Waiting for--and waiting out--the storm

As I type this column, I’m bathed in the glow of my kitchen light.  My iPhone is charging next to me and my husband is downstairs watching the Patriots broadcast.  A pot of tomato sauce burbles on the stove as I heat up a cup of cider in my microwave I pause to appreciate this scene, and realize that by the time this paper goes to press, all of these small but important actions may very well become impossible.

Because “Frankenstorm” is headed our way.

That’s right, we’re gearing up for yet another “hundred year storm”.  Though Hurricane Sandy is predicted to make landfall somewhere in my beloved New Jersey, she’s still planning to beat the stuffing out of New England.  I love the way they throw that term, “hundred year storm” around. Sandy is being compared to the “Perfect Storm” of 1991, another Halloween nor‘easter, and if my math calculations are correct, that was only 21 years ago.  I remember last year’s “Irene” being referred to as a “hundred year” storm as well.  Actually, there have been more than a few “storm of the century” storms in recent memory.  I’m starting to think that perhaps I was born in the wrong hundred-year span.

I don’t doubt that Sandy will wreak havoc on the Northeast.  As I write this, the New York City transit system is halting service and there have been evacuations in parts of the city.  The predictions coming out of that area are eerily reminiscent of those scenes from the disaster movie, “The Day After Tomorrow”, where a giant wall of water decapitates the Statue of Liberty and plunges most of Manhattan undersea. Of course Jake Gyllenhaal’s character was able to outrun that wave, so perhaps there’s hope for the Big Apple after all.

On the one hand, I’m glad that people are given enough notice to prepare.  We all want enough time to stockpile water and batteries and canned food and generators and gold kruggerands and pinot noir and copies of Us Magazine and People.  The downside is enduring more than a week’s worth of Doppler maps and storm tracks and reporters in windbreakers on the beach.  I’ve seen endless news footage of empty grocery store shelves and people gloating over getting the very last generator.  With all that advance warning, our hatches are thoroughly battened.

I appreciate that our governor declared a state of emergency long before the first drops of rain hit Massachusetts.  I’m thankful that National Grid has a plan in place to try to minimize power loss to its customers.  I’m thrilled that our town has been proactive in contacting residents with suggestions on how best to prepare for yet another apocalyptic storm.  But no one has really addressed one of the most pressing issues of all:

What about Halloween?

I know there are many experts already forecasting the financial damage that may result by Frankenstorm, but what about the emotional damage caused when all those Disney Princesses, Transformers, Zombies and Fairies are denied their fun-size Snickers and Mini Kit Kats?  If you think planning for a hurricane a week in advance is impressive, my kids start planning their Halloween costumes on November first.  The inside of my house looks like The Spirit Store, and my son has already a strategic route to maximize his candy intake.  Hell hath no fury as a child denied the opportunity to travel from house to house and beg for full-sized Hershey bars.  Any suggestions, FEMA?

All kidding aside, now that my grill has been bungeed to the deck, my flashlights properly tested and my pantry stocked, there’s nothing else for me to do but pray that everyone I love comes out of this storm safely.  And when it’s over, I’ll thank the Lord that there won’t be another storm of this magnitude for a century.

Until next year, that is.

A Picture that's Far from Perfect

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It’s that time of year again.  The air is cold and crisp, tinged with just a hint of wood smoke.  The days are a collage of vivid blue skies blended with leaves in hues of red, orange and gold.  As autumn ticks by, parents and children alike will carefully select getups for that one frightening day that can result in grown men and women squealing with terror. 

Brace yourselves.  It’s school picture day.

As a parent, I should love school picture day.  Though I take hundreds of candid photos of my children, picture day is my one opportunity for a professional photographer to take a portrait that is the embodiment of that school school year.  In years to come, I’ll be able to look back at these school photos and reminisce, “Awww.  He looked so sweet in 5^th grade.”

That’s the fantasy.  The reality was that in 5^th grade, my son’s school portrait looked like an ID photo for a 40-year old software developer. I sent the photos back and opted for the retake day.  Unbelievably, the make-up photo was even worse.  The photographer, compensating for the glare on my son’s glasses, had him tilt his head at an angle that gave him a double chin and made him look like a hippo.  I ended up demanding my money back and submitting my own photo to the yearbook. I understand that there are hundreds of children to shoot in a limited amount of time, but in this digital age, there’s no excuse for pictures that make children look like safari animals.

