"But Why Is the Rum Gone?"

My computer crashed the other day. I thought that only happened to hapless students, but it turns out I was wrong. And everything was gone. Wiped clean as a blackboard on Friday afternoon. As an analog TV without a converter. Tabla rasa. Two-thirds of a brilliant novel I had just about finished; photos of Hillary and me yukking it up over a beer; Grandma's prize-winning recipes; records of my secret bank account; and a PowerPoint outlining how to cure global warming.

In a word: ______ .

Even if I put it more realistically--that I lost a substantial chunk of a third-rate novel I've been messing with for a long time (and especially this summer), photos of vacations and of Cosmo on Halloween, and a geology glossary that I've been adding to for several years--it's still a bummer. (Does anyone still say that? I'll have to ask my students.)

My first reaction was fatalistic: I guess I wasn't meant to write that novel after all. The second was more mercenary: I lost a good ten hours' worth of work translating geology documents from French, which I will have to redo, without pay. And third: Crap.

I'm not crying, but I could be.

Yahoo bookmarks, favorite apps, preferred wallpaper. Software for Office, the printer, and DSL all has to be re-installed--not a big deal, but time-consuming. (Ten hours of translating! And 60 student papers to grade! A drafty house to winterize!)

MP3 downloads.

Not a catastrophe. Not even a calamity. More of a bother, a nuisance, an inconvenience. (See, I got my thesaurus back!) In any case, at least there's always more music out there. (And Pandora's back on my favorites bar!)

Yours in cyber-ness,

Lost at Translation, or, Crazy Little Thing Called "Truc"

Visualization exercise. As you read the following words, develop an image in your mind, as detailed as possible. Ready?

· dial anvil
· lift pillow manifold
· square to round fan tin
· TC harness (not to be confused with a TC reader)

What did you get? Flowers? Clothes from Melrose Ave.? A peculiar family ritual?

Me neither. And yet when a local company asked if I could translate, from English to French, a shipping list full of such things bound for Morocco I said, “No problem.” The Grand dictionnaire terminologique is an awesome specialty dictionary, but even they couldn’t come through. Google? Nope. Because guess what? Some of these are unique to the company, which manufactures them.

I considered just using the word for “doohickey,” perhaps varying that with “thingamajig” and “whatchamalcallit.” (For the record: “bidule,” “engin,” and “truc” will serve, in no particular order; that's bee-DOOL, on-JHAN, and trook, roughly, for those of you who believe that pronunciation is useful if you actually want to make yourself understood.) I was sent some photos, so that helped, although I’m still wondering if you can find that TC harness on Melrose.

Hillbilly Dawg

I’ve always sort of admired those dogs that hang out in the front yard without having to be fenced in or chained up. Just the way they acknowledge you with mild interest as you walk by, then go on with their contemplation of the grass growing or the shadows of the trees moving. They are one with the house and garden; their Buddha nature is touching.

And now I have a dog like that: not a new dog, it’s still Kayla, but she has a new habit of wanting to lie out on the front grass or the porch. Bill likes to call her a hillbilly, I guess because she’s not like them city dawgs that have to be on the leash all the time. I like to leave the front door open for some fresh air, and Kayla is free to wander in and out. The trouble is that flies also tend to wander in, but they don’t wander out so easily. And I’m not sure Cosmo is as proud as I am to own a front-porch kind o’ dawg.

So yesterday Bill and I put up a screen/storm door to keep out the flies and (in a few months) the cold wind. We (mostly Bill) worked all afternoon and the thing actually works! I mean, you never know: old house, a slightly wonky door frame, an imperfect world. But the window slides down smoothly; the hydraulic closer whooshes quietly and keeps the door from slamming, and the latch clicks in with factory precision.

That didn’t change things for the dawg, however. Her circumstances may have gone upscale, but she is true to her nature, loving lots of fresh air, friendly neighbors, and flies. So when you have some time, be sure to come on by to say howdy and sit a spell. Life is good on the porch.

An "Up" Rant

Those who know me know that I’m not one to go out of my way to cause trouble or discord. And there really is no reason now to express my dissatisfaction with the movie Up” especially since it’s not even on the screen, except that I feel like something should be said, albeit after the fact.

