Ellen Herrick

Author of The Sparrow Sisters

20/20

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It’s time to put on my reflecto-vision glasses.  What?  You don’t have a pair?  You know, the ones you buy off the back of an Archie comic, right next to the X-ray Specs and the itching powder.  Most people go for the X-ray Specs because the picture shows a lady in her undies.  But, in case you haven’t wasted that allowance yet, they don’t work.  The reflecto-vision glasses, on the other hand, are guaranteed to show you the past with a mixture of insight and nausea.  I know, mine are hanging on the chain with my readers. January is as good an excuse as any to take a look through them.

We had a lovely Christmas.  Everyone was home, we had to stack the boys like cord wood in the Cambridge house.  Once Emma was out of school we hightailed it to the Cape so that we didn’t have to circle, like jumbo jets, outside the bathroom.  Before you haul out the Bing Crosby and The Bishop’s Wife…oh go ahead, haul ’em out.  The roast and Yorkshire pudding, the capon, the chipped beef on toast and the Boxing Day lunch tradition lived on.

Satisfying on every level.  Then, we returned to Cambridge with everyone and everything in tow.  Because a family Christmas fills me with joy and sucks the life out of me simultaneously, I ran right back (screaming) to the Cape.  My husband saw my eyes beginning to take on that marginally lunatic cast and suggested I might need some “alone time” and by that he meant, step away from the…well, just step away.  So I did.  The children are fine, in case you worried.  David is recovering nicely.


I spent three days in a deliciously empty house with my reflecto-specs firmly perched on my nose.  No blinding instants of clarity, no aha! moments.  Just a little time to remember how lucky I am.  Lucky to have been slightly overwhelmed by sheer numbers, lucky to drive back and forth to Boston in the snow to collect my Dad, and then again to return him.  Feeling particularly lucky to be kneeling on the floor at midnight Christmas Eve trying to find the little green army man that made it through 16 years in London, one Christmas tree at a time, all the way back to America.  That army man belongs to William, he used to make bases behind the presents and in the branches of our Christmas trees and it was suddenly terribly important to get Cap’n Bob back up for year 17.  Luckily, I found him.

I use the word lucky a lot.  It isn’t always so smart or safe.  At the end of August, 2001 just after my sister came for a visit to the Cape I went on a “we are so lucky” spree.  I was so pleased by the visit, the way her children, mine and the rest of the cousins built the world’s most rickety tree house and sailed and swam and laughed.  I was thrilled to have David around for two solid weeks.  The whole time felt slightly enchanted.  About a week later it was September 11th and a week after that may sister was diagnosed with breast cancer, and in what felt like only minutes everything turned to shit.  But of course, that wasn’t true.  I was still lucky, because none of these horrible things happened directly to me.  Still, suddenly everything was so terribly fragile.  And, yet, here I am, feeling lucky again because I’ve got this messy, sprawly family with every ailment and blessing that comes with that.  I know I should be more careful, keep an eye out for the “Your life looks entirely too happy” Gods (they sit on a much higher level than the Traffic or Weather Gods so their punishment goes far beyond a jackknifed tractor trailer or rain on vacation) but I just spent those three days ALONE and the glow lingers prettily.

People who know me know this; I am strangely sensitive to over-stimulation.  This from a woman who can be extremely loud and incredibly close.  That is, if I love you (or don’t), think something is funny (or not), boy do you know it.  But, I definitely have a saturation point (even for myself).  It’s kind of like having a finely tuned gag reflex.  I can pack it in: the lights, the kissing and hugging, the laughing and cooking and yapping, the washing of the guest towels and sheets.  And in the flush of all that goodness, I know how lucky I am.  But then, it all comes back up in a rush of fever dreams and aphasia.  I can’t remember my children’s names or why I’m standing in the living room with an oyster knife.  I can’t bear the sound of family voices arguing over trivialities or laughing at YouTube.  When I lean over to pick up the scattered bits and pieces that spill out of their lives a headache builds and I feel as if there is a box of photographs and thread and old matchbooks and pencil stubs knocking around in my brain.  That’s when David offers the release valve–and the words “I am no Stephen King victim”–so I drive off, laughing maniacally.

