One for the Road? Bar Cars May Face a Last Call

Taken from the April 20, 2010 edition of The New York Times.

“One for the road?”

Bar cars may face a last call, but Jimmy never let you leave his pub dry, no matter the day or the time or the fact that you can’t barely pull yourself up by the bootstraps to get home to your wife. Or kids, if you have ‘em.

I don’t.

Coming home from Grand Central, I drain four or five whiskeys on the train before pulling into Roseyville, a small, too-perfect town an hour north of the City. I head straight to Jimmy’s—every day—for a few more rounds with the boys. We talk about President Johnson’s politics, our buddies in Vietnam, the new secretary at our office—anything to pass the time, anything to keep us from going home to Bonnie, or Molly, or June, or Barbara.

So here’s to one for the road. I’ll take it.



the article.

The Dandelion King

Taken from the April 20, 2010 edition of The New York Times.


The Dandelion King stood stately before his lawn chair throne, an oversized emerald robe hanging off his seven-year-old shoulders, stick-staff in hand. Poolsey the Beloved sat loyally by his side, tail wagging. With an outstretched neck, his majesty slowly surveyed the land before him, an eight-by-ten plot of earth that sat squarely in a perfect, eight-by-ten pool of light, a pastoral respite amid five-story brownstones that flanked its four sides. This was the young King's most favorite time of day--12:05 pm--when the sun floated directly above the yard, dispelling dark, angled shadows and warming the furry yellow faces of a hundred dandelions who reached toward Mother Sun with all their green-stemmed might. He smiled a toothy grin at Poolsey, who flopped to the ground to warm her belly in the newfound light. Knowing the moment would soon pass, the Dandelion King took his throne, stretched his bare legs and lifted a freckled face toward the sun, thankful that she took a minute's rest before beginning her westward descent.


the article.

Rain Sets Records and Stops Traffic

Taken from the March 30, 2010 issue of The New York Times.




Rain sets records and stops traffic as I wait on the Belt Parkway to pick up my mother, who I haven't seen since my sister's college graduation seven years ago, the year I chopped my long red hair into a pixie cut, rented a U-Haul van and moved to New York City. I whisper the words slowly, “Seven years,” tailing off at the end in disbelief and embarrassment. The words make my mouth taste sour. In front of me, taillights pulse on and off, drivers impatient in the standstill traffic, pavement slick and shiny as though it’s been raining baby oil. I’m probably the only one here hoping we don’t move.

I try to imagine my mother sitting next to me in the passenger seat, as she will in the next hour. All I can produce is a mottled collage of flesh tones under thick square glasses, glasses she had when I was a toddler in the 80s, glasses that have stuck with me for 25 years, but not my mother. It was a phenomenon that began to frighten me a few years ago—the inability to imagine the woman who birthed and raised me. To fight it I’ve kept the same family picture up through all of my moves from Manhattan to Brooklyn, Brooklyn to Queens and back to Brooklyn again. It’s a photo from a family trip to Niagara Falls when I was sixteen, when my 13-year-old sister was all legs, my brother had buckteeth and my mom and dad were together. After a while, I realized it wasn’t that I couldn’t remember what she looked like, I just couldn’t imagine her here. With me. Anywhere else was no problem, down to the detail. Even now, I can picture her waiting at the terminal with floral, garage-sale luggage at her feet, alone, craning her neck to see my car pull up, crimson lipstick bleeding slightly into the lines around her pursed mouth. She’s watching everyone else get picked up in shiny cars, imagining them rolling in sudden sunshine down the highway, giggling with loved ones, the passage of time between visits a circumstance and not a statement. She’s thinking, “What will we talk about?” and “How do we mend?” and “Why can’t we be like that?”, just like me. “Just like me,” I say out loud.

Without warning, I feel my heart soften—just enough—and for the first time in years, I don’t resist it. I look into the rear view mirror and clip the hair out of my eyes with a bobby pin. I turn on the radio to Tom Petty singing about two old gunslingers, and I laugh.

I see the airport exit ahead as traffic begins to move. Raindrops slide down my windshield, glowing red and orange with the taillights ahead, and the click of my blinker matches the beat of my heart.

the article.
[headline has changed from its original]

Boy

This story was inspired by a friend, who gave me the first sentence and told me to run with it.

Dad was gone before I was able to ask him to stay. He told me he'd take me to school that morning, but I woke up in the middle of the night to a weight---like a finger pressed to my heart---and I knew his truck was already miles away from me and mom, straining and stretching the thread that bound our small family until it snapped, thin and shredded. I stared at the clock above the kitchen table---an old cuckoo clock that stopped cuckooing long before I was born. 4:27 in the morning. I imagined my dad's headlights bouncing through the dark, leading him to a place far away, a place that I would never know. I watched the hands on the clock move until the windows slowly lit with the canary glow of morning through limp white curtains. And though I stood in the house of my childhood---with its peeling floral wall paper and worn green carpets--- nothing was familiar, and nothing was the same. His departure was that one moment in life where everything you've known becomes a residue that never washes out, only serving as a reminder of what was, and what could have been. It's the moment when familiar paths shift, become dark and take you miles from where you thought you were going. I knew that everything would change, and that nobody was prepared. It was the summer of 1980, and I was seven.

sometimes i think this city is beating me.

image by miru kim.

Tent Cities Arise and Spread in Recession's Grip

Taken from the March 25, 2009 issue of The New York Times.










Tent cities arise and spread in recession's grip. Colorful mounds and pyramids of vinyl pock the green banks of the Mississippi river in rural Tennessee, where more than 100 squat on state-owned ground. Police patrol the area, maintaining safety as best they can, but according to the state, the Depression-era shantytowns do not exist. But the proof is in the countryside, by the rivers' edge, littered with bottles of dollar-store shampoo, faded laundry drying in the sun, chicken bones and banana peels. The proof is under bridges, miles way, in Tennessee and across the nation where thousands have lost their jobs, their homes, their pride. The scenes are modern-day throw-backs to an era 80 years past, a frightening reminder that the American dream is not a bobbing apple, buoyant in a bucket of corporate greed and dishonesty and borrowing what you can never pay back.

the article.

Taken from the March 14, 2009 online edition of The New York Times.

Without a pastor of his own, Obama turns to five major world religions for spiritual inspiration. His heart and mind open to the teachings of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism: religions that have clashed and celebrated, warred and made peace. They are religions that often look at the other as the wrong way, with the misled leader, the faulty followers, the spurious scriptures. But Obama works within himself to break the human inclination to compartmentalize, to blindly shun what he does not know, to judge and reject, and he takes the valuable teachings of each religion and applies them to his life, to his presidency. And with eyes, ears and heart open to the world, he begins to lead a powerful country with the peaceful teachings of new friends—the world’s oldest and greatest leaders, long passed.

Wouldn't that be ideal?

The article.