How the Bankers Stole Christmas

Every You down in You-ville

Liked Christmas a lot.

And the Bankers did too--in New York and Charlotte.

 

The Bankers loved Christmas! The whole Christmas season!

You can ask why. Everyone knows the reason.

It was gift cards and sweaters and HD TVs

American Girl dolls and new shoes and Nintendo Wiis.

 

But I think that the most likely reason of all

May have been that everyone's credit limit was too tall.

 

But, no matter the reason, the gift cards or shoes.

Weeks before Christmas, the Bankers began hating the Yous.

Staring down from their offices with nervous wan smiles

At the vacant shop windows and empty store aisles.

But every You down in You-ville couldn't even afford lunch

From debt load and foreclosure and the big credit crunch.

 

It happened back in September,

If you will remember ...

 

After years of prosperity, the economy tanked.

And now this austerity, it just really stank.

For 28 years, they'd been on a roll.

Now the Yous one by one were living on the dole.

 

"They're not filling the stores!" the Bankers snarled with a sneer.

"We'll never stay liquid. That much is clear."

Then they growled as they watched the DOW Jones keep on dropping.

"We must find a way to keep them all shopping!"

 

But how?

 

Then the Bankers got an idea!

An awful idea

The Bankers got a wonderful awful idea!

 

"We know just what to do!" they laughed with great glee.

And they boarded their jets and flew to D.C.

And as they walked into Congress, they knew they'd receive

An unprecedented 700 billion dollar reprieve.

 

"Help us!" they said in a loud chorus of rings,

"For we are the most awesome of the financial kings!"

 

They reminded Congress, "to give us free rein!

To regulate us now would be completely insane.

We can bring the DOW back to its previous bubble

It's just those stupid Yous who are in all this trouble."

 

Then, they loaded their pockets with taxpayer money.

And flew off to where the climate was sunny.

They would eat escargot in the restaurants of Paris

And fly private jets to the beaches of Nevis.

 

But then as the Bankers sat down and gloated

Their overstuffed egos distended and bloated.

The Yous stood watch as the DOW continued down

And their homes were foreclosed in their very own town.

 

The Bank had taken their houses and credit.

For 28 years, the government had let it.

Secondary derivatives and subprime mortgage rates.

And credit default swaps had sealed the Yous' fates.

 

All through the fall, throughout the long days

All the Yous felt robbed of their 401(k)s.

They sold all they could--a stock market unloading.

But as Christmas approached, there was a sense of foreboding.

 

With no credit to buy and no money to spend

The Yous would be starting a new Christmas trend.

They'd make and they'd bake and they'd learn to buy less

Until the new President could get them out of this mess.

 

For Christmas would come, just without cash

It would come without packaging that went in the trash.

It would come without presents, without ribbons and wrappings

Without tags and tinsel and trimmings and trappings.

 

Then the Yous thought of something really quite daring.

Maybe Christmas, they thought, is about more than sharing.

The holidays, perhaps, are more about caring.

 

As Christmas drew near, the Yous felt in good cheer

And focused their hopes on the New Year.

 

And hope, the Yous realized, the tall and the small,

Could be the very best Christmas present of all.

 

I miss Sarah Palin

Barack Obama is the 44th president of the United States. Hooray! I didn't dare believe it until I saw it on TV. Then again, I didn't dare believe that George W. Bush could be president either.

Almost two weeks after the election, there's a sense of hope in the cold November air, a sense that Captain Hazelwood is no longer -- or will soon no longer be -- at the helm of the S.S. USA, that no matter how strong the storm, Captain Obama will have the wisdom and courage to keep the ship not only afloat but making headway. Assuming he can get the ship off the reef, stop the hemorrhaging, and make repairs.

But I have to say, I miss Sarah Palin. Not as a potential vice presidential candidate but as a daily source of entertainment. In the two months before the election, I awoke every day with a sense of "Oh goodie, what will she do today?!" I couldn't wait to go online, read the news and editorials, watch Keith Olbermann and Jon Stewart, and check out huffingtonpost.com and politico.com and any other website that detailed her every misstep -- her patronizing winks, folksy "you betchas," and her mangled, usually meaningless sentences, although I can't fault her for not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is. Had you asked me, I would have guessed that Bush couldn't even spell the word doctrine, let alone have one.

With what looks like a responsible, thoughtful, wise administration about to step in, what will we have to titter about over dinner? It's like when the neighbors are all behaving, there's no one to center the conversation around -- no "Did you hear what Nancy said to Sue?" or "Jennifer will catch more than a cold if she wears that outfit." With no one's misfortune to gossip about at neighborhood gatherings, we're left to inquire about what's in the stuffed mushrooms and wonder aloud how Joanne makes her azaleas flourish. 

As uncharitable as it is to gossip and titter, let's face it: it's fun, especially when we don't like the people we're tittering about.

So give me a juicy scandal -- a Watergate, a Neiman-Marcus-gate, a Wysteria Lane. As long as it's in the GOP. Or at someone else's house. Meow.

Auto relations

Yesterday, while driving through tourist-filled Manchester, Vermont, the car’s brakes gave out. Pedal to the floor, a guttural noise coming from under the hood, oh sh*t. I didn’t think this happened to 21^st century cars. I shifted into low and steered away from pedestrians.

Fortunately, I was less than a mile from the mechanic’s, the same mechanic who allegedly fixed the worn brakes last week.

I pulled into his lot without rear-ending an Audi wagon, put the car in park, turned off the ignition, and breathed a sigh of relief. I had killed no one, not even myself.

Turns out a caliper screw had come loose, which allowed all the brake fluid to leak out. The mechanic tightened the screw, poured more fluid into the reservoir, and sent me on my way with instructions to call immediately if the brake light came on.

I drove straight to my husband's office and asked to trade cars.

So yes, I’m a complete girl when it comes to car trouble, no doubt because my first car was broken more often than not. This is not how it’s supposed to be. Cars, like marriages, are just supposed to work, especially late-model cars. Yes, they both require regular maintenance and upkeep. But given that, they should function without a hitch. Right? No alternator failure on a cold afternoon in the mountains, or a busted U-joint in rush hour traffic.

It all started after college when I began a 10-year, 100,000-mile relationship with one of the few lemons ever produced by Toyota — a used 1981 Corolla with sunburned blue paint. In the decade I drove this car, I went through two water pumps (one failure requiring a tow truck), three batteries (each guaranteed “for life”), two transmissions (one installed the day I started grad school and cost half my student loan), two clutches, and an alternator, which kindly gave out in the driveway.

I also learned what a distributor vacuum pump does and that if it breaks, the car won’t drive faster than 10 mph. This happened in a blizzard outside Salida, Colorado. I spent the night in a cheap motel, wiled away 6 hours the next day at the Toyota dealer while they couldn’t find the problem, limped home (a one-hour drive that took four), and found a love note from the dealer’s mechanic in the glove box the next day.

Another time, the thermostat broke in Phoenix in June. In 100-degree heat, I drove home to Tucson (a 90-minute drive) with the heat on and windows open.

The car didn’t much care for cold either. If the temperature dipped below 20 degrees, it wouldn't started.

Then there was the valve cover that blew over Vail Pass. Fortunately, the oil light didn’t come on until an hour later when I was only 10 minutes from home. Did I immediately stop as my father had always instructed? Nope. But I did make it home.