After floating around the Cape for a few days with the specs on, group activity overdose hissing gently out of my pores, I did have one extremely useful revelation-ette.  I have been so busy feeling lucky that I forgot to feel grateful.  There is a difference.  For instance I was lucky enough to spend a couple of crisp November days on Nantucket with my friend Lisa (the one who taught me to swim–not how to do it but how I must do it).  I am grateful that we belong together and that she feels that too.  I am lucky to be within hours of my sister for the first time in years.  I am grateful that she stops time to spend some with me.  I am lucky that my husband still wants me by his side.  I am grateful that he stands shoulder to shoulder with me when it gets awfully dark (or when I put on skates for the first time in 20 years and my daughter hip checks me into a nearby pine).  There, you see the distinction.

So, I think I can take the glasses off now.  I passed the (hind) sight test and managed to draw a lesson from it without having the ophthalmologist of present and future weigh in.  It reminds me of the psychological experiment where they put these upside-down glasses on some patients. The whole world was stood on its head.  After a few days, the subjects adjusted.  When the glasses were removed, the poor things were already in the habit and continued to step OVER the door lintel and turn their cups bottoms UP causing hot tea to pour all over their wrists.

I guess I’m in for a bumpy few days as I try to remember exactly where it is I stand.

Lucky me!

Just a Moment

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I find myself strangely shaken by the absence of our two boys.  It started on the drive to the airport after we dropped Will off at Kenyon in Gambier, Ohio (where?).  It had been bucketing down the whole day before as we unloaded his stuff and settled him into his room.  The rain threw itself against his dorm room windows as I tucked in sheets and folded duvets.  The wind rattled the frames while David, Will and I stared at his roommate (perfectly nice boy) while he hung a massive American flag over his bed.  The sky stayed resolutely heavy and gray all through our jolly dinner on a porch already wet with the day’s weather.

But, as David and I swept down the highway the next day, farmland rolling away on either side, the sun struggled out and glanced off the drops clinging to the last of the corn silk.  We swerved carefully, politely past an Amish buggy clip-clopping along the road and as I turned around to look at the driver under his wide-brimmed hat I was struck by how vast the backseat seemed, how lonely it looked without Will sprawled across it.  For a moment I was bereft and for a second in that moment I felt a flash of the kind of complete emptiness my friend must feel every second of every moment of every day as she mourns the death of her son.  I literally caught my breath, I almost gagged the grief was so intense, so physical.  I thought I might pass out from the pressure on my chest, I might actually be sick from the weight of loss.  I looked at David and told him what I was feeling, for just that second.  And even as I described it to him and he nodded, understanding exactly what I meant, I was ashamed of my grief.  My son was going to college, her son would never see fifteen.  My older son was on the Cape with my daughter, surfing, laughing, visiting with the grandparents.  Her older son was with his uncle, the only relative either of them have left, visiting South Africa, the scene of the terrible accident that took the lives of four people in the time it took me to glance back at the Amish farmer.  Our family was marking milestones of joy on our road.  My friend’s small, resolute family mark each day with relief that they have, somehow, gotten through it.  And they get through it with remarkable grace, clinging to each other, three firm chins up, three sets of eyes turned to the horizon.

And still, I look into Will’s room and swallow, hard.  Today, James drove off to college for his senior year.  He’d spent the morning surfing some pretty damn big waves with his sister while his father and I gave them the thumbs up from the safety of our towels.  Now, I have just finished clearing out the detritus in James’s room and by that I mean about 700 pounds of sand and salt and more hair product than there is at a Miss America pageant.  It still smells like him: citrus and cotton and boy.  Twenty minutes after he left I got a call. “I forgot my pillows,” James said, the sound of wind rushing through his little jalopy loud and evidence that he was already driving too fast.  I assured him he could buy pillows in Pennsylvania (Yes, another hotbed of Amish non-hijinks).  “Slow down,” I told him.  “Are you on hands-free?” I shouted.  Oh, it is all so fragile, it really is.