Of course, the photographer isn’t always to blame.  In kindergarten, my younger son forgot to turn in his picture money.  While other families received class photos and portraits, we had to wait for the retake day.  Prior to the make-up day, I picked up my son from school when another mother stopped me and said,  “You’re Cooper’s mom?” She burst into giggles and confided, “My husband and I were laughing so hard over the class picture last night.”   I explained that we had missed the first round of pictures and hadn’t received a class photo yet. “You mean you haven’t seen it?  Oh, I’ll make a copy for you.”  Making good on her promise, I received a copy of the kindergarten class photo. My son was smack in the center of the group, eyes shut tight with his tongue sticking out.  “Why did you do that?” I wailed. He shrugged his shoulders and simply replied, “I don’t know.” In an unrelated conversation with the school principal, I hesitantly asked if she had seen that particular class photo.  With a sigh she replied, “Yes, and we’re planning to re-do that class picture on the retake day.”  That year, Mrs. Brown’s kindergarten class had the distinction of providing families with two class pictures.  But only one of them was suitable for framing, thanks to my son.

The school picture process has changed drastically over the years.  In my day, a photographer in Sansabelt pants and a shiny shirt would place everyone on the same stool, in front of the same backdrop and comb everyone’s hair over their foreheads with the same icky comb. Flash forward to today, when kids can choose from over a hundred and fifty different backgrounds, including the Brooklyn Bridge, snowy fields, a Japanese pagoda, the Las Vegas strip, and even outer space.  My son chose “Dark Matter”, a galactic background that makes him look like he’s about to be sucked into a black hole. Still, I consider it a better alternative to the one that evokes the phrase “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas”.  How many grandparents will receive a school portrait of their grandchild in front of the Golden Gate Bridge and wonder, “When did they go to San Francisco?”

Then there’s the “package” selection.  How many 8X10’s, 5X7’s and wallet photos do we really need?  Judging by the number of leftover photos from years past, the answer is “not that many”.  That doesn’t include the trading cards, calendars, mouse pads, beverage cups and dog tags that are also offered.  Dog tags?  Who knew that dogs even wanted to wear pictures of their owners?

Thankfully, both kids are over this year’s picture day hump.  Though I’ve yet to see the results, I’m crossing my fingers that both sets of photos are acceptable, thereby avoiding the dreaded retake day.  I don’t think I can handle this process twice in one year.

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words, but I can sum up school picture day in just one: Oy!

Older Crowd Can Still Get Its Kicks

I’ve become a soccer fan these last eight years; a necessity since both of my children have played soccer through our town’s sports association.  My younger son played for a few seasons before deciding that baseball was more to his liking, while my older son has played every fall and spring season since kindergarten.  In addition to spending endless hours on the sidelines watching my sons practice and play, I’ve enjoyed attending some of the New England Revolution games at Foxboro, and watching World Cup Soccer on television.

With all that in mind, I can honestly say that I’ve found something infinitely more entertaining than watching my children play soccer.  And that’s watching my husband play soccer.

Recently, my husband was invited to join a local “over 40” soccer league.  My husband is over 40 and then some, so you can imagine my concern about him suddenly deciding to sprint around an indoor soccer court for fifty minutes every Friday night.  Though a regular at the gym, at his age every physical endeavor brings potentially new and exciting ways to hurt himself. The team’s name, “Under Construction”was a little puzzling, but definitely preferable to something more ominous, like say, “Condemned”.

My husband had a brief stint on a co-ed team just a few years ago, and what I remember most was each game ending with someone limping off the field in need of an ice pack.  At the end of that season, I was thankful that most of his body parts were still intact.  There were no subsequent invites to join another team until earlier this fall when the “over 40” team came calling.

And so for the past month, my Friday nights have been spent sitting in the stands at the South Shore Sports Center in Hingham, cheering on the efforts of my husband and his fellow soccer cronies…er, I mean teammates.  I can honestly say that there are marked differences between watching children play soccer and watching mature men play the game.

For example, the language is much more colorful.  Mind you, the teams do try to keep their exclamations PG-13, given that there are often kids in the gallery, but I’ve seen a few missed plays result in an f-bomb.  I guess I can’t expect men entering their golden years to yell, “Oh POOPY!” when they miss a goal.  Though that would be funny.

Speaking of language, my Friday nights have taken on an international flavor.  My husband’s team was slaughtered three weeks ago by the Brazilian team.  Big surprise there, since Brazilians come out of the womb with cleats on their feet.  My husband’s team was definitely at a disadvantage because their opponents were shouting instructions to each other in Portuguese.   That and the fact that they’re Brazilian.  Things didn’t go much better the following week when they played the Irish team.  Though instructions were shouted in heavily-accented English, my husband’s team just couldn’t get out from under the luck o’ the Irish.