And all this after I regularly fed it super unleaded gas and STP, changed its oil every 3,000 miles, purchased a custom-fit dashmat to protect the vinyl from the harsh western sun, and often vacuumed the interior and polished its dull paint. It was like living with a psychotic person who occasionally forgot to take his meds.

After 10 years of torment and tears (often beside the road far from home and long before cellphones), I finally sold the car to a local high school girl who covered the rear bumper with Nine Inch Nails stickers, and I was able to afford a 1991 Subaru wagon previously owned (and sold by) a Christian family. After Toyota the Terrible, the Blue ‘Ru was as reliable as my father.

Then came the evil Passat. It was the first brand new car I ever owned. But it compromised my trust almost from our first date. Within the first week, the air conditioning button on the dash got stuck on (in November). The dealer replaced it, but I was left to wonder what would go wrong next. Six years later, just about everything had — including the front fairing dropping off from its underbelly as I drove along a dirt road in Vermont. I once left it parked and unlocked overnight on a street in Boston. Come morning, it was still there, right where I'd left it, as if somewhere it had a note to car thieves: "Don't steal me, you'll regret it."

I finally outright refused to drive it after the STOP, BRAKE FAULT light flashed red on the dashboard, and no one could figure out why, not even the dealer who charged us over $500 despite fixing nothing. We traded it for a Toyota Prius, a cute little car that looks like a hamster. It gets the garage now (although this comfortable parking spot never did much for the Passat). A year into the relationship, the Prius still has my trust.

But the Prius has become Andy’s car, given its good gas mileage and his daily 62-mile commute. And I am left with the seven-year-old Highlander and its suspicious brakes. Maybe what it needs is a name — something like Goldie or Rusty or Bob. Would it feel like part of the family then? And thus less inclined to carry us to our deaths?

Or is this yet another relationship destined for the junk heap? 

Does anybody know what's going on?

A-hem. Excuse me. Yes, over here. (Furtive look around to see if anyone is eavesdropping.) Could you explain the financial crisis to me?

You see, I’ve done the required reading (New York Times and AP stories), and I’ve even done the bonus reading (editorials, Newsweek analyses), and I’ve also listened to the network news analysts. I have investments in both stocks and bonds, and I don’t glaze over or tune out when I meet with our financial planner.

But I don’t get it. And like high school kids in chemistry class who don’t dare admit that the chapter on atomic orbitals is confounding, I’m guessing that I'm not the only one who doesn’t get how it will affect us, the middle-class consumers and taxpayers.

Yes, I understand that there are people who bought houses far beyond their means (like the woman interviewed on CNN last week who makes $10/hour as a hair stylist yet bought a $495,000 house on Long Island), and I understand that many folks are mired in credit card debt. I understand that real estate has tanked, so have sympathy for those who have to sell their houses right now. And I know that, should the market stay the same, I might be able to afford a Winnebago in my retirement but not gas to drive it. And my daughter's education fund? It might cover text books.

I have a slim grasp of what hedge funds and derivatives are, and I get the rudiments of Wall Street — the buying and selling of stock as a way for corporations to raise capital. But the rest of what Wall Street does seems like magic — or dark magic — where the magician waves his wand and literally pulls money out of a hat.

It hasn’t really hit me yet what the economy’s implosion will do to my daily life. I can still buy food and pay my bills. I still have a few writing assignments. My daughter gets on the school bus each morning and returns each afternoon. I can buy gas for my car and bread at the bakery. So the economic crisis feels like this abstract thing out there — like a hurricane that’s affecting another part of the country. But which part? And what kind of damage is it causing? And will it soon show up here?

If I knew this, then maybe I would have understood what Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson planned on doing with that $700 billion. Exactly who received this money? And by that, I mean the name of the company and/or entity, and the name of the individual in charge. And what are they going to do with it?

I vaguely understand that it is supposed to free up credit, so people and companies could borrow money. But at this point, I don’t anticipate needing a loan in the near future. So is my ship still in danger of sinking? Or will I remain afloat, only having to navigate choppy water?

And what exactly is happening to the people who got us into this mess — the well-paid financiers and “creative thinkers” who kept pulling money out of the hat even though they knew there was nothing behind it? Like, a-hem, Mr. Paulson himself, former Goldman Sachs CEO whose net worth has been projected at around $700 million. I don’t see him throwing $10 million into the bailout kitty. If we could round up 7,000 of his Wall Street cohorts, there’s the $700 billion right there.

I wish someone would write, “Economic Crisis for Real People.” A lot of us might benefit. Maybe the bailout package would have passed Congress. Or maybe we, the well-informed voters, would have insisted that the bill be drafted in a different form in the first place.

But who am I to say? Maybe I’m just the dumb kid sitting in the back of the class.

You see, I’ve done the required reading (New York Times and AP stories), and I’ve even done the bonus reading (editorials, Newsweek analyses), and I’ve also listened to the network news analysts. I have investments in both stocks and bonds, and I don’t glaze over or tune out when I meet with our financial planner. 

But I don’t get it. And like high school kids in chemistry class who don’t dare admit that the chapter on atomic orbitals is confounding, I’m guessing that I'm not the only one who doesn’t get how it will affect us, the middle-class consumers and taxpayers.

Yes, I understand that there are people who bought houses far beyond their means (like the woman interviewed on CNN last week who makes $10/hour as a hair stylist yet bought a $495,000 house on Long Island), and I understand that many folks are mired in credit card debt. I understand that real estate has tanked, so have sympathy for those who have to sell their houses right now. And I know that, should the market stay the same, I might be able to afford a Winnebago in my retirement but not gas to drive it. And my daughter's education fund? It might cover text books. 

I have a slim grasp of what hedge funds and derivatives are, and I get the rudiments of Wall Street — the buying and selling of stock as a way for corporations to raise capital. But the rest of what Wall Street does seems like magic — or dark magic — where the magician waves his wand and literally pulls money out of a hat.

It hasn’t really hit me yet what the economy’s implosion will do to my daily life. I can still buy food and pay my bills. I still have a few writing assignments. My daughter gets on the school bus each morning and returns each afternoon. I can buy gas for my car and bread at the bakery. So the economic crisis feels like this abstract thing out there — like a hurricane that’s affecting another part of the country. But which part? And what kind of damage is it causing? And will it soon show up here?

If I knew this, then maybe I would have understood what Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson planned on doing with that $700 billion bailout. Exactly who received this money? And by that, I mean the name of the company and/or entity, and the name of the individual in charge. And what are they going to do with it?

I vaguely understand that it is supposed to free up credit, so people and companies could borrow money. But at this point, I don’t anticipate needing a loan in the near future. So is my ship still in danger of sinking? Or will I remain afloat, only having to navigate choppy water?

And what exactly is happening to the people who got us into this mess — the well-paid financiers and “creative thinkers” who kept pulling money out of the hat even though they knew there was nothing behind it? Like, a-hem, Mr. Paulson himself, former Goldman Sachs CEO whose net worth has been projected at around $700 million. I don’t see him throwing $10 million into the bailout kitty. If we could round up 7,000 of his Wall Street cohorts, there’s the $700 billion right there.

I wish someone would write, “Economic Crisis for Real People.” A lot of us might benefit. Maybe the bailout package would have passed Congress. Or maybe we, the well-informed voters, would have insisted that the bill be drafted in a different form in the first place.

But who am I to say? Maybe I’m just the dumb kid sitting in the back of the class.

Treasure hunting

I hate to shop. Never liked it. Just ask my mother. 

