprise birthday party she orchestrated for me – the only one i’ve ever had – because she knew how much it mattered. she had a way of honing in on the sensitive, achy spots in your heart, and tending to them. like a psychic healer, she always knew just what you needed most – a phone call, a gesture, a balm. she had a knack for knowing when you needed to talk, when you needed cheering, when you needed to be left alone. she was attuned to that kind of thing – she was always a caretaker, and when she cared for you she took care of you.

i remember her animals. i remember the day she got franny, her beloved golden retriever. franny was her first baby, but there were a lot more to follow. she could never turn away an animal in distress – sometimes to her own detriment. she didn’t always have as much money or space as she had heart, but there was no one else on earth i would have trusted more with the care of my pet. she would watch my dog when we went away and i always felt a bit guilty when i came back, knowing that she was probably nicer to my pooch than i was.

i remember her look. she was striking in that slavic way. tall and slender, all angles, with high cheekbones, dark hair and fair skin, and a red mouth – beth was never without her signature red lipstick. she had a loping walk – the kind you develop when you were real knobby-kneed as a kid, but she never outgrew it. she favoured classic tailoring, linens and silks and chunky silver jewelry. she had a closet full of crisp white shirts, but she liked to surprise people as well. a photographer friend of mine once used her as a model for a book cover he was shooting, with a blond bob wig and black gloves, very femme fatale, and she loved that. she turned heads without even trying, but she definitely enjoyed the attention.

i remember her generosity. she’d give you the shirt off her back, and she once very literally gave me the shoes off her feet. that generosity of spirit made you just want to soak her up, to drink it in like water. she often gave more than she had, and that sometimes left her in a hole – emotionally and financially. but if you needed something, anything, she was there. if you needed her tomorrow, she would be there yesterday. no hedging, no boundaries, no questions asked. it was that simple for her, and when you were around her, it made perfect sense. it was the only way she could live.

i remember her sense of humour. she was quirky and wacky light-years before quirky and wacky were cool. she loved a crude joke – crass, slapstick, that was right up her alley. she liked her humour unrefined and honest. she had a laugh that had a hint of snort to it, and sometimes it morphed into genuine snorting hilarity. which sounds unattractive, but it wasn’t – it was all part of her goofiness. goofy – that’s what she was. people can relate to that, it made her accessible and approachable and such fun to be around.

i remember beth as beautiful, tough as nails, vulnerable, rebellious, effusive, extroverted, resilient, self-destructive, warm, loving, scared and scarred.

last night, i found out that my friend beth has died. i’m still piecing together what happened. i’m still piecing together my heart and my memories. although we’d lost contact, i never stopped trying to find her, and i always figured at some point we would reconnect. that will never happen now, and all i can do is remember her as she was.

i remember my generous, gregarious, funny, flawed, sweet friend beth.

lynyrd skynyrd – free bird

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now that i live an ocean away from my family, we usually don’t exchange gifts at Christmas. but the other day i saw a link to this charity gift card website, and thought it would be a really nice idea. so i sent everyone a small denomination giftcard which they can then donate to the charity of their choice. as part of the message going along with the giftcard i wrote:

This year I thought people would like the opportunity to pass on some good to any cause that is near and dear to their heart. Our family is so lucky, we have more than enough cheer to spread around

and while that it technically true – my family are lucky in that we all, thankfully, have enough to eat, shelter, and clothe ourselves – upon reflection, i think i’ve probably been a bit insensitive. i was really speaking only for myself – because while *i* have enough money to donate to others, others in my immediate family are definitely not as well-off. in fact, there are some in my family who probably could have made good use of that $25 themselves.

talking about this makes me a bit uncomfortable, actually. truth be told, i’m fairly well-off in comparison to many – i live in an expensive city, yet still have enough to do things like travel, go out to concerts, give nice gifts, and generally not worry too much. in fact, i live a fairly cushy lifestyle by some standards. that’s not to say that jonno and i don’t work hard, or watch our spending in other ways. but overall, we are extraordinarily lucky to have not only enough, but more than we need.

others in my family have it a bit harder. there are some who’ve had to rely on public aid. there are some who’ve had difficulty finding steady employment. there are some who worry about keeping the jobs they have. there are some who make ends meet – but only just.

and to be perfectly, excruciatingly honest, this is the only time it has occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, it might bother them that i have certain financial freedoms that they don’t.