I don’t remember much fighting when my children played soccer, but in my husband’s league I see players posturing, chest bumping and getting in each other’s faces over the most minor infractions.  At one point I wondered if I was watching soccer or hockey.  Luckily, most of the blowups dissolved quickly, and no one came after us in the dark parking lot after the game. 

The adult games also offer something the kids’ games never could: booze.  There’s nothing that can’t be improved by the addition of alcohol, and that includes watching an assortment of older men, some in questionable physical condition, sweat their way up and down the pitch for the better part of an hour.  Cheers!

I will say that with age comes improved skill at (ahem) ball control. These over-40 teams have perfected the art of carefully passing of the ball to each other, rather than slam-kicking the ball at every opportunity as children often do.

As far as injuries, so far my husband has strained a muscle in one leg, necessitating the use of a wintergreen-scented muscle rub that stinks up the entire house, and just recently twisted his foot, causing a big, swollen bruise to appear.  No serious injuries or trips to the emergency room…yet!

While I wouldn’t mind the occasional Friday night movie or dinner out, I know that one of the things my husband enjoys most about these evenings, other than his pure love of the game, is to have his family in the stands cheering him on. When he comes off the field with that big, beaming smile on his face, looking almost like a kid himself, I’m reminded of how much this means to him, and I’m tempted to  throw my arms around him and share his joy.

But I don’t.  Because let’s face it, he’s pretty sweaty.

Spirit and Skill are Band Substances

As many of you know by now, I am not a huge football fan.  Though my husband loves spending hours watching the Patriots on Sunday afternoons (he’s watching them play as I type this), I prefer to spend my time reading, watching movies, folding laundry or even scrubbing the bathtub.  I have nothing against Tom Brady and his crew; I just find football to be a slow-paced, confusing game.  No matter how much someone tries to explain the rules of the game, I just can’t seem to grasp it.  

Maybe if my kids played football I’d have more of an appreciation for the sport, but it’s definitely not their game.  However, at least once each season, my younger son will ask me to take him to watch his friend play football.  As a result, I wrote a column last year about the appeal of the Friday night football game.  Under the lights, bundled up against the cold, crisp fall air, a palette of leaves scattered on the edge of the field, with moms and dads calling out encouragement to their fifth and sixth graders; I may not understand what’s happening on the field, but I definitely can appreciate the camaraderie in the stands.

And now I have a new appreciation for football thanks to one more very special element:  Marching band! 

Now that my older son is a freshman in high school and a member of the marching band, football holds a whole new appeal for me.  I may seem to be paying attention to what’s happening in the game, but what I’m really doing is sneaking peeks at my son in his band uniform.  Who knew that the strains of “Gonna Fly Now” could sound so inspiring? I’ve always found “The Star Spangled Banner” to be moving, but now it brings tears to my eyes.  Marching band is the final piece of the puzzle.  Football now has meaning.

Okay, well I still don’t know a flag from a fumble.  But who cares as long as there’s a combination of brass and percussion to entertain me?  I rely on my husband for cues about the game.  When he claps, I clap.  When he cheers, I cheer.  When he curses, I ask, “What just happened?”  And then I wait for the band to strike up a rousing version of “Bad Romance”.   

Marching band provides inspiration for the team.  It gives the cheerleaders something to dance to.  It entertains the spectators, especially when the band performs their rendition of “Jaws”, complete with a bloodcurdling scream at the end.  But best of all, it gives us the halftime show.

This year, our marching band is performing a medley of Beatles tunes.  It would be tricky enough to perform “Eleanor Rigby” marching up and down the field, but watching the performers sidestep and cross each other without collision is truly a wonder to behold. I asked my son, who plays bass drum, why he “crabs”, or walks sideways.  “It’s because we can’t see over the drum and if we walked forward we’d crash into each other”.  His comment reminded of the scene from “Animal House” when “The Stork” leads the entire marching band down into the alley.   I never thought much about all the time and work that goes into the choreography of marching band until I watched my son beat a 20-pound base drum while “crabbing” from the 50 yard line down to the 40. 

Of course, none of this would have been possible without summer band camp, which could also be considered “boot camp” for musicians.  For five days, the members of the band marched up and down the field at Camp Wind-in-the-Pines during the dog days of August.  In addition to giving kids the skills needed to perform, it also gave the incoming freshman a chance to get to know the upperclassmen.  One seasoned band mom said to me, “If your freshman discovers his friends aren’t in the same lunch, remind him he can always sit with the band.” One my son’s first day, he did just that. Marching band is what made the transition to high school a smooth one for my son.