I spoke with my friend this morning.  She spent a week with us on the Cape, she usually spends two but this year the timing was bad.  She needed to be home, in London, on the anniversary of the accident.  She feels safer there, even though it is clear that she will never feel truly safe again.  She’d had a bad week.  It was clear from her voice that she was barely keeping her head above water.  Her tears were, almost literally, drowning her, her grief so overwhelming I pictured her clinging to the wreckage, alone in a vast sea of sadness where wave after wave crashed over, filling her mouth with salty, liquid bereavement.  She told me how tired she was, how tired of being brave and strong, the things for which she has always been–justly–known.  I pictured her as the child she’d lost, cheeks wet with tears, knees scraped and muddy, worn and just DONE with all this grown up work.  And, there was not one thing I could do to make it better, nothing I could say or build or cook or clean or feed her that would fix this.

And yet, I sensed her pull herself together.  I swear I could hear the sound of her resolve re-forming as she drew a shaky breath.  “So, tell me,” she said, her voice still watery but gaining strength, “How did Will take to college?  Tell me everything about it.”  Tell me everything about a life I will never get to live with my son, that’s what she was asking me.  And I did, making her laugh as I described how, for some reason, every picture I took that weekend was of David and Will walking away from me.  She hooted at the American flag and reminded me that we have a Union Jack in the closet that absolutely MUST be sent, post haste, to Kenyon so that Will can assert his inner Englishman.  She sighed as I told her how we’d sneaked Will a beer at the end of the move-in day–at eighteen in England, he’d been drinking responsibly for two years.  We’d all sipped a frosty lager as we showered (not together, each to his/her aggressively countrified room), and then met up for dinner.  And, she’d added her tears to mine when I told her how we’d driven off, Will a steadily diminishing figure in the rear view mirror.

So, yes, I miss my boys.  I miss Will’s humor and James’s earnestness.  I long for the sound of big feet thundering down the steps, of surfboards sliding in and out of the car, sand and wax leaving a crunchy ridge on the back window.  The fridge is much more spacious, as is the the laundry hamper.   But here’s the thing: all of this is as it should be.  Every step taken away from us is right, every forgotten pillow or book, or flip flop can be sent on to them, every phone call will serve to reassure us that all is well.  And all iswell, for us.  For my friend, the joy she cannot tamp down will continue to struggle to the surface, her laughter will bubble up, and her instinct to go forward, to care for the son she still has, will prevail.  And my moment of loss will be just that, a moment, to be replaced by those of pleasure and anxiety and pride as I watch all my children grow up.

Weep No More, My Lady

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Here is something you should know about me.  I’m not a crier, not really.  I do not cry about sad/bad things happening in my life.  Ever.  I didn’t cry when my mother died.  I’m not a hard-hearted Hannah, I just don’t cry about the big things.  I do, however, weep copiously when small children sing at school concerts.  I cry when I see a little person lost in the supermarket.  I cry when I see a balloon floating away in the sky.  I have been known to cry at that 1970s ad for some do-good organization that features a kid in group home writing a letter to Santa asking for a puppy.  Does anyone remember that ad?  One kid says “Santa won’t bring you a puppy!”  And then, the do-gooder volunteer/ Secret Santa/postal worker guy reads the letter.  On Christmas morning, the kid finds a puppy waiting for him.  Of course he does.  The look on his face?  Priceless.  The look on the pooh-poohing kid’s face?  Oh, the humanity!!

Another thing you should know:  I tell detailed stories.  “Really?” you say.  Once I told my high school crafts class (we were making our own shoes, no kidding, shoes) the entire plot of Wuthering Heights, and cried at the end.  Not the book, silly, the Merle Oberon, Laurence Olivier film.  Maybe I also cried because I let our Dutch crafts teacher pierce my ears with a sharpened earring and a cork that day.  Hey, it was a Rudolph Steiner school, we made water from scratch.  There you go, more details.

So, here’s where it all comes together.  The showstopper, the 11 o’clock number, the big pay off.  Or maybe the medium sized clutch of saved allowance.  The handful of change in the sofa cushions.  The quarter under the…you get the picture.

My middle son William started acting just last year.  His brother was kind of a BMOC in the theatre department.  He went out for every production starting in 9th grade.  And he was good, very good.  So, I reckoned Will didn’t want to be compared to his brother.  They look alike, both play rugby so comparisons were inevitable.  The truth was more prosaic even then that, and more enormous.  Will’s mind-numbingly dyslexic.  Memorizing lines was terrifying to him.  As it turns out, he can do that, memorize.  He just has to recite his lines, a lot, all over the place, in public, even.  Those pedestrians you see, backing up like a wave receding?  They’re running away from Will.