don’t get me wrong: there’s no one in my family who would let any one of us go without. but charity is a luxury available only to those that have a surplus. that’s a luxury that some of my family just don’t have.

if i critique my motives, i know that my heart was in the right place. but i have to wonder if perhaps i was so caught up in making the gesture to make myself feel good, that i never considered whether it was something that would make others feel good. if i wasn’t giving what i wanted to give, rather that what others would want to receive.

how’s that for selfish? i never stopped to think about it at all.

they say there is no such thing as a truly altruistic act, and i suppose i proved that to be true. but maybe even if my magnanimous gesture wasn’t such a great present for everyone else, at least it gave *me* something in return – a little self-awareness, a little sensitivity, and a little reminder of something i’d clearly forgotten. that no matter how well-intentioned, Christmas is not about the giving – it’s about family.

and what a gift that is indeed.

god knows (you’ve got to give to get) – el perro del mar

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there are nights in our history that my family don’t talk about. nights where the calm of domesticity and image of family was shattered into a million sharp pieces that left us all scarred.

it is enough to say that much. in fact, i’ve probably said too much.

but this is not a post about the things that happen to a family, or the things that happened to our particular family. i’ve long since come to understand that all families have their hidden scars. given enough time, they eventually form part of the strength that hold us together – or sometimes, hold us apart. the shared bond and shared vulnerability of having survived – without words, we share a story.

and the thing is not that every family has them – because every family does. the thing is that we forget that others don’t know. me: i forget that others don’t know. i forget that people who did not know me during my twenties, don’t know what a massive crater those things that happened left in me, for so very long. they have no idea that i was not always whole.

there are people whom i’ve known for many years, who helped me live through some of those times, so they understand that there are things that are redacted from my past. for a very long time, the things that happened to my family were a source of pain that was sometimes so all-consuming that i was a walking, weeping wound. they felt like *the* defining characteristic of my family, and by extension, a defining characteristic of me.

(and just as my family doesn’t talk about those scars amongst ourselves, i do not tell the story of others in my family – those versions, those experiences are not mine to tell, and as much as i am open about myself, i am very private about most other people in my family.)

but friends i’ve made in the past ten years have no idea. and i forget that they don’t know. this post came about because i was with a friend in a pub the other day, and on a tangent of our original discussion, i found myself filling in the backstory to some of my own darker days. i had forgotten, you see, and said something along the lines of, “you know how when such-and-such happened…” and the blank look of complete non-recognition fell across her face.

so why is that remarkable in any way? because the friends i’ve made in the past ten years have no idea. those scars? they’re faded. the pain that once left gaping wounds in my heart for all to see? it’s no longer the hole at the center of my life. it too, has faded into memory. i can tell you where and how things shattered – but it is no longer the central, defining story of my family. it no longer defines me. in fact, i forget that many of my friends don’t know.

and the miracle of that forgetting?

that tells me i’ve healed.

change of heart – el perro del mar

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the other day on thanksgiving, i rang up my brother dave’s house to talk to the family gathered there. after chit-chatting with all and sundry, my brother raul’s girlfriend, passed the phone on to dave’s long-term-partner-now-new-wife. as she handed over the phone, the girlfriend called out, “hey Mrs. B___! jen’s on the phone!”

as she did so, it suddenly struck me: after being one of only two Ms. B___s in my family tree for years (the other being the one who gave birth to me), another woman now shares my surname.

you see, my grandfather’s surname was B____. he had sisters who all changed their surname upon marriage. dad’s surname is B____. my dad has five sisters, who all changed their surname upon marriage. my two sisters have both changed their surnames. my mother is Mrs. B___ by marriage, and although my parents divorced years ago, she kept her married surname.

so for several years now, i have been the lone female B___ who is descended from this particular line of the family tree… stuck way out of the very furthest twig of the limb. and in spite of childhood teasing, misspellings and mispronunciations far too numerous to count, and marrying twice… i’ve never had any inclination to change it. i like to joke that that’s out of sheer laziness, but the truth is that i’ve always been very attached to my surname.

