Call Me...Maybe?

I hate the phone.  Let me just put that right out there.  Oh sure, I call my sisters and girlfriends to chat, usually when I’m driving or cruising the grocery store aisles.   I like a good old catch-up convo as much as the next gal.  But when expediency is called for, the phone can suck time like a black hole. 


Set aside my skepticism at clutching a mobile device to our brains or the loony appearance of those blinking Vulcan blue earpieces.  What I hate about the phone when conducting business is the socially required chitchat, the lubrication, the “how are the kids” banter that doesn’t allow for cutting to the chase.  Wasn’t this precisely why Al Gore created the Internet --- so we could all be more efficient?


But lately it seems that even email is failing me.  I’m drowning in the sheer volume, suffocating in the volleys. Some conversations and decisions seem to require so many back and forths, so much cc-ing and reply-all-ing, that my knickers are twisted.  We are a society of over- communicators.  We text while we paint our toenails, we tweet while we’re getting frisky.  We feel a sense of rising panic if we haven’t responded to someone in 24 hours.

Good old-fashioned email can plunge you into hot water, if you’re not careful.   The written word lacks tone or inflection, there’s no indication that you are joshing (other than that silly smiley face symbol). Even a well-intentioned breezy missive can sound like you are dead serious, and a serious email can read as if a razor is poised at your wrist.  


Ooops.  It seems I’ve just offended someone with my sloppily dashed email.  But OMG, WTF?  I’d used LOL, added a smiley face and plenty of exclamation marks to lighten it all up.  Sigh.  More time spent on clarification, apologies and back–pedaling.  Now a phone call to hear our voices, palpate the hurt, define the intentions and un-do the damage.  And finally, are we good?  We’re good. OK. Thumbs up.  We like each other on Facebook again. 

Suddenly I’m nostalgic for my old black cord phone, the one I pulled into my childhood bedroom to whisper about cute boys.   A phone call back then had weight, carried a certain importance.  It was almost the equivalent of a written letter now, as quaint as composing your Santa list from the Sears & Roebuck catalogue. 

One of my favorite Nora Ephron essays is “The Six Stages of E-Mail.”  In the first stage she describes her excitement and infatuation at the new method of communication.  This gives way to her confusion over excessive spam for retail and personal growth opportunities like penis enlargement.  Note - my husband once changed his email address for this reason and let’s not go into the understandable insecurities this can breed when you’re a male recipient.  In the next stage, Ephron is overwhelmed by her email and finally the last section is simply entitled “Call Me.” 

 

 

Clicking on my email icon is like powering up a ball machine on a tennis court.  My returns are faster and the replies now shorter.  Anyone who emails me has to live with the fact that I don’t take the time to spell check. It’s my tiny stab at insurrection, a minimal but important time saving device.  To me, email is the written equivalent of a verbal response.  Of course there are exceptions, but you know you’re a friend if you have to read my messages fone- et-i- call-ee.

Sadly, from the looks of my inbox, email is here to stay.  And after years of attempting to be a nice, polite girl, dutifully answering even unsolicited emails, I’m getting ruthless.  I’m teaching myself to resist UFR (unnecessary further response) and to press delete when I see the FNOD’s (Forward to ten friends Now - Or Die a mysterious death within 24 hours).  I no longer send replies that say “great”, “OK,” “done,”  “thank you” or “really?” It’s liberating.  And frankly, do these people even remember they had the last word?  Did they care?  And don’t get me started on RAA (reply-all abuse).  Emailing someone is like accessing porn on the Internet.  Even a child can do it.  

I’m not sure exactly how I’ll solve this.  It’s unrealistic to assume I can throw my devices out the car window and walk away from the burning wreckage.  But I’m working on a healthier balance. 

But the next time we’re trying to set up a lunch date and its taking seven replies, don’t be surprised if you hear the phone ring.  That will be me— and please don’t be offended if I fail to enquire about your parent’s health. 




www.leewoodruff.com   facebook.com/leemwoodruff   twitter@LeeMWoodruff 

Christmas Past and Future

I’m one of those people who never reads a book twice or doesn’t like to see a movie again.   But twenty years into my marriage, I broke my rule to re-read “Crossing to Safety” by Wallace Stegner.  

The book had originally been a bridal shower gift from a friend of my in-laws, and I’m embarrassed to say I can no longer remember who she was.  But I vaguely recall that the accompanying note said it was a mandatory tale for anyone embarking on marriage; a simple story of commitment and friendship amidst the backdrop of life.   It sounded banal enough that I set it aside and in the throes of wedding planning, it was left behind with my in-laws.  The day after our September wedding, my new husband and I left for China.

“Peking” in 1988 was still a relatively backward city. Residents wore Communist Mao suits and bicycles were the major mode of transport.  Bob was teaching at the Chinese Law University and our living conditions were Peace Corp poor; a concrete dorm room, jungle toilets down the hall and no potable running water.

