Finding Nyro

Finding Nyro
There’s not much in my music collection that I can truly claim as my own discovery. Most of my favorites came through some zeitgeist bellwether or other – in the cool kids’ dorm rooms or some boyfriend’s mix tape, drenched in peer approval. My taste never quite followed the mainstream, but it definitely stuck to a rather predictable canon of late-1980’s-and-90’s alterna-chick music (Suzanne Vega, Kate Bush, Jane Siberry, Throwing Muses, PJ Harvey, Sleater Kinney, etc).

But Laura Nyro? I found her all by myself, almost by accident and perfectly backwards. A contemporary of Joni Mitchell, she predates all my college-girl favorites and influenced many of them. But it was the summer of 1997, just a few months after she died, when I heard her on the radio for the first time.

I was clearing out my cluttered non-profit office, preparing to move on to my first-ever corporate job. WXPN was playing all its favorite artists alphabetically for some reason. They were up to the N’s, I guess, because all of a sudden “Eli’s Coming” came warning, pleading, pulsating from the tiny radio speakers, stopping me in my tracks. That powerhouse voice; the seemingly endless layers of soulful harmonies, instrumentation, and Nyro’s wild piano all driving the anxious pace of the song . . . until it slows and swoons to a bittersweet surrender. “Eli’s coming, better hide your heart girl.” How did she know? I scrambled around for a post-it note and jotted down her name when the DJ announced it. I spelled it “Nero.”

Soon Eli and the Thirteenth Confession took up permanent residence in my CD player. I had a week off before starting my new job, and I was spending every minute of it practicing with the new graphic design software while Laura wailed in the background. “Poverty Train.” “Stoned Soul Picnic.” “Eli,” of course. That whole summer was a stark, lonely time of transition, but her music filled in every corner of the empty spaces. Sometimes I’d just lie on the floor right next to the speaker and bask in every nuance of her songs.

Cover Girl
I was surprised to recognize some hits I knew from other bands covering them (especially after I got Time and Love: a Laura Nyro Tribute Album). The Fifth Dimension’s “Wedding Bell Blues,” for example, used to irritate my socks off. Then I heard The Roches’ joyful version on Time and Love, infused with all the boisterous, wistful joy of unrequited love. “We used to hear this song on the radio when we were kids – that big Biiiilll! busting out of the speakers,” Suzzy Roche reminisces in the liner notes. And then I finally heard Nyro’s original version, thick with sunny harmonica, that syncopated piano, and her big voice. Never thought I’d love a song that pleads so unapologetically for marriage, but there it is. It’s one of my favorites.

And I was overjoyed to rediscover “Stoney End.” I’d first heard Barbara Streisand’s version in middle school aerobics club. (Yes, yes, drama club wasn’t offered that quarter. Shut up.) I was only 12 and not much into non-show-tune music, but the lyrics just grabbed me:

I was born from love
and my poor mother worked the mines
I was raised on the good book Jesus
’Til I read between the lines

Whoa. It was like a smoke signal of sorts. I was this vaguely intense little oddball, but I'd found a sign that such intensity really exists in the world and at least one grown-up was singing about it. After a few weeks, though, the aerobics teacher replaced the song with “Disco Inferno.” I kind of forgot about it over the years, especially by college when Streisand was definitely a signifier for “not cool.” How incredible to find “Stoney End” again after all those years, first through Beth Nielsen Chapman’s soulful, heart-breaky version on Time and Love and then Nyro’s gorgeous original with her breezy delivery of those heavy-hearted lines. How had I missed all this? How was I only just finding Laura Nyro now?



Who Was Laura Nyro?
Michele Kort’s outstanding biography, Soul Picnic: The Music and Passion of Laura Nyro, addresses that question pretty thoroughly. Many people haven’t heard of Nyro because, it seems, being heard-of simply wasn’t a huge priority for her. Being heard . . . making incredible music to be understood and appreciated on her own terms? Yes. But being famous? She didn’t really see the point.

She is known for supposedly bombing at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 at the very start of her career. Kort does a great job exposing that myth – a myth that Nyro herself seemed to perpetuate more than anyone. With her long gown and early-60’s-girl-group- inspired songs, Nyro’s style was out of synch with the festival (which launched such acts as Jefferson Airplane and The Mamas & The Papas). And from Kort’s description, Nyro’s performance fell short of her own expectations. The crowd was lukewarm; the house band had a hard time keeping up with her. Still, when you watch the clip she is positively spell-binding and the crowd is polite, if not enamored. And this supposed failure didn’t hold her back from joining forces with a young David Geffen, who adored her and oversaw her most successful albums.

