what is it about hands? i am forever fascinated by them. their age, their scars, their stories. these hands here -- they're the hands of a carpenter, arguably the best carpenter in town. how many porches has he built? stairs? bannisters? how many houses in this town have been touched by these fingers, planing freshly hewn wood to the smoothness of palm skin? he seemed delighted when i came outside to watch him work, and i said something about how my house now held a piece of history, the porch's bullnosed edges telling anyone who noticed that a craftsman was here.

after snaping a few shots, i stepped back and just let him work as the world went on around us -- fedex trucks whizzing past, the noonday siren warbling its call, the mailman bringing the catalogues. his hands went back and forth, planing the edges smooth, talking and joking and smoking as he worked. i thought of the state in the world right now, the economy, gas prices, global worry, and i looked back at his hands, and thought of how they'd seen everything from the newness of color tv to the glory of putting a man on the moon to the election of an african-american president.

nothing like the curves and shadows of an old man's hands to put things in perspective. like the trees in the earth, they're deep and they're strong and they're lasting.

over the last few weeks, i've been pummeled from all sides with meanness... from people i know, and people i don't. and i don't get it. sure, i've been guilty of meanness in the past. we all have. but then, most of us feel guilty, and if we have the courage, we own it.

but not everyone does.

i know it's naive to expect otherwise, that meanness happens, just like shit.

but still.

come on, people.

what is it about grime that's so fabulous? is it the history it connotes? is it the hip, low-down urbanity it adds to the mundane? whatever it is, it's sexy, and thousands of people will look at this, numbly, without seeing it at all.

i took this on the 6-line subway platform in grand central station, people milling about as they waited for the train, sweating. nobody paid attention to the antique tiles telling us where we were, or the years of grit, abandoned metro cards and lost IDs covering the train ties. i tried to imagine the engineer who first hammered this sign into the wall, using a stencil for the paint. what was his name? where did he go after work for a beer? what did he wish he'd done with his life? and what train did he take to go home?

and then the local shuttered onto the tracks, struggling, a busty old lady late for her dentist appointment. the doors opened, we elbowed our way inside, and left.

 
sometimes i'll be driving somewhere -- in this case, a back road less than twenty miles from my house, on the way to visit friends for dinner -- and i'll see something that will literally steal my breath. this time, i had to pull over. yes, it's just a half-mowed horse field, but something about it resonated. maybe it was that imperfect edge. or the smoothness of the curves. or the simplicity of an open, uncultivated field. but it put something into perspective, something i can't quite articulate. it made me long for girlhood, that innocent time when i could sit under a tree and read for four hours straight, answering to no one, needing nothing other than the book in my hand and sneakers to get me home. maybe i'm romanticizing a girlhood i didn't really have, but that's ok.

it's never too late, and there are a few trees left. 

let me tell you a story.

florian and i met back in 1991. soon after, we lived together in a tiny apartment in munich; he was going for his master's in research chemistry, and then his doctorate. but something never felt right, stuck in a lab, trying to make black crusty crystals no one would ever use. he'd come home, deflated and depressed. i could literally smell the desperation on him, remnants of some sour concoction brewing at the bottom of a test tube.

fast forward to the spring of 1995. we'd just gotten married, and discussions of The Rest of Our Life were the topic of the day. he knew he didn't want to be a research chemist, but in germany, changing horses mid-stream just wasn't done. then one day he came home beaming. he'd just tutored an undergrad, and as he explained to me how he felt seeing the light bulb go off over her head, this was the look on his face.

you can see it in his eyes, can't you? the glee?

he's now a high school chemistry teacher in a nice suburban new york town. the kids adore him, he's active in the teacher's union, and he's the coach of his school's academic challenge team (think "jeopardy!"for high schools). in fact, his team is the third best in the country, a rise in success that just happened to coincide with florian's involvement. he shrugs it off when i try and give him credit, but it's so obvious to me. the kids on that team -- the supersmart ones who never fit in anywhere, until now -- get to see this face every day, the sublime joy of learning and knowledge evident in every pore.