If you really truly love Up and aren’t interested in hearing it dissed, go back to what you were doing. Sorry I bothered you. If, however, you also have a niggling feeling that this movie wasn’t worth the Uproar, read on.

My name is Shelly, and I didn’t like Up for the following reasons:

1) There are two females in the whole film. One is dead, and the other is a speechless, flightless bird named “Kevin.” Okay? As far as we are given to know, the entire pack of dogs is male.

2) A propos of the dog pack: If the villain can create a collar that allows dogs to talk, if he can figure out a way for male dogs to reproduce, this man is a flippin’ genius. Why does he need to spend years, decades, hidden in this Brazilian forest just so he can find a bird no one believes existed? (All right, he’s a madman and has to regain his ruined reputation. Still.)

3) A propos of the villain, Muntz: He is exceedingly nasty. He wants to kill Russel and Mr. Fredrickson. He doesn’t of course; no, they kill him instead, watching as he falls to earth from a great height. I mean airplane height.

4) A propos of the airplane: I know the film is fantasy, but fantasy should still maintain a certain verisimilitude. Here is a decrepit old man who has to use a stair lift in his house, but who, in the face of adversity, gains the strength and agility of a near-superhero: able to cling to the side of a moving plane like Spider-Man; duel like Captain Jack Sparrow; and hold on to a rope with one hand and a boy with the other. (Like, I don’t know—Homer Simpson?)

5) And finally, a' propos of Homer Simpson, Up wasn't funny.

Okay, that’s the end of the rant. (Cosmo didn't like the movie either, btw.) The animation was jaw-dropping fantastic. The balloons were gorgeous. Thanks for listening.

When the Big Dog is Away by Kayla

Basically, I don’t have to do anything and everyone still loves me!

Chase the ball? Are you kidding? When The Billy throws it for me it’s magic, it’s cosmic, it’s a force as pure as gravity, but when Shelly throws it? Pfft. I’ll chase it, sure, but why bring it back when I can stop and sniff? She doesn’t seem to understand the dog’s bicameral brain: Billy throws the ball, and Shelly feeds me biscuits.

Hey, speaking of biscuits? Shelly bought me these things in a box with a medium-sized dog on it. I ask you, do I look medium? That’s why I ask for three or more. Shelly pretends she doesn’t know what I mean when I keep looking at the top of the fridge—does she think I’ll give up that easily? I have a whole repertoire for this: the deep rumble (not a growl; that’s totally different, and I save that for when I’m in the house and see women pushing strollers down the sidewalk), the short breathy woof, and then, if she’s still trying to make her coffee or eat breakfast, the full-out bark. I don’t mind this little performance; it’s our thing now. Something special I save for her.

Here’s a good trick: Sometimes, when Shelly gets this wacky idea that she can leash me up, I bite on the leash and pull pull pull! Too fun. She tried to dominate me when I was a pup—you know, pushing me down to expose my belly, biting the side of my face, talking in a low, loud, no-nonsense voice. It was just confusing then; I was like, whoa, who died and made you alpha bitch? But it’s good for a laugh now. “No!” she says. Cracks me up every time.

Big Dog is back from wherever. Whew! Finally, I can get some exercise.

Nora Roberts: "Ass in the Chair"

"Ass in the chair": This is the dictum by which author Nora Roberts has succeeded in cranking out 182 novels (and selling more than eight million books in 2008, according to the article in The New Yorker, June 22, 2009). “She scoffs at the notion of inspiration, divine or otherwise,” and writes for six to eight hours a day.

Wow. You can’t argue with advice that so obviously brings results (to the tune of sixty-million dollars a year gross, in fact). What advice, I wonder, would she give to an eleven-year-old boy who has taken the “ass in the chair” paradigm to heart, but only to watch way too much TV and play video games? How to get him out of the chair?

I take much of the blame for Cosmo’s sluggification. After all, I chose to order satellite for my new house, knowing full well that it offers Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network. In fact, that was pretty much the reason for getting it, duh. Myself, I could live quite well without a TV. (Except that I’d want to watch The Simpsons seasons on DVD occasionally....)

Just to add another unhealthy and gratuitous layer of frosting (because we know that kids love to lick the frosting off the cupcake and immediately seek out another sweet, unclaimed victim), I bought a recliner. A high-leg recliner, which to me looks more like a normal armchair than the puffy swivel design, but, nonetheless, a recliner. LA-Z-BOY. No doubt the chair—which is so lazy that it’s indifferent to correct spelling—is named after the consumer, but it’s just as plausible that the name itself induces the phenomenon of la-z-ness.