So, in 11th grade Will said he got a part in the play.  “Good on ya!” we all cried.  What’s the part?  “I play a Nazi Youth who kills a puppy,” he said.  Well, fine then.  On opening night we all sat in a little, sweaty, nervous Herrick clump.  Will opened the show with a monologue.  He was the physical essence of Nazi youth: blond, blue-eyed, strong.  It was chilling.  His performance in the next two hours was wonderful.  We were all so proud of our Nazi.  It was unnerving to say, “You were so good, Will.”  But, I went to the ladies’ room and cried, just a little, in the stall because I was so proud of my son, the one who killed the puppy because that was what he was told to do.

His next role was a closeted gay teen in a play commissioned for the school.  He was unrecognizable.  Always comfortable in his own skin, a clown who is never afraid of looking the fool, Will became a person who couldn’t even think about who he really was.  His body language was hesitant, soft and uncertain.  When he finally reaches up to kiss the object of his affection–a tall, artsy guy–his hand cradles the guy’s neck with such tenderness, I cried.  I cried because Will inhabited this character with absolutely no hesitation. I cried because Will has two Fairy (and I use that word because they do) Godfathers who didn’t get to see the performance.  I cried because I was so happy to see that the boy got the boy.  I cried because when I saw that gesture, hand fanned gently across the other boy’s jaw, I knew Will was a really good kisser.  His girlfriend was right behind me and David had to put me in a head lock so I wouldn’t turn around to look at her.

Then, Will was in a musical last Fall.  He’d never sung in public before but, being a game kind of boy, he dove in.  Will has a voice that would make a grown man cry, “Stop, my ears are bleeding!”  I cried because my ears were bleeding and because, dammit, he sang his little heart out.  And, he danced.  The kid can dance.  This Spring, Will’s in a two-hander from the late sixties about a couple of thugs who bully, manhandle and persecute an Indian guy waiting for a bus to the Bronx.  Will was all over the stage.  He used his body and the lines to become someone he would absolutely hate.  I cried because Will’s face, his voice, his rigid, menacing posture scared the crap out of me.  Emma, his little sister left halfway through it, too spooked to watch him anymore.

OK, we’re winding up here, stay with me.  I cried the other day when Will’s grades came through.  They are good, as always.  He’s a fine and determined student.  It was the comments that made me puddle up.  Well one in particular.  Teacher comments must be the hardest things to write.  But this one, from his English teacher, Oh Boy.  It reminded me of the most important thing I need to get right as a parent.  Did I get it right?  Nah, Will did.  See below.

“Will is the uncensored human person in all its possibilities.  He is vigorous and kind and delightful and smart and funny as hell and whimsical–silly–and yet has gravity.  Mostly he’s good…I’ll miss him next year.”

There, I’m done.

It Only Hurts When I Laugh

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I was just having a cup of tea on my little terrace (as you do) and spilled it (as I do).  I spilled it on the table which is wire and designed to let liquids flow through it (which this one did, nicely).  My knee, my pants, my sneaker are now splashed with sticky tea.  I won’t be changing, though.  Too much like hard work at this hour.

What that spill did was remind me that I spill, a lot.  I am a gesticulator.  I flap my arms when I talk.  Sometimes the windmill effect causes casualties: Coke cans, wine glasses (preferably red for maximum stainage), entire bowls and plates.  Sometimes I hit people in the face or the arm or their up-raised glass of red wine.  I have knocked so many salt shakers over there is a salt lick under my dining chair.  I have had to thrown so many pinches of it over my shoulder that there can’t be a sailor in danger of drowning within a hundred miles.