my surname is pretty unique, even in cities chock full of multi-cultural populations. in fact, for many years, it was thought that outside of the cluster of B____ relatives in the new york/new jersey area, there was another cluster of distant cousins somewhere in california – and that was it. these days an internet search brings up a small smattering of people, who are, i’m sure, in some way related to me by historical lineage – i can see the familiar high slavic cheekbones and noses staring back at me with such familiarity in people’s facebook profile pictures, including those with alternate married surnames. my particular surname goes back to a tiny island called unije, off the coast of croatia, where my grandfather, Matthew B____, emigrated from when he was barely a teenager. he journeyed alone by boat (his father Martin having emigrated to parts unknown in the states several years earlier), landed at ellis island, as in the classic american immigration narrative. there’s a famous family story that a dockworker at the port, who happened to know Martin B___, happened by chance to recognise my grandfather Matthew B___’s surname from the hundreds of names on the ship’s records, and managed to put him back in touch with his father who was also working the docks. in a city of millions, what were the chances?

and so it was another set of coincidences that lead me, in one of my periodic google searches, to find a book called “The History and Families of Unije”, a small genealogical book put together as a personal project by an author tracing his own family history. unije’s modern history has been checkered by the forces of war – it has been a various points part of austria, italy, the former yugoslavia, and now croatia. in 2005, a set of parish records were uncovered which dated back to the 18th century. suddenly, thanks to this book, i now can look back and trace the origins of my B___ surname to 1753. i can see pictures of the island where my grandfather lived as a boy. i can see the olive mills and the sardine factories. this amazes me to no end.

i’m not a history buff, and i’m not a genealogist. but something about this commonality with people whose blood lives on in my veins pulls deep at the core of me. it feels essential to who i am. i am the granddaughter of an immigrant, i am the great-great-great-great-great-great granddaughter of Martin B___, who was one of about 140 inhabitants of the tiny island of unije in the early 1700s. even before i knew this, i felt it.

genetic links are strong stuff. in recent years, my brother and sister who were adopted as infants, have both been in contact with their biological birth mothers. i have seen them standing next to each other, their mannerisms, facial features and smiles mirroring each other. in spite of the years of separation, and differing surnames, they are linked at the cellular level. as my brother dave married the new Mrs. B___, i watched his birth mother and biological sister look on with smiles that were perfect images of the one beaming across his face at his new bride.

this is the truth of why i have kept my surname. it is, for me, a way of representing those links to people whose dna from hundreds of years ago, still circulates through me, and whose immigrant story has made my life possible. i am a B___ because my grandfather and great-grandfather left their stone houses and olive mills and sardine factories to travel across an ocean to the docks of lower manhattan.

but it also represents the links with those to whom i am tied not by the genetic bonds of blood, but by bonds of choice and love. my siblings and i are not of the same genetic descent, we don’t look alike or act alike… but we are family just as true as if we were born that way, and our shared surname reflected that. my new sister-in-law is of greek heritage – her parents too, emigrated here, and are also part of the famed american melting pot. she shares none of the B___ dna, but in adopting her into our crazy family, she is just as surely “one of us” now.

i am Jen B___. the B___ represents my family – the old and the new of it, the blood, bonds, marriages, divorces, adoptions, journeys, oceans, history, stories, deaths, olive mills, birth mothers, misspellings and cheekbones of it all. for me, it represents all of who i am, past and present.

it is my family, it is my identity, it is quintessentially *me*. i wouldn’t change it for the world.

it’s cool to love your family – feist

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another thanksgiving here in the uk.

i will be working on the day, but hosting a traditional turkey dinner on the saturday – a motley dinner party of three americans, three south africans, two brits, and one canadian. they are friends and family both.

between the the two years i lived in Canada, and the nearly seven years i’ve been here, i’m almost getting used to celebrating on a completely different day. scary.

but i am grateful. this past year my family has welcomed a new nephew, a new sister-in-law, and very soon, another new niece/nephew. so much love.

happy thanksgiving to one and all – i hope you have as much to be grateful for as i do.