Whenever we visited my grandmother in Boston — traveling from our home in the hinterlands of Vermont — my mother would drag me and my sister on day-long shopping expeditions to Filene's or R.H. Stearns, where she would sequester us in a small dressing room while she tried on what seemed like 50 dresses at a time. It was more boring than church.

Worse, she rarely wore the items that she purchased. I remember one particular dress — dark blue and resembling a Naval officer's uniform — that cost $98 (in 1974) at Stearns. She wore it five times (I counted). Or the 100 percent polyester pantsuit in a gray/brown floral print, which belongs in the Worst Dressed section of the Fashion Hall of Fame, along with the patent leather go-go boots to match, all from Filene’s. She might have gotten away with it on the streets of New York. But in Vermont? It looked like a costume.

Not surprisingly, my sense of fashion now tends toward the practical (boring). If a pair of capris and a shirt can’t be worn on a bike as well as to a business meeting, they aren’t worth buying.

Which makes it hard to explain the allure of TJMaxx, the fashion-for-less department store that sits in a corner of downtown Rutland. At least once a season, I find myself wandering the aisles and digging for bargains in not just women's clothing but also in housewares, linens, picture frames, and kids' toys. It's the first stop on the Procrastination Express. 

What makes it so enticing? Does it spark the latent hunter-gatherer in me? Is finding a softshell Patagonia jacket for $49.99 — hiding amongst the women's pajamas — like coming across a rare Goji berry in the forest?

Or is hunting for bargains just a game? A treasure hunt for grown-ups: Patagonia capris for $19.99, Lole Bermuda shorts on the clearance rack for $10, hand-milled lavender soap from Provence for $4.99, a Le Creuset Dutch oven regularly $250 marked down to $49.99, kids' Levis with rhinestone-capped rivets for $14.99, Waterford crystal candleholders for $12.99. 

It feels like plundered booty.

So if Andy asks me what I did today, I won’t admit that I wasted time. Instead, I’ll say I went treasure hunting.

Handbags and windbreakers

My friend Nigel, who lives in New Zealand, always enjoys pointing out the amusing differences between American English and the King's English (or is it now the Queen's?). In England and its former colonies, a bathroom is a place where people bathe, while a toilet (water closet, loo ...) is where we perform necessary anatomical eliminations.

He has also reminded me that what I refer to as a sweater is in fact called a jumper.

Then, on a blustery day, when I announced that I had forgotten my windbreaker, he chuckled and said that a windbreaker in Britain is someone who suffers from flatulence (and thus might require the loo?). In proper English, my nylon jacket is called a wind cheater.

Most recently, he responded to my purse blog with a more ominous tale of linguistic misinterpretation.

"In the English-speaking world, what you call a purse, we call a handbag," he wrote via email. "A purse is a wallet-like thing in which notes (bills), credit cards, and (more rarely these days) coins are kept. Women keep their purses in their handbags."

He then recounted a story about a New Zealand woman who was held-up at gunpoint in Gotham by a man who demanded that she hand over her purse. She opened her handbag and frantically rummaged around in it for her purse.

"Gimme your f**n purse!" the mugger screamed.

"I'm looking for it," she screamed back.

The thief then snatched her handbag and ran off with it, "leaving it to observers and later the cops to explain to the woman that she was very lucky that this linguistic misunderstanding hadn't got her shot," wrote Nigel, "for it's likely that the thief would have thought she was rummaging in her purse for a gun and not that she was searching for her purse in her handbag!"

Imagine if the thief had demanded her windbreaker.

Purses

I need a new purse. My current bag is an over-the-shoulder or strap-in-your-hand hybrid, and it doesn’t do either well. So I tend to leave it flopped on the floor wherever I go, and something invariably falls out of its outside pocket. Like the car keys.

But to buy a new purse is to condone this particular accessory. And I don’t. I don’t even like the name. Never have. You can’t say purse without squinching up your lips. Purse. It rhymes with terse. A purse is what a crotchety old woman carries looped over her arm, held tight. Like a weapon. Or a suitcase-sized satchel hauled about by a harried mother who needs to have at her immediate disposal any number of items: tissues, pens, a sweater, mirror and comb, three shades of lipstick, a daily planner from 2005, a dented half-drunk water bottle, and a three-course meal complete with silverware.

I do not want to be either of these women. I want to be footloose and purse-free, able to shove my driver’s license, credit card, and $20 in one pocket and chapstick in the other and walk out the door.

To carry more implies that others depend on me: “Don’t look at me! Carry your own damn Kleenex.”

And to carry a handbag looped over one arm ties up that arm from useful activity. Ever tried steering a bike with a bag dangling from your arm?

My purse-carrying days began slow and grudgingly. In my 30s, I purchased a fanny pack and stuffed it with my wallet, chapstick, and a checkbook, Post-It notepad and a pen. Then I found a cute canvas over-the-shoulder carpet-bag-looking tote at a funky store in Ouray, Colorado, and decided it looked more dignified. I put in it the contents of my fanny pack, plus a newly acquired cellphone and Palm Pilot.

And then I had a child.

My purse became an Eagle Creek backpack-slash-diaper-bag. We could have survived for a week on a deserted island with what was stored in that bag, and probably for two weeks if you didn’t mind pinching cracker crumbs from the seams.

Now that Sam is almost 8, I’m back down to a normal-sized purse. I bought a leather Coach backpack-style version a few years ago, thinking that the leather and the designer name would give the illusion of respectability.

But it soon became spattered with milk (from baby bottles smuggled into movie theaters and restaurants) and required too much maneuvering in winter to get it over both shoulders while wearing a Parka. So I ditched it for the over-the-shoulder or strap-in-your-hand model. I purchased it for too much money from Title IX Sports, the athletic-mom outfitter. In my mind this made it less of a purse and more of a “lifestyle accessory.”

But it too is proving annoying. And I am forced to realize that I am the dispenser of Kleenex and Purell, money and gum, chapstick and cough drops. And when my cellphone rings, I need to be able to find it. What if it’s the school nurse calling? Or the police?

Perhaps I just need to give my handbag a new name. Like Seinfeld, I’m not carrying a purse. I’ve got a “European Carry-All.”

And with it slung over my shoulder, I’ll pretend I’m walking the Champs Elysees in Paris.

“Vous faire a besoin d’un tissue, ma petite enfant?”

Murderer in the basement

If and when I get skin cancer, I should remember today.

I skied at Pico. It was one of those classic spring days, the kind that feel like winter’s ransom. The sky was blue with a few swaths of cirrus; the sun and a south breeze warmed the air just enough that the snow’s surface softened, but not to the point of turning the snow to gloppy mashed potatoes. And the turns we made in the snow after the hour-plus hike up the mountain reminded me of why I love to ski. When I need a mental trip to my happy place, skiing Pico today could be it.

The only downside to the day — besides the hike up with skins stuck on our skis (which in my book isn’t a downside at all; the exercise is the reason we’re there) — was that I forgot to wear a baseball hat. I had slathered my face with SPF 45, but after five months of keeping my face hidden under hats, scarves, neck gators, and jacket collars, it’s hard to think of the sun as a bad thing.

As we started hiking at 12:30 p.m. — melanoma’s cocktail hour — I realized that we would be staring straight into the sun for the next hour and 15 minutes, never mind the rays reflecting off the bright snow. Well, I reasoned, it’s too nice to head home.