Kort’s book tells the story of Laura as a wildly talented teenager who’d cut class at the High School of Music and Art to sing in subways with her harmony group. Just a few years later she was recording kick-ass album after kick-ass album with an enviable amount of creative control. She wore outlandish dresses, decorated the studio with candles, and rode a horse-drawn carriage across Central Park to her recording sessions. She was the quintessential over-the-top theater chick – but with overwhelming talent to back it up, turning out a uniquely amazing album a year from ages 19-23.



Nested
Those early songs are full of such fire . . . the wild joy, the unashamed yearning. I felt every minute of it during my first Laura Nyro year, wishing that I’d had her music with me for all my stormy years. I hadn’t exactly walked in her shoes, but I sure had cried at the corners of the squares. I’d savored the seedy-mellow bliss of “Blackpatch” and “Sweet Blindness”; the ripped-out tears and gritty urban poetry of “Gibsom Street” and “New York Tendaberry.”

There’s a whole collection of less-celebrated (and perhaps more homogenous) jazzy/ethereal albums from Laura Nyro’s later years. As Kort details in her book, she’d been through a brief marriage, followed by a head-over-heels love affair, finally nesting happily into single motherhood and eventually partnership with artist Maria Desiderio. Fittingly enough, I didn’t start paying much attention to those later songs until I was at a nesting stage myself.

As I was preparing to move to Seattle and couple up with Mr. Black for good, I found myself drawn to the dreamier songs like “Smile” or “Mr. Blue.” And when I was first stumbling through the earliest days of new motherhood, I’d prop myself up on the couch and nurse the baby in a sleep-deprived daze to Nyro’s later work. “To a Child” was an obvious favorite:

I’m so tired
You’re so wired
And I’m a poet
Without a poem

The songs are lush perfection; “easy listening” in the very best, most artistic sense of the term. Though the music is more subtle than Nyro’s earlier work, the lyrics still sneak up and grab me with every bit of the old intensity. Especially songs like “A Wilderness,” when she’s singing about herself as soft, ethereal mother and her wild child. Singing my life, in other words.

Many people pass by
Caught up in roles and rules
Many rivers run free
I don’t want to crush the wilderness in you, child
Or the wildness in me
How do we keep them both alive?

Which is pretty much everything I’ve been trying to say about me and The Boy all along. There are times when parenting tears me in so many different directions at once. And my boy in particular . . . so entirely mine but so confounding, always. Again: How did she know?

Why Chick Music?
I don’t want to get all fan-ish and imagine parallels between myself and this amazing musician I never met. Every introspective girl and her Birkenstocks over-identifies with at least one chick-music icon, and I suppose Laura Nyro is mine. But it’s not as cheesy as it sounds. It’s downright logical, actually. If you’re caught up in a haze of feelings and then some artist comes along and just sings about them, expresses them with this incredible poetic understanding. . . well, you’re going to want to latch onto that artist, aren’t you? Nothing wrong with that.

Anxiety, Art, and Head Lice

It was an interesting weekend on the Internets for me. On Offsprung (my favorite parenting Web site), there was a good discussion about the realtionship between intelligence, creativity, and depression.

As someone who's dabbled in all three, I was inclined to argue against the notion that medication for depression and anxiety inhibit artistic ability. Sure, we might not want to imagine an art world where Van Gogh's on Prozac. But, as I said in that discussion, most of us aren't Van Gogh. Most of us aren't even that guy who paints on PBS. And depression and anxiety can be huge roadblocks for whatever creative potential is there in the first place.

But then I went over to Open Salon and saw there was an open call for stories about "Facing Your Worst Fear." (As if I could pick just one!) But when I was really honest about it, there is one fear in particular that's been sucking up more than its share of my energy, brain power, and mood. Could I do it? Could I write from a place of anxiety and produce something worthwile?

Well, I wouldn't call it Great Art or anything. But it did get an Editor's Pick on Open Salon. Um . . . hooray for anxiety?

Check it out:

Lice, Lice, Baby

Yes, it's about head lice...