This disinclination for activity has become a bone of contention between Cosmo and his dad, who despairs that C is on the path to becoming a fat and lazy adult incapable of finding or creating something of interest. I certainly don’t want that; neither does Cosmo. But nagging him about reading books (besides the graphic novels he’s already memorized), getting exercise, or finding a hobby, results only in frustration (as most nagging must). Suggestions meet with stubborn resistance.

How to make him responsible? Creative? Interested in stuff? Inspired, even?

Nora? Little help?

As of this writing—I don’t have a clue. But to be honest, I’m not stressing too much. As long as he laughs at SpongeBob, wants to share something from his videogame with me, plays with his dog and friends, or quotes The Simpsons verbatim and at length, he seems happy. And I get to spend time with him. (Okay, maybe it's not quality time—but it is at least quantity time, and that counts for a lot.) I may not know numbers like Nora, but I do know that eleven years old turns to twelve turns to twenty, in a very short time.

I Drive a Truck

(I should start out by giving a shout-out to Andrea, because it's her truck and I hope she's feeling better....)

In the nearly eleven years I’ve lived in Colorado, I’ve relied overmuch on the excuse, “Hey, I grew up in LA, okay?” when people stare wonderingly, maybe even suspiciously, at me because I’ve never hiked a 14er or gone white-water rafting.* I still haven’t done those things, but I feel a bit less like a poser because--are you ready?--I drove a truck, a double-cab, 4x4 Toyota Tundra-or-Something (10 mpg city, 15 mpg highway). I drove most of the way from Leadville (at 10,200 feet, the incorporated town at the highest altitude in the U.S.) to Grand Junction, down winding mountain roads, over the Eagle River Bridge, through Glenwood Canyon, and alongside the mighty Colorado River. Me. I did that.

I don’t know if I need to elaborate for you urbanites, but perhaps some background information would help put this event in perspective. On the Western Slope (west of the Rockies, that is), whenever you’re waiting at a stoplight or parking the car at Barnes and Noble, chances are that when you glance out your side window, you’re about eye-level with your neighbor’s tire. Chances are that the driver is the only occupant, and that he (occasionally, she) doesn’t actually haul hay or construction equipment, but uses the truck to commute to the grocery store or movie theater. (Colorado also does not have a helmet law for motocyclists. I don't know if there's a connection here.)

*Footnotes: a 14er is a mountain peak over fourteen thousand feet, of which Colorado boasts fifty-four. And the reason I’m hesitant to try white-water rafting is not because my brother once broke a tooth on a (California) river trip, but because the idea of sitting exposed to the sun for hours at a time, unable to wander off for a walk when I’m bored or stop at a Starbucks for iced coffee to cop some air-conditioning, does not really appeal to me.

But don’t spread this around, because it might be near heresy....

Fun with Words

Today Cosmo used the word “patronizing” to describe Obi-Wan’s attitude towards the villainess Ventress, whom Obi calls “Sweetheart” just before she’s about to whoop his ass. (Actually a draw, since she ran away to fight another day.) It reminded me of some less sophisticated words Cosmo used to say. For a long time, well after he could read, he said things like “Are we having panacakes for breakbast?” and “I lost my bounce” when he was referring to balance. It was so sweet that we didn’t bother to correct him. (A longish essay follows—which you are invited to read or skip—documenting his linguistic evolution and running commentary on our trip to Venice in 1999. Ten years! Wow.)

Speaking of Venice, this year the American representative at the Biennale* is Bruce Nauman, considered to be one of the most important artists of the latter 20th century. One piece, called "Days/Giorni," consists of two rows of 14 audio speakers. You can walk between them and listen to various recorded voices that randomly recite the days of the week, in English and Italian. Here's the disconnect: These words, so deeply ingrained in our subconscious, have a specific meaning, but when you hear them looping through (in fact, you can, at http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/06/10/arts/design/20090610_BIENNALE_FEATURE.html ), they become more arbitrary, more like sounds or a chant, than a reference to a particular notion of time. The repetition challenges assumptions about what those words mean by turning them into a kind of "polyphony,” as some reviewers have called it. The words repeat, different but the same. Days of the week repeat, too—but this Monday is surely different from the last. The music of our lives.