For each new morning with its light,
For rest and shelter of the night,
For health and food, for love and friends,
For everything Thy goodness sends.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

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i want my grandfather to die.

i want my grandfather to die, because i know if he were aware of the state he’s now in, he would want to be dead. he who owned a gun and would nonchalantly talk about using it against himself, can no longer manage a steak knife. he who took such pride in his perfect posture and thick black hair, has crumpled in on himself. he who piloted the plane that was my very earliest memory, and prized his freedom above all else, is locked behind safety doors. he who spent his life as a chemical engineer, can no longer tie his shoes. he who never wanted to be a burden on his family, is legally incompetent of mind and infirm of body. those essential things that made him the man he was so proud to be, have been torn away from him – and if he could have, he would have gone down fighting tooth and nail to go out with them. he is no longer aware of who he once was – but who he once was would rather die, than be who he is now.

i want my grandfather to die because at this present moment, he is happy. because i know that the path which lies ahead only becomes more distressing and debilitating. because i know there is no kind or peaceful ending for this cruel disease, there are no mercies. for right now, he is happy in his simple way. singing music, eating food, retelling times half-remembered, relaxing into a soft touch. but i know full well, that this will not last – there is future fear and sickness that i only wish he could be spared. he is happy because he knows none of this.

i want my grandfather to die because it’s killing my mother. it’s killing me to watch my mother lose her father in a thousand tiny moments, eroded memory by cherished memory, dignity by precious dignity. it’s killing me to see her try to be strong as he grows ever frailer. it’s killing me to watch her try to hold on to a ghost. it’s killing me to watch her watch him vanish in front of her eyes. it’s killing me to watch her see herself one day in his shoes.

i want my grandfather to die because the reasons i have for wanting him to live are so selfish, so cowardly. it’s me who is worried about grief and the avoidance of pain. it’s me who can’t bear the sadness that he no longer remembers me. it’s me who is too weak to watch him shuffle off for a diaper change, to watch him eat his meals with his fingers, to watch him become more childlike each time i visit. it’s me who can’t stand it when i feel his papery hand in mine, when i tuck his thinning hair behind his ears, when i tell him i love him and he says “i love you” back, not knowing who i am. it’s me who is too scared of a time when he can’t say it back. i want my grandfather to die because i cannot cope with the process of losing him. the steady, irreversible loss that wears away at my heart.

i don’t want my grandfather to die – but he is dying. i don’t want my grandfather to die. but my grandfather – strong, fiercely independent, pilot, engineer, devoted husband, proud father – is long gone.

shelter for my soul – bernard fanning

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after six and a half years living in London, i don’t really get homesick anymore. not for places anyway. and as for people… well, the awful truth is that you get used to the missing. that ache becomes a constant, uncomfortable but bearable background noise that you learn to live with out of necessity.

so it’s been a while since i choked up on the inevitable departure. i am always sad to leave again, of course, but dealing with that is the price of being an expat. so you deal – you prepare yourself, you suck it up, and you deal.

and so it caught me by surprise to find myself sobbing as i hugged my sister goodbye yesterday afternoon, crying as hard as if it were my first time tearing myself away. i don’t know why. maybe it was the fact that i will once again miss the birth of my newest niece or nephew, due in a few short weeks. maybe it was the fact that for the first time in five years, we were all together for my brother’s wedding, and it felt so good to be in the warm embrace of my whole family. maybe it was the changes in my grandfather, whose memory of me is fading so fast. maybe it was the time spent with old friends that know me so well that we can pick up where we last left off without missing a beat. maybe it was seeing my dad together with his sisters, and realising that the passing years are beginning to have the same effect on myself and my own siblings.

it was probably all of these things and more. these precious, precious things that only grow dearer with time – these stirring longings that no amount of travel or freedom can take the edge off of.

i always believed that more than six years as an expat would inure me to these nagging doubts and guilts. i always thought this choice would get easier, not harder.

but the tears belie the reality – i am missing more, and not less. and with each passing year, the tradeoffs i’ve made seem to pale in comparison to the things slipping past which i can never recapture.

i have, for the most part, become accustomed to the missing. but this fresh spate of tears serves to remind me that that’s not necessarily a good thing.

how i miss you – foo fighters

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my dad is pretty crazy.  he turns 60 in just a few days, and when i was recently home, i spent father’s day with him.  it goes like this: the plan is originally to go out for some brunch, so when i arrive at about 11:00, i’m dressed to head out to a restaurant.  after a few cups of coffee and some chat, my dad says, “we can go in a just a sec, but i just need your help with something first.  it’ll take two minutes.”