When I am describing an activity I have to mime it.  I drive (both hands up on imaginary steering wheel, crossover turn left), I write (pen scribbling across paper in mid-air), I call (both dialing–defunct but such a satisfying movement–and talking, hand to ear), I type (fingers flying always accompanied by the tippy-tap sound).  You get the picture.  David pushes his chair back from the table when I start a story.  Worse still, I bring my feet into the action.  If I say I’m walking, they thump, thump along with the description.  Forget about running.  Clear the decks if you hear my say “I ran into so-and-so yesterday.”  I have several friends who are similar, although far more graceful than I.  One, Kelly, uses the expression “the kicker was…” and throws her foot forward.  Believe me, I have snagged that expression and move to messy effect.

I fall, too.  For someone who once made a hefty financial contribution to her college fund as a ballet dancer, I am a complete spazz.  I can fall off a flat surface, and frequently do.  You’ve heard of a standing start?  I can do a standing fall.  Still, upright, minding my own business, splat.  I regularly walked out of my clogs until I got the message that I shouldn’t wear them for that reason alone.  And, I don’t recover well, either.  I crack up.  There is nothing so funny as people falling (as long as they don’t get hurt, natch).  I sat at the biggest window of the college dining hall in the winter so I could watch people skid out on the ice in front of the entrance.  Mean, I know, but a meanness I earned by hitting that ice with my ass at least every other day.  Once, I fell down a fairly steep hill–in Budapest of all places–and slid in my flippy, summery sundress until a tree stopped me.  David and half the Hungarian population ran to my rescue only to find me helpless with laughter, not injury.  When I was working in New York I slipped on some ice in the middle of 81st Street.  With the crosstown bus bearing down on me I picked my change out of the ice and laughed until I had to scuttle, crab-like, back to my apartment to change underpants.  Yesterday I had coffee with two friends and managed–in the course of a story about a drinks party where I threw a hummus-topped pita slice across the room during a conversation about Estonian hot-smoked salmon (huh?)–to edge my chair leg right off the raised outdoor platform.  Both women lunged, saving me from certain hysteria.  I was almost sorry.

My best friend from college fell now and then, too.  But, somehow, she was more graceful, less “Look at me, how funny is this?” and more figure skater back on her feet before the East German judge can say 4.0, in her recoveries.  Once (this isn’t exactly a falling story), she walked out of her own skirt.  It was one of those 1970s Danskin, slippy, silky things that tied at the front. She was strolling across the quad and it untied and she walked right out of it, leaving a puddle of black fabric about five feet behind her before she noticed.  She was with a boy at the time, A BOY.  He said, “I think you, uh, your, uh…”  He pointed to the puddle.  “So I did,” my friend said and returned to the skirt, shimmied it back on and rejoined the boy, never once blushing or barfing.  Now, if that was me I would have laughed and rolled around until I was late for class.

So, now you know that I am a blur of pinwheeling limbs and waving arms, frequently on my way down to or up from the ground.  Before you join me for a meal or a walk or a chat, you should probably put one of those padded, can resist even an attack dog attack suits.  You might want to add some kind of face mask, not Hannibal Lecter-level, but maybe a lacrosse helmet-like thing.  And, just to be safe, push your chair back until it is level with David’s.

My personal brand of idiocy guarantees me a good laugh daily, really.  Which, if you ask me, is very healthy.  It’s kind of like an apple a day only much, much funnier.

Who’s That Girl? No, Really, Who?

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Now, before you begin to wonder, “does this woman not have an un-posted thought? let me just say that we all have a junk drawer.  You know the one, bits, bobs, knobs and knockers.  Mine has about five old mobile phone batteries and a few lira, francs and pesetas.  And, oh no, here’s an envelope with one of Emma’s baby teeth!  Does that mean that I forgot to be the tooth fairy, or that I remembered and chucked the tooth in a drawer without thought?  I don’t know which scenario is worse.  It’s not like I can ask her.

But, I digress, which hardly seems possible since I haven’t even embarked.  So, the junk drawer.  Since I’ve started this blog, it feels as if I’m cleaning out the junk drawer in my head.  Only, it’s not really junk–at least I hope it’s not.  It’s stuff, to be sure.  And, in with the stuff, I’ve found little bits of fluff, some spare change (enough for a coffee at that cafe?), a band-aid for that old hurt I’ve reopened, and, look, chocolate!  So, I take the stuff out, piece by piece and decide whether it’s worth keeping, sharing, even.  Well, some is chocolate, and some just ain’t.

