On this day 52 years ago, my parents got married. Tonight, the bridge and groom along with two of their sons celebrate at the tony Blue Ginger restaurant in the center of Wellesley town. Brother Rob drives us in his SUV the short mile to the restaurant. We try to …
I assemble the icosahedron. The only space left empty in this house is the underutilized living room, so I haul up parts from the basement. I tie PVC pipes together in 5-point vertices. The thirty pipes do indeed form an icosahedron. I inflate the green exercise ball with a loud …
I suggest another museum outing to my parents. Let’s take the subway into downtown Boston to visit the Isabella Stewart Gardner art museum. Both parents come up with reasons to defer the trip, like hot weather. I press them as my time home grows short. My unemployed days in my …
Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday nights in New York City: home respectively at 3am, 2am, 5am, and 3am. Ug. The 5am wasn’t my fault; late in the night, the subway connects slowly from Brooklyn to Manhattan. I lumbered home at 5am to beat dawn and the breakdown of my circadian rhythm. …
New York instructs about intimacy. On my New York visits, I have dined and drunk early evenings. After my host retires responsibly early, I venture out with a set of spare keys for late-night adventures. When the time shrinks in the small hours, I feel the loneliness of the loud …
If New York City is a perpetual-motion machine, the tourists gum up its works. Hurried pedestrian flows on busy city sidewalks are snagged by islands of confused visitors. Time is money, people! Get out of the way. The tourists overrun not only Times Square and Broadway but also most corners …
New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMa) is the best museum in the world. The building bulges so with icons: Van Gogh’s Starry Night, Monet’s Water Lilies, John Cage’s score for 4’33. A Calder mobile hangs forgotten above a stairwell and excruciatingly beautiful Wyeth painting hides behind a bank of …
Hungover. My head throbs. My neck aches. Nausea. I stagger under heavy clouds. I want to sleep fitfully until the sun sets, but the caffeine withdrawal bomb ticks. How did I do this to myself? Again? Obvious: last night I drank most of a bottle of a red wine on …
I am home and try to help. My mother attends a bridge class every Tuesday night. I offer to cook dinner that evening. Back in San Francisco, I might aim for the exotic and mainly vegetarian. My parents do not eat that way. Perhaps like the rest of their generation, …
Want to know someone well? Spend time with his parents. I am a product of my parents and a reaction to them. I have my Father’s love of industry. We spend our free time building. He saws oak and cherry wood in the basement to make bookcases, chairs, tables, and …