COUNTRY

Art and I are in Connecticut visiting his family.

We have been coming here together for about seventeen years. Every time we’re here, we are overwhelmed by the beauty of this place. Late September is, of course, an ideal time of year to visit. The leaves are magically beginning to turn – yellow, red, gold. The sky can be grey and heavy one day, blue and sparkling the next.

Coming from Los Angeles, it seems as if we have stepped into another world altogether. The majority of the houses are very old by American standards – many over two hundred years old. The style is “Cape” or “Victorian”, “Saltbox”. There is no “landscaping”, as we know it in L.A. There are trees, taller than the houses, thick and substantial. You wouldn’t see so many trees clustered together in the West, because they would have been struck down by fire far too often. Here there is plentiful rainfall, so the fire danger is minimal.

At night as you drive down the winding country roads, there are almost no lights, save for the lights inside the homes. If you look up, you can actually see stars against a black background.

Being here makes my heart beat a little slower. In fact, everything slows down just a little. I feel serene, calm, unhurried. (Even though there is a lot for us to do here).

I would recommend that you visit New England, but I’m afraid you would. We don’t want to have the place even more overrun than it is already. But then, I feel very guilty because everyone should experience this at least once in their lifetime. To come here is to go back in time. To go back to a time when neighbors knew their neighbors and looked out for one another. A time when you couldn’t go shopping on Sunday. A time when people felt safe leaving their keys and their pocketbook in the car (as my sister-in-law did last night). A time when there really were small towns holding meetings to decide what is best for the community (as the Town of Morris did last night). Here, the American Dream is not a dream.

I recommend you come and experience it for yourself. Before it disappears.

FAMILY

When I was very young and stupid, and even when I was not-so-young and stupid, I thought nothing of pulling up stakes and moving to a strange city. I had the peculiar notion that I could simply uproot myself, transplant my life, and thrive anywhere I happened to land.

What I have learned is that it just doesn’t work. If I am a rose, I simply can not plunk myself down in the middle of a cactus patch and expect to be happy. Maybe some flowers are different, but for me, I need family. I need roots. I need to feel connected.

All of this has been becoming crystal clear to me for the past couple of days. Art and I came back to Connecticut in order to connect with his side of the family. His parents are in the middle of a very emotional move. They’re leaving the ancestral home of forty-eight years – It’s just time for them to consolidate a little. To live in a less demanding environment so that they can relax a little. And while there is ample reason for them to make this move, it is nonetheless extremely difficult for them. At the same time, Art’s brother is facing a serious health challenge. How could we not be here? Finally, we are in the process of buying a condo here in Connecticut so that we can spend more time with Art’s family. For most of our married life we have lived in Los Angeles, and this has been wonderful for us – especially since my mother and two sisters and their kids live in L.A. But it has meant that Art’s family gets short shrift. Neither of us wants that – so here we are.

Today we spent the day packing boxes and lugging them out of their old house. We spent hours just sitting at the trestle table in my in-laws’ kitchen talking about anything and everything. We took out pizza for dinner from the Italian restaurant across the street. It’s been a hard day, in some ways, and to tell the truth, I’m pretty wiped.

But I just want to say this – Family is not something you are born into; it is something that you create with your heart and your hands. What makes people family is not blood ties. Blood ties just create genetics. To be truly related as family requires many small acts of kindness. If you think about it, your mother, your father, your aunt, your sibling, are not important to you because of an accident of birth, but rather because they made you chicken soup when you were sick, or because they took you to a Twilight Double Header, or because they let you cry when you needed to.

Family is a blessing. I’m tired, but I’m happy.

LAX TO JFK

Yesterday we flew from Los Angeles to New York. Have you flown lately?

This was my first post-9/11 flight from a major airport. Usually Art and I like to fly out of Burbank (now renamed Bob Hope International). I keep wondering how it got to be international, because as far as I can see, the longest flight out of BHI is from Burbank to Nashville. Anyway, for yesterday’s flight we decided to brave LAX so that instead of having to change planes in Dallas or Chicago, we could fly from coast to coast.