Recently, I had a dermatologist appointment.  It was at Guy’s and St. Thomas’s Hospital.  You have to walk across Westminster Bridge to get to it.  To my right, Parliament and Westminster Abbey, lovely!  To my left, the London Eye, meh.  Below me, the Thames and, what’s that in front of me?  A bagpiper.  Oh.  The very name of the hospital made me think of my appointment as “Ye Olde Mole Patrole.”  When the doctor found something on her patrol I wanted her to shout, “Halt!  Who goes there?!”  Instead she just said, “Right, that has to come off.”  And so it did.  It was on my back and I was tempted to ask her to lop off that hump I’ve developed along with the ‘spot of bother.’

When I thought about the hump it made me think about aging and how I’ve kind of slid, sideways, into my fifties.  There, you say, there’s the stuff she mentioned.  Up until only months ago I thought I looked pretty damn good (I am not soliciting compliments, but if needs must).  Then, the other day I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, sort like you look at strangers on the bus with you: quick flick of your eyes to theirs, and then away.  Yep, there it was, 51, written all over my face.  It looked disappointed somehow, my face, as if I’d let it down, instead of the other way around.  A friend told me that it was hard not being the prettiest girl at the party anymore.  She’s right of course, not that I was all that.  I wasn’t, and I’d easily come to terms with getting older because I really did think I was getting better–on the inside at any rate.

Being born pretty and growing old is like being born rich and growing poor.  I can’t remember who said that but I know I repeated it to my older son, James, who is sometimes so pretty it hurts to look at him (at least to his mother).  I was in the midst of a fight with him over how lazy he was (is) and my point was that he should develop some skills other than how to gel his hair just so.  Now, I find the pretty/old:rich/poor analogy offensive–not to mention the use of it with my then-19-year-old son.  “Look at me,” I want to snap at the guests at that party where I’m not the prettiest anymore.  No, wait, “Listen to me,” is what I mean.  I am wise and funny and game and strong.  I am so much more interesting than that girl over there, the one in the short skirt who’s legs seem to go on forever.  Then, because I am wise and funny, etc., etc. I think, fuck it, I don’t need acknowledgment, I know who I am.

Of course I’ve put this all down in a blog because I am incredibly shallow and self-absorbed.  I guess I’ll just eat that chocolate now.

Care and Feeding

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One of my first jobs was at a not-for-profit think tank.  I figured out pretty damn quick that I needed profit to live in New York City.  I also noticed that at 23 I was too easily distract–oooh, something shiny!–ed to do much of the thinking thing.  So, wisely, I went to work in publishing.  I mean, I read walking down the street, surely I would really focus if it was my job.

After two years of crappy little cubbies and second hand office chairs, the bright new world of book publishing was a shock to the system.  On my first business trip, I got up early so I could find a coffee shop.  No $25 cup of joe for me.  I ran into my biggedy-big boss who saw my little bag-o-breakfast.  He informed me that room service was available at the hotel as were phones to call home and color TV.  I was used to less-fine things.  Anyway what he said to me stuck: “It’s all part of the care and feeding of our people.”

I shouldn’t have been so surprised.  I am all about the care and feeding of my people.  And, I married a guy who, from the age of 19, made me feel cared for and fed.  We may call my husband “Cabana Boy” because of his easy ability to make everyone around him feel comfortable, but the truth is he makes us feel safe.  When you’re safe–in yourself–as the Brits say, you have all kinds of time to take chances.

About a year ago my family went skiing without me.  Believe me when I tell you that I would rather hack off my arm with a butter knife than ski.  I am that uncoordinated.  As my daughter headed out the door she asked, “What will you do while we’re gone?”  I said I’d faff about and fiddle and putter.  But Emma wanted more.  “What would you do if you could do anything?” she asked.  “What would you do if you couldn’t mess up?”  If I couldn’t fail, I thought.  What would I do?  “I’d write a novel,” I said.  “So, can I read it when we get back?” she asked.

Emma was so sure I could do it.  So, I did.  The messing up part is yet to be determined.  That’s what feeling safe does for you. Thanks Emma, and thanks Cabana Boy–he’s the one in the picture, preparing to care and feed, natch.