Melsville

Dream House

Remember what your dream house used to be?  I do: fourteen years ago, Jamie and I  moved into ours   We didn’t pay rent to live in our dream house, we owned it.  We could decorate it, paint it, do anything we wanted.  We could make any changes we wanted;  but why change it?  In our house, there were enough rooms for Jamie and I to have our own little offices.  We could look out upon our decently-sized yard and imagine our children playing in it.  The subway, the cheap movie-theater and decent restaurants were a quick walk from the front door.  Did I say “dream house”?:; well it was.  Jamie and I didn’t dream big house-wise, so the house could be small.

I still love this house.   It’s my family's history.  Both my kids came home to this house.  My children are city children;  they walk places because so much of life is within walking distance.  They know kids on this street.  Their yard is the best yard, climbing structure and all.

This is our home, and we’re bursting out of it.   Those two offices?  They were perfect places for desks and filing cabinets,   Once they became the kids’ rooms, they got smaller.  Now that Emma is sleeping in the cozy little office where it wrote for hours on end, it looks smaller than a hotel coat-closet.  It is, and always was. Liam’s room is jam-packed with Legos.   The kids need bigger rooms.  I need a second bathroom  because, first thing in the morning, desperately wants the only one we have.  The half-bath, the guest-room, the laundry-room up where all the laundry is; yeah, we need them.

The house has us, it really does.  The porch has been torn down,  and the cement steps got demolished yesterday.  The back-door opens straight into nothing.  Step outside, and you’d drop into a hole that’s as deep as our basement.  The only way out of the house is through the front door.  We’ve got nowhere to go but forward.

Girls in Charge

Emma turned four today.  Four, she told her teachers and every kid in the Red Group as soon as she walked through the door.  The same age as her bestest buds , this seemed to be bigger news than all the cupcakes we brought, even the ones she frosted.   Tonight there are new books to read and a new game ( Chutes and Ladders, which Jamie remembers fondly ).  Some rainy day, there will be a new puzzle to try.  Indulgent?;  hard not to be with my little girl.

Six years ago, while we watched our sons run around the park, my neighbour, Paul,  noted that four-year-old girls are the most self-confident people on earth.  If allowed, they would, and could run the world.   Paul had never lived with a four-year-old girl, but he knew people who did, and he’d heard them holding court around the jungle-gym.  I’ve seen little girls in full command of two different day-care-centers.  Emma knows the world belongs to her.

Yesterday, I watched Emma and three of her girls around a pink tea-table make big plans to wreck havoc.  When our girls are dressed up in pink tulle with crowns and sparkly shoes, they rule the kingdom, and there’s not a king in sight.  Emma loves Cinderella, she loves the magic and the transforming; when she plays it, the Prince never even enters the story.

Last year, I wondered how I was going to handle fairy tales.   Last year, I imagined a Cinderella who took a break from the party to check out the castle library.  That’s where she meets the  very shy Prince;; they discuss literature and science. before hitting the dance floor.  Okay, sometimes I tell the story “by the book”, but I’ll try and remember to tell it my way more often.

It might be easier to bring out my Ella if I could show her off in a picture-book.  Any artist  out there want to work on one with me?  I’m not kidding; my drawing style is a little too modern and cartoonish than I think this beauty needs.   Interested?; be in touch.

In that park that morning with Paul and the boyos, I hadn’t spent too much time with little girls.   It is easier to wonder where all the girl-power goes if all you know is that theorists say it goes.   Many of the ten-year-old girls I know play soccer and practice Kung Fu like they have something to prove.  My mother-in-law (former Biology teacher) always said that the best group-projects were the ones where short teenage girls headed the groups.  Those girls wanted good grades, and no lazy boys were going to stop them dammit!

Maybe it’s good that some girls think about their appearance before boys do.   Some boys I know leave their houses in black sweatpants and dirty navy shirts, and I’m sick of looking at them.   Stop embarrassing your mothers boys,  before we stop chalking it up to “boys being boys”

My Emma is tough, powerful and loves loves pink. She turned four this morning.