At least if I do get skin cancer — and I very much hope I don’t — I can look back over the past 40-plus years and remember days like today. Or the eight winters spent in Colorado where every weekend was spent skiing at a different resort. Or 12 years racing my bike in the west, sometimes spending up to six hours in the saddle as we rode across the desert, our sweat long ago having washed away whatever sunscreen we remembered to apply at dawn. Or even childhood summers spent in the town pool or swamping metal canoes in the lake at summer camp. Like a really bad hangover, at least it will have been fun that led me to that state.

If only we earned all our illnesses, rather than just contracting them for no good reason. We could rationally weigh the costs and benefits of our actions. Certainly some habits predispose us to illnesses. My weird Aunt Anne smoked eight packs a day and died of lung cancer.

But what about my friend Wendy? She contracted thyroid cancer several years ago, but as far as I know, she eats well and exercises regularly. She’s smart, funny and just goofy enough to be an interesting person. So it’s not like I can say, “Well, duh, if you didn’t so much bacon, then maybe you wouldn’t be in this predicament.”

Despite regular tests, her doctors, so far, have been unable to find the source of her cancer. So in a sense, she and her family — her husband and two kids — are living with the equivalent of a murderer in the basement. They know he’s there, but they just can’t find him, nor do they know how he got there. So they go about their daily lives trying not to think about him.

Maybe we all have murderers in our basements. And maybe I let mine in on a nice sunny day when my skis cut through the corn snow like butter.

But I try not to think about it. Why ruin a beautiful sunny spring day? Or even a dreary one for that matter.

And next time, I’ll remember my hat.

Psychotic Boyfriends

Spring is finally showing signs of arriving in Vermont. The crocuses are poking up their brave little heads, and the snow banks are melting, leaving behind their glacial loads of road grit and grime on the lawn. Yesterday, it was almost 60 degrees — the first time it has been that warm since ... since I can't remember when. Last October, maybe?

But no sooner have I washed and put away my winter parka and folded up my scarf, it’s back to blustery and cold, with a north wind beating back any warmth from the sun's rays. And what’s this? Snow in the forecast for Friday?

It makes me feel as if I'm dating a psychotic boyfriend. For no apparent reason, he's suddenly friendly and warm, making me forget completely about the dark days of winter when he was sullen and mean. He even gives flowers on these days. When perfect spring days arrive, I feel like dancing in the street. Throw open the windows! Let’s have a party!

But Psychotic Boyfriend throws these days at us just often enough (which isn’t anywhere near often enough) to allow us to weather the bad days — the days when it snows in May or the rain blows sideways and the furnace can’t possibly take the chill out of the air. These are the days that Psychotic Boyfriend has not taken his medication. It’s a wonder anyone puts up with his behavior.

Just as I'm threatening to walk out — to move south or west or to remote Pacific atolls where the sun always shines — Psychotic Boyfriend softens his blows, turns sunny and warm again, and cons me into sticking around. The earth radiates warmth, the grass turns green, the daffodils finally bloom, the air smells like spring. Now this is more like it. I even feel like inviting the neighbors over for a beer.

For over a decade, I lived out west, where the weather was much more even-tempered — excluding the occasional tornado. I didn’t have to drop everything on a nice day just to get outdoors. There was always the weekend, when the sun would almost always continue to shine. But while living there, I dated an actual psychotic boyfriend, who on a perfectly sunny day would verbally attack me for something — that I didn’t make enough money, that I wasn’t ambitious enough, that I didn’t cook enough. I stuck with him for over three years, living for those really good days when we would climb three 14,000-foot peaks in a day, or mountain bike Moab’s White Rim trail.

I finally dumped the real psychotic boyfriend and realized that I could still climb 14-ners and do long mountain bike rides without the mental anguish. I traded him in for a place where the weather is psychotic and the boyfriend (now husband) is not. Although I would dearly love to live where the sun shines more days than not, we are (I’m slowly realizing) not moving.

If this is the sacrifice I must make — a balanced man for unbalanced weather — then I guess I can’t put the parka away quite yet.

-----

In 1876, Mark Twain gave a speech entitled “The Weather.” In it, he said, “I reverently believe that the Maker who made us all makes everything in New England but the weather. I don't know who makes that, but I think it must be raw apprentices in the weather-clerk's factory who experiment and learn how, in New England, for board and clothes, and then are promoted to make weather for countries that require a good article, and will take their custom elsewhere if they don't get it.”

I’m so excited! ... (not)

I was cashing a check at my bank today and noticed that a recent merger had brought not only a new name to the institution, but a new slogan as well. My old Factory Point Bank — a name that implied proletariat values and good honest labor — had become the regional-sounding Berkshire Bank.

And now, on the wall over the tellers’ windows, in big gold letters it reads: “Welcome to Berkshire Bank, America’s Most Exciting Bank.”

I stood there feeling somewhat alarmed. I don’t want my money in an exciting bank. I want my bank to be staffed by staid, suit-wearing executives who view the slightest hundredth-of-a-point change in interest rates with great concern. I want my money cared for by men and women who sip tea and watch the Nightly Business Report.

“America’s Most Exciting Bank” makes it sound as if the Berkshire Bank employs roller coaster fanatics who want to take my money on a similar ride, who thought Enron was an excellent investment opportunity, and who speculate on real estate in Mideast countries.

Excitement in banking gives off a whiff of embezzlement, the savings and loan debacle, and the stock market crashing. It’s like your dentist promising “dental thrills.” Some institutions and occupations should simply not be exciting.

Standing at the teller’s window, I had to fight the impulse to withdraw all my money and run from the bank yelling, “Stop the ride! I want to get off!”

I would prefer having my money in a bank that promises “A Passion to Perform” (Deutsch Bank), or that it’s the “Bank of Opportunity” (Bank of America), or even one that tells me “You’re Richer Than You Think” (Canada’s Scotiabank), which I would be had I converted my American dollars to Canadian a few months back.

Or even “America’s Most Boring Bank.” At least then it wouldn’t sound as if I need Dramamine — or Valium — every time I deposit a paycheck.

Up up and away

I hate to fly. Which is a problem given that part of my income comes from travel writing.

It’s not a fear of flying. I actually do love to fly. It’s the way that traveling via commercial airline has become torture.

I used to love air travel. I loved airplanes and airports and anything related to aviation. I even wrote a high school term paper on the history of aviation. When we flew to England in 1972 on a BOAC 747 from Montreal, I was so excited that I couldn’t sleep the night before. I was nine, and this was the biggest adventure I had ever had. I didn’t care where we were going. We could have flown in circles and landed back in Montreal (something I did last year, in fact, but was far less giddy about). I was just so excited to be flying in an airplane. Finally. And a jet no less! The biggest jet they had ever made.

I remember how it felt as the 747 rumbled down the runway, my back pushed into the seat from the acceleration of those four big engines. I remember the cabin gently pitching up and the feeling of weightlessness as the plane’s wheels lifted off the tarmac. I remember the disappointment that we were stuck in the four middle seats too far from a window to really see the world grow small beneath us. But it was a night flight, so it didn’t really matter anyway.

It was glamorous to fly back then. Exotic. Adventurous. There was enough security to know that we were special — that with whom and on what we were traveling was important enough to protect, not that we were the potential threat.

I didn’t fly again until spring break 1983 — sophomore year in college. I flew People Express to Norfolk, Virginia, to visit a friend who lived in a more southerly clime.

But I became stranded in Newark, the airline’s hub. A helpful gate agent found me and several of my fellow travelers a flight from LaGuardia instead — a cab ride away. Adding to the drama, the cab rear-ended another vehicle on the ride over, but somehow we made it. This was, apparently, what low-cost deregulated travel was all about.