Remembrance of Chimichangas Past

I barely gave it a second thought when Chi-Chi’s restaurant chain went out of business a few years ago. What can you do when the favorite restaurant of your adolescence causes an outbreak of Hepatitis A with its filthy, filthy scallions? Not a whole lot you can do, really. Shrug and be cynical. It’s not like the restaurant was so great in the first place. I hadn’t been there in years, and when we did manage to go it was typically done with irony. One more facet of innocent youth falls from grace like Milli Vanilli. And so it goes.

If it hadn’t been so crowded at Gorditos today, old Chi-Chi’s would probably still be the furthest thing from my mind. But as I was waiting in line, my eyes wandered behind the counter to a stack of taco salad shells on a shelf. I gave them a fond smirk. Remember when those were such a big deal? No? Well, I do. I remember being positively enchanted the first time I was served a salad in one of those things. I grew up in rural Pennsylvania in the 1970’s and 80’s, and such delicacies were not widely known about in our neck of the cornfield.



I first heard about Chi-Chi’s from the hairdressers at the salon where I got my perms. (Yes, yes, it was the 80’s. Shut up.) They were a fun-loving bunch of WTF-are-we-doing-being-single-in-Berks County, PA folks always in search of an adventure. Sometimes that quest took them to comparatively cosmopolitan Allentown, where Chi-Chi’s was a favorite hot spot. (You overhear a lot of conversations sitting around with that perm solution on your head.) So, my 15-year-old self was pretty excited to learn that our local strip mall was expanding into an adjacent field, adding a Chi-Chi’s of its own.

Mexican food! Our town didn’t even have a Taco Bell in those days, and our school cafeteria had only recently added “tacos” to its menu. This was a very big deal. Such a big deal, in fact, that our Spanish teacher arranged a field trip to Chi-Chi’s for all her honors classes. We were going to immerse ourselves in the rich, vibrant culture of authentic Mexican dining. Sort of.

I was absolutely charmed. The faux adobe exterior! Painted tiles on the tables! Non-alcoholic blender drinks that looked just like real blender drinks! Appetizers! In retrospect, Chi-Chi’s was to Mexican food what The Olive Garden is to Italian food. But at the time, when “nice restaurant” meant “steak house,” the menu seemed exotic and authentic. I was so naïve, I didn’t realize that the entrees were named after Mexican resort towns. I thought “Cancun” really was the Spanish name for seafood enchiladas. Oh dear.

I described every detail to my mom that afternoon with all the girlish enthusiasm of an 18th century epistolary novel. A few weeks later, she took my sisters and me to Chi-Chi’s to celebrate the last day of school. I remember feeling so sophisticated, all pastel-eyeshadowed up, sipping that Nada Colada.

And thus, a cultural bridge to adulthood of sorts was formed. Chi-Chi’s was our place; the fancy restaurant we kids had discovered for ourselves. That’s where we went for Big Serious Dates with our love interests or Big Serious Talks with our best friends; that’s where we went with a group of friends before a formal dance or after a day at the downtown library working on our term papers. We weren’t full-fledged adults yet, but we were trying it on.

By the time I was in college, Chi-Chi’s was already becoming a joke. Nevertheless, it was our favorite spot for our Sisters Nights Out when we were all back at our parents’ place for school breaks. We weren’t so wildly impressed with it anymore, but somehow it still carried an air of the old sophistication that blended nicely with nostalgia for a time when adulthood seemed shiny and carefree. I got a taste of the real “adult” Chi-Chi’s experience during that year I spent living with my parents between graduate school and Real Life, joining my fellow WTF-are-we-still-doing-in-Berks-County friends for happy hours.

I even had my bachelorette party at Chi-Chi’s. That’s right. It wasn’t one of those wild, swinging bachelorette parties you’ve seen on TV. It was the kind of bachelorette party you have when it’s one month after 9/11, you’re 32 and already own a house with the guy, just flew back to PA from Seattle to get married in the few vacation days you were able to scrape up, and spent the last two days running around getting your marriage certificate and finalizing wedding arrangements. In other words, it was something of an afterthought. But it was perfect. Between the last-minute wedding-planning madness and actually walking down the aisle, it was so wonderful to just sit in Chi-Chi’s – the place where, in many ways, I’d found my adult self – with my fiancé and the sisters who’d been there for me through thick and thin. Pass the chili con queso.



I’m pretty sure that’s the last time I ever went to Chi-Chi’s. I’d visit home as often as I could, but there were other restaurants now. My parents favored a fancy new Italian place where the waitresses couldn’t pronounce the dishes, but the tiramisu was incredible. Visiting Friendly’s became a bigger priority, as good Mexican food is plentiful in Seattle but classic ice cream sundaes are practically non-existent.