Sherlock Holmes and Me

When I was seven or eight, I met my childhood hero, the one who pulled me into the 19th century.   On a rainy Sunday afternoon, my father took us into Boston to see the 1939   film “The Hound of the Baskervilles”.   You may know it, the brittle brilliant Holmes, his dottering Dr. Watson, and 200 pounds of sinew, teeth and fur.  Piece by piece, clue by clue, it all came perfectly together;  how could I resist?  Why should I?

From that afternoon on,  Holmes was my number one, over-the-top hero.  Comic books, space-operas, they meant nothing to me.  Other detectives were mere, dim shadows.  Holmes solved crimes on the London street and in country homes in that big costume-drama, the Victorian era, where I dreamt.  At night, on the school-bus and during Math lessons, I invented crimes to solve with Holmes by my side.

By the time I was ten and attending the yearly meetings of the Friends of Irene Adler, I had probably heard every story thanks to a public radio station that ran the half-hour radio plays of the Sherlock Holmes stories made by the BBC in the 1940s.  My father and I saved each story on an old tape recorder we placed by the speaker.  Dad and I liked these better than the movies because  they got the whole stories just right and showed Watson the way  he really was; as Holmes’ intelligent contemporary.  Listening to those plays with Dad was the best part of Sundays.

Every December, Dad put on his tux and escorted me to the dinner-meeting of The Friends of Irene Adler.  Here, all members worked our way through a nearly impossible quiz on Holmes and his work before dining on roast goose and sherry trifle.  At my first meeting, I got up and proposed a toast to The Baker Street Irregulars.  The Irregulars were the street-kids whom Holmes paid shilling to ferret out clues and information.   Queen Victoria, Irene Adler, Holmes and Watson had been thusly honoured I didn’t want my boyos to be forgotten.  Nobody had thought to toast them before, and that became my yearly responsibility.

I loved Holmes because he proved that being smarter than anyone else really counted for something,  Sometimes, it was all you needed.

When I was a kid, I liked Irene Adler just fine.  It took me years to fully appeacuate her power. She stopped Holmes in his tracks so completely that he had to admit defeat, even  to himself.  It’s only after watching men lock themselves into some pretty stupid mistakes because they can’t own up to making mistakes that I realise what an achievement that is.

Another hero from my childhood was Oscar Wilde.  He never solved a crime or prevented an innocent woman from being mauled by mastiffs, but Oscar could nail a situation, or an adversary, with a few well-chosen words.  Oscar would probably have made a better dinner-companion.

So, did I like the new Sherlock Holmes movie?  Oh, yes I did!!!  It’s a big concoction of 19th  century adventure.  This is still  the kind of get-away I need.

Christmas Music

And so this is Christmas.  The Asian lady from the Davis Square T stop is in Harvard Square singing Christmas carols.   For months, this lady, with her wooden guitar had always been in the Davis Square T stop whenever I was there.  Always there, and always singing “Annie’s Song” without hint of irony or satire.  She seems happy, so I’ve always liked her.   Now, as I’m running from Davis to Porter, Porter to Harvard and home again, I hear her in another station singing other songs.

In Concord, when  the center of town was the site of two holiday traditions.  The first was the night when they kept the shops open into the night.  Not a very eventful event, but it was fun.  We  walked through the bright, dark, cold streets seeing friends, visiting stores, and shopping.   And then, there was Christmas Eve.

On Christmas Eve, people gathered to sing christmas carols in Concord center.   It was always cold, a thin, sharp cold, and the cold, and I was usually wearing  a dress and party shoes.  My family stopped in the center on our way to friends’ home for a traditional Feast of the Seven Fish.  We sang,  “Joy to The World,” or “We Three Kings” from out of booklets that we’d hung onto over the years.  Everyone sang loudly, not everyone sang well.  Remember all the Whoes in Whoville singing hand in hand? That’s what it was. 