So the first thing we had to do was take a taxi from our house (which is way out on the East side of town in the hills) way out to the extreme West side of town. We had to get up at 5:00 a.m. in order to be ready for the taxi at 6:00 a.m. Art made it known to the driver that he had already checked with the taxi company and knew that the approximate cost of the ride would be $37.00. The driver, who did not speak perfect English, pretended he had not understood. Art repeated himself carefully so that he was sure the driver had understood. I had the distinct feeling that this did not sit well with the driver. In any case, he zoomed us out to LAX like a bat out of hell. He dumped us unceremoniously at the Delta terminal and drove off.

I looked at the long line snaking out of the terminal and on to the sidewalk and wondered, “Why didn’t these people print out their boarding passes on the computer at home, like we did?” Then we got inside the terminal and quickly realized that these people were not waiting for their boarding passes; they were waiting to go through security.

The line snaked through the terminal and it took us about 15 minutes to get up to the head of the line. A couple of people tried to cut in front of us, but Art was having none of that. He scolded them and pointed to the back of the line. They looked red-faced and ashamed and dragged their sad little roll-around bags to the back of the line. As we got closer to the front, we realized that, not only did we have to lay our bags flat on the table to be X-rayed, but we also had to remove our jackets and our shoes. I thought to myself, “Good Grief! One misguided fool decides to turn his shoe into a weapon of mass destruction, and all these poor grandmothers and grandfathers and maiden aunts and peculiar uncles all have to take off their Weejuns or their Easy Spirits or their wing tips or their sneakers and stand there in their stocking feet. At one point, a man in front of me took off his jacket by lifting it over his head, and his shirt came off with it so that he was standing with his bare back to me in his bare feet and for a split second I had the uneasy notion that they were going to strip search all of us right there in front of God and all his children!

On the other hand, I guess none of us are totally immune to the paranoia of a post-9/11 world. I saw a woman wearing a veil a few rows ahead of me, and I actually wondered whether this was something I should worry about. Of course, I reasoned to myself, this flight is going to JFK, and it is a connecting flight to Barcelona, Morocco, and South Africa, so of course there would be people of all sorts on the flight with no plan more sinister than going home or visiting friends. But this is the natural result of terrorism, to have these thoughts. I told myself that I had to shake it off. You just can’t live your life cowering in a corner. (Even if, like me, that sometimes sounds appealing, given the right corner).

Anyway – for those of you who know me – you know that I was none too fond of flying anyway, pre-9/11. So it’s all the same to me. It boils down to this: Take my little “mother-of-the-bride” pill, and enjoy the ride.

Our flight was actually pretty smooth. There was a little turbulence, but I’m starting to understand that a little turbulence is normal. So I did pretty well. We had to rent a car and drive from JFK up to Connecticut, which was, as you would expect, pretty slow and riddled with traffic until we got about an hour outside New York. But the Connecticut landscape rewarded us with gorgeous trees just starting to turn colors and gently rolling hills that went through picturesque little towns. And we’re so happy to be here with Art’s family.

Now that we’re here, I’d say it was well worth it. Even having to take off our shoes.

PACKING

Tomorrow we’re getting on a plane to go to visit family in Connecticut.

We’ve known about this trip for several weeks. This time tomorrow I will be on the plane. All I’ve got packed so far is socks, underwear and t-shirts.

Every time we travel I imagine that the next time I will be more organized and efficient. I imagine that I will make a list a week ahead of time and will check each item off the list as I pack. The night before leaving, I imagine Art and me enjoying a candlelight supper, our bags packed and waiting by the front door. I imagine that I will get on the plane knowing that all is in order. I imagine that I will not panic as the plane takes off, thinking that I have left the stove on. I swear to myself that I will not forget one of the following items: bras (it was awful), sweaters, nightgowns, vitamins, toothpaste, toothbrushes, shampoo, camera, umbrella, socks. . . all of which I have forgotten before.

Now, as my grandmother used to say, it’s not like we’re going off to the wilderness; we can find just about anything we need wherever we’re going (except for prescription medicine, which we can’t buy in another state). But it gets expensive and inconvenient, buying stuff that we already had at home. And you wind up spending more time at Wal-mart than you had planned. Usually, maddeningly, the forgotten item is left sitting on top of the bathroom sink or the nightstand where I specifically left it so that I would not forget to pack it.

