Faded Photographs

The other day, my friend's daughter snapped a picture of us with her new Polaroid camera.

They say the camera doesn't lie, which we all know is a lie, but an old fashioned Polaroid only lies because it has to. We watched the photograph as it slowly came into blissfully poor focus, blurring the lines on our faces and softening the rough edges. Three cheers for antiquated technology! Had I only thought to jut my elbow out to the side the way girls do these days to make even the flabbiest arm look like a scrawny chicken wing the image would have been perfect.

Somewhere in the apartment where I grew up, there are dozens of musty albums filled with photographs that look strangely similar to this one. The thin white border tucked into tiny photo corners, the glossy finish capturing shifts in light and the shadows of turning pages, people captured together forever in an indelible moment in time. These are not pictures you scroll through, not like the infinite rows of thumbnail shots stored on our cell phones. These are not pictures you could delete with a quick tap of the thumb. Each one has value, even if it is only the cost of the small rectangle of paper. You could always rip one up, but you didn't do so lightly.

I tucked the new picture in my purse. It's way too complicated to post a tangible photo on Facebook. Oddly, we are no longer amazed when our phones, cordless but attached to us always, can double as a camera (not to mention library, credit card, flashlight, mail carrier -- I suppose "double" is a bit of an understatement). But my friend and I watched, fascinated, as the Polaroid spit out a shiny blank rectangle that gradually turned into a flatteringly fuzzy reflection of us.  The moment it appeared it looked ancient, suggesting my friend and I had known each other forever. Or at least since the seventies.

We have not, although we seem to have just missed each other on several occasions. We are the same age, but we grew up in different places. Mutual friends and acquaintances have moved through our lives at different points on our time line. We attended the same school in the same remote town in New York State, at different times. We struggle similarly with the next chapter in our lives, wondering what to do with our expensive degrees, our stiffening joints, our children, who no longer depend upon us to make their decisions. Most of the time, anyway.

I remember when I retired my once very cool Polaroid Swinger for a much cooler Kodak Instamatic. My friend probably has similar memories. My friend's daughter likely has never heard of a Kodak Instamatic, but who knows, that may be next. Let's face it, the Polaroid has too many moving parts, and here in the twenty-first century we don't like too many moving parts. We multi-task and we consolidate, we "out" the old and "in" the new. We like recycling quaint old ideas, like Polaroids and Kodak Instamatics, and bell bottoms, and -- Lord help us all -- shoulder pads, but only for a short time.

I will cherish the Polaroid snapshot in my purse. It is a reminder of a shared past and a shared present.

Putting a Fork In It

I feasted on Chicago style deep dish pizza the other night with my daughter and a few of her friends, all of them home for the summer after their first year of college. Not a big deal, just a brief interlude before what would be, for them, an evening hanging out with friends and, for me, an early bedtime.

"You've led a fascinating life," one of them remarked. I don't think I spoke of anything in my past that was any more interesting than garden variety dysfunction. I don't think it was my basic paper credentials, the stuff I've always relied on to fool prospective employers, the stuff that says as much about me as the Scarecrow's fake diploma from the Wizard says about him. I don't think it was that I grew up in an apartment on a congested urban street. They even admit to knowing some elderly people who had to grow up in apartments. I don't think it was my job, since I barely even understand what I do. I am pretty sure it was all about the pizza.

"What's better? This or New York pizza?"

My daughter jumped in with a provisional response, bought me some time while I nearly choked on a thick bite of cheese. "Not better or worse," she explained. "Just different."

I admired her poise. She's become a little defensive of Chicago pizza this year, surrounded as she is by so many New Yorkers at school. Still, she's been raised to know the truth. It's like football in the United States versus everywhere else. Not the same sport, and, dare I say, without being judgmental, not in the same league.