so he, my stepmum, and i all head outside to the back garden.  it was raining pretty steadily earlier,  and had now thinned to a persistent drizzle, but we are definitely getting damp.  my dad shows me a tree he’s been working on taking down – a 30 ft pine in the corner along the neighbours’ fences that caught some fatal tree disease and needed to be chopped down.  the tree was probably half down, with a good 12 feet of trunk remaining, and at the top, a large, 6 ft log was suspended by a chain.  as he clambers up a ladder perched precariously against the tree, he tells us he needs us to pull on a nylon rope which would lift the weight of the log enough so that he could unchain it from its mooring, and lower it safely to the ground on his side of the fence.

so, like fools, my stepmother and i are planting our feet in the mud, heaving at a wet nylon rope to try to lift this log in the air.  of course, the log gets caught on an errant branch, so my dad begins poking at it with a big sick, trying to swing it free.  that doesn’t work, so he begins hacking at the branch with a handsaw.  it comes free from the first branch, only to get caught on another on the way down, and this scenario repeats itself a few times before finally, a half hour later, the log is on the ground.

my dad has mist on his glasses, bark bits in his silver hair, mud on his jeans, and bleeding knuckles.  “okay,” he says.  “let’s go eat.”  i turn to him and say, “you know, it just wouldn’t be father’s day unless you were 10 feet up a ladder, hacking at a tree in the rain.”

that’s the kind of thing my dad does all the time.  i am consistently getting emails from him about all the crazy things he does.  how he jumped into the ocean in a speedo and santa hat for charity (though i really didn’t need to see the picture!).  how he challenged his 30-something staff members at work to a stair climbing race.  how he’s sailing his boat down to north carolina singlehandedly.  how he’s planning to bungee jump off the same dam james bond did in the opening scene of “goldeneye”.  how for his 60th birthday, he wants to jump into boston harbour.  how he was dancing in the square in venice with wild abandon when the police came along to break it up.  how he was dancing in harvard square to some street performer playing folk music.  even as a kid, he was always the father who used a real butchers bone in the halloween costume, who brought his honeybees into school for show and tell, who tried to build a log cabin in the woods, who learned to ride a unicycle and juggle at the same time, who liked to jump and click his heels together to show off.  he was the kind of father who was always full of loopy ideas and enthusiasm in equal amounts, always singing and dancing and trying new things and throwing caution to the wind. and dancing, always dancing.  the kind of unselfconscious dancing that doesn’t need a rhyme or reason or even a partner.

and i was always the painfully shy girl dying in the corner of embarrassment.  my personality could not have been more different from my dad’s.  i was the kind of girl who was terrified to do anything new for fear of getting it “wrong”.  my deepest desire was to not stand out in any way, shape, or form.  to be unexceptionally bland and undistinguishable in every way.  attracting no attention, blending seamlessly with the wallpaper.  i was quiet and sober and easily flustered.  i hated being humiliated by my dad’s exuberance, as wanted nothing more than to slip through the floor cracks every time he acted goofy or silly.  and anything i was uncertain of, or didn’t know how to do well was out of the question – i was so fearful of looking foolish, that i never tried anything at all.

i bring all this up, because the other day, my friends dragged me along to something called ceilidh dancing.  i honestly hadn’t a clue what i was in for, and would never have agreed to go if i’d only known it was a form of scottish square dancing.  so when we arrived at the big school-style auditorium and people began lining up in kilts and the fiddle began warming up, i parked myself on the bleachers and settled in with a beer.

you know how it goes next: prancing and dancing and  drinking and sweating and laughing harder than i have in a very long time, with plenty of bruised toes to remember it by the next day. my dad would have loved it.

this didn’t start out to be a story about my father – only about this dance i went to the other night and wound up enjoying immensely in spite of myself.  but i guess i couldn’t help it.  it seems, somewhere tangled deep in my dna, even with all my years of cringing and blushing every time my dad unhesitatingly did something kooky or made a fool of himself, it turns out i am my father’s daughter after all.

i stand corrected – vampire weekend

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so here’s what happens when you plan a holiday around sun and beaches: it rains.

it rained nearly every single day of my vacation.  and yet somehow, through the unfailing optimism and hilarious good cheer of my travelling companion, (and copious amounts of beer), it was all okay.  everything we did, was “perfect”.  everything that was even moderately successful was “meant to be”.

i was, as tourguide, overcome with the realisation of just how different i am from the person that lived in boston 6 years ago.  the paths and places i’ve forgotten, the words that tangled up my tongue.  while there are bits and pieces that remain as intimately known as the back of my hand, more and more, each visit back represents snapshots of a life that is more different than i ever remembered, and all the unseen shifting that happened when i wasn’t looking.