And speaking of sound, the New York Times had an article (June 22) about how our ears can be a more reliable witness than our eyes when the two senses receive conflicting information. Author Natalie Angier says, “Scientists now suspect that the origin of human language owes as much to improvements in the early hominid ear as to more familiar spurs like a changing vocal tract or even a generally expanding brain.”

So there you have it: language, sound, music, time, and art, all connected. (I’ll let you draw the lines between dots.)

Here’s hoping you keep your bounce.

* We got to go to the Biennale on that trip, with Cosmo mostly sleeping in the backpack. It was very cool.)

Angel of Language

“Ball” was our son’s first word— at least, the first that clearly referred to something. He’d been exclaiming “da-da-da” for a long time, but even though we liked to think he was celebrating his dad wherever he went, he was probably just trying out sounds to see how they resonated in the wide world. Then one day, as I was putting him in his car seat, he pointed to a tennis ball on the floor and said, “Ball.” Perhaps it was more like, “Ba,” but we both knew what he meant, and we looked at each other and laughed. From then on his world was adorned with circles and balls. As we looked at books together, he pointed to the moon—“ball”—and monster eyes—“ball”—and doorknobs and pumpkins and snowmen. Pictures on billboards, car wheels, fruit, and CD’s all caught his attention. We’d be driving down the street and he’d say “ball” so often I thought he was simply repeating the word as a kind of mantra or reveling in his recent discovery. But time and time again he surprised me. If I looked creatively, there was always some sort of ball, even if it were only the balloon on a Re/Max “For Sale” sign.

When Cosmo was eighteen months old, we took him to Venice for two weeks. His spoken vocabulary had expanded, but “ball” was still his favorite—both the word and the toy. Just before we left, a friend lent us her dog’s little soccer ball, which we tucked into our on-board bag and carried everywhere from then on. The ball became his source of pleasure and exercise as well as a kind of social passport. While we waited in the Rome airport for our connecting flight, he entertained the other passengers, children and adults alike, by kicking the ball to them. They cheerfully kicked it back. Once we got to Venice, he kicked it around the campos and the Piazza San Marco, and if it rolled away from him passersby would stop to kick it in return, sometimes staying to continue the diversion or just to watch him. Whether people were responding to a particularly European urge to kick a soccer ball or simply admiring this blond-haired boy’s focused play, Cosmo inspired them to indulge a whim, if only briefly.

In the early evenings we would wander from our rented apartment on over to San Stefano, a neighborhood square full of activity. On their way home from work and relaxing before dinner, residents would pause to have an aperitivo or gelato, buy a newspaper, or greet a friend. Usually one or two small groups of boys gathered to play soccer and practice shooting goals by slamming the ball against the brick wall of the Gothic church. Cosmo spied them immediately and was transfixed. Drawn like a cat to a catnip toy, he was ready to pounce. I’d pull him away but he’d wriggle determinedly out of my arms and trot back to the playing field. I’d scoop him up again and retreat again. One boy was nice enough to let Cosmo kick the big soccer ball, although he seemed a bit anxious to get it back. Maybe the boy, recognizing that rabid desire, was both empathetic and wary. Sometimes Cosmo would be content to watch, but even then he was still actively engaged. He would crouch low, point a finger and jabber loudly, something like “Beejabuya meenameena Ball!” Although excited, he was not smiling: this was serious, intense business. Creating his own language, he sounded like a fussy blue jay or chattering squirrel.