Cars and Toys

Toy cars never interested me, and I never imagined they would.  Who  would know that a trip to a toy store would set me dreaming of driving through a glittering mod-tropilos?  And yet, there she was.  In the crowed parking lot, actually shining like an actual new penny was a copper-colored Austin Mini.   An original Mini, a car older than I am, the sister of the car my mother learned to drive.  This car had obviously lead an eventful life, but she was so beautiful.

You’ll never know how large a Mini Cooper is unless you’ve see an Austin Mini.  They are the perfect little toy car.  They look like something you could pick up and carry home, and that’s what I wanted to do.  It didn’t matter that I can’t drive; that car and I could share a funky, young,  girl-about-town life.  I hated turning my back on that lovely, but I had Christmas  shopping to do.

This is my third Christmas with a daughter, and it hasn’t gotten any easier.  It’s harder actually, since she’s exposed to more TV commercials than she did last year,  and she can see what they are selling; some are selling passes to girldom.  Mini-ovens, castles for twirling Barbie princesses,; Emma asks, “can we get that?”  When I ask her what she likes about it, all she sometimes says is,  “ It’s a girl-toy”. 

Now, I’m a girly-girl,  I and I was one when I was four.   When I was four, I loved dressing up, caring for my dolls and animals and having tea-parties.  I would never pull Emma away from enjoying these things.    It’s all about exploring girlhood , figuring out what she likes and what she can totally do without for now.

Our job that day was to follow Emma around  toy stores and see what she liked.  Baby dolls, when Emma saw that shelf filled with baby dolls,, she headed right for it.  She seemed to want to play with them all.  The next morning, she was pretty clear when she told me she really wanted a baby-doll; a baby-doll and a spinning top.   Add books, Legos and a few other bits of fun, and there’s Emma’s Christmas goodies

Standing in front of the Austin Mini, Jamie said, “look Emma! It’s your size!”  Oh, she thought it was cute alright, but it wasn’t love at first sight. 

Some Good Things and Why They Are Good

I just ate a plate of latkes at Rene’s Cafe.  I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, I love potato pancakes.  That Rene’s keeps some kind of potato pancakes on the menu is one of the reasons I love it.

The best thing about Rene’s Cafe isn’t the potato pancakes of the eggs Benedict.  Liam and I go to Rene’s together on the Monday mornings when he’s home while Emma is at pre-school.  As soon as his side order of bacon hits the table, he attacks it; it might even be gone by the time his pancakes arrive.  I sit across from him, slowly eating veggie eggs benny. Liam can’t understand why I would replace the canadian bacon with spinach and tomato slices, and he can’t believe how slowly I eat.

Liam and I talk about stuff.  He tells me about his classmates.  I tell him about Mahatma Gandhi, and we agree that his birthday should be a holiday.  We discuss Harry Portter;  why everyone might rather that Percy Weasly  died in place of  Fred but that maybe it had to be Fred.   The best thing about Rene's is that, at Rene’s don’t rush their patrons.  The best thing about Rene’s is that Liam and I can stay and talk. as long as we want.

A writing challenge for the Winter is going to be to write a piece of Harry Potter fan-fiction.  When I’ve finished a story about George Weasly, I’ll give it to Liam, so we can talk about it over breakfast at Rene’s.

The Campbell /  O’Keefes have made pacts with the Campbells  and the Bendas; this Christmas, we are shopping only for the kids.  I love shopping for children, particularly at Christmas.  I like it because I do it in person.  I spend time in Porter Square Books  looking at the picture books  and seeing the illustrations for myself and reading the first pages of novels. I enjoy talking to the salespeople and finding out what books they recommend.   I walk up Mass Ave to a real  toy store; one where the toys are displayed in interesting ways.  These are toys that a buyer selected, toys that look like fun.  I might even get to see a toy out of the box, to see what it feels like, how a kid would play with it.  The salespeople can talk about the the toys because they know what they are selling. 

I like shopping in small stores because people working in these stores are sure of what they sell.  People who work in stores don’t get paid poorly to pack and ship boxes.  I like shopping in stores because I realize how much  I’m actually buying and how much it actually costs.  I like shopping in stores because going to the store is an event.