We all have a tendency to remain loyal to the familiar -- the familiar being the stuff that reminds us of another time, the time that formed us. Growing up, I rarely went more than a couple of days without a slice of pizza. A flimsy triangle of paper thin dough weighed down by a heavy slab of cheese glistening with orange grease that oozes off onto the floor (New York pizza is best eaten standing) when you fold the triangle in half may sound a bit unappetizing to the uninitiated, but to those of us who grew up thinking there is nothing but frontier west of the Hudson -- except New Jersey, which is kind of in a class by itself -- it's ambrosia.  We learn early how to press a finger down into the middle of the sturdy crust and fold, catching the un-foldable and scalding narrow tip on our tongue without burning the roof of our mouth.  We pretend not to notice the filth behind the counter when we sashay in on a whim to grab a slice to tide us over until the next meal.

To be fair, I have lived in Chicago for a long time now, long enough to feel some of that loyalty that comes from the familiar, the stuff that reminds me of a time that formed me. I raised my children here, I have eaten dozens of deep dish pizzas without complaint. I am not straddling the fence though. Football, futbol. Apples, oranges. Pizza, delicious Italian meal in shape of a pie. I'm okay with it all.

Almost a thousand miles away, only hours before the Chicago pizza feast, my older daughter had lunch in New York with my mother, her grandmother. They capped off lunch with a coffee by a fountain where, ages ago, that same daughter had thrown -- in the words of my mother -- the tantrum to end all tantrums. I remember it well, trying to choke down the Chinese food of my own childhood while my generally well mannered first child pitched a fit that surprisingly did not attract all sorts of child welfare workers. The story of their lunch made me yearn for that rather bland Chinese food, for the bustling streets of Manhattan where a screaming baby turns no heads, for the days when my kids were always around. For the familiar, even when it wasn't all that pretty.

Those days are few and far between. I know my mother savored that coffee with her oldest grandchild, remembering fondly that day long ago when it was hard to envision the fine, upstanding person she would become. And I savored the Chicago deep dish pizza, too, with my youngest daughter and her friends. Eating pizza with a knife and fork seems a bit sacrilegious, but it's really no different from watching football with a round ball. You just have to get past the semantics.

It's all about the pizza, which is sometimes not what I think of as pizza at all, but still very good.

Old Glory, New Glory

For years, I spent America's Independence Day on the Canadian shores of Lake Erie celebrating my Scottish mother-in-law's birthday. I had to rely upon the distant fireworks display in Cleveland to stoke my patriotism.

Distant fireworks and the inevitable red, white, and blue icing on the birthday cake made by some mysterious woman in Detroit named Vicki. Actually, my mother-in-law's unique Scottish Midwestern twang and her immigrant obsession with American dental care notwithstanding, the celebration always seemed as downright American as apple pie. Stars and stripes napkins, greasy food, whining children of all ages. It could have been Anywhere, USA, except all the stores were open and, for the locals, it was just another lazy summer day.

I liked my Canadian fourths of July mostly because I felt a part of something. Different guests joined the core group each summer, but I could not have imagined it going forward without me there. Oddly, though, like most things, it does.

Since my marriage imploded, I have been relegated to a position of, if not obscurity, at least insignificance, in the suburbs of Chicago for the July Fourth holiday. I am an onlooker once removed, observing the parade and its spectators from a safe distance, with an odd mix of amusement and envy. I am way too cynical (and averse to primary colors) to don some red, white, and blue ensemble and cheer as my twenty-first century town morphs into Mayberry. I find it difficult to work up enthusiasm as local dignitaries wave from their convertibles and local politicians and bank managers toss out seemingly endless supplies of refrigerator magnets. I feel for the high school athletes, their teams' ranks thinned out by summer camp, looking sleepy and sheepish as they ride by, relieved, no doubt, that most of their peers have not yet made it out of bed to witness their humiliation. Young parents, their arms laden with chairs, herd their children down the sidewalks. They all seem happy. They cannot imagine July Fourth going forward without them there.