And so it has become, even on legacy airlines. Flying back from Newfoundland last winter, my flight to Boston was canceled due to weather. After much tapping on her keyboard, the gate agent presented me with my new itinerary: the same flight but two days later. Had I not rushed back to the house that I had rented with some friends (who still happened to be there), logged onto the Internet, Skyped Air Canada’s 800 number, waited on hold for one hour and 58 minutes, and listened to the same on-hold soundtrack set on a continuous cycle for the entire duration, I might still be there.

Instead, I found flights routed through two different airports and actual free seats on those flights, making it home an entire day before I would have even taken off had I followed the gate agent’s plan.

Then there’s the issue of seating. It used to be a random surprise where we would end up sitting on an airplane (and on Southwest Airlines, it still is). Front or back of the plane, aisle or hopefully window, as I still like the bird's eye view.

But now, for the pleasure of sitting near the front — thereby giving us a shred of hope of making our connection in the likely event that the flight is delayed — it costs extra.

When I booked a $215 roundtrip ticket on Northwest to Dallas last May, I was only given the option of reserving a middle seat. “Must already be a full flight,” I thought. But when I checked in at the airport, I optimistically hit “change seat” on the self-service kiosk’s monitor. Hark! There were aisle and window seats available, and near the front! But not unless I forked over another $15 per flight. I upgraded on the first leg so that I had a better chance of making the 40-minute connection in Detroit, which turned out to be a sprint.

And what’s with these short layovers? When flying to/from more remote airports, say Boise or Burlington, it’s either four hours or 40 minutes. And the connecting flight is almost guaranteed to be two concourses away. How do non-athletic people travel by air? How would my 84-year-old mother make it from United’s gate C31 at O’Hare to gate F4 in the allotted 40 minutes, which becomes more like 20 after unloading from the back of the plane?

I had to make this exact gate change last week, but with only 10 minutes to spare. I workout regularly. But by the time I reached F4 and my flight to Calgary — heart pounding, lungs gasping for air, ski boot bag and computer-laden briefcase swinging wildly from my shoulders, sweat soaking my shirt (the same shirt I would have to wear for the next 48 hours in the likely event that my luggage wouldn’t made the flight) — I looked so bedraggled that the flight attendant parted with a bottle of water. For free.

When I did arrive in Calgary and found my luggage sitting on the baggage carousel, I couldn't believe it. It was an aviation miracle. On at least a quarter of the flights I take these days, I am relieved of the convenience of my luggage.

This time, it was my friend Hilary’s turn, and she was not amused. Her luggage had not arrived despite the fact that her connecting flight had come into O’Hare’s gate F3 (immediately adjacent to the Calgary flight at F4). “Your bag is in Denver,” is what the customer service person told her when she filed a claim, as if this statement would reassure her.

It’s as if we’re flying Aeroflot, without the option of bribing baggage handlers. I have skied in other people’s jackets, used their toothpaste and contact lens solution, worn the same outfit to meetings and dinners, dried my socks with the hotel hair dryer, and tried to style my hair using my fingers and hotel conditioner.

At what point will we shout, “Enough"?

If a restaurant treated us this badly, we would never patronize it again. “Ah, madam, we have a lovely table for you here,” the host would say, showing us to a table squashed in the corner near the dishwasher with nothing but a stale roll offered and canned pasta salad. Then the bill would come: $300. Bon appetite!

In this case, we can always try another restaurant. Or make our own pasta salad. We can’t fly — or even move quickly — to another part of the world without colluding with the airlines that insist on torturing us. Deregulation has fueled our wanderlust, and it’s tough to be grounded, even if it’s self-imposed.

Not that any of this is new. In 1984, again on People Express, my backpack went missing. I was en route back to college after a wonderful summer working in Glacier National Park. Inside my pack were waterlogged hiking boots, sodden during one last hike the day before I left, and a bag of dirty laundry, including my entire collection of underwear, save the pair I was wearing.

I filed a claim at the People Express baggage services office, then hitched a ride to school with a roommate. I had a few clothes in storage that I could wear.

A month later, someone at the local bus stop called. My backpack had arrived (and mysteriously been delivered there). Inside were moldy boots and musty clothes, and on the outside hung a baggage tag written in what looked like Dutch. My backpack had apparently had more of an adventure than I had.

If this is where airlines are headed — to bankruptcy along with People Express — perhaps next time I’ll fly cargo.

Give me an H! Give me an O!

In September, we finally relented and let Samantha sign up for cheerleading. Or rather, Andy relented. I was OK with it from the time she expressed interest in it two years ago.

We had been reading off a newspaper flyer about all the kids’ activities offered by the city rec department: soccer (spoken with a hopeful voice), rock climbing, T-ball, gymnastics, cheerleading, ... . Samantha jumped at the word as if she had known what cheerleading was since birth. She was five at the time, and Andy said absolutely, positively, unequivocally no.

In truth, Samantha is a born cheerleader. She’s naturally loud — voted “loudest camper” at summer day camp this year — prone to spells of jumping around with arms flailing, and attracted to skimpy, sparkly outfits.

But the very idea of the sport, if I can call it that, gives Andy fits. He seems to think that eight weeks of cheerleading will start our 7-year-old down a career path to waitressing at Hooters. Or on the payroll of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders.

I, on the other hand, see the rec center program as an avenue to get cheerleading out of her system before an age where wearing tight outfits and cheering on the sidelines for boys to score a T-O-U-C-H-D-O-W-N really is loaded with sexual innuendo. Primary school cheerleaders aren’t sexual objects. They’re cute. Sort of. And why not let her see what it’s all about? To say no now could lead to her harboring the urge for a decade, then dropping out of college to pursue her unfulfilled cheerleading dream.

When I was a kid, cheerleading was the only activity available for girls, at least until high school, when field hockey and cross-country running were added to the menu. We didn’t even have to ask. Our mothers signed us up, and every Saturday in the fall, in their dresses and high-heel shoes, they drove us to the flood plain that served as an elementary school football field.

We thought our cheers actually helped the boys and that they would look over and see how cute we were in our pigtails and short skirts. We weren’t destined for careers at Hooters. We knew one day we were supposed to date those boys, but only if they asked first. We were housewives in training — attractive and supportive, cheering on the boys in their endeavors, without anyone — except our mothers — cheering our own.

By the time we were in high school, only the cool girls were picked to be cheerleaders. And the squad was as much a dating pool for the football team as it was a cheerleading group. With thick glasses, good grades, and no boobs, I was far from cool and way off the cheerleader radar. Not that I wouldn’t have jumped at the chance if asked.

Then my sophomore year, I went to prep school. Exeter had been all boys until 1970, and it never seemed to occur to anyone to start a cheerleading squad once girls were a part of campus life — probably because girls who win the math prize in public school aren’t typically the type to swoon after the quarterback. (And if we do swoon, we do so privately. No sense in setting ourselves up for public humiliation.)

At football games, a couple of potential theater majors with bull horns led the whole student body — or at least the students who attended the games — in loud intellectually elitist cheers such as “Pursue them, pursue them, make them relinquish the ball,” or the more low-brow “What do we do? Screw the blue,” for the end-of-season big game against rival Andover with its blue-and-white team colors.