Yes, I do buy presents on-line.  When I’m buying CDs, computer gear or hard-to-find books, it makes sense.   For years, our route has been covered by the same UPS man, and I like him.  He carried boxes in for me when I was pregnant and shouldn’t have lifted things.  He came to our house twice in one day so he could bring me a late-arriving package two days before Christmas. He always calls me “Mrs. O’Keefe”, and I don’t let many people do that.

Last week, I took my First-Level Kung Fu test.  Instructor Karen reviewed my test.  When we scheduled the test, she tried to put me at ease saying, “I’ll be reviewing the test; it’s only me.  Only you Karen, the incredible woman who was still leading kids’ classes and two days before her son was born, only you Karen, who, cute as you are could probably snap somebody in half.


What makes Karen ( and Jonathan, and Marc, but I’m talking about Karen today), s o great is that she knows how to help me and when to leave me alone. When I was working my way through the Long Fist and Southern Fist forms,  I barely noticed her at all.  I felt like I was all alone working.  Full of purpose and all alone.

With Karen’s help, I proved a few things .  Because I wasn’t trying to keep up with a roomful of people while Jonathan counted out ten side-kicks on either side,  I could do them a little better (not much better, I will always hate side-kicks) if I did them slowly.  Because Karen insisted that I take more time with it, I realized that I actually do a passable snap kick with my left leg.  I can pull either leg up to my chest and stand there; I didn’t know that.

She’s the tough one, Karen is.  She doesn't modify moves for me as often as Marc ot Jonathan do.  Now, I adore Instructor Jonathan, don’t imagine that I don’t, but I think I still scare him.  Small women with Cerebral Palsy probably scare lots of able-bodied men.  I’m not sure that Jonathan has ever gotten over the fear that I was going to fall over and break something.

Last night, Jonathan lead the class.  I hadn’t seen him in maybe a month,  and his classes always are fun.  I walked home though the cold dark, with a few snowflakes swirling in the air.  I’m not crazy about the wind, but it’s almost Christmas, so it should be snowing.

I woke up this morning wishing for the tiny apple pies my mother always made; cups of pastry filled with homemade chunky applesauce and big dollops of whipped cream.   I missed those, and the sausage rolls and the many-layered wonder of Christmas trifle  Mama always made.  Her trifle recipe left the world when she did,  so here comes my yearly effort at making something like it.  One week before Christmas Eve, it’s good to miss these things.

What's Hanging on YOUR Tree

In the days when Christmas was enforced as the primary Winter holiday, Christmas ornaments were a yearly were classroom projects.   Skeins  of yarn, rolls of shiny paper, stacks of popsicle sticks, and blizzards of glitter, the y became stars,, circles and bells.  I also remember making an angle out of a gold paper cup, a paper doilies and a tiny Styrofoam sphere; for years, she topped our Christmas trees.   

My mother saved home-made decorations, although she always hoped that some would vanish somewhere between the basement boxes and the tree.  Some were so old that we  had forgotten who made it, or even what it used to be.

Such was the case wit the Xmas Lozange.   Made out of melted yellow plastic, a foreboder of the melty beads, it was long and shiny.  Because its texture was gravely, I thought that the plastic had never melted properly.  As the years past, we all agreed it was butt-ugly, and neither my brother Jonathan nor I took responsibility for it.  He blamed me, but I absolutely know that he created the Xmas Lozange.   The last time we our families gathered to the tree with my mother, all admitted we hated it, and the Xmas Lozange hit the trash.

My mother made ornaments as well.  She sewed them out of felt,  She made the classics, the tree, the Santa, the stockings the teddy-bears and the reindeer, and she made ones that made sense only to the four of us;  who would decorate her tree with a felt Sherlock Holmes except the youngest member of the Friends of Irene Adler?