The crowd on the Canadian shores of Lake Erie has changed over the years. In the small cluster of cottages where my in-laws and their friends created, long before I came on the scene, what we referred to as their Irish Riviera, folks who were barely teenagers when I met them now have offspring who are older than I was on my first visit. Another generation of children has taken the place of my children on the Canadian sand, and I can easily picture them running down the beach chasing sea gulls. 'Scuse me! Pardon me! The birds would scatter, then return, and the cycle would begin again, to everyone's delight. Except, I assume, the birds.The core blood lines are the same, but there have been births and deaths and divorces and marriages, and kids who were supposed to remain forever young have moved on to create family holiday traditions of their own.

The same can be said for the crowd in suburban Chicago. But here, and everywhere, really, things seem strangely familiar, as if nothing has changed. A new generation of young couples and their children crowded the suburban sidewalks for this year's celebration. My eyes played tricks on me; I could swear I saw old friends, looking just as they looked twenty years ago. I could see my own children's faces in the strollers, in the gaggles of pre-schoolers testing their parents' patience. I even thought I saw myself, looking strangely content.

Sometimes I feel left out when things go on without me, but sometimes it's just reassuring. Yes, I was, in some ways, on the outside looking in this year, watching a strangely anachronistic parade, catching Facebook photos of the latest generation on the Canadian side of Lake Erie. But the continuity makes me smile and gives me comfort, particularly as I, like so many others, tweak the old traditions and maybe even create some new ones.

Over the Rainbow

I lived in Chicago's Boystown neighborhood in the summer of 1986. I had just gotten married, and we lived on a quiet street lined with typically Chicago three flats and greystones that, more often than not, looked far grander from the street than they were inside.

Our apartment was in the middle of the block, a short walk away from Broadway to the east, Halsted to the west. By day, the neighborhood was alive with a twenty-somethings, gay and straight, its cute restaurants and bustling shops a mecca for people like us, just getting started, still enjoying the laziness of weekends that revolved solely around our own schedules. Night games had not yet come to Wrigley Field, and we could hear the roar from the stadium just north of us on warm afternoons. Fans moved through our streets on the way to and from the game. Chicago is a sports town, and even the gay enclave of Boystown played along.

Evenings in our east Lakeview neighborhood catered more to the gay community than to "breeders" like us. When the weather was nice, we could hear through our open windows the revelers in the midst of their bar crawls. We tended to go elsewhere for our entertainment when the sun went down.

In the summer of 1986, when the Chicago Gay Pride Parade rolled down the block a stone's throw from our apartment, there were an estimated 40,000 in attendance. The parade gave an impression of flamboyance, or maybe that's just the way I saw it. In my mind's eye, I recall mascaraed men in muscle tees, cross dressers dancing in the street, over the top floats weighed down by exuberant survivors of a community that was in the midst of being decimated by the AIDS scourge. It was a day to celebrate our differences, to at least pretend to put aside our fears.

Today, almost thirty years later, my daughter and her friends will be joining a crowd in east Lakeview no doubt numbering in the millions to celebrate not just the annual parade but pride. Gay pride, straight pride, just plain old pride. Participants and spectators alike will gather in the June sunshine, enveloped by a glorious rainbow, to celebrate a great moment in history. This week, the gay and lesbian community in every state can officially enjoy the right to marry. Some of us wonder why it took so long, why it was even an issue, and, well, why anyone would want to get married. But it did take so long, and it is still, in the minds of many, an issue, and marriage can actually be a good thing, so there is much to celebrate.

I am guessing that what my daughter and her friends will witness will be very different from the stereotypes and caricatures that wedged themselves into my head all those years ago. Sure, there will be flamboyance. I like to think every community has its share of all kinds of people, defined not by their sexual orientation or the color of their skin but by the diversity that makes us all so uniquely human. Far right (or wrong) thinkers be damned, this year's parade is about love and family and respect and hope and equality and, if all is right with the world, a healthy dose of flamboyance to boot.

Today is about everything under the sun, and everything over the rainbow.

Sweetening the Pot

A new friend told me the other day her top reason for loving her dad is he loves Boston Terriers. My new friend is only seven, but she seems very wise.