Cheerleading wasn’t an option, and somehow this made us equal to the boys in those early Title-IX days. We could play volleyball, soccer, do crew, swim, even play ice hockey. We weren’t housewives in training. We were expected to attend college, grad school, get a job and make our way in the world. I wasn’t going to stand around and cheer for some boy. Unless he cheered for me too.

Fortunately, Samantha’s cheerleading career was over after only four weeks. Too much standing around, she said. “I want to play soccer next year,” she announced the other night. She had discovered it in gym class and liked all the running around.

I know our days of skimpy outfits and sparkly eye shadow are far from over. But at least she’s learning that it’s more fun to participate than watch, and to be cheered rather than to cheer.

First law of thermodynamics

My friend Nigel called the other day. He was in the San Francisco airport en route home to New Zealand after having climbed Mt. Rainier outside Seattle. “I crested the rim of the summit crater,” he recounted, “and I felt I couldn’t go on.”

A 15-year-old memory that had been buried deep in my cortex — beneath memories of child birth, mothering panic, and hellacious airplane trips with an active toddler — came back in pieces, as if I were an amnesiac. I suddenly remembered that view from the crater rim over to the actual summit — the highest part of the crater rim — of Rainier, a 14,410-foot dormant volcano. I remember it seemed infinitely far away across the snow-filled crater floor beneath a deep blue sky.

Nigel made it, he said, just as I had, slogging behind my then-boyfriend. As Nigel talked, I sat on our screen porch, phone in hand, and was transported back briefly to that summit with the glorious view of Seattle, Puget Sound, the Olympic Range, Mt. Baker, the stump of Mt. St. Helens. I had been there just a decade earlier.

“So do you have any adventures planned?” asked Nigel, a globe-trotting political science professor whom I met in 1994 while climbing 18,510-foot Mt. Elbrus, also a dormant volcano, in southern Russia.

I looked down at the small roll of fat bulging over the waistband of my shorts and suddenly felt like a drop-out. Where once I would have replied, “Yes! I’m entered in the Leadville 100 mountain bike race in a month,” or “We’re trying to climb all of Colorado’s 14,000-foot peaks this summer,” I replied: “Uh, we’re going to Maine next week; I might play a little tennis.”

There was a detectable pause on the other end of the phone. Nigel once told me that I was one of the fittest people he knew. I didn’t just enter the Leadville 100. I won it. I once climbed five of Colorado’s 14-ners in a weekend. And when Nigel and I climbed Elbrus, I didn’t just summit it. I was the first one in our group of five — all men — to make it. Then, with time to spare that afternoon, I skipped up its 18,442-foot sub-peak.

Now here I sat 13 years later with a goal of playing a little tennis, maybe walking on the beach or doing a 20-mile bike ride. And I felt like two people: the Previous Peg who knew what blood tasted like in her lungs, and the current version — also known as Samantha’s mom — who would like nothing more than eight solid hours of sleep and an afternoon reading a good book without hearing the word, “MOM!” shouted every five minutes.

As Nigel talked about his climb up the snowfields and glaciers of Rainier, I started wondering if Previous Peg would ever return, even for just a brief visit. Will I ever find the motivation — or desire — to push physical limits again? Or am I destined to watch my tummy roll grow larger, like tree rings building out each year?

I’d like to think that version one will return, once Samantha is older. If for no other reason than to still fit into my clothes. For now, I have slid into the role of Samantha’s mom, and I don’t have the energy to be both people. It seems as if the first law of thermodynamics applies to parenting—that energy is neither created nor destroyed, it just changes form. While some days it feels as if all our energy has been utterly destroyed, I realize it has simply been used to create a stubborn, strong-willed, six-year-old whose current life goal is to become a horse rider.

Although I always thought I would pine for adventure, I don’t. At least most of the time. Friends no longer call inviting us on bike rides or backpacking trips. I still enjoy riding for a couple of hours or going for a short hike with only adults.

But to go out for too long feels selfish, as if I’m disrupting the family equilibrium — sucking up all the energy for my own personal good, when it’s Samantha who needs it so she won’t wither.

In truth, Andy and I have both withered. But I like to think of it as lying dormant.

Camping

As a kid, I hated camping. Camping meant bugs. Camping meant no TV. Camping meant we weren’t cool enough to stay at Howard Johnson’s.

Other kids got to spend their vacations swimming in HoJo’s indoor pools and eating hot fudge sundaes in the restaurant chain’s turquoise green booths. We spent ours under the roof of a green canvas L.L. Bean tent, the design of which hadn’t changed since George Washington’s encampment at Valley Forge. And we ate whatever my mother could cook on the two-burner Coleman stove, set up on a picnic table at whatever campground was the site of that summer’s vacation. Mostly, we ate spaghetti.

Once it was pitched, which took the better part of an afternoon, the tent was spacious enough for four to sleep side-by-side. My parents each slept on air mattresses with matching flannel L.L. Bean sleeping bags, while my sister and I made do with cotton mattresses dug from the musty alcoves of my grandparent’s attic. These were covered with old muslin sheets and scratchy, moth-eaten, wool Navy blankets once used by my grandfather during World War I.

But our vacation home was not entirely without luxury. In an uncharacteristic moment, my father — a man who takes his Scottish heritage seriously — splurged on the tent’s matching green awning that made it look as if it had a porch. If it rained during our camping expeditions — which it invariably did—my father would put on a dark blue wool balaclava, sit in a lawn chair under the awning, and read Chekhov. Or worse, he would fish. We were expected to do the same.

My mother would shut herself in the car and read back issues of The New Yorker while my sister and I threw ourselves in despair onto our itchy wool beds.

“I hate camping,” my sister said over and over again. I moaned in agreement.

By far the worst part of the whole experience was the fly-infested outhouses from which emanated the worst smell I had ever encountered. While our parents read, my sister and I would see how close we could get to the offending structure before the odor overpowered us, then scurry away. The very thought of setting foot inside it induced constipation. Only once, when I was eight and we were driving cross-country to see friends in Minnesota, did we ever stay at a campground with flush toilets. That campground also featured a swimming pool, tether-ball, and four-square court, plus a bunch of other kids to play with. It was in Indiana, and I didn’t want to leave.

By our teenage years, we would have sooner done time in prison than gone camping. Camping was boring. Camping was for kids. Camping was barbaric. Camping was beneath us. We required daily showers and regular changes of freshly laundered clothing.

Sometime during college, though, camping became cool. On Friday afternoons in the early fall, we would load a friend’s Ford Bronco with sleeping bags (mine was a North Face bag purchased at EMS with my summer earnings), foam pads, and a two-person tent into which four of us would squeeze. We would head north, where someone always knew someone who owned land in Vermont, although it was never easy to find. I liked it out here, despite the fact that most of the time I was cold, hungry, and not well rested. But we were different than the loafer-wearing, pearl-earring set back on campus.

I liked camping so much that I changed majors — from art history to geology, which I naively assumed was like Camping for Credit.

One summer, the geology department unwisely gave eight of us the keys to a van and a week to reach the required summer field camp 2,000 miles away in Red Lodge, Montana. The goal was to see as much of the country as we could — from Niagara Falls to the Corn Palace in South Dakota to the Grand Tetons — on the $75 our parents had paid the department for gas and whatever other money we had squeezed from their wallets. On that five-day odyssey, we drove west, discovering places most of us had only read about, and pulled over when we were tired — in corn fields and state parks, in town parks and beside the road. It wasn’t exactly camping in the strict sense, more like a cheap way to sleep.