If at first this all felt like an adventure, by December, I was missing my family desperately.  One of my sisters was pregnant, and this would be the first Christmas I wouldn’t be there.  The fun of paring our lives down to the basics had worn off with the advance of the holidays in our drab and secular surroundings. 

When our first big package arrived by sea from Bob’s Mom, I enthusiastically assembled the foot-high fir tree with attachable ornaments, and hung the stockings she had included.  Snuggled under a few holiday music cassette tapes was the paperback “Crossing to Safety.”  I was eager to open it, desperate to connect with anything familiar back in America.

The tale of a husband and wife on the cusp of their new life together and their burgeoning friendship with another couple quickly absorbed me.  The novel moved from Wisconsin to the apple orchards of Vermont, familiar territory for me growing up in the Adirondacks.  And then, with time, the challenges began, the things that life often hides under its skirts when we first take our vows.

 

The simplicity of the story and the sparse eloquence of the writing captivated me. There was no sex or violence, no swear words, dystopia, or green aliens.  It was a tale about life the way it is really lived, with loss and love, successes and failures, disappointments and triumphs. The characters came alive with Stegner’s beautiful prose.

 

Two decades later, I was a seasoned wife with four children in various stages of leaving the nest.  The world had left its mark on us all.  When my journalist husband was injured in the Iraq war, we were all tested.  We celebrated in his recovery, while coming to terms with the preciousness of time together and the importance of resilience.  We were no longer the doe-eyed couple who believed that one’s path in the world could simply be forged from the sheer force of good intentions and hard work.

 

I had decided that re-reading “Crossing to Safety” would be a wonderful way to honor our twenty year anniversary and yet I was slightly worried that it might disappoint.  This second time, I was determined to re-read the story without any rose colored glasses.

 

Devouring the novel as a young bride far from home, I had originally identified with the newlywed couple at the beginning of the story.  Twenty years later, it was the older couple, the road-tested version of the newlyweds, with whom I felt a kinship.

 

I empathized with what life had thrown at the characters, the medical scares, the dings and dents, the disappointments, the strength of the women’s friendships, the determination to go the distance and see things through.  The gift of “Crossing To Safety,” I understood in hindsight, had been receiving a blue print for life.  At the time, I had simply been too young to comprehend.

 

 

Looking back now at that first Christmas with Bob, I am nostalgic.  Life in China was simple and unencumbered.  We had no children or mortgages, no mound of bills, savings or possessions, just the strengthening foundation of a growing love.  We would need to call upon that in the years to come, to summon up what we had worked hard to construct.  But as I write this, 24 years down the road, I am grateful and proud that we have done more than simply survive.

 

I can still see that stark Beijing dorm room, feel the thrill of devouring a great book that has more than stood the test of time.  Although I couldn’t have imagined then what course our lives would take, as I now prepare to gather the brood for another family holiday complete with traditions, music and food, I wouldn’t trade places with my old newlywed self for all the tea in China.

  

Happy Holidays and may they be filled with remembering what's important.

Lee

www.leewoodruff.com   facebook.com/leemwoodruff   twitter@LeeMWoodruff 

GIVING THEM THE BIRD

Most folks are eagerly anticipating Thanksgiving, talking nostalgically about family recipes and pumpkin pie. But I just can’t get excited about the turkey.  This is not simply because I have to prepare it.  It’s because I hate turkey.   Frankly, there must be a bunch of us, secret turkey subversives, who just nod and keep our faces even when folks salivate about the big bird on its sacred day.

If Ben Franklin had gotten his way, and the turkey had been selected as our national symbol, gracing coins and crests, maybe it would have been off limits as a food group.  No one I’m aware of eats American eagle. But somehow the turkey has become the edible symbol of our most fundamental American holiday. 

I’m daydreaming of assembling a holiday dinner this week that would be an all-inclusive, anti-turkey Thanksgiving.  What could be more America in the 2000’s than a melting pot meal?  A little sushi appetizer, some Chicken Tiki Masala (now practically the national dish of Great Britain), rice and beans… you get the picture.  Shouldn’t we create something that better reflects the cuisine of our country’s present demographics rather than retreading what some starving immigrants trash picked one late November in Massachusetts?

Sure, go ahead and toss your recipes at me, your turkey deep fryer, your perfectly browned breast draped with bacon, your whole garlic clove in the cavity.  You won’t convince me.   These Band-Aids are the equivalent of throwing a little KY jelly (or better yet Zestra) at the real problem; beneath that sultry skin, turkey is a mostly dry bird.  Even the alleged juicy brown drumstick mostly disappoints.