Two years after my bachelorette party came the Hepatitis A incident at a Pittsburgh-area Chi-Chi’s. It was horrifying, actually. Hundreds of people were sick. One man underwent a liver transplant. A few people died. I was anxiously pregnant with The Boy at the time and trying to avoid obsessing over news stories like that one, so I put it out of my mind as best I could. (Although I remember avoiding scallions with near-religious fervor.)

Just a few months ago, I drove past the old Chi-Chi’s while doing some last-minute Christmas shopping. I felt just the littlest bit sad to see the once-glorious faux adobe building standing empty like that . . . such a cultural epicenter in its day. Now the whole strip mall is bit of a ghost town, anchored by a gutted Circuit City and an Old Country Buffet. But it’s flanked by newer strip malls everywhere in the former cornfields, featuring the stores we used to travel to Allentown and even Philadelphia for – Borders, Pier 1 Imports, Old Navy.

On the one hand, it’s nice to see the comforts of suburbia in my old home town. I’m glad that my parents don’t have to lug themselves to the next county every time they want to visit a big bookstore or enjoy a Starbucks latte. But at the same time, there’s something very bittersweet about the loss of those fields and that one-time “fancy” Mexican restaurant. Just like the late teen years themselves, I don’t miss it. But I miss it. Hasta luego, old friend.

Chocolate-Covered Absurdity

In honor of Valentine's Day season, I've been posting some of my favorite dating mishap stories on Open Salon. Go on, check 'em out! Show your V-Day spirit by giving this blogger a little page-view love.

What We Did Before Match.com
In which a friend and I take a zany, sitcom-ish romp through the world of personal ads.

Older Guys: Still Just Not That Into You
In which I consider the benefits of dating an older guy . . . but what did he see in me?

All the Lonely People
It’s “Eleanor Rigby” meets When Harry Met Sally meets Punch Drunk Love. Sort of.

Balloonstruck

The balloon animal vendor captured my heart. Maybe it was just one of those days when you’re ripe for unconventional inspiration. Or comfort.

That’s why I went to The Gallery in the first place that day. My mom used to take us there when we were kids. The glamorous downtown Philadelphia mall had seen better days, or maybe I’d just been too easily dazzled as a kid. But it still made for a nice little nostalgic lunch break for my slightly-jaded twentysomething self – disappearing into a crowd; sipping my old favorite Hӓagen-Dazs peanut butter vanilla milkshake; and admiring the tall, twinkly-eyed, auburn-bearded balloon animal vendor.

He seemed like the personification of everything that was right about the world. There he was, smiling and calm, making people happy while all the lunch-break suits and class-cutting teens streamed by him in a preoccupied haze. Maybe someone had slipped something in my milkshake. Or maybe I was just so bored, or lonely, or dreading going back to work that I just had to act impulsively. I’m not sure how it happened. One minute I was smiling at him from my bench; the next minute I was at his side.

“Do you like your job?” I asked. His smile was warm and genuine, not at all bothered by the crazy lady asking him personal questions while he was trying to work. And he liked his job quite a lot, it turned out. Until recently, he explained, he’d been a social worker. But it was heartbreaking work; he was completely burned out. He used to make balloon animals around the office as a way to deal with the stress, so he decided to start a business doing just that.

I was captivated. It was like a romantic version of Douglas Coupland’s Generation X “McJobs.” Here was a guy with a heart, and he knew how to follow it. He was older than me, but what did age matter when Monica was dating Tom Selleck on “Friends”? It was also sweetly reminiscent of Party Girl – when Parker Posey’s character falls in love with the falafel guy. I said goodbye to Balloon Guy and went back to work with an extra spring in my step.

For days I walked around with the delightful prospect of him in my heart, figuring we’d meet again. Everything had an extra note of joy to it. Then I realized I was going to have to do something about it. He knew my first name, but had no idea where to find me (if he wanted to at all, of course). Could I do it? Could I go back to his balloon kiosk at The Gallery and breezily ask him out for coffee?

Well, I would try. It was only a few blocks from my office, not much of a detour on my walk home. Just stop by after work, chat, and ask him out. I’d already struck up a conversation with him out of the blue. How hard could it be to take the next step?