I continued camping even after I was gainfully employed. Yes, it was a cheap way to sleep, but it was the sense of promised adventure that was camping’s allure in early adulthood. A night sleeping in a tent was almost always followed by a hike up one of Colorado’s Rocky Mountains, an all-day mountain bike ride around Utah’s Canyonlands, a raft trip down Class V rapids in West Virginia, or a day spring skiing in New Hampshire’s Tuckerman Ravine.

My camping excursions stopped when Samantha was born. It seemed natural to stop when she was a baby. Who wants to dig for diapers by headlamp? Find the bottle in a cooler at 2 a.m.? Or make a convincing argument that the Big Bad Wolf doesn’t like to live in forests like the one outside the tent’s walls but instead prefers darker evergreen forests in hills where no one in their right mind would never camp ...

But Samantha is almost seven now, and we haven’t incorporated camping back into our summer routine. The bugs have something to do with it. Black flies sense that I am a giant feast, and no level of DEET keeps them at bay. But it’s not like the bugs didn’t swarm me before she was born. It’s just that I’m not willing to put up with the discomfort of camping with no reward. And there’s not much promise for adventure when Samantha asks, “When can we go home?”

Last summer, we tested the waters with a modified backpacking trip to a hut on Mt. Washington in New Hampshire’s Presidential Range — modified because we tried to mitigate whining by driving to the summit, then hiking the 1.5 miles down to the hut. And hut is a misnomer. More like a lodge with remarkably odor-free pit toilets. (This should not have come as a surprise, however, given that one night for three cost over $200.) The place slept 90 in bunk rooms, and Andy, Samantha and I were assigned a triple-decker bunk in a room with five other people. Once the novelty of the bunks wore off, Samantha was too scared to sleep alone and ended up sharing the two-foot-wide mattress with Andy, who had been trying to sleep on the bunk above her. We were all grumpy the next morning, and the only adventure was hiking s-l-o-w-l-y back to the car.

Do we try a bona fide camping trip this year? My enthusiasm is low. But I do want to instill the sense that we are a family that camps, that enjoys the outdoors, and that seeks adventure. Not a family that watches TV. But I don’t want her to hate camping either — to associate it with bugs and bad odors, or think we’re doing it because we’re too cheap to book a room at the Sheraton (which would have cost less than our night in the “hut”).

If we could pitch a tent at Disney World, would she have fonder memories of camping? Or would she just remember that her parents were both very grumpy?

Maybe we should start by camping in the backyard. At least then a clean, odor-free bathroom is only a few steps away.

House guests

After my sister got married, she moved overseas with her husband. With the prospect of free lodging in an exotic land, my mother announced that she and my father would soon visit. For three weeks. 

My new brother-in-law went pale. In the end, my parents stayed for two weeks. And my mother has been the subject of significant ribbing ever since.

Now my parents generally keep their visits to a polite three days. Not that my mother wouldn’t stay longer if she could. My father knows that fish and guests stink after three days ... except when the purchase of plane tickets is involved.

My mother would live with us if we hinted at an invitation. She refers to our guest room as “her” room and seems deeply offended if we tell her that she can’t visit, as if we’ve put her out in the street without a warm coat.

This happened last fall. We were renovating our master bedroom and moved — for six months — into “her” room. She called to announce an impending visit (there is no asking, just announcing), and I told her that there was no vacancy — that we were living in the guest room.

There was a pause, as if she were waiting for me to say, “Oh never mind, you can come. Andy and I will sleep on the futon in the office.”

But horrible daughter that I am, I did not capitulate. They stayed at the local Comfort Inn. I felt guilty. Andy did not.

But there have been other times when saying “I’m afraid that’s an inconvenient time to come,” or simply “No,” hasn’t stopped her. Three years ago, she and my father made plans to fly to England from an airport near our house, not theirs. Yet they failed to advise us of their plans. A friend from Colorado had plans to visit us at the exact time.

Put off by their presumption that mi casa es su casa, I firmly said no, that I would not ask my friend to sleep on the couch (or futon) so they could roost here. I thought that was that. My friend arrived, and when we returned from a day trip, there was my mother sitting at our kitchen table.

“We were too tired to drive home,” she said in a wet-puppy voice.

Andy was outraged. I was mad. My friend felt awkward. I asked them to sleep on the futon, then felt guilty all night.

It’s not that I don’t love my parents. I do. Very much. And I know the sacrifices they made when my sister and I were young — eating fried clams at HoJo’s rather than at a nicer place with table cloths, driving us through freezing rain to reach the orthodontist, listening to us whine and complain through the drudgery of prep school, and fetching our tired selves from college, not to mention paying for it.

It’s just that their visits make me feel as if I’m being drawn and quartered. My parents like to think that they just blend into our lives when they visit. But in truth, it only works best when we — or specifically I — become part of theirs again. I feel torn between my former role as child under their care and my current role as adult with a child now under my care — a child who wants my attention as much as they want it too.

“She certainly runs the house, doesn’t she?” my mother will say in the middle of one of Samantha’s “Grandma-is-visiting” meltdowns.

“She does live here,” I say in Samantha’s defense. I want to have a meltdown too.

Then there’s the fact that we lead a different lifestyle than my parents did when they were in the trenches of raising children. I choose to work, and to exercise, as often as I can. My parents firmly believe that dinner should involve silverware and be on the table at 6 p.m. or shortly thereafter. And they don’t always agree with where I cut corners. My father once announced that he doesn’t consider pizza an adequate dinner entrée.

“What are you planning for dinner tonight?” my mother always asks between bites of cereal. When she was raising children, she always had a dinner plan, and she seems to feel that starvation is imminent if something isn't defrosting by mid-morning, or a grocery list isn't prepared. I usually regard dinner as something that can be pulled together in the 20 minutes before the appointed hour, and sometimes it involves the same cereal she was munching on for breakfast. But I have to say, she has never gone hungry in my home.

When either Andy or I dash off in the evening for a bike ride or game of tennis, my mother gets a worried look and asks, “When will you eat?

“When we get back.”

“It’s not good for you to eat so late,” she replies, still worried.

“It’s not good for me to not exercise,” I insist.

Then there are the comments about parenting style. “You act like you’re running a restaurant,” she chastises when I ask Samantha what she would like for dinner, macaroni and cheese or cous cous and chicken. “Just make her eat what you’re eating.”

Except I don’t know many 6-year-olds who eat take-out Thai food or spinach lasagna. And I refuse to subsist on mac & cheese.

In the hope that she might broaden her view, I point out to my mother that Andy, Samantha and I are reasonably happy and well-nourished. That Andy and I make a decent living and aren’t on the gov’ment dole. That we help the neighbors and the community when we can. And that Samantha doesn’t swing from the chandeliers, play loud violent video games, or yell obscenities out the window.

But perhaps if she did, my parents wouldn’t visit as often.

Large prey

The day after Christmas, Andy announced that he wanted to buy a new TV. Not just any TV but one of those giant flatscreen high-definition TVs that become the focal point of whatever room they lord over.

We didn’t need a new TV. We had two smaller flatscreen TVs in our kitchen and bedroom, and the “main” TV — the one in the so-called TV room — was a perfectly good Sony given to us by my in-laws nine years ago. It measured 27 inches on the diagonal and had a clearer picture than our other two newer TVs. 

While we were visiting my family in Atlanta over the Holidays, Andy, my father, and my brother-in-law were left unattended long enough that they set off on a trip to a local electronics store. Andy was soon captivated by the rows of gigundus televisions with such clear pictures that he could see if Peyton Manning's nose was running and whether his teammates had shaved or not.