i'm an incredibly lucky woman, cos i get to see it too.

i'm writing this from my friend susan's living room in long beach, california., sitting sideways in a big wide chair.

i had no idea what to expect. i am a new yorker. i don't do well in the heat. i wear sweaters. i don't rollerblade. i'm not thin. my perception of LA was borne of movies like "falling down" and "terminator 2." flat. sprawling. grey. "who wants to go to LA?" everyone told me i'd hate it. 

well here i am, the decemberists' plaintive cries wafting across the room, and i find myself loving it, much the same way i'd fallen in love with chicago, baltimore, toronto. it's just another place, and it's foreignness makes it fabulous. the cultural incongruence of palm trees in strip-mall parking lots just makes it more of that place. the ocean breezes are constant and sweet. the bougainvilla is bursting like paint squeezed from a tube. the low stucco'd houses are welcoming and warm, tucked along straight-arrow streets dressed in gaudy floral skirts. we drive past them with the windows down, not talking, and we are here. in this place. 

i exist because of the vietnam war.

my father, patrick, was an infantryman, sent there in 1967. one of 11 children from an extremely poor irish neighborhood in the slums of philadelphia, he was young, scrubbed and ready for a fight. his enthusiasm lasted all of a day, when upon arrival he saw children with guns. so he used his humor to survive. and in so doing, he met a very funny man named david. they became buddies. best friends.

david got a lot of mail from his family; patrick got nothing. in one of his letters home, david told his sister about his new irish mate with no mail, so she wrote patrick a letter herself. he replied. a correspondence was born. six months after patrick and david wended their way back to the states, patrick and barbara got married. about a year and a half later, the day the Mets won the world series in 1969, i was born.

alas, the marriage itself did not last. but the notion of turning death into life, hopelessness into hope, dark into light? that stuck.

a few years ago, after finally reconnecting with my father after a lifetime of figurative distance, i asked if he had any photographs of me from when i was young, as i had almost none. i knew he had been into photography and film -- while other kids saw "bambi," i got to see "dr. strangelove"; "the godfather"; "annie hall." so that christmas, under the tree was an album he and my stepmother had put together, a picture book of my childhood. is there such a thing as a  new memory? and when i turned the page and saw this photo, circa 1972, i started to cry (in a good way). there i was.

here i am.

driving home tonight sucked. it was wet, the other drivers were really aggressive, and the dishes served up by tonight's deejays were bland at best (except for gomez's "see the world," which carried me home).

i pulled into the driveway, turned off the radio, gathered up my crap and got out of the car. and then, smelling the rain, i stopped.

and i remembered my grandmother.

it takes a certain kind of rain, a certain kind of smell, to bring her back. it doesn't have to be a steady rain; a wet mist is sometimes enough. i can't explain what it is, but tonight had it.

i've been meaning to write about grandma for a while (she died when i was thirteen). now, according to my mother and my uncle, she was as fucked-up a mother to her children as a mother can be. and i believe them. but something odd happened. she may have been a terrible mother, but she was a goddam fabulous grandmother to me.

friday night, 4 pm: cocktail hour. she'd make my grandpa (arnold reuben, son of the inventor of the reuben sandwich, and all-around sad sack) his drink (1/4 glass scotch, 3/4 glass water). then she'd make her drink (7/8 glass scotch, splash of water). my treat was a glass of ginger ale and a plate of town house crackers and philadelphia cream cheese. i'd bring grandpa his drink on a tray, and i'd always take a sip, and i hated it -- and i can't drink scotch or whiskey to this day, sadly.

then i'd take my "cocktail" into the bedroom and watch Emergency! while grandma made dinner (filet of lemon sole, with kraft mac & cheese on the side). the next day we'd do errands, heading down to the parking garage to her station wagon. i have such fond memories of that garage -- the smell of gasoline, the feel of the modern concrete pillars under my hands, the look of her wiry, aged hands grasping the steering wheel, tightly.

