Birthdays

My birthday is coming up and people have started to ask me what I kind of a present I want.

At this point there is no particular thing I can think of that I truly want. I have more than I need, too much that owns me these days, and I’d like the Salvation Army to come clean a lot of it out. My wife would object to that, of course, and she’s right.

The kinds of things I want these days are intangible. I want close friends to share long conversation with. And please don’t wait until I’m in Tuesdays-With-Morrie shape for that to start.

Snow for Christmas would be nice, but probably a selfish request that would mess up people’s holiday travel plans. A couple of years ago we went to Prague in December and waited on the tarmac at O’Hare for seven hours before the expired wing de-icing could be reinstituted. We had bought each other business class for Christmas, which was a good thing because I would have been arrested if I had gone crazy in steerage waiting to take off. I don’t know how those people handled it, but they did. Perhaps I should ask for patience instead of snow.

I want an agent for my unsold books. I know for sure that they both need at least one more good revision before anyone will look at them. That’s not something anyone can give me, and it will take a lot of time with my ass in the chair focusing on the books before that will happen. If it ever does.

I’ve made more money this year with my watercolors, which is not to say much, than with my writing. It’s nice to have people ask to buy a painting occasionally. Having people ask more frequently would certainly stroke my ego, not that it needs stroking, just ask my friends.

I’d like a non-judgmental partner to go to the health club with me four times a week. That, of course takes the opposite of revising my books. I have to get my ass out of the chair to do that. I might even lose the hundred pounds I need to see go. [N.B. I can talk about being fat, but you are not permitted to talk about my being even a touch portly.]

A surprise party with a good band and a nice dance floor would be terrific. As far as that goes, I’d like to go dancing at least once a week. For that I’ll need a comfortable pair of shoes with leather soles, but fit is problematic and I can’t ask anyone to take me to Nordstroms, particularly during the Gigantic Holiday Buying Season that passes for Christmas. I’ll get up there with my credit card within the next couple of weeks, fight off the hordes of shoppers, and find something that fits.

I’d like ten acres full of rabbits within close driving distance so I could take the dogs and let them loose to hunt. Last night shortly before midnight when I let them out for one final potty before bed, they cornered a rabbit in the back yard and chased it for about five minutes. It finally escaped under the fence. I don’t think they had any intention of catching it, and neither they nor I would have known what to do with it if they had. Ugh. I know this might offend some of my animal-loving friends, but Stella and Brando are animals too. Hmmmm. As one of my favorite columnists says, “When political correctness collides with political correctness.” I wouldn’t mind 500 feet of Lake Michigan shoreline within close driving distance, either, for the dogs to run on. The point is moot (perhaps even mute), of course, because there’s no way I can find and afford ten close acres; and no Lake Michigan property of that size is available for even a one hundredth of what I could afford.

I’d like to establish a substantial scholarship fund at Goddard College, a place that truly changed my life. Maybe that will be part of my will, or perhaps my friends will create a scholarship after I die. I certainly won’t be able to enjoy flowers then. That would be a good place to scatter my ashes (eventually! Let’s not jump the gun), but I won’t know the difference, and it won’t mean the same things to the people who do the scattering.

None of these is a helpful gift suggestion for anyone. And Christmas is coming, which is even worse. But at some point in most people’s lives, there’s very little they need. I think I’ve reached that point in mine.

Happy birthday to Beth T, with whom I share the date!

Please feel free, as always, to comment below.

Split in Two

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It happens every summer. I get caught, for a time at least, between Plainfield, Vermont, and my home in suburban Chicago, a foot in each world as if I were stepping into a canoe as it drifts out into the lake while I am being split in two with one foot on land and one in the boat.

After a week at the Clockhouse Writers Conference (CWC) held in the idyllic confines of Goddard College just outside the quaint and sophisticated state capital of Vermont, I sit, usually in the bar at Burlington International Airport with a beverage, as I try to puzzle out where I belong.

I muse about the dorm room – with a shared unisex bathroom down the hall and the cafeteria about four city blocks away. I remember my first trip to Goddard. I was terrified that I would end up in a hotbed of militant feminists intent on emasculating me. I had an arrangement with my therapist that if I got desperate, she’d fly out and get me. I didn’t call. I fell in love with the experience instead. I became the token male member of a lesbian group. Talk about irony. For the first time in almost ten years, I found a place I truly fit, a place where I was loved and accepted for who I was, warts and all. Goddard has become the place I feel most myself. Each semester I returned – as much for the fitting in as for the education – until I graduated with my MFA in Creative Writing. Now I go back to the CWC every summer.

A week at Goddard both exhausts and energizes me, and I sometimes believe that if I stayed longer, I’d explode. That doesn’t mean, however, that I want to leave.

So I sit at the bar drinking Ketel One with too many olives in a Goddard-induced dream dreading the return of reality when my flight departs. The bar has wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Green Mountains in the distance. The haze on the mountains turns them from green to blue, to gray, and sometimes the mountains vanish completely, melting into the clouds. In the foreground are the runways and hangar of the Green Mountain Boys Air National Guard. The Green Mountain fighter jets take off and land occasionally, but more often play joyful tag, almost touching down one after another. Then, barely above the tarmac, they accelerate abruptly into the ether and shatter the air with sound.

I sip my drink, munch on olives, and grieve the end, for another year at least, of intense connection. But as I sip, I know that people whom I love just as deeply wait for my return to the Chicago suburbs where I live in a Father Knows Best suburb. The houses are well kept, tree branches intertwine over the street, and the sun shines golden on us all year long. Everyone waves when they drive by or stops to chat if we’re walking. We all pick up after our dogs and mow our yards regularly, and we have block parties in the summer with grilled steaks and ice cream.

Too soon I become entangled in pre-flight security screenings and the wait for my plane to board. The woman who has checked tickets for the last few years is so cynical she makes me laugh. She says she won’t answer the phone on her day off or after six at night because her boss might be calling her to come in for extra work . I always check in on line and get an aisle seat. She refuses to have the internet in her home – and she certainly won’t fly. The TSA screeners in Burlington are . . . vigilant. This year they scold me for packing my carry-on too densely as they unpack it with their blue gloves. The battery charger for my camera draws their attention because I stuck it into a shoe.

Years ago, when I first flew out, even before Nine- Eleven, the security screeners treated all the returning Goddard students as if we were terrorists, ready to blow up plane after plane. Now they are more polite. They insult us with their condescension as they explain as if to three year olds why they must look more closely at our luggage. They are always my first step back to a reality where people don’t trust and hold each other up.

Then I sit at the gate. This year the plane was delayed for an hour. Weather messed everything up across the country. I sat and read until we boarded the plane , and then sat in my aisle seat next to a young couple who live in Joliet.

I survive the trip. I’m happy to be home. Yet part of me always longs for Vermont.