“It would be nice to see the football,” Andy told me after announcing his desire to purchase one of these TVs. And not only the TV, but also home theater too, so he could hear the fans cheering all around, as if our couch were in a private box at Lambeau Field. And by ball, he meant any ball — football, baseball, tennis ball.

“You can even see the individual blades of grass,” he claimed, referring to the turf under whatever football game he had been watching while in the store.

“Oh?” I replied. “Why is that important?”

“It’s just such a clear picture.” He was almost giddy, and he isn’t the type to succumb to giddiness.

The conversation then turned to money. When I asked the price, he hedged: “Um, more than we should spend right now.”

With that, I figured we had put the topic to bed. But he was not ready to concede. “It would improve our Super-Bowl-watching experience,” he stated, as if I cared about that annual rite. “And I’ve been waiting for these TVs to come down in price.”

Not long enough, I thought. I just couldn’t understand his desire. Not that I’m immune to shopping impulses. But they normally involve shoes or sweaters at TJ Maxx, items that cost generally less than $50. We’re outdoorsy types, not barca-loungers. For the price of this much-sought-after piece of electronic equipment, we could ski in the Alps for a week.

Then there’s the issue of practicality, and Andy is normally the pinnacle of practicality. We haven’t replaced the toaster oven that he purchased in 1985 because it still works, and he wears shirts he’s owned since college because they still fit and aren’t threadbare. And we drive our cars until the engines are about to blow. Which is about to happen on our VW. At least in my opinion. Andy says that the car is merely temperamental. Fine, but $3,000 would be a nice down payment on a less fickle car.

What was driving my typically budget-conscious husband to drop most of month’s pay on an audio/visual toy? Is it the 21^st century way of bagging large prey?

“Look what I brought home, honey! This should last us through the winter.”

Or is it his need to master something? To put it together, adding its remote control to the flock already roosting on the coffee table, and make it work despite the inherent complexity?

Or is it that Andy, and his male brethren, have, for the most part, been able to hang on to their childhoods more easily than women? And giant HD TVs — and home theater, ATVs, and even fancy lawn tractors — are simply the best toys around. They can get together on Super Bowl Sunday to show off their new toys the way they once gathered in the neighborhood to check out Ralphie’s new Red Ryder Carbine Action 200-Shot, Range Model Air Rifle.

We women, we’re the ones poo-pooing their grand schemes and telling them, “You’ll shoot your eye out.” Our childhoods feel like a lifetime ago, and now our days are consumed by keeping the nest in order, not adorned with expensive electronics. Three grand could go toward a season’s worth of groceries, a car that starts on demand, even Ralphie’s college fund. We kill the joy and feel self-righteous doing it.

When I returned from a business trip in mid-January to find a 46-inch Samsung LCD TV commanding the north wall of the TV room, I realized that I was more jealous than angry at the money “thrown away.” Andy’s inner child is alive and well. He can conceive of buying such big-ticket toys and enjoy them with no remorse.

My inner child left around the time our real child arrived, apparently leaving behind a surly grouch.

As I stood watching Planet Earth on the Discovery Channel’s HD Theater — the neon tropical fish swimming by as if we were on the reef with them — I realized that I miss my inner child.

Should I go looking for her? Or will I find her somewhere on the screen of that big TV?

Beauty or a beast?

Tasked with outfitting myself for a Halloween party, and wishing to build my costume around a pair of rotten teeth purchased a few years ago for just such an occasion, I headed to WalMart.

Half-an-hour later, I had a complete trashy teenager ensemble — purple crushed velvet camisole with copious bust, push-up bra with molded foam cups and itchy lace trim, fishnet pantyhose on sale for $1, big hoop earrings, matching skull-and-crossbones leather-ette armbands, a red wig, and plastic high-heel sandals (la piece de résistance for $5.88). To all this I added a denim mini-skirt that I had sewn from a pair of Levis in 1980. The total cost: $40.

It’s cheap to look cheap.

Samantha, age 6, declared that I looked beautiful. I looked in the mirror and saw one of those women who strut through the midway at the county fair on a Saturday night. Is this who my daughter aspires to be? I find myself hoping that conservative and preppy comes back into vogue before she reaches an age when what she wears will really matters. To her, and to us. Or will she always have a natural attraction to styles that make her parents wince?

When I was young, my mother’s college friend — a woman we knew only as Olga — would send us boxes of clothes that her daughter had outgrown. Olga lived in New York City and was obviously a member of a socioeconomic group that could afford to dress its offspring in miniature versions of the same clothes that the adults wore to the country club and PTA meetings. My mother would open each shipment and ogle over the Pendleton wool plaid pants and camels hair coats.

My older sister and I would cringe, denouncing each garment as ugly, hideous, and something only old ladies would wear. We would sooner wear our pajamas to school than be caught dressed in any of Olga’s daughter’s cast-offs.

Instead, my favorite outfit was a leather-look vinyl mini-skirt, complete with fetching fringe along the hem, and a matching brown vinyl vest, also rimmed with fringe. I remember wearing this outfit as many days in a row as I could, and my mother didn’t seem to mind, probably because the skirt and vest didn’t require much maintenance other than an occasional sponging. My sister owned a similar outfit, except her vest had longer fringe.

But when our appearance was required at a family event in Boston, where my grandmother lived, my mother would intervene in our clothing selections. At least until I was 12, when one fateful day, she threw in the towel. She had taken me to a local department to purchase “something decent to wear” to my weird aunt's funeral. The funeral was scheduled for Trinity Church in Boston, and my mother must have thought a Vanderbilt or Rockefeller might wander in off the street. But we were never close to Aunt Ann, my father’s older sister, and her passing was not an event that I thought warranted a fashion makeover. She had smoked eight packs of cigarettes a day and, little wonder, fell victim to lung cancer. She had also once had a frontal lobotomy back when that was the treatment for the mentally unhinged, and my sister and I were as emotionally close to her as we were to a floor lamp. Except for the floor lamp in my grandmother’s bedroom that turned on and off with a clap of the hands. We preferred its company to just about everyone on my father’s side of the family.

From the racks at Hovey's Department Store, my mother thought the perfect outfit for a spring funeral was a skirt and matching shirt with giant pink roses set against a light teal background. She insisted (insisted) that we buy it. I looked in the dressing room mirror and felt like one of Maria Von Trapp’s stepchildren dressed in a frock fashioned from the villa’s drapes. With hands defiantly on hips and snarly expression on my face, I insisted I would not wear it. Yet my mother bought it anyway. I felt completely and utterly defeated.

Then on the way home, we stopped at Zayre’s (like Ames, only lower quality, if that’s possible). There, I found a beige gauze skirt with matching t-shirt and brown faux leather belt. Now this was me! Wearing this outfit, I could hold my head high, smile at my fellow funeral goers, even chat up a Rockefeller, should one walk into the church vestibule. I'd like to think my enthusiasm convinced my mother to buy this outfit and return the other. In truth, the fact that it cost under $10 (to Hovey's $30) sealed the deal.

After that, my mother rarely forced her tastes upon me, probably because she realized it would cost her less money.

I choose not to fight clothing battles with Samantha. As long as her outfits are climatically correct and not too skimpy, she can wear stripes and flowers, glitter and leopard print. Not that I don’t wince or make comments. But I don’t put up a fight.

I’m confident that, thanks to peer pressure, her tastes will mature. As long as her peers aren't the ladies at the county fair.