Gone Baby Gone

Yesterday I was riding home on the train from Washington, DC. I make the trip once a year to attend the annual Herblock Foundation Award & Lecture. Tim Russert spoke and I saw some of the people I used to work with at The Washington Post. It's a wonderful evening and I'm always inspired to write as a result i.e. my Barack Obama piece posted on this blog.

I had a brief conference call on the train and then I settled in to read my Esquire magazine, yes George Clooney is on the cover. With another three hours to go, I decided to watch Gone Baby Gone because it was already late and this was the second time I'd rented it without watching it. I've read a couple of Dennis Lehane's book, not this one. I also saw Mystic River and basically decided not to let my son out of my sight as a result. In the Clooney article in Esquire, the reporter brings up a YouTube video and says it's so disturbing "it will scar you forever". Well that pretty much sums up Mystic River for me.

I'm sure I'm not blowing any secrets here. Gone Baby Gone, if the title didn't give it away, is about a little girl who is taken from her home in Dorchester, Massachusetts. Dorchester is a shithole and this child has it rough. Her mother is an addict and she makes a series of terrible decisions that put her child at risk. I actually loved the film in spite of its horrific plot line. I was able to catch a few of the special features and someone said that the movie was really a love story about Boston.

When the movie opens, Casey Affleck as narrator is talking about the choices we don't make that define who we are. Our families, our city, our neighborhood. He talks about growing up in one place your whole life.

This idea is completely foreign to me. I grew up in so many places, I get confused sometimes about the timeline. I'm a Texan and I believe that defines me. But it's a faint memory to me. It boils down to my grandmother's house.

We had bonfires and BB guns, crawdad fishing with a stick, a washer , some string and a piece of bacon. Granny Helen had a peacock and a raccoon, a mean little goat and a meaner shetland pony. My grandfather raised subsistence cattle, had a few horses, chickens for eggs and a good-sized vegetable garden. But this place is gone now. My mother says she takes solace in the fact they turned the land into a church. Well I don't. I miss the Indian paintbrush and the bluebonnets and the long driveway leading up to the best smelling house I've ever known.

If place defines you, then I'm in big trouble. I've lived in Houston, Austin, Arlington and San Antonio, Texas. I've lived in San Marino, California and Raleigh, North Carolina (twice). I went to middle school and part of high school in Westport, Connecticut until we moved my senior year to Weston, Massachusetts. I went to college in New Orleans and spent a year abroad in Paris. I lived in DC and New York after school. Now I live in Fairfield, Connecticut. That's a lot of moving around.

A friend of mine called me a chameleon when we were in middle school and she was right. In each place, I changed myself, at least outwardly, to fit in. In California, I wore OPs and Vans. In Connecticut, I was the California girl. In Raleigh, I was a Yankee. In New York, I was a Southern belle. And in France, I was l'Americaine. (le pire sans doute)

In my mind, I'm going to fly into a city one day, maybe on a business trip, and I'll feel at home. Something like that happened to me about 4 years ago in California. I was driving to the airport and suddenly I was in Santa Monica and I thought wow, this feels great. But everyone hates LA. Even people who live in LA hate LA.

So where is my place? I know it's warm. I can see a courtyard garden, with a combination of flowers and herbs or a few tomatoes. I like the feeling of the west for sure. I've been visiting my father in Chicago lately and I really love it there. Just too damn cold for me. The Northeast is comfortable. I know the roads, I know the behaviors. I get the jokes. I like the fast pace. I remember going nuts in North Carolina where everything was so slow. People would stop and chat with their bank teller or split a lunch bill four ways and pay with checks.

I liked DC because of the non-driving. But DC is a strange place. A company town and the company is dot gov. I worked at the Post and was considered a flaming liberal by anyone I met. It may be that my essential task, or one of them, is to find my place. Because I agree that place defines you. Place comforts you. You can't wait to get out and you can't wait to come back. At least that's what I've heard.

I'm gone baby gone. For now. Maybe it's Santa Monica. Maybe it's that courtyard apartment I stayed in during Jazz Fest one year. Maybe it's Texas. I don't know.

The strange thing that happened was, as I was writing this blog I looked out my train window and knew exactly where I was. New Roc City, near that big mall. And I felt at ease. If only it were sunny.

The Tooth Fairy

My son lost his tooth last week, this gnarly pre-teen molar looking thing. It was at the end of the day and I realized I didn't have any cash to pull the old switcheroo with the tooth fairy. For a minute, maybe more, I contemplated just telling him."There is no tooth fairy," I would say. Just blurt it out. Get it off my chest.

It was one of those days you have as a mom. I worked most of the day preparing another stack of writing samples. That's one big difference I've noticed now that I'm working for clients in New York. They can't seem to get past literal. You need to have work samples specific to their client or their business, preferably work done for a big name. They can't look at a body of work and say, "Yes I do believe you are a writer." I gotta tell you, I think writing is writing. Either you can or you can't. You have or you haven't. But that doesn't fly in the big City.

Anyway, four hours of gathering and formatting samples to send to a recruiter who won't read them but insists on seeing them. Throw in a few loads of laundry, some light housekeeping, cooking breakfast and dinner, bed making, working out and it's a full day. It was one of those days I have when I close my eyes before opening the dryer, praying there isn't a load of clothes already in there that I'll have to fold.

I thought screw the tooth fairy. Will is going to find out at some point. Why not just tell him?

I couldn't. I mean I've done some shitty things as a parent but I couldn't do that. Here's what I did instead. I borrowed money from him. I borrowed money from him to put under his pillow so he could still believe in the tooth fairy and I was off the hook. I told myself I'd pay back the 5 bucks but I haven't yet.

Frankly he's a money pit, so I rationalized this whole thing to myself by saying I spend at least 5 bucks a day on some kind of junk for him, gum or iTunes that's he's downloading. I've explained several times that every song costs me a dollar. "It's only 99 cents," he says as if that makes it alright. Thanks Apple for making a buck only seem like 99 cents.

It's these little tit for tats we have with our children that feel like bamboo shoots under the nails. I stole 5 bucks from my kid to pay the tooth fairy who paid him. He broke even and I didn't have to destroy his illusions. I'm saving that for later.