Damn near impossible, it turned out. His kiosk was all the way at the west end of the basement level, right across from the Market East SEPTA station. I stood at the opposite end of the mall, lurking in the doorway of a store, camouflaged by a steady stream of shoppers. I could see him in the distance, taller than I’d remembered. And busy. I kept telling myself I’d head down there after the next wave of commuters poured out of the station. But I was positively frozen. What was I going to say? Would he even remember me? Just how lonely and desperate and pathetic was I, anyway? After a few false starts I gave up and went home, feeling just the littlest bit heartbroken.

A few days later, I regained my nerve and went back to try again. I took slow, deep breaths and walked purposefully toward his kiosk, forcing myself not to think about it too much until we were face to face. Step, step. Breathe, breathe. I came to the end of the row of kiosks, right where his should be. But it was gone. Gone.

No! Maybe he’d relocated to another part of the mall. I walked every floor, end to end. I had no idea the damn Gallery was so expansive. Turns out it went all the way to Strawbridge’s. Who knew? And, more to the point, where was my Balloon Guy? Nowhere, that’s where.

If I hadn’t come so close to asking him out a few days earlier, maybe it would have been easier to let it go. But at the time, it seemed to me there was a “carpe diem” lesson in there somewhere. He had been right there, but I was too overcome with shyness and self-doubt to speak to him. And now he was gone. I guess I’ve got to find him, I resolved.

I called the mall office from work, putting on my best approximation of a yuppie mom voice (which, ironically, I never use now that I actually am a yuppie mom), affecting the confidence and the “surely you’re going to help me” attitude that I hoped would cover my paper-thin excuse for calling. I pretended I wanted to hire him for a child’s birthday party, but all I had was his first name and a vague recollection of his kiosk’s location. It worked. They found his business card and gave me his number. Before I lost my nerve, I called him right up and left a message.

For our first date, we met at my “safe coffee house” – right around the corner from my apartment building, where it was easy to make a hasty retreat if things took a turn for the weird. No need for that this time. In fact, it was easily one of the best first dates I’ve ever had. No awkwardness, no “what was I thinking!” moments; just a happy, easy flow of good conversation. We could not stop smiling at each other. All I wanted was to crawl across the table into his lap, but I’d seen Sense and Sensibility recently and was going for a more Austenesque/ joie-de-repartee restraint. Instead, I went home, put on some music, and danced around my apartment like a bad chick movie.

Our second date was even better. Well, at least it started out that way. Joyful conversation, joyful food, joyful margaritas. We cuddled a little before the movie started, chatting happily. I remember right before the lights dimmed we were talking about The Producers. He told me how he’d seen Dick Shawn live, and how brilliant he was.

The movie was Othello – which, in retrospect, may not have been the best choice for a date movie. Yes, it scores points for being a lush, star-studded film version of a Shakespeare play. And yes, it was playing at the art cinema, which was practically a requirement for First Movie Dates of the 1990’s. But it was still Othello, with all its blinding bitter jealously, vicious manipulation, murder, and whatnot. When Harry Met Sally, it ain’t.

I could never be sure if it was the film’s subject matter that clouded his mood that night. Had he experienced that level of jealously himself? Or that level of manipulation? Or loss? It could just as easily have been my own chattiness about the film, and Shakespeare in general, as we walked home. Maybe the “too smart” thing alienated him. Or, just as likely, maybe my Shakespeare prattle came across as callow and naïve, illustrating our age difference in a way that hadn’t fully occurred to him until then. Or maybe he’d seen an ex-girlfriend at the theater on a date. Who could say?

But whatever the reason, something shifted significantly with him that night. He gave me a short, bearded kiss goodnight and tapped my arm playfully. But we never recovered our initial joy of each other after that.

There wasn’t a phone call for a while, which made me feel a little panicky, sad, and resentful. Valentine’s Day came and went. Eventually, I went back to The Gallery and found him at his kiosk, where I hung around like a high school girlfriend trying to chat and be breezy. I couldn’t help it. When I really like somebody, it’s puppy time! So much for Jane Austen. He made me a balloon flower – a belated Valentine’s Day gift. Sigh…

There were a few strained dates after that, and then nothing. In the end, I had to resign myself to the old familiar “maybe he’s not that into me / maybe I’m not that into him; I just want to be into somebody” refrain of the single smart girl. I was sad, of course. But it wasn’t the end of the world. It’s so easy to blame ourselves, but the fact is, dating is hard. People come with so much baggage, it’s rarely anybody’s fault when things don’t work out.