and we'd have our day out. fish from the fish market. everything else from the food emporium. if i was good, a toy from the toystore. lunch at lord & taylor. back home, where i played make-believe in the living room, pretending i was named stephanie, after the sister of the boy i had a crush on then, whose name i've since forgotten. i'd make up dance routines, with her as my audience. and that was it -- i had an audience. she paid attention. and in my world, people, in my little world that was EVERYTHING TO ME.

and the thing grandma and i used to joke about was the rain. invariably -- and i'm not joking -- whenever i went to visit, it rained. i still remember the sheen of the wetness on the slate steps of her building's forecourt; the gaudy multicolored lights in the goldfish ponds shimmering as the dirty water danced around the raindrops; the smell of relentless rain through the screen in her kitchen window. it became "our thing."

fittingly, it rained the day she died, and it rained the day she was cremated. when we went back to her apartment after the service, i remember standing in her kitchen, leaning against the chocolate-brown convection oven, crying. the wife of my grandmother's husband's son (long story) came up to me -- this symbol of all that was wrong in our family -- and patted my shoulder, telling me to stop crying. i looked at her square in the face, and removed her hand from my shoulder.

"no. she was my grandmother, and i'll cry if i want to."

(i actually said that.)

and then i turned my back to her, leaned my head on the wet window screen, and sniffed.

with difficult anniversaries, come joyous ones.
today marks the fifteenth anniversary of the day florian and i met.
and (are you sitting down?) there's a story. shocking, i know.

i was 21. i'd just graduated from college and, disillusioned with academia, had decided to pool what money i could and plan a trip. my close friend pete had just moved to dublin to be with his newfound partner, so i figured that was a good place to start. i bought a backpack. i bought a "let's go." i bought a plane ticket.

after a week with my friends, i set out on my own. that first night was at the kilkenny youth hostel. i bought some brown bread, some butter, a bit of jam, some tea. i felt independent -- truly self-sufficient -- for the first time in my life.

the next night i decided to do something "crazy" and take a bus out to foulksrath castle, a hostel just outside of town. it was a chilly place, not very cozy, filled with stone and history. the kitchen was massive, a sea of stainless steel. i found a pot, a spoon and a bowl, and set about making my dinner -- baked beans. there were two other people in the kitchen, a shortish fellow with a british accent who kept chatting me up, and a tall, quiet man in sweatpants and birkenstocks. i moved to other side of the kitchen to avoid the chatty cathy. not finding a can opener, i used my swiss army knife to open my can of beans (a lengthy process, if you've ever tried it). when i was done, the tall man asked if he could borrow it -- to open his own can of beans.

in the dining hall, the table in the window was free so i took it. the tall traveler came in, looked around, came over to my table, and asked if he might join me. "of course," i told him.

he opened up a battered aluminum tin and took out some sausage, an apple, and some bread, which he ate along with his beans. i asked him where he was from. "bavaria," he said. i chuckled and said, "unfortunately all i know from bavaria is the donut." he laughed and explained it was a province in germany; he lived outside of munich. then he asked where i was from. "well...," i said, faltering. "i'm american... but i'm not an asshole, i promise!"

we both laughed. and something clicked into place.

that night we compared itineraries. he was headed north; i was headed south. his english was good but not great, and i spoke no german, so we spent the evening waltzing with words -- i'd need to find other ways of saying something complicated, and he used the few words he had to say many complicated things. at the end of the evening, he asked me if i would be willing to go with him to the youth hostel he'd been to the night before, to pick up a pair of pants he'd left there.

it meant backtracking.

it meant changing my itinerary.

it meant trusting a stranger.

"okay," i said.

we ended up staying two nights at that hostel, in enniskerry. we ended up combining our intineraries and traveling around ireland together, listening to tapes of the last radio show i'd deejayed before leaving college (bonding over joan armatrading and "solsbury hill"). we ended up meeting again in munich (at his invitation) before i headed home, not knowing if we'd ever see each other again. we ended up writing to each other every day. we ended up living together, after i sold my car and bought a one-way ticket to munich the following february. we ended up getting married in 1995.

we ended up here, living our lives.