My father was a bit too fastidious to be a dog fan, but I know he would have loved each of my dogs with all his heart. Love me, love my dog. My mother -- the one who plucks microscopic bits of lint off carpet and scours her toilet after each flush -- let my boxer puppy lick her face a few weeks ago. My love for her (my mother, not the puppy) reached new heights. If my mother were a tall, dark, handsome man with boatloads of money I would marry her.

Back to my new young friend, the one who knows quality in a man when she sees it. She also knows where she is going to college and she already has her wedding dress picked out. I don't have the heart to tell her that it is a woman's prerogative to change her mind, and that her plan is merely a work in progress. She seems as comforted by her sense of certainty as other kids are with their belief in the tooth fairy. To interfere with that would simply be cruel.

When my first child lost her first tooth, my parents happened to be in town visiting. Competition with the real tooth fairy became fierce; in an odd game of fantasy poker being played beneath my child's pillow, the pot exploded to twenty-seven dollars. Sure, it interfered way too soon with my daughter's belief system, but twenty-seven bucks seemed like a fair trade for a loss of innocence.

I suppose unconditional love makes us all do strange things. Stranger, even, than outbidding the tooth fairy. We lose irretrievable hours of sleep to crying babies, we trade in careers for thousands of miles logged behind the wheel of a minivan, our lives revolve around unruly and demanding beings who, as they grow, often have a hard time seeing past our stupidity and our peskiness. They forget, at least for a while, that we would do anything for them, like love Boston Terriers, or even let a dog whose mouth has been to all sorts of unspeakable places lick our face.

And my new young friend would probably love her dad even if he preferred chihuahuas, or cats  (although I admit that's a bit of a stretch). She will change her mind about college and she will pick a different wedding dress, or maybe no wedding dress at all. But she won't change her mind about her dad. Children are wired that way, to love us in spite of our shortcomings. As my children have grown, I have marveled at their ability to love, if not unconditionally, at least with a capacity to put the needs of others before their own. Sometimes too much so, but I cannot help but feel proud that they somehow learned to err on the side of grace, forgiveness, and generosity. I pity the tooth fairy who tries to stiff one of their children with nothing more than a few shiny coins.

We are the lucky ones, my young friend and I. We have people in our lives who love Boston Terriers and who would let our puppies lick their faces. People who will stop at nothing for us -- even if it means shaming the tooth fairy.

Blackhawks Town

All over Chicagoland, otherwise rational people are deluding themselves into thinking they might somehow be instrumental in bringing the Stanley Cup home. Without so much as lacing up a skate.

I moved to Chicago in the summer of 1985, so I did not have to wait long for my introduction to the city's love affair with its teams. The Bears' championship season was approaching, and though I had never been much of a football fan I was not immune to the charms of Sweetness and the Refrigerator, could even recite most of the players' names. The Superbowl win was dampened somewhat by the Challenger disaster two days later, but never before had I experienced the level of electricity that can light up Chicago when one of its team is having a good run. By the time the Bulls came along to dominate basketball in the nineties, I was accustomed to living in a town that regularly painted itself red and black. The team practiced in our lily white suburb, and kids otherwise unaware of racial diversity would assume every tall black man in the world was a Bull. It was a heady time.

The Blackhawks scored early in Game 5 the other night, just as my friend and I were snapping a selfie. We worked hard to replicate the pose each time the puck went our way. Another friend was in the midst of putting on a jersey when the first goal was scored, and spent a good part of the evening taking it off and putting it on. At other gatherings, people were recreating lucky seating configurations while eating recently anointed victory food. The uninvited souls, those being held accountable for earlier losses -- after all, what else could it have been -- remained safely out of sight, their empty chairs a solemn reminder of their negative vibes.

Frankly, I'm still wondering why ice hockey is being played in the middle of June, but I'm all about sharing in the glory, especially if all I have to do is put on the same filthy shirt and eat the same greasy food. It just seems like an awful lot of pressure, and, by the way, has it occurred to anyone that no matter how vigilant we are in our own little corners of the fan base we have no control over whether someone else drops the ball?