We were as fascinated by him as he was by the ball. His speech was in that fluid transitional stage between babbling and verbalization, between pure potentiality and recognizable language. He seemed to be still “trailing clouds of glory,” tapping into a universal awareness that we adults have long ago lost. Sometimes he would “read” books to himself out loud, with elaborate sentences and gestures, the meanings of which were known only to him. The exotic intonations might well have been Chinese or Indonesian, so melodic and strange they were to our ears. We were somewhat in awe of him, for at one-and-a-half-years old he had the capacity, as all babies do, to speak any language, given enough exposure and repetition. It’s so much harder for his parents, who come to a second language later in life and have to twist our American mouths and tongues in unfamiliar positions just to say, “Two tickets, please” (Due biglietti per piacere). We may know phrases but can’t mimic the accent; or we know the vocabulary but not the correct sentence construction. As adults we are all too aware of the complexity of language, its tenses, gender, agreements, and colloquialisms. We want to follow the rules, both linguistically and socially. But Cosmo felt no such compunction. Whereas his parents stammered and addressed the grocery store clerk impolitely in the familiar tu form of “you,” he unabashedly pointed and stared at people until, invariably, they’d smile and wave at him. We knew enough Italian to order in a restaurant and were just glad to receive the dish we wanted, but he elicited a much more genuine response by running into the gelato store proclaiming, “Your!”—his word for “yogurt.” Twice he was given a free dish of that decadent version of ice cream. We often carried him in a backpack on the vaporetti, the water taxis, and if he started wiggling and complaining that he wanted “Down!” people around us—even the men who helped dock the boat—were quick to help distract him by catching his eye, making a face, or saying a few kind words.

Bumbling though we were, our small knowledge of Italian proved a modest advantage. It wasn’t hard to know that people were complimenting our son, but I was glad to be able to understand some of what they were saying. For example, the cashier at one church said, “Che begli occhialini!”; that is, what beautiful eyes. In the foyer of our apartment building, Cosmo insisted on pushing around a doll’s stroller that had been left there, and since it was sometimes hard to entertain him in our little apartment, I allowed him to do so. Still, I kept an eye out for the owner while practicing what I might say in Italian to beg her pardon. Sure enough, here she came, a young girl with her father. “He was playing with this,” I said rather obviously. The girl was not impressed, but her father was gracious. I learned their names (Augosto and Elena), her age (three years old), and that she had a 20-month-old brother. They asked where I was from. Such rudimentary information, and yet I came away feeling gratified that I could chat with them, however briefly. It was still way beyond me to join the locals who made an evening ritual of ordering aperitifs and snacks at the little bar downstairs and chatting with friends by the canal wall, but at least I could tell Elena how nice she was to let Cosmo play with her toy. She made a point of taking her stroller back upstairs with her.

Cosmo seemed thrilled with his expanding vocabulary, too. A few months before, at his last swim class, he suddenly learned to kick his legs. At the same time, he said “Gick!” with such obvious glee it was as though he needed the action before he could master the word. In Venice, his growing vocabulary often reflected his new experiences: pasta, sit, peach, map, chicken. “Aa-cot” was a favorite, as we gave him dried apricots to distract him in museums. “Push” was useful, as he was learning to eat with a fork. And although “bath” was certainly not a new experience, it was at least unusual, since we bathed him in a big dish tub on the floor of the shower. “Up-down” was his neologism for climbing the steps of a bridge, a newfound skill.

He was learning that words not only describe things, but that they also express emotion and requests. When we were in the apartment, which was narrow and confining, he often banged on the door and exclaimed, “Owda!”; that is, outside, where the world opened up and he could run. When we licked up the last bit of our gelato one night, he said “all gone” for the first time. He said it in such a plaintive, almost anxious voice, and with such a melancholy wave that it seemed a lesson learned. Good things do not last, neither pear juice nor vacations nor babyhood. Lunch must be cleared away, boats drift out of view, and people you admire—or who stop to admire you—go away, and you might never see them again.

Once I took Cosmo out to a nearby square, Campo San Trovaso, while his dad made dinner in the one-person kitchen. Unlike most squares, this one was not entirely made of stone or concrete but offered a meager patch of grass, and on this evening we saw two rabbits nibbling their greens. Their owner noticed Cosmo’s interest and kindly picked up a rabbit to let him pet it.

“Piano,” she said. Pet it softly.

Encouraged by my other small success, I wanted to take this opportunity to talk, but I could think of nothing to say until I was reminded, perhaps inappropriately, of the baby food jar of puréed rabbit I’d seen at the store.

“Come si dice?” I asked. “Coniglio?”

“Sì, coniglio,” she said, and from then on spoke a comfortable English with me.