I suppose I could regard him as a “the one that got away” of sorts. But I doubt he was really “the one.” I loved the initial spark, but I barely knew the man himself. Ignorance is bliss, and sometimes an abrupt ending can be a blessing in disguise. Our brief encounter had all the joy and longevity of a balloon itself. Nothing wrong with that.

Love, Light and Dark

Death ripped something open in me when I was 15 years old, and about 85% of my adult personality bloomed right out of it like a freaking Greek myth or something. I could feel it actually happening. Really.

Yes, it was my grandmother’s death, which may seem ordinary enough. But let me tell you, this wasn’t your typical central-casting grandmother. She was a painter, a spiritual poet, a humanitarian, and a big flaming liberal of a grandmother before “liberal” was an insult. She taught racial tolerance to school children in pre-MLK Philadelphia. She traveled through pre-war Europe on an art scholarship. She and my grandfather got a visit from the FBI during the McCarthy years. I don’t ever remember her baking cookies, but I do remember going to see Ralph Nader with her when I was about three or so. (Well, mostly I remember being bored beyond human comprehension. Still pretty cool, though, in retrospect.)



For most of my life, I just knew her as this wonderful grandma who made us paper dolls out of matte board and took us to the beach. She had this incredible capacity for joy and saw beauty everywhere. She used to stop us in our tracks to point it out: see how the light reflects on the insect’s wings? She was full of laughter and taught us to take joy in our mistakes. She lavished praise on us, just like the parenting books tell you you’re not supposed to do. But I loved it. I don’t ever remember anyone else but her calling me “beautiful” and “stunning” until years later when I started having boyfriends.

At 15, I was only just beginning to recognize what an exceptional woman she really was. One night, right before Christmas and at the height of our PBS station’s pledge drive, my mom and I were watching motivational speaker Leo Buscaglia give one of his talks. (Remember Leo Buscaglia?) That’s just like Grandma, I remember thinking. It was amazing. Here was this venerable, bearded fellow speaking so eloquently about love to a packed, adoring audience – popular enough to be run during pledge week, for goodness sakes – but to me, it sounded just like my grandmother.

“She would love this. I’m going to buy his book for her for Christmas,” I told my mom, and she thought it was a great idea. So we went to Waldenbooks at the mall that week and picked out a copy of Living, Loving, and Learning. And I felt so proud, realizing that my grandmother and I were on the brink of an adult relationship with each other.

There’s no writing workshop in the world that would let me get away with this next part. It’s cruel and formulaic to the point of being trite. But I swear, it really happened this way: Four days after I gave her that book for Christmas, she died. Heart attack. It was completely unexpected. Words fail.

The grown-ups were crying. I remember it was unseasonably warm for December, and the rain poured down. (Foreshadowing of Seattle, perhaps?) I remember feeling stunned and dark the whole time, drinking it all in but keeping my thoughts to myself. A plain casket, closed. That was her in there. How could that be?

We weren’t religious, but it’s amazing what you can come up with on your own when faced with death for the first time. I decided, first of all, that someday I would have a daughter and name her after my grandmother (which – remarkably – did actually happen 22 years later, almost to the day). And I decided that I would keep her spirit alive by trying to be like her. I would seek beauty and joy everywhere; I would keep fighting for justice in my own quiet way. The Leo Buscaglia book would be my guide.

Yes. Mere days after giving it to her for Christmas, I got the book back. So I read, read, and re-read until I somehow displaced all my jumbled existential despair and raw teen passion onto its author. It’s strange, thinking of it now, but I actually kept this writer in my thoughts more consciously than the grandmother I was grieving for. Walking in the fields near my parents’ house, feeling simultaneously empty and full, I yearned for him. Actual him. Not sexually, I don’t think. But not like a family member, either. There was an intensity to it that felt like love.

Had I made him into a guru of sorts? Did I want to sit at his feet and walk in his wise, benevolent shadow; a spoke in love with its wheel? I wondered: Was this the way religious people felt about their deities? Not the ideal sacred way you’re supposed to feel, but maybe something closer to Godspell’s “Day By Day”: that intangible yet total love that is so complete, joyful, and even fierce at times but can’t ever be attained or held. It’s not reverence, it’s not lust, it’s not apprenticeship, it’s not even love, really. It’s a bit of a mix of all those things and not quite any of those things.