Like most of his family, Liam makes things.  Three years ago, he built a home for my Yoda figure.  It sits on my desk an intentionally-lopsided hut, so perfect for the squat green Jedi.  Right now, he has a business building habitats for the beastie-shaped pencil-topping erasers that are popular with his classmates.  Demand is now so high that Liam and his fellow builders  have needed to fire their sales-people.  Liam may make himself obsolete because, since kids pay Liam and his friends in erasers, they may eventually be the only ones who have any.

This weekend, I am planning a trip to Pearl Art Supplies in Central Square.  Bypassing the alluring aisles of chalk pastels,  I’ll head strait for the craft supplies in the basement.  Felt, Popsicle sticks, melty beads and anything that sparkles, I’m planning to come home with some of everything.  The art-students buying brushes and fixative upstairs may wish they were going home  to make Christmas Jedi.

Anyone who wants to see the most beautiful patch of sidewalk in Somerville should come by my house.  Bring a camera, you aren’t going to see its equal on your street, my street, or any other.   Any day now, it could be jackhammered into rubble, so you have no time to lose.

Two months ago, this panel of pavement was  the scene of some bleeding and bone-breaking that just had not happened.  Tree roots had broken the slab into pieces and pushed the pieces eighteen inches off the pavement.  Elderly men taking their dogs on their morning constitutionals stopped me on my way home from  taking Emma to pre-school and told me I should call the city and tell them to fix it.   The lady from across the street was very good at telling me what could go wrong if I didn’t get it fixed.    She didn’t want anything bad to happen to  me or the kids.  “Call the Mayor and tell him he has to fix it.  Tell him you’re sick and that you have two kids.”

She was the one who told me what might have happened one night in August.  “Some lady fell in front of your house last night.  I think something happened; she broke something, fractured something, I don’t know.  You call the Mayor and get that sidewalk fixed.”

I never needed to speak with the Mayor.  I called my Alderman and I identified myself as many ways as I could I was a Somerville homeowner, a voter in his district, I was a mother with two young kids and a person with Cerebral Palsy and a seizure disorder.  I was all of these things, and I needed my sidewalk fixed.  Someone had fallen in front of my house, might have broken something;  I needed that sidewalk fixed.  It was up to the city to fix it.

Within fifteen minutes, the Alderman was in front of the house, work order in his hand, waiting for the DPW.   Accident waiting to happen, they agreed.

Two weeks later, our neighbours were in awe of our smooth, flat  sidewalk.   There are  cracks and pits all up and down the street,  but the panel in front of my house is pristine. 


Last week, the builders told us that if we wanted the extenuation work on our house to include a full second bathroom and a half-bath, we will need to put in a larger pipe to carry water to the house.  This means the sidewalk in front of our house needs to be dug up, wrecked.   After that’s done, we’ll be replacing it at our own expense. 

So my local friends, come and marvel at this monument to telling the city of Somerville what needs to be done.    Enjoy it while you can.

A Trip to the Bookstore

After dropping Emma off at Pre-school,  I practically ran to the subway station.  Nothing was getting in the way of me and Porter Square Books.  I was on a mission, and nothing would stop me.

Even being in the subway gave me a thrill.  Just having somewhere to go, excited me. I was going to go to the bookstore and buy two copies of The Grapes of Wrath; one to replace the decrepit library copy which was past overdue and unfinished.  The second unblemished copy was for me to finished at me leisure.  I also intend to sit in the cafe and eat a triple-berry scone with my coffee. Hunger had settled over me, I needed that scone.  I wanted to enjoy my breakfast before I needed it too much.  To the subway!!

On the subway-platform,  across the tracks, I noticed a placard telling of a local production of The Taming of the Shrew.  From the blue-on-blue tangle of images and words, Katerina glowered alluring; half come-hither glance, half-dare-you-to-cross-this-line glare.  It worked on me, I already yearned to go.   Live theatre? Shakespeare?; yeah Baby! I wondered if my Mother-in-law could take the kids some night and let Jamie and I go.

In his theater-days, my father had played Pertrcchio in a Belfast production.  As an actor, Daddy was made for Shakespeare's comedies; he had perfect comic timing and the look of a handsome character-actor.  Daddy had crazy red-hair and was nowhere near tall.  He played Petrichio in heeled boots and risers because he wasn’t taller enough than his leading-lady / foil. 