For things Cosmo had no word for, he made use of “Mmm? Mmm?” and pointing to let us know, for instance, that he wanted to play in the broom closet or grab a jar of tomato sauce off the grocery shelf—much in the same way that I told the grocer, “Vorrei queste, per piacere”: I would like these, with a finger pointing to cherries, a word I could not seem to remember (ciliegie). When we visited churches, Cosmo experimented with the acoustics by shouting, “Ba! Ba! Ba!” At the church of the Frari he was so excited by statues of horses on a tomb that he loudly and repeatedly called them “Moo!” One very charming idiom he created on his own was that, instead of saying “boat,” he sang a little song that went “doo-doo-doo”—something like the first three notes of “This Old Man.” As there were many boats in that city of canals, we heard this ditty many times.

I had no similar kind of music to speak; on the contrary, the Italian words I uttered seemed clumsy, flat, and limited. One day the caretaker of the apartment stopped us and asked if things were going all right. “Sì, va bene,” we responded—that was easy enough. Then she launched into an involved discussion about sheets and towels. I vaguely remembered the words from a class, but in any case the elaborate pantomime she performed was clear. I gradually understood that we were to give her the dirty laundry. What I wanted to know was when and where we should deliver it—and yet I could not make her understand that.

She grew more exasperated. “Gli asciugamani,” she kept repeating. “Gli asciugamani sporchi.”

“Sì, capisco,” I responded. What I wanted to say was, All right already! Dirty towels! But what are we supposed to do with the damn things? Hoping that the matter would be resolved before bedtime, we collected the linen in a pile. Later that day, no doubt realizing that she would have to take the matter into her own hands, she came by and picked it all up. She asked if she should clean the apartment mid-way through our stay—at least, we both guessed that was what she asked—but fearing more frustrating conversations, we assured her we would take care of it.

We felt as though we had shown our true nature: since we didn't have enough vocabulary to discuss household activities, we were merely tourists after all. Oh, well. We could still enjoy those things that did not depend on a particular language to be appreciated: the mosaic floors and golden domes of San Marco, for example; the expanse of the Grand Canal and the intimacy of the back streets; the Tiepolo paintings in the Scuola Grande di San Rocco. At the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, we took in the impressive collection of modern art, a refreshing change from the centuries-old paintings and sculpture we had been immersed in. Since they did not allow the child backpack, we had to check it and carry Cosmo in our arms. As we looked at works by Picasso, Duchamp, Brancusi, Balla, and others, he started to get antsy. I tried to point out balls and circles in the paintings so I might pause a little longer in front of them, but he was not to be bothered. Now that he had more experience in kicking and throwing, pictures of balls were apparently no longer as interesting as the thing itself. If I set him down, he careened about, getting in people’s way. As I picked him up take him outside, he squirmed and his foot hit the frame of a Pollock.

Once outside, however, he was happy. He kicked the gravel in the courtyard (“Gick!”) and pointed at other children, whom he identified collectively as “girl.” We also wandered to the front of the building to a terrace fronting the Grand Canal, where there is a large bronze sculpture by Marino Marini called “The Angel of the City.” It is a minimalist form of a naked man sitting on a horse, with his face upturned and arms spread wide in an encompassing, almost ecstatic gesture.
He’s like our child, I thought: full of grace, greeting the world unself-consciously and openly, without pretensions or fear, accepting whatever wonderful things it has to give. I looked out at the canal bustling with gondole, yachts, and barges, at the blue water splashing against the ochre and sienna walls of the old buildings, and I momentarily understood that angel’s rapture. When I turned to find Cosmo, my son and my joy, he was investigating the spotlights fixed in the ground.
When he did look up, he pointed at the angel’s horse and said matter-of-factly, “Moo.”

The Tennis Lesson

Cosmo’s thinking is that, since summer is synonymous with vacation, it is antithetical, even anathema, to learn anything, even for “fun.” In past summers we’ve signed him up despite his protests for swimming and theater classes. But he is eleven years old and 103 pounds, and his desire for independent decision-making must also increase in weight. (Moreover, even if the Cabaret Theater hadn’t gone bankrupt last year, he really is over the experience of sharing the stage with 30 kids, most of whom are younger and don’t know their stage right from wrong.)

Cosmo gets exercise walking the dog, riding his skateboard, and wrestling with his dad, but I’d like to see him do more. I gave him some options: fencing class, swimming with friends, or tennis with me. He chose the latter. So Tuesday morning we head out with rackets, a new can of balls, bottles of water, and the dog, to the courts, which are about three blocks away.