I wrote to him once. He’d been the guest on some morning talk show and I scribbled his address down on a scrap of wrapping paper. After sitting on it anxiously for a few weeks, I finally sat down and wrote him the most banal little straight-margined letter that barely scratched the surface of my real feelings. I don’t think I even mentioned my grandmother. He or his office wrote me back, a warm and polite little response.

Eventually the whole thing started to feel embarrassing. I let go of my conscious attachment to the guy. But it was still there, inspiring me to pursue whatever unconventional, charismatic person happened to cross my path. I could carry the spirit of my grandmother, but I didn’t want to have to do it alone. I thought I needed someone to show me the way. Or maybe just someone to share it with who would understand.

Of course, unconventionality and charisma don’t always come from a heart of pure love and self-actualization, as I’d naively believed. Turns out there’s a whole lot of insecurity flying around there, too. They were either impossible to hold onto or they clung too tight. Most of them, to their credit, didn’t want to be followed. Their charisma was something of a coping device; they were just as uncertain as anybody else. But there were a few who absolutely craved an audience. They needed to be followed, but one special little follower like me would never truly be enough.

It was fun while it lasted, but gradually I gave up my pursuit of The Charismatic. Faced with a string of failed relationships and feeling out of step with the mainstream, I came to see myself as the Carrie Fisher to everyone else’s Meg Ryan. Something in me got tamed. The wild impulse to devote myself to The Charismatic simply turned into the desire to occasionally sleep with them. And not even that, really. Somewhere along the line, my attention shifted to The Aloof; the moon to The Charismatic’s sun; the vampire to their werewolf. (Yes, yes, a Twilight reference. We’re talking about female coming-of-age, aren’t we?)

In fact, I married the vampire. Or, at least, I married the geeky Gen-X version of him. He is cool and pale, almost supernaturally smart, barely eats, stays out of the sun. And when we met, he was a college instructor / rock critic getting ready to move to Seattle. Not sure how a wiggle-puppy like me even dates someone like that, let alone marries him, but it happened. (In all fairness, the guy’s got a warm side, too.)

Looking back on it all, I’m left feeling a little confused. Am I light or dark? Sun or moon? I’ve regarded myself as dark/bitter/cynical for so long, but there’s no denying my roots, my very spirit, soaked in innocent hug-seeking sun. Every once in a while I’ll come across someone who viscerally reminds me of the old Buscaglia days and it’s like a freaking magnet or something. I want to just . . . run to them. But I don’t.

And what about my grandmother? Am I keeping her spirit alive? Well . . . yes, I think. Not perfectly. Not always. But I do still stop and notice beauty in unexpected places. I do take joy in small moments and try to pass it along to anyone who might be willing to listen. And there’s my Little Girl, of course. Her namesake.

Those kids. That’s where my real sunshine is these days. They’re authentically charismatic and effusive and just so . . . present. They have no agenda; they simply love more than anyone could humanly possibly love. It’s what they do. And I can shine that love right back at them with reckless abandon. At least for now. I’m sure we’ll reach a point when they’ll be embarrassed by it, setting down paths of their own. All the more reason to enjoy it while I can, I suppose.

Resolutions

I started making New Year’s resolutions about 15 years ago – the first time in my life when the calendar, and not the school year, marked a new beginning. I’d been living in Philadelphia for a few months, friendless and floundering around in various temp jobs, trying to get my feet on the ground. And just in case that wasn’t enough, I was also recovering from my second surgery to remove some big fat ovarian cysts.

“If you were married, I’d tell you to have your kids now,” my (male) doctor had said. Peachy. I didn’t even know if I wanted kids in those days, and being married seemed about as likely as taking flight. I’d had some casual boyfriends that year, all of whom would have left a boyfriend-shaped hole in the wall if I’d mentioned marriage, kids, or ovaries to them. I didn’t know what I wanted, exactly, but I knew things had to get better than this.

So I sat down at the kitchen table and wrote my first-ever list of resolutions. Some of them read like Stuart Smalley’s “Daily Affirmations” (“Find the potential for joy in each day”); some of them were practical and frank (“Know there are always alternatives. Do not marry or even couple out of desperation”). Cheesy or not, it was exactly what I needed to hear at the time, and writing the words myself somehow felt more powerful than reading them on a kitten poster or even hearing them from a friend over coffee. Scribbling away at my table, I was feeling more hopeful already.