time marches on, of course.  would that i could freeze people, come back to exactly where they were when i left, slide right back into my slot, take up my place seamlessly in everyone else’s lives and times.

but i can’t.  and the changes seem more and more pronounced each time i try to pick up where i left off.  i cannot, it seems, expect to indefinitely straddle two worlds – at some point, they drift too far apart.

these observations are not new, of course.  i’ve made them many times.  what was new, was the realisation that it doesn’t really sting so much nowadays.  i kinda wish it did.

other things of note:

• i have a new nephew! will get to see him in a few weeks when i’m at my brother’s wedding
• my nephew had swine flu. yes, for real
• my other sister is also having another baby! due sometime in november
• i don’t miss getting wound up by the ridiculous media in the u.s.,  at all.
• lucky charms have inexplicably shrunk their marshmallows and now call them “mini-charms”
• i may get lost driving around, but i can still home in on the beacon of any dunkin’ donuts within a 5 mile radius
• customer service, while sometimes verging on the sycophantic, overall remains a far better experience in the u.s.
• i hate getting charged for using an atm machine
• boston is actually not a bad little city
• people in the u.s. are starting to use british slang. i heard “knackered” and “wanker” used. for some reason, this annoys me greatly.

a few photos (more here):

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If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, “thank you,” that would suffice. ~Meister Eckhart

happy thanksgiving!

with love to all family and friends celebrating, near and far. with so much gratitude for all you bring to my life.

heartfelt thanks.

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a few pics from my visit home

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i’m so proud of my friend (and honorary third sister) diana, who was just listed in san diego magazine as one of their “women who move the city”.

she’s one of the strongest, smartest and most socially conscious women i’ve ever had the good fortune to know, and she just makes the world a better place to be. basically, she just kicks ass.

and *she* has more foreign policy experience than sarah palin

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spent the weekend out in wiltshire with kerryn, tracey, chris and tonia – the occasion was j’s third birthday!

amazing how quickly the time has flown. watching children grow so fast makes me feel old.

but i can think of few better ways to spend a weekend than surrounded by gorgeous countryside, with good friends, good food, good drink, and birthday cake.

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happy birthday to my dearest brother dave… and happy anniversary to my sister kate and her husband carl!

love to you all

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we didn’t get rained on – yay!

i did, however, freeze my unmentionables off every night. i’ve never missed jonno more…

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today was the quarterly pilgrimage to see dear aunt muriel.

aunt muriel is my grandfather’s cousin – a garrulous old bird in her late 70s/early 80s, and my only relative here in england. i never actually knew anything about muriel growing up, and only really met her for the first time at my grandparent’s 50th wedding anniversary celebration, back in… 1996 maybe? though i have no recollection of being introduced.

instead, i only came to meet muriel properly courtesy of my grandfather’s alzheimer’s.

you see, muriel is a bit of a social butterfly and frequent traveller, and she’d spoken to my grandfather about coming over to visit him. apparently she’d arranged to fly into boston, and he’d planned to drive up from west virginia to meet her. my grandfather’s memory had, however, become increasingly clouded and muddled – a fact muriel would not have been aware of, considering how adept he’d become at hiding it.

a few days before muriel’s scheduled visit, my grandfather happened to mention in passing to my mother that she was due to arrive, but he wasn’t sure of when or where. he also had no telephone number for her or further details about her flight or arrangements. in a panic, my mother rang me, and managed to dig up a postal address from years ago, and i was charged with writing to her to try to explain the situation and hope she got word before getting on a plane to arrive in boston with no one to greet her.

thankfully, this being a rather small country, most post arrives the next day, and muriel rang me to discuss what had happened. luckily she took it all in stride.

after rehashing the situation, she invited us up to piddington-upon-oxford for a sunday lunch. we felt obliged to go. and thus began a quarterly tradition, which we now seem rather unable to escape from.

every 8 weeks or so, muriel rings. we fix a sunday a few weeks hence. we trek up there by train (or drive, back when we owned a car) to arrive at noon. we then spend four hours drinking sherry, listening to repeats of the same stories over and over (recited by muriel at a non-stop 90 m.p.h.), posing for photos and perusing old ones, and choking down the most godawful food i’ve ever had the misfortune to ingest.