The  Belfast Shakespeare Company missed a chance they should have taken; that’s what I think.  How would it have looked, I wonder if Katerina was well and truly taller than her suitor?  What could the cast do with that?  We’ll never know.

As I walked to the bookstore, I recalled a college classmate who had been much under-used by the Vassar Drama Department.  Frankly short, Sheldon had Crayola-orange hair that fell, poker-straight down the middle of his back. He also looked very young, and wore roundy wire glasses.  When the Drama Department mounted a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Sheldon finally got the attention he deserved.  He played Puck, and he filled the whole stage looking like a man loving every minute of his star-turn.  After the first performance, the audience all told their friends to go because everybody had to see Sheldon.

A few nights before the first show, Sheldon had to get a Drama Department haircut.   His fabulous hair was loosely braided, and the braid cut off,  There were sad women on the Vassar campus the next morning. 

Once I’d gotten ordered my  muffin, I saw a book on a table that I knew I had to buy.  It was called Belfast’s Ghosts, and the cover declared it an impressive first novel and a taut thriller.  Taught thriller; that suggested that it was about “The Troubles”, which is not exactly what I wanted it to be.  I wanted a book to tell the reader about Belfast, the antique gem, the place my young father thought of as the cool, big city.  I wanted people to read about a Belfast that didn’t blow up.  I knew that such a place existed.

My friend, Marguerite, has family in Israel.  She knows what it’s like to have family somewhere you see as dangerous and unpredictable.  When I was a teenager, visiting my grandparents in Northern Ireland,  a girl at some kind of protest, march or “disturbance” died after being hit by a rubber-tipped bullet.  All other news stopped.  It became the only thing, the worst thing happening anywhere.  When I returned to Boston, I called my boyfriend and assured him my family and I were all okay.  He had no idea what I was talking about.  Northern Ireland rarely makes the American news.   When it does, it’s never good.  Always early in the morning, and never again that day, National Public Radio tells me that there have been shootings.  I just lie in my bed cursing and crying; oh my people, stop it, stop it.

Before I even picked up the book, I heard about something else I desperately wanted to see.  The Somerville Theatre would be screening  A Hard Day’s Night on Sunday.  I was already dying to go, but this time I wanted to bring the kids.  I wanted them to see a Beatles made without Peter Max animation.  Goofy, over-the-top and even then understated; I wanted to give the kids a treat.  I wanted them to appreciate it.  My kids have senses of humour, and I want to give them some credit.

I’m so glad I went to that bookstore.  Three cultural shots, straight up, I’m dizzy but I want more.  I’ll start the new book today, The Grapes of Wrath will keep.   I want to go to the theatre, or even a movie, but I might have to settle for knowing others are seeing them.  Wanting is a rush, but it’s not enough.

Back to Melsville

I’m sure that all my readers are bored of hearing this, but I’ll tell you one more time.  Since November is National Write a Month month, I’m giving it a go.  It’s that simple.  I’m not going to bore you with the details; I want to tell you that I’m working.  I also want you to know that I’m not moving out of Melsville.  You’ll actually be hearing more from me.

Everyone also knows that I practice Kung Fu twice a week, right?   Each class starts with twenty or so minutes of stretches, jumping jacks, push- ups and standing very still until it hurts.  Each class opens with punching into the air and kicking at nothing.  After every class, I take a one-mile walk home through the colder-and-colder dark.  By the time I get home, I’m loose, tired, wide awake and thrilled.

I want to  make Melsville the warm-up.  My fifty jumping jacks and 100 toe-touches, this will be where I start, or end.  Melsville could be that bracing, let-it-go walk at the end of the night. 

My life is my life, this novel is not.  Here,  you’ll be hearing about what happens in my life.

By the end of this month, I will have also passed my Level Two Test in Kung Fu class.  Oh yeah, and construction should be underway on the house in the next few weeks.  November is shaping up to be one packed month.