 

Maybe I dislike turkey because it’s the kissing cousin to chicken, which was forever ruined for me by my mother’s weekly skinless boneless breast dinners, incinerated and dehydrated under the broiler with a dab of margarine.   And then, if I had any hope of reconciliation with chicken as an adult, it has been beaten out of me by the countless frozen breasts with fake tattooed BBQ stripes that rest on lumps of rice or lettuce at every ballroom event lunch, banquet or conference meal.  Chicken is the go-to entre, the little black dress of mass meals.  

But, look, you say, look at all the fab accompaniments there are for turkey!  There are sauces and gravies, herbs and cranberry goop and citrus reductions.  Save your breath.  These only mask the issue, like feminine deodorant spray.  Be honest, a basic slice off the breast is like chewing through gypsum board.  The only possible way I enjoy turkey is a Thanksgiving leftover dark meat sandwich with fresh bread and lots of mayo (my husband would argue here for Miracle Whip.)

I don’t like picturing the farm to table journey of my bird.  We Americans don’t fancy the idea of getting a gander at where our food really comes from.  We’re more comfortable with the concept of shrink-wrap, dry aged, butchered cuts or ground meat.  But with a turkey, you can’t avoid imagining the living animal, even though by the time it gets to you, it more resembles an open casket viewing.  There it is, nude and embarrassed, hunched in forgiveness on your platter, minus a few extremities.  A turkey on the table is so… whole…. so intact. 

We all grew up with illustrations of hatchet-wielding pilgrims clomping around in those buckled shoes after the turkey.  As a child I was scarred by the tale of my mother’s family cook in Arkansas who wrung the chicken’s neck bare handed or chopped it off on a block while the rest of it flopped around a few seconds longer before collapsing.   I think of this image when I pull that old candy-cane neck out of the bird’s body cavity, where its been stuffed like some mafia message from “The Godfather.” And where do the feet go? What the hell happens to the feet?  Do they get shipped to China where they are considered a delicacy? Forget I asked, I don’t want to know.   And I don’t want to contemplate the image of mechanized plucking. Turkey feathers must be the poultry equivalent of a woman’s unwanted facial hair. 

 

Rolling my cart down the grocery aisle during the holidays, I am both repelled and drawn to the jumbled cases of plastic wrapped white skinned turkeys of varying weights, their knees drawn up in a yoga child’s pose. They look like a horror version of those Anne Geddes photographs and greeting cards, the ones with the naked babies in groups or dressed as single flowers and ladybugs.  Unlike the babies, the turkey skin has a mottled, bluish cast, all pimpled and dimpled.  It’s when I reach into the case and see the tiny pool of blood in the packaging that I ask myself what’s wrong with stuffed shells for a change of pace?  Why not honor the contribution of Italian Americans this Thanksgiving season?  Anyone?

By most accounts, the turkey is a mean, ugly bird.  And dumb as a stone.  Maybe anything that dumb deserves to die.  Evolution and natural selection haven’t helped it out any.  We have a pack of wild turkeys in my suburban NY town that claimed the median of a highway strip as their “hang turf” last year.  A hundred yards further and they could have had a nice little stretch of woodland to themselves. But no, these dimwits spent months playing chicken (pardon the pun) with the cars as they exited the interstate.   About every other week there would be a mound of feathery road kill on the off-ramp.   Honestly, any animal whose cry is “gobble gobble” is asking for trouble.

But like the turkey, I’m a big talker.  I dream about a turkey-free Thanksgiving, but I’ll never really take action.  My family wouldn’t allow it.  If it were my call, I’d eliminate the other colorless foods that have become a tradition in our family, my mother-in-law’s corn and oysters casserole, the stuffing and mashed potatoes, which will sit like wallpaper paste in our stomachs, the rutabaga, the white rolls and then the gravy made with parts that have been sitting inside the turkey’s ass in a bag (don’t get me started about the word “gizzards.”)  Once it’s been cooked to perfection it all looks like nursing home steam table food.  No teeth required. 

 

In the end it’s the ritual.  It’s about all of us coming together.  It’s about tradition, no matter how much I might daydream about a more sumptuous menu.  And regardless of the time invested to plan, shop and prep, my loved ones will clean their plates in roughly 20 minutes following the word “Amen.”

They will stand up, groan and stretch and return to their touch football game, their headphones and texting, their X-box war game or their custom couch indentation in front of the flat screen TV.  We sisters will clear and soak, load and dry, and lay out dessert, as unquestioning of the routine as the wives in the Bin Laden complex.

 

 

But none of us complain.  We love one another’s company, the addition of a displaced person at the table, the stray college buddy, the big city boyfriend, the sense of completion that all of our chickees are back in the nest for this long weekend and we get to mother the whole lot.  And for one day, at least, turkey and all, the world feels in its place.

 

Happy Thanksgiving!

 

 

 

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