I tell myself I will make a list. Then I sit down to type out my list. I start with the obvious: underwear, socks, shoes, toothbrushes, toothpaste. . .and I feel like an idiot. I am embarassed to type the list. I abandon the list. Who could forget anything so obvious as, say, underwear? Well, I have.

Now, part of the problem is that we don’t want to check any bags. So, here we are planning a three week trip. We each get one carry-on bag that has to fit underneath the seat, and one “personal item”. I have learned to stash my pocketbook in my carry-on, which allows my “personal item” to be a small bag for toiletries, my books, and my endless array of comfort items for the plane. My husband has to bring his computer, of course. That leaves us with our carry-ons. (Mine is the green one with the wobbly wheels.)

So, you might ask how in the world can you pack for three weeks with only one carry-on a piece? Well, you take two pairs of jeans, a week’s worth of underwear and socks, a couple of t-shirts, one sweater, one pair of shoes, and you do your laundry once a week. (Then you just ship anything else U.P.S.).

The day before a trip I always have the vague feeling that I am forgetting to do something important. I usually am. Besides the packing, there are the cats to be taken care of, the paper to be stopped, the mail to be handled and the plants to be watered. The garbage has to be taken out so that your house doesn’t smell like a dump when you get home. Emergency numbers have to be given to friends and loved ones. The taxi has to be called for 6:00 a.m. so that you can make your 8:00 a.m. flight. Some lights are left on. Some lights have to be left off. The house has to be locked, front and back.

And I have to check the stove yet one more time.

BORCHING

To borch (Yiddish origins) is to bitch. To bitch is to moan. To moan is to complain. But to complain is not the same as to borch. Borching is usually relentless, always vocal, and never intellectual. It has a visceral connotation. Its value is cathartic. A sure-fire guilt-inducer. Usually a source of irritation to the listener.

There are two schools of thought on borching. The first is that we should all be stoic, bear up with stalwart determination. It is the British school of borching, which goes with the British stiff-upper-lip credo. The belief is that if we ignore pain, anger, annoyance, grief, fear, or indignation, it will disappear.

The second school of thought on borching is that we should vent. This is more the American school by way of Vienna. The theory goes that borching builds up like steam in a kettle, and that if we don’t somehow expel the energy in a slow, measured, controlled way, the energy will inevitably explode, shatter the tea kettle, and cause irretrievable harm to all.

There are some people who are gifted at listening to people borch. I like to think that I am one of those gifted people. That’s why I used to be a marriage and family therapist. I am an experienced receiver of all kinds of borching, both one-on-one and in groups. I think you have to be a really good borcher yourself in order to be a good borch listener. I have given up being a professional listener in order to listen more attentively on a private basis. This seems to work well for me. But let’s face it, the whole idea of talk therapy is based on borchers and borchees. And it works exceedingly well.

This morning at breakfast I asked my husband how he was. Art barely answered, except to say, “Okay, for an old guy”. “What” I asked “does that mean?”. He said, “Oh, I have my usual aches and pains. They may go away and they may not.”. This is a curious blend of both schools. On the one hand, there is the British stoicism apparent, since he did not go on to list the specific aches and pains, as in “My lower back is in a spasm. My right baby toe is numb. I have the beginnings of a sinus headache. My stomach is a little rocky.” On the other hand, he made vague allusions to “aches and pains”, which stirred a bit of guilt in me. This makes sense. My husband is half-British. But he’s been married to me for fifteen years.

I, on the other hand, am unambiguously Jewish. I start out the morning by listing my complaints: “My allergies are back. I couldn’t breathe last night and now my nose is running. And now I’m tired because I didn’t get any sleep. I think I’m fighting off a cold.” This gets my tea kettle emptied out right away and has the added bonus of eliciting Art’s sympathy before he’s even had his first bite of breakfast. Do you wonder that we have such a great marriage?

Of course this morning as I went through my morning litany, I began to think – Maybe the Brits are right. I mean, suddenly it’s just no fun to vent anymore. And getting Art’s sympathy is like shooting fish in a barrel. I mean, he’s such a nice guy that there’s just no point in it.

Besides, I have the Blog. Blogging is a lot like borching. Every morning I get to pick out a new subject to borch about. You, dear reader, get to “listen”. Of course, there are some mornings that I have nothing to borch about, and I am forced to choose some other topic. Like today, for instance. I feel fine, so I just decided to talk about borching.