You be Jill, I'll be Kelly...Sabrina's up for grabs

If you were a girl and grew up where I did, chances are you played Charlie's Angels at recess. We would gather in the outside stairwell in front of the Boys' Entrance (a relic from when the girls and boys entered through different doors, I suppose) and cast the roles.

Almost everyone wanted to be beautiful Jill, played by Farrah Fawcett on the t.v. show. There would be long queen-bee-ish negotiations resulting in one happy girl and several stomping away in a snit. For some reason (conflict avoidance?), I consistently opted for Kelly, who seemed pretty enough and smart enough but not extraordinarily so on either count. Somehow Sabrina was always the booby (ha!) prize role--was she too brainy or was it the page-boy haircut? Her sharper-edged voice? We would conscript a nearby boy into playing Bosley and we were set to fight crime and, more importantly, to run with our hair flowing behind us, catch boys, and wrap them up with our jump ropes.

But first! I almost forgot the most important part. Someone would recite the opening lines:

Once upon a time there were three little girls

who went to the police academy

and they were assigned very hazardous duties

but I took them away from all that

and now they work for me

my name

is Charlie

And make the all-important, gun-toting pose:

Please tell me I'm not the only one. I think in our young girl minds, we were all three women: the beautiful one, the smart one, the classy one. At least we believed it was in our future, when we reached the magical grown-up years. Probably whole feminist studies dissertations could be written on the messages we received and internalized.

I outgrew Farrah Fawcett as a role model before I left Wilson School (but in jr. high I totally had those sneakers she's wearing in the photo below). Since then I've rarely given her another thought. This isn't an "O Captain, My Captain" moment, really. But her death still makes me kind of sad, albeit in a selfish oh-no-not-my-childhood-icons/I-must-be-getting-old way. She was someone's mom, someone's sweetheart, and she seemed to handle her health ordeal with a great amount of courage.

And I kind of feel bad that she had to go on the same day as MJ. Talk about being upstaged.

That's all I wanted to say.

A kind of postmodern memento mori

and reminder to myself to carpe diem.

It really is a small world...

me, Greg, and Matt making jello on a pretend stove

Once upon a time I lived next to a boy named Greg (no, not that Greg, another one...my life is replete with Gregs) and his two sisters and parents.  Except he always wrote his name Gerg so that's what my family called him.  He and his older sisters, along with my brother Matt, were my favorite people.  We lived in two houses down a dirt lane in a small university town in Utah.  We played in the snow, did lemonade stands, played "it's not nice to fool with Mother Nature" with blankets in the wind, went fishing, and all those other childhood things.  I have a blurry picture of all of us hanging, cocoons in blankets, from my mom's rotating clothesline--a very downscale version of an amusement park ride: 

------------------------------->

Fast forward...oh, 30-something years.

I'm sitting with Gabi having lunch while our kids play on the playground. (She was visiting New England and we arranged to get together. I can't believe I didn't ever blog about that; it was a highpoint of my April.)

Gabi mentions it reminds her of a time she met another one of her blogging friends last year.

G: Do you ever read RochelleT's blog?

A: Hmmm. Yeah. I used to...but I lost the link and it's been a while.  I like her!

G: I met up with her at a park in Logan last summer when I was visiting Utah. She's not from there and she lives in Texas but her husband grew up in Logan. Aren't you from Logan?

A:  Yeah.  I wonder who her husband is (idly thinking there's no way I know him).

G: I can't remember his name but her last name is ...T@11m@dge

A: You're kidding!  Is his name Greg?

G: Yes!

A: I do know him! Gerg! He was one of my favorite childhood friends!

Isn't life grand?

(Hi Greg and Rochelle!)

That's just what we do...

Once my mom was making dinner to take to someone.  Again (insert teenage eyeroll here).  I think I started making the initial squeaks and squawks about "why do they get that?  Can't we just keep it for ourselves? Why..." Or maybe I was a little more tactful and expressed my concern about my mom's busy schedule and did she really have time for this? But I remember she put down her spatula, looked at me and said kindly/firmly "Annie, this is just what we do."

I tucked that one away and have pulled it out now and then.  Who's we?  Women? Mothers? People? Neighbors? Humanity?  And how do we know what to do and what's enough? Make bread?  Have lunch together? Donate an organ? Give spare change?

* * *

You probably already know I'm a fan of writer Kelly Corrigan.  I subscribe to her blog and received a link to a new video today, which led me to another one.  Both (one funny, one poignant) are lovely reminders of just what we (friends/sisters/spouses/fathers.  But, I daresay, especially mothers) do.