So if you happen to see me at a football game, clapping and cheering and having a fantastic time, don’t think it’s because I’ve finally learned the ins and outs of one of America’s favorite sports.  I’m not there for the fumbles and the interceptions and the touchdowns.

I’m with the band.

A Case of Jet Lag with Time Travel Movies

By now, most of you know that I am a movie fanatic.  This weekend I took my son to see the movie “Looper”.  The film stars Joseph Gordon Levitt as an assassin who is tasked with eliminating an assortment of targets sent to him from the future.  He is taken aback when one of his targets turns out to be an older version of himself, played by Bruce Willis.

Ah, time travel.  Thou art a fickle plot device designed to mess with the heads of audiences time and time again.  Or is it just me?

I started thinking about all the movies I have seen throughout my life that featured time travel as a plot device, and was surprised at the length of the list.  One of the first I remember was “Somewhere in Time”, in which Christopher Reeve travels back in time to romance Jane Seymour.  In the beginning of the film, she approaches him as an old lady and urges him to “come back to me”.  He does this by dressing up in antique clothing, removing all traces of modern day artifacts from his person, lays down on a bed in a hotel and wills himself to travel back in time.  Wow, how lucky can you get?  No time travel machine like H.G. Wells, no special powers like the main character in “The Time Traveler’s Wife”.  He just thinks his way back.  Here’s where it starts to mess with my head.  If old Jane Seymour had not implored him to “come back to me” at the beginning of the film, how would he have known to travel back to see her when she was young and hot?  And if he hadn’t traveled back to see her when she was young and hot, he wouldn’t have run into her when she was old and craggy.  This type of thinking literally makes my brain hurt.

In James Cameron’s “The Terminator”, the character of Kyle Reese travels back in time to protect Sarah Connor from being killed by Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator.  You see, her unborn son, John Connor, sends his best buddy back in time to protect her.  In the process, Kyle impregnates Sarah.  With John Connor.  Ouch!  That’s my brain trying to figure out the logistics of that.  If John hadn’t sent Kyle back in time, he would have never existed.  At one point towards the end of the film, Sarah muses on this paradox saying, “A person could go crazy thinking about all this.”  Yes Sarah, and that crazy person is ME!

These films remind me of my failed attempt to read Stephen Hawking’s “A Brief History of Time”.  In the book, Hawking takes complex topics such as the origins of the universe, black holes, gravity and the nature of time and explains them in basic terms that those of us not blessed with brilliance can understand.  Unfortunately, Mr. Hawking didn’t dumb it down enough for me.  I found myself re-reading the same paragraphs over and over again, unable to grasp even the simplified explanations.  With a Homer Simpson “Doh”, I finally gave up.  So please, don’t let me think about an ever-expanding universe unless you want to see smoke leaking from the top of my head.

“Back to the Future” was a film that helped me understand time travel a little more easily.  As Michael J. Fox inadvertently makes changes to the past, the present-day photo he carries of his brother and sister changes as well.  First his brother’s head disappears, then the rest of his body, then his sister.  It is only when he sets the course of history back on the right track that the photo is restored to its proper image.  This was much easier to grasp than the book and film for “The Time Traveler’s Wife”, about a man with a genetic deficiency that causes him to bounce all over time.  He’s like Willy Wonka’s elevator in that he goes forward and backward and sideways and all other ways.  The only way I could read the book was to just let all the time travel references wash over me and not get too bogged down in the “where’s” and “when’s”.  My two friends who came to see the movie were not as lucky.  I swear I saw smoke coming out of their heads as we left the theater.

This is akin to the feeling I had when I watched “Inception” for the first time.  It took about five or six subsequent viewings for me to finally grasp the finer points of the “dream within a dream within a dream” scenario.  At least I think I understood it. I’m not completely sure.

Getting back to “Looper”.   I left the theater with a slight throbbing between my ears.  This only increased during the ride home as my son tried to explain the logistics of the film, complete with parallel universes and multiple realities.  It all made sense to him, but I had to ask him to stop talking before my head exploded. 

Perhaps time travel will be invented in my lifetime. If that happens, maybe I will finally grasp the intricacies of it.  By then the novelty will have worn off and Hollywood will stop using it as a plot point.  And when that day arrives, I’ll travel back in time to today and rewrite this column.

In the meantime, please excuse me while I pop a few Advil.