Even if the Hawks lose (perish the thought), it's been cool -- feeling as if I am a part of something. A part of somebody's game day guest list, a part of the conversation in a local watering hole, a part of a sprawling metropolitan area where devotion to sports teams takes on an almost religious fervor and allows a diverse city, at least for a moment, to speak with one voice. Sure, I'll always have the '69 Mets (dare I bring that up?) but New York was always a bit too wrapped up in itself to stop dead in its tracks for sports.

I have not yet decided where I will watch the Hawks game tonight. There does not seem to be any pattern attached to my attendance at various houses. There have been more wins than losses, but somehow I don't think I can take credit or blame for any of them. Still, wherever I end up, I will abide by my hosts' superstitions, and no doubt acquire a few of my own. I will probably borrow the jersey I wore for the last win, and I will change whatever it is I am doing at the moment if Tampa happens to score. I will stuff myself with food deemed lucky by virtue of timing (please let it be artichoke cheese dip and not raw carrots) and I will play musical chairs with the best of them.

And, like everybody else, I will secretly take pride in my own small contributions if the Hawks win or, if necessary, watch somewhere else and wear something else for Game 7.

Heads Up!

An elderly gentleman has taken it upon himself to watch over me at the local library.

It's funny how some people catch your attention, maybe because they remind you of somebody you once knew, maybe somebody important. I admit that when he first approached me, I was neither surprised nor offended. I had noticed him, sitting at the table across from mine, to my left. There were plenty of other regulars, I think, but none of the others had made an impression.

Only his question startled me, that first time. "For profit or not for profit?" My defenses immediately went on high alert. Another person wondering what the heck I was doing, and if it was worth it for someone to pay me. The things I wonder about on a daily basis.

"For profit," I answered. "Theoretically," I added. I wear my confusion on my sleeve.

He bent down and picked up a penny from the floor near my chair. He offered it to me. I flinched. I could see it was tails up. I only pick up pennies if they are heads up, and then I make a note to myself to hold onto it for good luck, although I generally forget about it entirely pretty quickly. Truth be told, I've never really paid attention to whether my luck changes, even for a moment. I explained my policy to the gentleman. He seemed a bit surprised, but he put the penny in his pocket and wished me luck. I worried about him, with a tails up penny in his pocket.

I didn't see him again for a week. This time he startled me when he suddenly spoke in my ear. "I've been waiting for you," he said. Not in a menacing way, just very matter of fact. I recognized the voice. "I was at McDonald's the other day, getting a coffee," he continued. Had he said he was getting a Big Mac, I might have been concerned, but he was getting a coffee. Not so creepy.

He opened up his hand to show me what looked to be a penny, although it was so dark and weathered I could not really tell. "And I saw this filthy old penny on the floor, and I remembered what you said, and I bent down and saw it was heads up, so I took it for you."

I didn't know what to say. He apologized for its condition. I told him it was probably an antique, and I thanked him for it.

When I left a short while later to run a quick errand, I placed the old penny in my jacket pocket, and kept checking for it. Rain was coming down in sheets, and I was hoping my penny would help me find another sheltered parking space when I returned to the library. After a third spin through, it worked. Well, I found a sheltered parking space, and I like to think the penny had something to do with it.

The elderly gentleman and I have chatted again since then. Not just about pennies, but about what we do and where we have been and what we would like to do and where we would like to go. He mentioned he had found another penny the other day -- tails up -- and had kept it for himself. He admitted business was not going well for him at the moment. I gave him a knowing look.

The filthy dark penny sits on my dresser now. I knocked it to the floor once, and it landed tails up, but I flipped it over and put it back. Once heads up, always heads up. My luck, I decided, had been grandfathered in.

The penny is more than an ordinary penny. And the elderly gentleman, well, I like to think he is more than an ordinary elderly gentleman. His face does not really remind me of anyone in particular, but his kindness is vaguely familiar.