I secretly hope we will be friends someday.

Happy Friday!  {I'm heading outside to appreciate our 70 degree weather!}

Maddy in China today: According to the itinerary, she visited the Olympic Park and Bird's Nest and Water Cube.

Attended a dinner with (luckies!) a kung fu demonstration.

Bunking

In the cabin that my grandfather built, there is a bedroom downstairs for the grandparents and then there is an open loft upstairs with...(counting)...seven beds, a mix of doubles and singles, that can sleep eleven or more.  Plus a crib or two.

On summer evenings, all the cousins would be put to bed upstairs at the same time and grandpa would tell a story about Billy Johnson the pioneer boy and Tokonebo his Indian friend.  He would tell it....very...slowly....with many...breaks...so we...would {ideally}...drift off...to....sleep.  Then (if you outlasted Grandpa's storytelling) you could eavesdrop on the grownups and their games for hours into the late evening.  As you can imagine, I gleaned a lot of knowledge from words drifting their way up to the loft: On life, loving, fighting, sex, living, religion, politics, other perspectives, and always humor.

Later, all the grownups would climb the big wooden staircase, find their beds,  (some of them) snore, and sleep.  All of us in one big cozy dorm-style room.

All of this is just to say: I'm a fan of that kind of situation, bunking together. At least in theory.  

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In our current house, we have a strange set-up.  There are two master bedrooms (don't know why...one has a big room + sitting room and the other has a big room + master bath) and two itty bitty bedrooms.  Currently, G and I use the master bedroom with the master bath, the girls each have a tiny bedroom, and Sam uses the "sitting room" for the other master bedroom while we use the room itself as a study/studio/craft/guest room.

I'm itching to shake things up and one option is to have the kids (or at least the girls) move into the other master bedroom, dorm-style.  They have had their own rooms for several years but part of me thinks/wishes that they would be closer if they were sharing a room for these last few years before they move away and do separate things.  But I realize I may be living in my own glowing la-la land where kids make their beds and talk late into the night about sisterly things.

Did you share a room growing up? What are your opinions on bunking together?  In favor? Against?

Pubs & Pogues

A couple of years ago (back when G worked for a British company and I rode his coattails as often as I could when he went there for meetings) we wandered into a pub on a little side street in London.  As a non-British non-drinker, I was always fascinated by the whole pub experience (do I choose where I sit?  do I walk over to the bar and shout my soda order? is someone going to yell at me? and what about the crowd of people lingering outside?  do I just walk up and make conversation? are they already in groups of friends?)  

As you can tell, I overthink things.

This time it was irresistible.  It was the night of the European Football Playoffs  and there was a jolly chaos inside that we couldn't ignore.  So we went in, joined in the happy cheering and jeering, suddenly die-hard English football fans by virtue of pub-adoption. I grinned through the whole jubilant exuberant night and left feeling like I had jumped, Mary-Poppins-and-Burt-style, into another world.  Minus the penguin waiters.

* * *

Last Friday G and I had tickets to the Pogues concert at The House of Blues.  Let's see...Irish folk/punk band in Boston?  In a concert hall with five bars along the interior perimeter?  Think that'll be lively?

I'm pretty sure we were the only sober ones there.

I'm pretty sure lead singer Shane MacGowan was the least sober one there.

I'm pretty sure 85% of the attendees were singing along with the band at the top of their lungs.

It brought back memories of that merry pub experience (multiplied by 10). There aren't any seats at the House of Blues concert venue, which makes for a lot of dancing and interactions. Lots of grown tough burly Irish American men dancing jigs, complete with locking elbows and spinning.  Pretty much like this:

For instance: At one point I was walking on the way back from the loo and a guy put his finger on top of my head. I looked at him quizzically and he and his girlfriend said "spin! spin!" so I did and they all cheered.  (Apparently I was the first who did. I kind of felt like "Norm!" at Cheers).  It was amazing fun.   We laughed a lot--at the dancers, at the manic mood of the whole audience, at the enthusiasm.

And at the same time, a bit of sadness on the underside of the evening.  Looking at addiction's ravages in Shane MacGowan (he looks decades older than his age) you wonder why the extreme lows and destructiveness have to so frequently accompany the joyousness.

{In fact, the Boston Globe called the show "a blended blur of life's emotional extremes: joy, laughter, tears, and sorrow. Beating at the music's clamoring heart were the Pogues, who ultimately left us wondering whether there ever was a band so perfectly, equally suited to playing either a wedding or a wake." } 

Other Pogue favorites:  Fairy Tale of New York, Love You Till The End

photo via MaryElle St. Clare's Flickr page