This wasn’t a lesson in the sense that I was there to teach him something. Like any good lesson, this was not about technique; and what we learned may not be what we think we learned.
And since this isn’t really about tennis, I won’t make this about Cosmo, either (he might not appreciate that last blog, come to think of it!), but I need to start there.

In short, we both stunk. But whereas I—une femme d’un certain âge—don’t have any illusions about my tennis-playing abilities, Cosmo expects to be good at whatever he undertakes. And why not? He’s handsome without trying, smart, loved, and generally happy without trying. When he falls short of his expectations, though, he doesn’t know what to do with his intense frustration. It has nowhere to go but back on himself, and the failed attempt (as he sees it) becomes a referendum on his character. He’s a terrible tennis player, so he must be a terrible person.

It’s a twisted logic I know too well; this is so painfully me at his age. (And for many, many years after.) I remember actually throwing the tennis racket (he at least has more scruple about that than I did), ripping up the botched piece of sewing, and trashing the drawing that didn’t look exactly like the lumberjack I found in a magazine ad for art school. (“Can You Draw the Lumberjack? You May be an Artist!”) I remember feeling that I was good at nothing, and therefore good for nothing. And nothing anyone says can shift that nothing out of your head. That nothing is a boulder you keep pushing and pushing until you realize that you can let it go and watch it roll easily downhill. It sounds easy—easier than hitting a stupid yellow ball with a stupid racquet. Until you have to do it.

Thank god for the dog, is all I can say. She has another non-lesson for us: if a ball comes your way, grab it, even though someone’s going to take it away again.

On the Tarmac

We're on our way to San Francisco, ready to fly out of Denver, when we experience the altered state of consciousness which is "flight delay." The airline does its part by easing us into it bit by bit, like a gateway drug. The Departures sign first indicates a delay of fifteen minutes, not a big deal. Hey, it's summer, the airport's busy, and United is not the EuroStar, right?

And then the minutes increase: half an hour. The reason for the delay, posted on the electric sign at the gate, is "Aircraft delayed." Cosmo's becoming anxious. Always full of impossible questions, he now has a battery of them: When are we going to leave? How long do we have to wait here? Why can't the air traffic controllers get their act together? I maintain my cool, of course, and try to say "I don't know" with as many different nuances as possible. Forty minutes, and we go get pizza (Cosmo) and burritoes (his dad and I). Fifty-five minutes, and I feel like we are caught in a time bubble, where nothing ever happens. (The Talking Heads describe heaven this way, but I doubt this is what they had in mind. Personally, I think planes are probably on time in heaven.)

When we finally board the plane, four hours after arriving at the airport, we let go of some of the anxiety that has been building like Marge Simpson's hairdo, blue and implacable. The plane backs up--hooray!--and sits there. The captain comes on the intercom to tell us that we have to wait until he gets the okay.

Cosmo's anxiety level shoots up to eleven. Why don't we take off? Why are we just sitting here? Are we going to even get to San Francisco tonight? Why don't we take off? And variations on the theme. His voice is just this side of hysterical.

His dad, a frequent flyer and thus eligible for a seat farther up in the cabin with more leg room and strangers for seatmates, isn't privvy to this. I'm thinking, You owe me, pal. (In fact, later he admits to having his own freak-out, wanting to scream and tear out his hair, so maybe it's better he wasn't there. Cosmo does pull out his hair, literally: I can hear a few strands ripping.)

"Cosmo. I don't know when we're going to take off. The captain doesn't know. See those clouds over there? See that lightning? That's why we're not taking off: it isn't safe."

"I don't care if it's not safe! I want to go! I want to get out of here!"

"Sweetheart, I know this is upsetting to you, but there's nothing we can do. You're going to have to find a way to deal with it."

"I am dealing with it! This is how I deal with it!"

Okaay...Maybe ignoring him is the better way to go. Now he's crying; I stroke his back.

Of course Time, as it is wont to do, moves along. The storm moves along. The plane moves along, as does the baggage carrousel, the taxi, the front desk clerk, and the elevator. We're given a room on the highest floor--36. I look out the window at the lights of the city: there's the Bay Bridge, and if I step over here, I can see the Golden Gate. The bed looks comfortable and inviting, with its six or eight pillows. I don't need that many pillows, just as Cosmo didn't need that many questions. Safety in numbers? Reassurance in reiteration? I don't know. I have but one answer now: Go to sleep.