muriel, by her own admission, is a bad cook. in fact, muriel gives herself a little too much credit – she is a truly terrible cook. jonno likes to joke that she begins boiling her waterlogged vegetables the night before – but he’s probably not far off. meat and potatoes are an incinerated, gristly mess. shrimp cocktail is floating in a puddle of watery mayonnaise. desserts are store-bought, then baked into a hefty brick. it’s really stomach churning.

yet, every few months, we voluntarily go, listen to her rapidfire chatter for hours on end, paste smiles on at the appropriate point in the familiar story, drink cheap wine, eat horrible food and make our escape around 4 hours later. part of it is because she’s so darn persistent – we’ve tried not answering the phone – and part of it is an inability to gracefully decline. part of it is obligation, and part of it is pity.

but more and more, part of it is a strange sense of affection. she’s become more important to us, because we are clearly important to her – i don’t know why we are, but we are.

maybe that’s part of the mystery of family.

all i know is, i must like her enough to suffer the inevitable stomach ache that follows.

feist – it’s cool to love your family

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for all the wonderful mothers i know, but most especially the ones i’m lucky enough to have in my family. happy mother’s day.

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to my darling sis, who keeps me in peeps (and my dentist in business)

love, your e.t.

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amity just texted me to tell me my favourite movie, E.T. is on television. which is rather apt because i just got off the phone with my sister.

Back in 1982 when I was 9 and my sister was 4, my parents took us on a cross-country camping trip for our summer holiday. We went camping for 3 months, from Massachusetts to California and back. And while as an adult, I am ever-so-grateful to have had that experience, at the time, I was pretty annoyed – as any nine year old who had to spend the summer doing “educational” things would be.

So then, we got back from camping, and went back to class in the autumn, my friends were all asking, “Have you seen E.T., have you seen E.T.??!!” Because seeing E.T. was apparently *the* only important thing to do that summer, and it was one of the first summer blockbusters ever. I, being stuck in a tent for 12 weeks, had missed out on THE seminal cultural experience for my peergroup.

And since videos didn’t even really catch on for several more years, I didn’t actually see it until I was about 15. My sister and I finally saw it for the first time together… and, being 10, she cried. And I just can’t bear seeing her upset, I’ve never been able to stand seeing her in pain – when my little sister cries, I cry reflexively. So I cried, she cried more, which made me cry even harder…

She and I continue to cry every time we see it, in a kind of unspoken empathic response – much like the one that exists between elliot and e.t. in the movie. When it was re-released in 2002 for the 20th anniversary, we went to the movie theatre together to watch it on the big screen for the very first time. Within minutes of the opening credits, at the scene where E.T. gets left behind by his spaceship, I glanced over and saw her chin beginning to tremble in the darkness, and that was it – we both ended up sobbing our way through the entire movie.

And since my move to the UK, it has become a kind of symbollic metaphor for our relationship – my needing to leave, her wanting me to stay, the bond that exists at the core of us making parting deeply painful, but our lives inexorably drawing us in different directions. she is my elliot, and i am her e.t. and just as in the climactic scene of the movie, when e.t. says “come”, and elliot says “stay”, no matter how far away i may go, i need only remind her that “i’ll be right here”.

And that’s why I love E.T., and why i can’t help but cry every time i see it – as I am doing now. because my sister is so very important to me, and because it always makes me think of how very much I love (and miss) my sister.

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congratulations to my brother and newest member of the crazy ragtag collection that we call “family”… his fiancee! dave and ave are engaged to be married – aren’t they the cutest? ave’s been rather like a fourth sister for a while now, so it’s nice to make it official.

couldn’t happen to two better people

sending all our love and big kisses across the ocean,

j & j

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met yet another interesting person from the interwebs today – amity and i hooked up for a sunday brunch with amy, whom we first became acquainted with via an expats forum we belong to.

this is the fascinating bit about the internet – it would be all too easy to allow electronic interaction to substitute for real world experience, to hide behind the anonymity or the computer, to retreat to the safety of carefully considered words and managed, crafted persona. but technology is at its best when it enables you to enrich your actual life and relationships – allows you to expand your boundaries and worldview by meeting people you might never have otherwise had the chance to meet, because the physical limitations of geography and time no longer apply.

it’s a point that’s been driven home time and again for me, and reinforced once more this afternoon – the internet is a wonderful place. it was great to meet you amy!

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