And thus, a single-girl tradition was born. Not every year was as bleak as that first one, but every year had its own brand of absurdity and bad dates and pathos. There were jobs that drove me crazy. There were friends who were mostly just passing through. There were boyfriends I loved way too much, and boyfriends I wished I’d loved more (and plenty of unrequited crushes in between). My life was such a work-in-progress in those days, beginning a new year at Point A with very little idea where I’d be by the end. Each year required a fresh batch of strength and survival skills.

So, I’d make resolutions. They were mostly your basic “push out the jive, bring in the love” rhetoric with little variation from year to year. I’d resolve to stay healthy and be strong; to bring more energy and enthusiasm to my job; not to worry and hurt so easily; to seize the day. Some years I included more ambitious resolutions about branching out into the community (find a hiking group, a book club, etc). Funny how those were the ones I rarely kept.

One notable change is how, after a few years of solid self-focus, the resolutions expanded to include other people. One year, for example, I resolved to be a better friend to the important people in my life. Another year, I resolved to keep working on adult friendships with my family. And since Mr. Black came along, there’s always been a resolution to give him my full appreciation.

Yes, the single-girl tradition survived couplehood. Well, pretty much. Our first New Year’s together was right before I moved to Seattle to be with him, so resolutions were a no-brainer. The year after that, though, I didn’t do them at all. We’d been living together for nearly a year by then, and going through a major stretch of growing pains. That’s the thing about long-term relationships. You hit a rough patch and you have to either plow your way through it or retreat. I was journaling a lot during that time, but New Year’s came and went without mention on the pages.

I started doing resolutions again for the next couple of years, but it was more for the sake of the ritual than anything else. We were engaged, and then in the first year of marriage. Aside from some frustrations with my job, I was feeling incredibly happy, lucky, and . . . well . . . resolved, I guess. My world was blissfully smaller, more manageable, and full of easy joy.

And then everything kind of came full circle that next year. I’d had two early miscarriages and was on the verge of a third one as the new year began. It’s funny how all those years of single-girl struggle really laid the foundation for something like that. Losing a pregnancy isn’t really like losing a boyfriend, but the survival skill set is remarkably similar. While it's an actual tangible loss in one sense, it's really about the loss of hopes and dreams; the loss of an ideal. I never thought I'd feel that way again, but there I was. My list of resolutions was as long and affirmationy as it was that first year in Philly. Here are just a few:

1. Trust your own strength, smartness, and lovability. Go on. Trust it.

2. Recognize that Mr. Black is every bit as complex, reflective, fearful, and loving as you are. He is not your rock. He is your partner on this path, every bit as vulnerable as you are, needing you as much as you need him. Communicate your needs, fears, etc. Hear his.

3. Fill every moment with something good – a thought, a song, a memory, an experience, a hug.

4. In short . . . please be happy. Be at peace. You need these challenges in your life, and you can meet them. Someday we will know how this all ends. But we can be happy before we know.

Sure enough, the following year I replaced my New Year’s resolutions with a giant “to do” list to get ready for the new baby. And in the years that followed? If I made any resolutions, I didn’t bother to write them down. I think I had one about doing more yoga one year.

Too busy and active with “real life” for introspection? Or too mired in motherhood minutiae to focus on myself? No, I don’t really see it either way. It’s funny . . .when I was digging up all these old resolutions in the first place, I flipped through a journal from 1995 and then another from 2007 back-to-back. 1995: Analyzing the pros and cons of pursuing a particular guy. 2007: Making lists of everything I ate and how much blood was in the baby’s diapers, trying to track down the culprit (it was dairy).

And I had to ask myself: Are those two preoccupations so different? Relationship woes, diaper contents. Mr. Black says it’s only the difference between metaphorical and literal shit. Crass, but true (although the relationship stuff makes for more interesting reading).

Anyway. It’s all just a big navel gaze, I suppose. But since this is just some chick’s blog and not the front page of CNN.com or anything, I’m hoping you’ll forgive me the indulgence. And who knows, maybe turning all this introspection outward will do some good somehow, shining my little Stuart-Smalleyesque light of wisdom on the Internets. You never know.

So, for 2010 I’m starting up the resolution tradition again. These are a little more succinct than in past years, but they say all they need to say:

1. Do the work

2. Be present for my children

3. Trust myself

4. Be mindful of my body and take good care of it

5. Simply enjoy that life is good right now and do more of the things that help make it good

6. Let it be

Or, as they say in Wuzzleburg: