Clean Starting

Today is December 6, 2016.

Stanley Steemer people will clean two floors in this house. I sit here on the sofa/couch warming my feet. Magregor sleeps next to my knee. Saki below on the beige/blue.  On and off aware of a small copse of green, gray sometimes, rustling in center for language (brain?).

Interesting to me are the explorations, by chance, I used to follow along said brain.

I glided pathways for observational purposes. Never suspecting.

Occasionally, a small burst of yellow or silver;

a determination to ignore, at least, until turning a corner (down many months, if not years). 

Never to return to that dull morning walkathon through metal doors, always with a smile; good morning, parade. (Do we want that comma?)

The tradeoff such enormity. 

Life. It Goes.

Overnight, you're no one at all.

Someone said  lots of things happen after you die,
only you are not included. (Funny.)

The woman in charge of protocol,
the man deciding new items, the boss who conducts the show,
peons, too, can dance;
and, true, the single dwarfed rebel
graying among tinbers—

we, too,  shrivel by day and shine to daisies.

My friend is almost ninety,
drives haltingly, his blinders in place,
neck fused.

One day, he'll kill someone,
I warn.

But no one takes away his keys.

What happens after we die?
Baseball games happen. Beer spills.
Someone chokes on a hotdog and is saved
by a nurse who becomes a hero.

It's all there: nightly news.

Mary Louise Taber Beebe

Eva Taber Ferris

My mother held on to every letter she received. My father kept nothing. My great grandfather kept only a few, which he passed down to his son, who kept almost none of his own. We kids grew up during the transition from the era of letter writing and the convenience of the telephone call. So, we still wrote letters to our relatives—not just holiday or birthday greetings, but long letters about the weather, going to the museum, how much we loved the pajamas we had gotten for Christmas, what our mother had cooked for dinner.

Dear Grandma,

It’s very cold here. How is the weather in Braintree? I hear it’s cold up there. We have a lot of homework. Today, we played on the ice. I have a new dog. His name is Rebel. Thank you for the brownies you sent. They were so good. We’re going to eat one a day. That means after three days, there will only be one brownie left. I wonder who will eat the last one. I hope you are well.

Love, Joan

Dear Joan,

I am enclosing a stamped envelope with my address so that you can write again without letting so much time go by. The weather is still cold, but my friend comes by to take me to church. I will make more brownies soon.

Love, Grandma

Phone calls were still expensive and short:

“Hi. How are you.”

“Oh, just fine. How about you?”

“Uncle Alistair died.”

“Oh, dear. I’m so sorry.”

“Well, I don’t want to run up my phone bill.”

“Okay, I’ll write.”

“I’ll look forward to hearing from you. Bye.”

“Bye.”

THE LETTERS OF 1887

But the letters the adults wrote to one another were far more revealing of their lives, which seemed weighed down with one burden and one tragedy after the other. They would write in heart-wrenching detail about the drudgery of day-to-day living, the bleeding fingers, the chilblains, the empty pantry, and, of course, God’s will. And at the end of the letter, the writer would hope the reader was happy and not as burdened as he or she was.

I recently came across the few letters my great grandfather kept. He even penciled in people’s last names, probably much later in life, which makes it easier for me—113 years after the writing—to keep track of the players. The letters describe in particular detail the illness and death of 32-year-old Eva Taber Ferris, my great grandfather’s older sister. There’s almost no punctuation in any of the writing, and certain meaningful nouns are indiscriminately capitalized, like Funeral, Sister, Casket, the Doctor, and the like. I’ve inserted punctuation where the lack of it would be too distracting. Here’s a portion of those letters.

May 1^st, 1887

My Dear Sister Ida (Taber),

Poor Eva is sickening fast. They had two doctors to hold a consultation. They said she could not live. She has not eat a mouthful in a month and she throws up all the time. Lillie is with her now. It is dreadful to think of her going, but God knows best.

She says she is not afraid to die. She is prepared to go; and she has had a miserable time of it on this earth and I know she will be far happier in heaven above.

Then I shall be all alone here [in the] East— no Mother or Sister or Brothers here to see me when I shall die. Oh my Dear Darling Sister Ida, let us all meet in heaven above, for things is nothing but trouble here on this Earth. Oh I am so sorry that you ever went out West. It is terrible for me to think of you all out there. My Dear little Sister you must always let me call you Ida for it sounds sweet to me as Brother Fred named you. It was so cute of him. I should never forget it.

Give my best love to Ma and Aunt May and the boys and your own dear self. I cannot write any more at present as I am so nervous about Eva and I cannot write correctly, but please excuse all mistakes and answer soon and tell Ma to write to me.

From your loving sister, Mary L. Beebe (neé Taber)

Eva died about five weeks later. Wesley Taber, her cousin, wrote to Ida with the news. I suppose he wrote it at Mary’s asking.

June 13, 1887

Dear Cousin Ida (Taber)

Your Dear Sister Eva (Taber) died on June 11. She was sick a long time, suffering a good deal in body. Cousin Mary was with her often and done all she could to comfort her. She wanted the folks to sing for her and when they sung one piece she would say, as she knew she would not live long, “Oh, sing more, sing more.”

The Minister spoke well of her at the Funeral. She died happy and good Christian. She was buried in a white Casket with four silver handles. There it was—full of flowers with her name, Eva, and a Wreath and other flowers. One Gentleman sung alone at the funeral, her favorite [song]. She was put in Fairmont Cemetery where her Father and little one are. Some of the young folks sang over her grave.

Cousin Mary took it very hard when she took the last look at poor Eva.

[Eva’s] husband [is] left with one little boy too young to know the loss of a Mother. [Her husband’s] mother, Mrs. Ferris, and sister have not been living with them. Eva had a comfortable home—everything looked neat and cozy. Cousin Mary when she writes can give you more particulars than I can for she was with her so much.

We was sorry to hear Aunt Mary’s health was failing. I hope she will get better. I suppose she worries about Fred and Clary [“Clary” is Clarence Taber Sr.] being away.

I was thinking what a change has taken place in a few years. The family getting separated, good home given up in Orange, and so much money spent. Uncle William is feeling better now. He has been troubled with his leg a little; [but] it is getting along all right now. He planted the seeds you sent. They are coming up and we will have some nice flowers.

Remember me to Fred and Clary. We all send our love to you and Aunt May and all their Family.

From your loving Cousin, Wesley Taber, 2601 3^rd Ave, apt. 140A, New York

Today, we wouldn’t talk like this on the telephone; we certainly wouldn’t put all this detail in an email, and most of us wouldn’t bother to sit down and write a letter. We might webcam or buy a greeting card with someone else’s version of how we’re feeling. What strikes me more than anything is that we no longer “minister unto” our ailing relatives. Instead, we call an ambulance so the terminally ill can experience an efficient and tidy hospital death.

Mary began her letter to her mother on June 12, 1887, the day after Eva died.

My Dearest Mother

May God in his great goodness give you strength to bear your great trials. Sister Eva has gone to her long home. She died Saturday morning at half past one o’clock and Jesus was with her to the last. She suffered dreadful here, but she is now at rest. Oh, she looks so peaceful. She will be buried tomorrow at 2 o’clock afternoon.

The day before she died, she said many [times], “What is the matter with me? Oh, what is it?”

I said, “Dear darling Eva, God is going to take you to Himself. Are you afraid?”

She said, “No.”

She said Death had no dread for her. She was not afraid of the grave. She just trusted Jesus. She was anxious to go. She said it seemed so long. She said, “Will it be much longer?”

The doctor came in at that moment and she said to the doctor and me, “Sing! Oh, sing!”

And the doctor sang two or three pieces for her, and she asked him to pray with her and he did. Oh, he was so kind, a good Christian doctor. What a comfort it was to her.

Then her Minister came in and prayed and sang to her. She wanted someone to sing all the time. It soothed her as nothing else did. Well then she seemed to have quite a struggle, but she knew us all and put one hand in mine and one in George’s. It was a trying scene. Then she grew unconscious and passed over so quietly that no one knew it but Reinhardt who sat beside her and closed her eyes and mouth.

She is nothing but a Skeleton. So thin but a peaceful smile on her face and I know she is safe with the Redeemed at last where this blessed Sabbath Morning she can sing with her darling baby and own dear father in heaven.

Mary’s picture hangs right beside her bed and she would lay and look at it and say, “Oh, I wished she was here.” She gave me Aunt Mary’s picture.

Once or twice, she thought I was you and she said, “Oh, Ma. How did you get here?

Then she would look again and say, “Mary, give me a drink of water.”

She took off her wedding ring and put in on George’s finger and said, “Don’t ever take it off.” Her poor hands trembled, so she could hardly get it on his finger.

She told Irvie to meet her in heaven. She said, “Irvie, Mamma is going to leave you. I am going to heaven. Meet me there, Irvie.”

And Irvie said, “Yes, Mamma. We will meet you up there. I am going up there to be with you some time.”

Oh it was my greatest comfort to think I could be beside her to comfort her some. She did not want me or George to leave her, but stay right beside her to the last.

Remember the last time a doctor sang to you? When life is about to come to an end in the United States, we stick tubes in people, thousands and thousands of dollars worth of tubes, and watch the constant drip, drip, drip of thousands of dollars worth of medication. And the nurses come and go, and the doctors come and go, and the orderlies come and go. In and out of the room, they come and go. And when the patient breathes the last breath, the nurses unplug the patient, and the relatives make arrangements for strangers to pick up the “remains” to prepare them for their eternity underground or for their hour in the crematorium. They are no longer ours to care for. They belong to the healthcare system’s final resting place—the funeral parlor.

At last, Mary got a long awaited letter from brother “Clary,” my great grandfather. She wrote back.

Brooklyn, July 5^th, 1887

My Dear Brother,

As I stood by the Casket of our Dear Sister Eva and viewed her Remains, it seemed I was the only one left and I represented her whole family. You cannot imagine how sad and lonely I felt. We were children together, Eva and I, and, oh, what happy times we have had together in days gone by. I do thank God that he had spared my life to minister unto her in her last sickness.

She would clasp my hand and say, “Oh, Mary, stay beside me. Do not leave me.”

But she is gone where there is no more Suffering and Sorrow and Care; and, best of all, she was prepared. She knew she was going. And when she was struggling with Death, she said she was trusting in Jesus, and that thought lightens the Burden, for we know if we only trust Him and do His will, we shall meet her again.

Poor George [Ida’s husband, George Ferris] is all broke up. His heart was wrapped up in her. Poor little Irvie [Ida’s son, Irving Ferris] does not realize it. He says he is going up to Mama, too. He says he wants to see Mama and his little sister.

Well, dear Clarence, a living trouble is worse than a dead one. I worry all the time when I think of you so far away. Poor Mama is suffering now for all the trouble she brought upon herself. She sees it now, and it would be unkind to blame her. But it is not her alone that suffers from her folly, but her children and poor Aunt Mary.

Life is but a struggle all the way through, and if it were not for the light we have, it would be Dark and Dreary enough when trouble comes to us.

How our earthly friends leave us! And how God raiseth up Friends to us in times of trouble! [These] are friends indeed. Even from the lowly, we oft find a Diamond hidden in the rough.

Now write and let me know your troubles. Dear Brother, write freely. I can sympathize with you and maybe I could help you write often. I think Fred [another brother] might write to me. Give my love to all. I guess you would hardly know my children. They have grown so. Lillie is quite a young woman. Ella is as tall as me, and poor Willie is a little taller. Walter is going on ten and Richie is baby. He is 7 years old now. I must close.

With much love, I remain your most affectionate sister, Mary L. Beebe

Eva Taber Ferris had been a tin varnisher in a Newark, New Jersey factory. She had, in fact, died of stomach cancer. Two months before her death, she had given birth to a baby girl who didn't live through the day. It wouldn’t be too far-fetched to suggest that there was probably a relationship between her job, her cancer, and her baby’s death. There was nothing to be done, of course, but submit to what they called “the will of god.” They had nothing else.

Mary L. Taber Beebe died in 1947 at the age of 96.

My great grandfather, Clarence Taber, Sr., was indifferent to my family and me, so I don’t know much about him. He wrote a number of books, including one about extrasensory perception in which he described his conversations with his late wife, Jessie. He also wrote a book titled Breaking Sod on the Prairie, about his childhood in South Dakota after his father’s death and his mother’s remarriage to the harsh Mr. James Sommerville.

He’s best known for compiling and writing Taber’s Medical Dictionary, which is still in circulation, still used in hospitals and medical schools throughout the USA. He was completely self-taught. No easy university road for him. No help from anyone.

Clarence and Jessie had three children—Mildred, Agnes, and Clarence Jr. Clarence grew up and had three children with his first wife and two children with his second. He abandoned all of them, and no one in the family came to their rescue.

They really did have hard lives. If your family split up and moved to different parts of the country, or world, you were almost entirely cut loose, and the only connection was via the slow journey of the letter. You had to squeeze the events of your life into precise words and fit them within the narrow margins on your page—front and back. You had to let both your happiness and your sorrow flow through black ink to the pen tip. Most of all, you had to weed out the little things—the things we talk about from day to day, the schmooze, the blah-blah-blah of the text message, the cell phone, the local bar.

Our lives are intricately bound to those of our ancestors. We are the way we are because they were who they were, because they suffered terrible hardships and deprivation because they didn’t have the same luxuries of choice that we have today.

I wish I could help Mary Louise Taber Beebe minister unto Eva Taber Ferris, for as I read and re-read her letters, there are no impossible barriers of time. How extraordinary it would be to thank the doctor who sang for Eva. How satisfying it would be to reach into the past and hold Eva’s hand, reassure her that all will be well, that she will be remembered by one of her own. I can’t do any of this, of course. This remembrance, this early 21^st-century blog entry, is the only way I can sing for Eva.

Muscles

Muscles. I grew up with muscles—flexed muscles, tattooed muscles, vein-popping muscles, strained muscles, pulsating muscles, and, eventually, sagging muscles, puny muscles, and no muscles at all. They weren't my muscles; they were my father's.

I’m all for staying in shape. It’s not a passion of mine; rather, it’s a habit left over from growing up with a man who lifted weights and liked the way he looked, especially on the beach, where he’d strut to the water’s edge with the self-assurance of a hawk in a chicken coop. He turned heads and knew it. He had a great ship tattooed on his chest and liked to flex his pectorals, which would make the ship bounce up and down.

“Do it again!” my daughter Shana used to plead. And he’d cause the ship to toss and turn across his chest, which also caused my daughters to laugh.

Building and keeping those muscles involved a lot of work, but he always laughed and said it was just something he did because that's what he did. 

He had been a waifish, skin-and-bone adolescent who had been maltreated and mal-loved by life, by parents who didn’t have much to do with him, and by teachers who didn’t mind reminding him of his stupendously sorry-assed, chicken-sized brain—perhaps a little hyperbole here, but that's the message he gleaned from the thorny valley that was his childhood. It should be no surprise, then, that bodybuilding and chasing women became his way of life. They were quick fixes that often worked so well they seemed just as efficacious as any long-term fix.

“Wow, your father’s so handsome. He's in such good shape,” the ladies, young and not so young, would gush.

“Yes, he lifts weights and exercises,” I would explain, although I was never sure why.

“Hmmmm," the ladies, young and not so young, would ponder aloud. "Maybe I could go visit him and get some advice about exercise.”

“I guess,” haltingly, clumsily, stupidly surprised that the friendship sought wasn't mine.

“Really? Okay. If you think he wouldn't mind.” 

And the ladies would ask him to show them how they could build a little muscle here and there on their bodies. “Of course, I don’t want big muscles like a man, like you; I just want, you know, to be firm. Here, feel this. Don’t you think I need to be firmer?”

And my father would show them the exercises they needed to keep themselves, you know, firm. And off they would go to do their sit ups or pushups or bending at the waistline—one-two-one-two—some returning in a minute, some in an hour, only a few not at all.

Time has a great sense of humor, for the parade of ladies eventually thinned to a trickle; the orchestra lost, first its lively horn section, then its more plaintive and serious string section, and finally its aging conductor. For its final coup de grace, time stuck out its foot and tripped my father into the pit where Alzheimer's awaits its charges with a certain undeniable glee. There, it stripped the muscles, sinews, and flesh from my father's body, reducing his gloriously sculpted housing to brittle bone, fragmenting his mind into countless pieces of puzzles unsolvable, scattered them into a confusion of constellations light years beyond both space and time.

If I could speak to him, I'd ask my father if he would now declare his lifetime pursuit of muscles the biggest waste of time ever. Would time have been kinder to him had he chosen to pursue, say, needlepoint or ice fishing?

And while I’m guessing at his answer—the one that will never come—I’m just going to strap on some ankle weights and do a few reverse crunchies, and perhaps I’ll add a few biceps presses. Silly really. But it’s something I have to do, because it is what I do.

PS: The last time I saw my father, he studied my face for a long moment and said, "I don't know who you are, but you like like someone I ought to love." We thought that was a very funny notion, and we did laugh.

My Mother's Parties

The people down the block are having a party, a loud party with screams, barbecue smoke, and aggressive bass notes that rip up the street like jackhammers. Windows rattle, trembling oaks lean precariously into the parkway, trying to escape the cacophony; night impatiently awaits the hour of dawn that will see the happy guests stumble into their far-away beds under the rising sun. I shut my windows against the cool night breeze, draw the thermal drapes, and turn up the air conditioner to drown out the noise.

I never go to loud parties, excluding, of course, the occasional wedding reception where guests are held hostage by some intrusive disc jockey who admonishes wedding guests to get out of their seats and hop around the room to the heavy beat of his amplified boombox music. Conversation is so old-timey.

It’s not that I don’t like parties. I grew up in a household where get-togethers were the norm, for my mother, Nancy, loved a good party and could always find an excuse to give one. There were Groundhog Day parties, Boxing Day parties, birthday parties, cast parties, coffee-and-tea parties, Sunday afternoon parties, and parties just for the sake of a party.

An invitation for one of her big soirées began with a few phone calls and then took on a life and momentum of its own, streaming in all directions through Nancy’s mismatch of friends and acquaintances. And within an hour or so of the first announcement, everyone we knew or had yet to meet was marking the date and time on their respective calendars.

For at least two days before each gathering, Nancy would set aside her dressmaker work and give herself over to the preparations. Most important was the food, and she’d make a list of all the necessary ingredients, including their cost down to the last penny, and head out for the supermarket pulling her shopping cart behind her.

Then came the cleaning, the scrubbing of floors and washing of windows; the laundering of curtains and slipcovers, the dusting and waxing, so that the house smelled like a copse of pine trees and shone like brushed velvet. The “good” glasses and dinner dishes—all courtesy of Hill’s Supermarket—were washed and stacked on the dining room table. The punch bowl and assortment of matching and almost matching punch cups came out of storage and assumed their pivotal position on the oak buffet in the dining room. The real silverware—a donation from one of her wealthy customers whose last name must have begun with the letter S—was polished and laid in neat rows alongside their mundane cousins, the various and sundry flatware of everyday use.

On the morning of the festivity, Nancy would roll her thick white hair in green rubber curlers and begin preparing the food—potato salad, macaroni salad, green-gelatin salad, leaf salad, plates of carrots and celery, bowls of walnuts, dates, figs, biscuits, cookies, cakes. And, of course, there was her famous punch, which she made with ginger ale, frozen lemonade concentrate, gin, and strawberries. Everything—except the lemonade concentrate and gin—made from scratch. Everything prepared ahead of time so that the only work she’d have to do during the party would be to wash the dishes as they were used and set them out again. No paper plates or plastic anything! That would have been a sacrilege, an insult to the food as well as to the guests.

The festivities were always supposed to begin at eight, but inevitably a few close friends would arrive before the official hour. It was often my job to take their coats and lead them to the food and drink while Nancy slipped upstairs to apply the finishing touches of her hostess persona. The trick, she said, was to appear as though she hadn’t lifted a finger all day, that the polished house and dishes of food had done all the work themselves, that her guests should take her cue and bask in the magic of the evening.

The trickle of visitors soon turned into a stream, and the house took on a reddish glow as if it had dipped into Nancy’s punch before any of the guests had gotten to it. The windows staring across the night became mirrors filled with chatting people, some balancing plates of food or tall-stemmed glasses of wine, others holding up their side of the conversation amid waves of laughter, the clinking of glasses, and occasional applause.

Some of the guests claimed a spot on the couch, whose ancient stuffing still exhaled under the slipcovers Nancy had pieced together from leftover fabric. There they would spend the entire evening enlisting a spouse or me to fetch their plate of food or another nice glass of that lovely punch. And did I think Nancy would share her secret recipe? Of course, it was no secret recipe, for Nancy always offered to share it with anyone who wanted it, but they asked anyway. Other guests never sat down, and spent the evening flitting from one group to another, chitchatting, gesticulating, making pronouncements about life, literature, political absurdities, or the cost of a Broadway theater ticket.

Nancy spent the first part of the evening in the kitchen washing dishes, sipping her vodka tonic, and shooing away anyone who offered to “help dry.” She didn’t say it in front of her company, but she thought them hopelessly inept as kitchen helpers, always losing one of her good silver forks or breaking one of her precious wine glasses or spilling the salt. She always preferred to do it herself. Nonetheless, she drew people into the kitchen where she held court amid the shushing of running water and tinging of dishes.

Conversations flowed from the personal to the political to the literary and back to the mundane with natural ease and entirely logical disjointedness. Each time I entered the kitchen with a tray of dirty dishes or empty serving plate in want of a refill, Nancy would be in conversation with yet another of the guests who had joined her entourage at the four-legged double sink.

No one was left out. She had a sixth sense for loneliness and knew instantly if a guest in another room was left without a conversation partner. And off she’d go to make sure that person came back to the kitchen with her or found a place amid one of the clusters of partygoers.

No matter how many people came, there was always space to breathe. This was, of course, by design. For, before the parties began, the furniture was always rearranged like a Chinese painting, with little islands of active space, that is, where visitors could sit in groups, and irregular expanses of free space where they could move about, follow their noses to the dining room, or wander into the kitchen.

Nancy didn’t approve of background music, insisting that it interfered with conversation, which was, after all, the main reason for having a party in the first place. Later on, as we three children grew into our late teens and early twenties, she would designate a music floor for us and our contemporaries—usually the basement. But, the music was never so loud as to interfere with our conversations or with those of the old folks on the floors above.

The young-people part of the house was darker than the rest and more eclectic with its assortment of aging furniture and low-pile carpets, summer sling chairs, and copper piping that coursed along wooden joists. Once in a while, a full-fledged grownup would descend to our cavern and stay for a while before getting bored with our puffy prattle about saving the universe. Sometimes, we’d take out guitars and imitate Joan Baez or Elvis. Occasionally, I tried to emulate Eileen Farrell, but it only made people laugh.

While downstairs had its temporary youthful charms, upstairs was warmer, softer, and better integrated, so all of us eventually came up for air and food and talk. Here we greeted the regulars who showed up year after year—Audrey and Jim Scarr, Rea and Joe Jacobs, “The Countess,” David and Gloria Jackier, Virginia Purvis, Ken Brinsmead, Larry Forde, John and Joan Maguire, Boris Haimson, Mary Jean Smildsin. There were also the acquaintances and relatives who showed up now and then. There were her sisters, Josie and Mamie, who lived in Ohio and would occasionally make the trip, especially for Boxing Day. And there were our younger friends—Bill Einhorn, Margita Hatfield, Charles Napoli, Geoffrey, Ann, and Polly Purvis (who later married Ken); there were new friends, fleeting friends, and even one or two of my father’s girlfriends. Nancy welcomed them all with equal grace and abundance.

The evening rode on a long wave, beginning with whispers that slowly built momentum and volume, rising to a crescendo between 10 and 11 PM and then, just as slowly, retreating under more subdued waters. That’s when the coffee and desserts came out. Amid the oohs and ahs and stirring of spoons against the fine coffee cups from Hills Supermarket, the guests began to say their goodnights. But, always and without fail, there were at least eight or nine who lingered until the small hours of the morning, sipping coffee and taking philosophy, theater, and Nancy’s beloved George Bernard Shaw. This was Nancy’s favorite part of the evening, for it was at this point that she threw off the role of hostess, allowing herself to be waited upon by the remaining guests.

When she died, we didn’t have a funeral for her. Instead, we had a party in her honor. The old friends and acquaintances came as usual, and we passed around a book in which people could write their memories of her. Rea Jacobs wrote: “Nancy’s Boxing Day party was the spine on which the year hung limply.”

The people down the block are having a party, and it’s spilling into the street and trampling the marigolds. There’s an argument of some sort; someone just smashed a bottle against the pavement. The angry music continues to suck the air from the night. Tomorrow morning, the line of cars will be gone, the noise will have snuffed itself out, the barbecue smoke will have risen into a dull cloud and washed into the horizon like so much slop, and the cowering ivy along the road will sputter and cough under the insult of paper plates and glass bottles.

My mother’s parties were designed and executed to bring people together for good food and conversation as well as a sense of belonging to life. The people down the block seem to have planned tonight’s party as a way to escape from life—that’s why they drown themselves in their noise, scream at one another, and stuff themselves with chips and beer.

I might be accused of romanticizing my mother’s parties of long ago. After all, isn’t that what we all do when someone or something becomes a memory? I might also be accused of not having kept up with inevitable changes in social decorum, of failing to appreciate a new way of manifesting exuberance, in short, of having become an out-of-touch party poop.

Whether or not I’m guilty of these misdemeanors, I’d rather attend the memory of my mother’s celebrations than open the windows on such a night as this.